David "Dave" Pruiksma (born January 15, 1957) is an American Disney animator[1][2] best known for his work at The Walt Disney Company and occasionally other studios.
Pruiksma was born and raised in Falls Church, Virginia where he attended J.E.B. Stuart High School. He graduated in 1975.[3] He then studied art at the Pratt Institute in New York for two years.[3] He left to attend California Institute of the Arts where he received a degree in character animation in 1981.[3]
Following graduation, Pruiksma was hired as an assistant animator at Disney and worked on the films The Black Cauldron, The Great Mouse Detective, Oliver & Company, The Little Mermaid and The Rescuers Down Under. He rose to supervising animator and created the characters of Mrs. Potts and her son Chip in Beauty and the Beast. Other characters including The Sultan in Aladdin, Pumbaa in The Lion King, Flit and the Forest Animals in Pocahontas, Hugo and Victor in The Hunchback of Notre Dame and Mrs. Wilhelmina Bertha Packard and Mister Fenton Q. Harcourt in Atlantis: The Lost Empire.
After completing working on 2001's Atlantis: The Lost Empire, Pruiksma left Disney because of his disenchantment with "Disney's greed-driven corporate structure."[3] He then worked freelance as an animation director and storyboard artist for the Cartoon Network series Hi Hi Puffy AmiYumi. He also accepted a position teaching at the Laguna College of Art and Design (LCAD) from the animation department's former chair Dave Kuhn, who Pruiksma had trained at Disney.[3]
Pruiksma was a full-time faculty member at LCAD in Laguna Beach, California until his retirement in 2018.[4]