James Baxter

In 2018, Baxter, along with fellow animators Stephen Hillenburg, Amanda Forbis and Wendy Tilby won the Winsor McCay Award at the 2018 Annie Awards.

In May 2013, Baxter was a guest animator for an episode of the fifth season of Adventure Time entitled "James Baxter the Horse". The episode's story focused on the lead characters trying to emulate a horse who can cheer everyone up by neighing his name (James Baxter) and balancing on a beach ball. Both the horse's animation and voice were provided by Baxter. The episode's title card features a drawing of the horse drawing a horse on a beach ball, while sitting at an animation table. A second episode focusing on the character's origins, "Horse and Ball", aired during the show's eighth season, with Baxter once again animating and voicing the character.

After The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Baxter moved over to DreamWorks Animation, where he worked on films such as The Prince of Egypt, The Road to El Dorado, Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron, Shrek 2 and Madagascar. Early in 2005, Baxter left DreamWorks and set out on his own as an independent animator. He became the head of his own studio, James Baxter Animation, in Pasadena, California, where he has directed the animation for the 2007 film Enchanted and the opening credits to Kung Fu Panda, for which he received an Annie Award. After the release of Kung Fu Panda in 2008, Baxter closed his studio and returned to DreamWorks Animation as a supervising animator. While at DreamWorks, Baxter worked on films including Monsters Vs. Aliens, How to Train Your Dragon and The Croods. In 2017, Baxter left DreamWorks once again and went to work for Netflix.

James Baxter (born May 19 1967) is a British character animator. He was first known for his work on several Walt Disney Animation Studios films, including various characters in Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Rafiki in The Lion King, Belle in Beauty and the Beast, and Quasimodo in The Hunchback of Notre Dame.