Heidi Smith

After graduating in 2008 from the character animation program at the California Institute of the Arts, Heidi Marie Smith made a name for herself as a character designer on the stop-motion animated feature film ParaNorman, produced by LAIKA, for which she designed all the main and supporting characters, as well as the film’s zombies and ghosts. This work earned her the 2013 Annie Award for Best Character Design in an Animated Feature Film. She continued her career as a character designer and visual development artist for several major American studios, including DreamWorks Animation, Warner Bros. Animation, Sony Pictures Animation, The Jim Henson Company and Netflix, contributing notably to the films Wish Dragon and The Wild Robot. In 2017, she published her first illustrated album, Lovely Beasts: The Surprising Truth, dedicated to the animal world, which won the 2019 Bull-Bransom Award for excellence in children’s illustration on the theme of nature and wildlife. Based in the United States, she remains one of the leading figures in character design within the American animation industry.