Years active 1988–present Name David Bowers | Role Animator | |
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Occupation Animator, film director, screenwriter, voice actor Nominations BAFTA Award for Best Animated Film Residence Los Angeles, California, United States, United Kingdom Movies Astro Boy, Flushed Away, Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick R, Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days, Astro Boy vs The Junkyard Similar People Sam Fell, Robert Capron, Zachary Gordon, Devon Bostick, Rachael Harris | ||
David Bowers (born 1970) is an English animator, film director, screenwriter and voice actor originally from Stockport, Greater Manchester in the UK.
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Early life
Bowers studied animation at West Surrey College of Art and Design in Farnham, but left during the first year to work on Who Framed Roger Rabbit as an inbetweener under director Richard Williams.
Career
After Roger Rabbit, Bowers worked at Cosgrove Hall on the cult-favourite television shows Danger Mouse and Duckula before moving to London to work for Steven Spielberg's Amblimation studio. He worked as an animator on An American Tail: Fievel Goes West before going freelance to work on advertisements and features. Bowers later returned to Amblimation to work on early story development and as a Supervising Animator on Balto.
With the founding of DreamWorks SKG, Bowers moved to Los Angeles to work as a story artist on The Prince of Egypt and The Road to El Dorado. It was during this period that he met Aardman's Nick Park and Peter Lord, who asked him to help storyboard Aardman’s first feature-length film, the critically acclaimed Chicken Run. He was ultimately credited as Storyboard Supervisor.
After Chicken Run, Bowers moved between Los Angeles and Bristol, United Kingdom, working on several DreamWorks and Aardman projects, including the hit CG animated comedy Shark Tale and the Oscar-winning Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit before directing his first feature Flushed Away with Sam Fell.
He directed a big-screen adaptation of Osamu Tezuka's classic Astro Boy for Imagi Animation Studios and Summit Entertainment that was released in 2009.
Bowers directed Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules, his first live-action film, which was released in cinemas on 25 March 2011. He also directed the third film in the series, Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days (2012), as well as the fourth film, Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Long Haul (2017).
On 13 September 2013 it was announced that Bowers is in talks with Universal Pictures to direct an animated/live-action film adaptation of "Clifford the Big Red Dog" by Norman Bridwell.