Prolific film animator Tom Bancroft, a son of California, had a fast pass to Disney — but it all came to a screeching halt in 2000.

While his name might be unfamiliar, his work has made its way into countless homes around the globe. He was the creator of Mushu in Disney’s “Mulan,” he designed young Simba in “The Lion King,” and he worked on several other famed Disney classics, like “Tarzan,” “Aladdin,” and “Beauty and the Beast.”

Bancroft was even offered the role of lead animator for 2002’s “Lilo & Stitch,” but he turned it down. He traded in his Mickey ears, he said, “to go work with vegetables.”

The successful artist recently appeared on CBN’s “Faith in Culture” Podcast, where he opened up about what led him to turn away from his “dream job” at Disney to pursue faith-based work.

When he was just starting out, Bancroft attended the California Institute of the Arts. Then, in the late 1980s, he and his twin brother Tony began internships at The Walt Disney Company, where they both worked on “The Little Mermaid.”

After 12 years with Disney, Bancroft said he felt “a calling” that “got very loud.”

“I think I was able to dodge it for a long time, unfortunately,” he said. “But I think it got very loud in the 2000s. … In 2000, I broke away from Disney and I felt like I knew exactly where I needed to go.”

Bancroft then spent a couple years working on “Veggie Tales.”

“I was about to be a lead animator on ‘Lilo & Stitch,’ and I gave that up to go work with vegetables,” he joked, noting it was his faith that pulled him out of what would be any animator’s dream gig.

He explained on the podcast that his Christian faith was “why I left Disney.”

“I honestly saw the direction Disney was going in all the way back in 2000,” Bancroft said. “And I felt very uneasy about it and so, at that point, my faith was mature enough, I think, for me to go, ‘OK, I don’t need to stay here — even though this is my dream.'”

“God,” he continued, “gave me a new dream.”

It was there — working on a Christian project — that Bancroft said prayer was integrated into his career “for the first time.”

“We’re praying at the beginning of meetings,” he reflected. “And I had just left a studio where I couldn’t talk about my faith in the hallways.”

Listen to the FULL podcast here.

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