Kurtz & Friends

Bob Kurtz, founder of the Burbank-based animation studio Kurtz & Friends and former governor of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, writes, designs, and directs entertainment films and television commercials, including main title animation for Gambit, The Pink Panther, Are We Done Yet?, City Slickers and commercials highlighting Honda’s Crazy-Sensible innovations. Other projects include segments for Steven Spielberg’s Minority Repot and Jurassic Park, the Crocodile anti-smoking films and print campaign for the California Department of Public Health and interactive games for Disney. Kurtz also created The Way Things Work, the 3-screen, 3-D multi-media film for Sony’s San Francisco Metreon complex.

Kurtz is the recipient of numerous awards, including an Emmy for the PBS special Roman City, the Peabody Award for the Lily Tomlin special Edith Ann’s Christmas, the Annie Award for Lifetime Achievement, and over 250 international awards. His films are included in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles and the ASIFA Archive, Germany. Kurtz was AdWeek’s animator of the year and also recognized as Japan’s Artist of the Year. He has also directed, produced and co-designed animated sequences for HBO’s George Carlin Special.

Bob Kurtz was born in Los Angeles, California and graduated from the Chouinard Art Institute (now the California Institute of the Arts.) “My philosophy is fairly simple-I am a communicator. Therefore the message comes first, then the graphics. I want to stimulate, excite, scare or create laughter. I don’t want a passive audience. I don’t expect a captive audience. It is the film artist’s obligation to reach out and touch that audience; to rediscover and share our common humanity.