Brenda Lee Banks (July 19, 1948 – December 30, 2020) was an American animator, who was one of the first African American women to work as a professional animator.[1]
Banks was born in Los Angeles on July 19, 1948. She graduated from Fremont High School in 1967 and then went on to attend the California Institute of the Arts. She continued her education up through 1977 even while being involved in concurrent animation work projects.[1]
The earliest known works that Banks was involved in include those starring Clerow Wilson in the early 1970s and the 1973 animated television special B.C.: The First Thanksgiving.[2]
According to Ralph Bakshi, Banks arrived at his studio in 1973 asking for a job, despite telling him that she had no background in animation.[1] She was given some small work in the 1974 feature Coonskin.[1] After proving herself, Bakshi then assigned her to work on several of the background "goon" characters in the film Wizards whose animation quality was not high priority for the film as compared to the main characters. Her work was a complete success and Bakshi described her as the "star of the goons at the studio". From there, she went on to work on a number of Bakshi's subsequent features, including The Lord of the Rings in 1978 and Fire and Ice in 1983. After the latter film, Banks left the studio to instead begin work at Warner Brothers on their Looney Tunes television specials. She went on to work at other studios, including Hanna-Barbera for The Pirates of Dark Water and several episodes and games for Fox's Simpsons property. From 1997 to 2005, she was a dedicated layout animator for the King of the Hill television show, before disappearing from the animating field altogether.[3]
Banks was given a WIA Diversity Award in 2018 by the Women in Animation non-profit due to her decades of work in the field of animation.[4][5]
Frequently described by her colleagues as a private and shy person who did not offer much information about herself or her background, animator Lee Crowe remembered that she had no interest or desire to be remembered as one of the first black women in animation. The only personal detail recalled about her, as stated by Nancy Beiman, is that Banks had a physical disability in the form of requiring leg braces before surgery.[1]
