Biography

Diana Coco-Russell has spent most of her artistic career in animation, with her longest run at Walt Disney Feature Animation as a clean-up animator. Beginning with Beauty and the Beast in 1992 and ending with Home on the Range in 2003 her credits appear on most films from that decade. While enjoying every moment of her time at Disney working with some of the best artists in the industry, her favorite films remain Lion King, Tarzan and Mulan. Diana is known for specializing in animals and villains, and feels the fun is compounded by the number of acting rich scenes these kinds of characters are given.

Known as Diana Coco in the industry, she began her career doing layout/storyboards for Filmation on the Lone Ranger/Tarzan TV series, later moving into clean-up animation working on He-Man and Bravestarr. Having graduated from Art Center College of Design in Pasadena as an Illustration major, she found she preferred the camaraderie of the studio atmosphere to the life of a freelance illustrator. After Filmation folded she went back to UCLA and received a Master’s in Education. Teaching Biology and running the Yearbook class could not match the call of creativity found in feature animation and she returned to the entertainment industry by starting up with Disney Feature Animation in Burbank. 

While at Disney she met Walt Stanchfield, who was conducting bi-monthly Gesture Drawing classes for the entire studio. Walt made a huge impact on Diana with his challenge to create and craft powerful drawings with life and simplicity. The call to draw the figure in poses so clear that they ‘spoke to the balcony’ was irresistible.  She took Walt’s drawing philosophy ‘on the road’ teaching figure and gesture drawing classes at a variety of institutions and studios including the local Hollywood animation union, Santa Monica City College the storyboard trainee internship at Dreamworks. Diana continues to ‘coach’ drawing and animation in a variety of venues while pursuing her other interests - plein air painting, animal drawing and riding horses with her husband and friends.