Kelly Asbury

Kelly Adam Asbury (born January 15, 1960) is an American animated film director, screenwriter, voice actor, published children's book author/illustrator, and non-fiction author. He is best known for directing animated films, including Shrek 2 and Gnomeo & Juliet.

Early life
Asbury was born in Beaumont, Texas and attended Lamar University for two years before transferring to the renowned California Institute of the Arts in 1980, where he studied animation and film making.

Career
He worked at Walt Disney Animation from 1983 to 1995, and contributed storyboards for several animated films including The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast and Toy Story. In 1993, he was the assistant art director on Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas.

In 1995, he began working for DreamWorks, and directed two Academy Award-nominated feature films, Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron (2002) and Shrek 2 (2004). In addition to directing, Asbury provided some of the extra voices in Shrek 2 and Shrek the Third.

Kelly Asbury directed and co-wrote the animated film Gnomeo & Juliet (2011), for which he also provided the voices of the tiny Red Goon Gnomes. He was nominated for two Annie Awards for directing and co-writing that film. In 2003, he wrote a non-fiction book titled Dummy Days, which is a biography of five 20th century ventriloquists. He is the author and illustrator of twelve published children's books, including Rusty's Red Vacation, Bonnie's Blue House and Yolanda's Yellow School.

In mid-2011 to mid-2012, Asbury contributed storyboards to Disney's Wreck-It Ralph and Frozen. Beginning in 2013, Asbury developed and directed the fully CG-animated reboot of The Smurfs called Smurfs: The Lost Village for Sony Pictures Animation, which was released on April 7, 2017.

Asbury currently resides in Southern California.