Kelly Asbury, renowned Hollywood animator with Beaumont roots, dies

Kelly Asbury helped birth characters that enchanted the world, directing the Oscar-nominated “Shrek 2” and “Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron” and earning credits on blockbusters from “Frozen” to “Toy Story” to “The Little Mermaid.”

The animator also sneaked in the occasional scene from his native Beaumont and maintained close ties with family and friends back home in Texas.

“He was a natural comedian, and one of the wittiest human beings alive,” said his sister, Gwen Asbury Speed of Tomball.

Asbury, 60, died Friday of abdominal cancer in Los Angeles, where he built a successful Hollywood career on some of the most popular animated movies of his generation.

He worked with studios like Dreamworks, Sony Pictures Animation and Pixar on a roster of films that also includes “James and the Giant Peach,” “The Prince of Egypt,” “Chicken Run,” “Shrek,” “Wreck-It Ralph” and Tim Burton’s “The Nightmare Before Christmas.”

Asbury grew up in north Beaumont, his sister recalled by telephone on Saturday. He was a 1978 graduate of French High School, where the art teacher Minnie McMillan inspired him to pursue a career in the field.

Asbury Speed said her brother was a creative child and “literally excelled with art.” He loved watching anything created by Disney Studios or Chuck Jones, she said, and especially liked the fluid animation of the “Road Runner” cartoons.

Jones later became a mentor and invited Asbury several times to his San Francisco home.

High school friend Brett Thacker, a former San Antonio Express-News managing editor, recalled working with Asbury at French’s student newspaper.

He said Asbury’s cartoons often included hidden messages that made students laugh but eluded the attention of administrators.

“At that early age, you’re trying to find your group,” Thacker said. “In Kelly, I found a fellow subversive and sharp sense of humor, but he was never a bad guy. We had a great time together.”

Later, he said, he visited Asbury at the studio where “The Nightmare Before Christmas” was being created. Asbury treated Thacker and his family to a tour of the studio, showing them all of the sets and characters.

Asbury Speed said her brother left a a surprise for her in the Tim Burton cult hit. She spotted it during the premiere, in a scene that featured a living room inside one of the homes in Christmas Town.

“It was kind of a ’50s design, and I immediately saw it,” she said. “It was our living room in Beaumont.”

Thacker described his friend as the rare person who achieved his Hollywood dreams but never let success go to his head.

“He was a humble guy,” he said. “Even after he made it big, he was down to earth and didn't want to be treated like some celebrity.”

After high school, Asbury attended Lamar University for two years before leaving for the California Institute of the Arts. Professor Jerry Newman helped him present his portfolio.

Upon graduation, Asbury’s skill earned him a presentation in front of Disney executives, to whom he showed a short featuring a cowboy riding a mechanical horse. He joined the company soon after and got one of his first movie credits in 1985 on an animated Disney film called “The Black Cauldron.”

Asbury continues to inspire children in Southeast Texas through a video that plays to visiting school groups, Museum of the Gulf Coast director Tom Neal said. In the video, prepared while Asbury was working at Sony Studios, he discusses his work and his upbringing in the community.

“He is someone who can get their attention because they know his work, and then they listen to him talk about how he worked to get where he is today,” Neal said. “He is someone that is easily accessible to them, but is also incredibly inspirational.”

Neal said it is powerful when kids hear someone like Asbury describe watching “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” at Beaumont’s Jefferson Theatre and dreaming about bringing his own drawings to life.

“They are amazed that so many people that have made their mark in the world came from here,” Neal said. “And he is a part of that inspiration for our kids.”

When his last film, “Ugly Dolls,” launched in 2019, Asbury sent the Port Arthur museum thousands of items to give to children.

Asbury also describes in the video his relationship with his father and the drawing games they would play together that inspired him to become a storyteller. He talks about his father’s death from cancer when Asbury was 12.

“I think what that did, you know, was really instill in me early on that I was going to have to grow up,” he says.

He said his mother ingrained him with a work ethic and an attitude to view anything worth having as something worth working for.

But he could also be a prankster, as his sister recalled.

“He had this thing with me, when I would visit in California, where he would bring me where celebrities hung out,” she said. “But we never seemed to catch them. So he started to pick out celebrities from look-a-likes in the street and fool me every time.”

Asbury Speed said her brother battled his own cancer for seven years, mostly in private, so he could continue to work without worrying about a studio passing him over.

“Only his close family members knew,” she said, “and, of course, his wife and two stepsons, who adored him. It helped him not to focus on it, I think.”