Aaron Belz: Tom, nice to meet you. As the 15th-anniversary Blu-ray release of Mulan and Mulan 2 is about to come out, and you led the team that invented one of its most memorable characters, Mushu, you’re a person we’d like to hear from. Would you begin by telling me how you got started at Disney?
Tom Bancroft: Haha, thanks. Nice to meet you too, Aaron. It was through a nine-week internship. Disney was going to all the major art schools in the country, and Cal Arts, where my brother Tony and I were enrolled, was always sort of their feeder for new artists. They were reaching out even wider for that internship because they wanted to see other art schools and see if they were up to par. So they ended up getting all these interns—there were about twenty of us that were chosen from different art schools across the country. Tony and I were in that group. It was during the time that they were making The Little Mermaid, so it was an exciting time to be at Disney. And then we both did get accepted—or given the jobs once the internship was over—so then we flew to Florida. I lived there for the next twelve years of my life. Most of my Disney career was there.
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