Jules Engel (born Gyula Engel, March 11, 1909 – September 6, 2003) was an American filmmaker, painter, sculptor, graphic artist, set designer, animator, film director, and teacher. He was the founding director of the experimental animation program at the California Institute of the Arts, where he taught until his death, serving as mentor to several generations of animators.
Engel was born in Budapest, Austria-Hungary, to an American mother, and immigrated to Chicago when he was thirteen years old. He lived in Oak Park, Illinois, adjacent to Chicago, and attended Evanston Township High School, where he began developing his drawing style.
At the age of 17 Engel moved to Los Angeles seeking an athletic scholarship to either USC or UCLA. He lived in Hollywood while attending the Chouinard Art Institute and started to draw for magazines. He worked in the studio of a local painter sketching landscapes, and later as a background artists and as an inbetweening animator in Mintz Studio, the studio founded by Charles Mintz and his wife Margaret J. Winkler, which later became known as Screen Gems.
In 1938 the painter and art teacher Phil Dike helped him get an opportunity to work at Walt Disney Studios in Burbank.
At Disney Engel worked in the film Fantasia, released in 1940. At the time, Disney intended to integrate "low" art (animation) and "high" art (classical music), and the studio needed someone who was familiar with the timing of dance. Because of his drawing talent and his growing knowledge of dance, Engel was assigned to work on the choreography of the Russian sprites and Chinese mushrooms dance sequences of Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker Suite, animated by Art Babbitt. For these sequences, Engel emphasized the contrast between the bright figures and dark ground, which critics consider as an important development of modern animation away from naturalism.
David Hand, director of Bambi, asked Engel work with him on the film. Engel did the storyboard for the sequence where Bambi first encounters the doe Faline. After completing the sequence, he did color sketches that diverged from the naturalistic color schemes being used in production.
Engel's time at Disney would come to an end with the development of the Disney animators' strike. While the union won the case over the studio, Engel didn't go back, largely because while he enjoyed the place, he felt uncomfortable being surrounded by colleagues that he felt didn't share his passion for the aesthetics of animation.
He was an animator in the First Motion Picture Unit during World War II, alongside the likes of Ronald Reagan, and Theodor Geisel (Dr. Seuss). Originally, Engel was waiting to be drafted in the U.S. Army, but was rejected because of his poor eyesight (indicated by his glasses), and a bad shoulder. The Air Force eventually recruited Engel for the Motion Picture Unit to work on training videos and war bond advertisements, at the Hal Roach Studios in Culver City. He would eventually work on drawing aerial maps and instructions for weapons.
Engel was one of a group of animators—including John Hubley, and Herbert Klynn—who left Disney to join the United Productions of America (UPA) studio. At UPA, Engel worked as a background artist on cartoons including the Oscar-winning Gerald McBoing Boing, Madeline, and Mr. Magoo, becoming art director in 1950.
The environment at UPA was much more open to experimentation, unlike at Disney. Engel brought to UPA his distinctive use of color, influenced by abstract painting and the work of Kandinsky, Klee, Miró, Matisse, Dufy, as well of the Bauhaus book "Language of Vision". Engel would later claim responsibility for discovering the children's book Madeline, and suggesting to Stephen Bosustow to buy, copyright, and develop the series.