We are saddened by the recent passing of beloved artist and animation producer Daniel Ridgers who died suddenly on Dec. 2 at age 52. Born in the UK, he and his family moved to California in 1986. Ridgers was a senior producer on the animated Disney channel show Future-Worm! and had been a senior producer at Walt Disney Imagineering for the past few years.
Ridgers began his animation career in the mid 1990s, working as production manager at Hyperion Studios and Starz Entertainment on a wide variety of animated projects including Virtual Oz, The Monkey Prince, The Brave Little Toaster Goes to Mars, Stripperella, Free for All and The Oblongs He was also production coordinator on Family Guy and Stewie Griffin: The Untold Story. He became head of production at DUCK studio from 2006 to 2015.
At Disney, he worked as a producer on The Proud Family Shorties. He was also a producer on seven Wild About Safety: Timon and Pumbaa shorts and 101 Dalmatians: The Further Adventures of Thunderbolt, a short directed by Floyd Norman. Ridgers then went on to be a line producer on Ryan Quincy’s animated show Future-Worm!, which ran from 2016 to 2018. He was also associate producer on Disney’s Mickey Mouse (2017) series and line producer on Warner Bros.’ Scooby-Doo, Where Are You Now! He was animation post-production executive at Amazon from 2017 to 2019. In 2021, Ridgers became a full-time senior producer at Walt Disney Imagineering.
Daniel is survived by his wife and best friend of 36 years Monica, and their two sons Alex and Matthew. The family has established a Gofundme fundraiser to help cover the costs of a celebration of life and future expenses in the wake of his sudden passing.
It reads:
“Anyone who has ever known Dan can imagine the loss in all of our lives of this man, the embodiment of the silliest fun, unending kindness and gentleness to all and an intense passion in everything he did. My children and I have lost a son and brother, but Monica Ridgers has lost the love of her life and Alex and Matthew have lost their best and beloved father…In work Daniel moved from creating art to producing animation for major studios, award-winning advertising and bespoke projects. He coached baseball and soccer, the latter for years. But like everything Dan put his passions to, halfway was never good enough and anyone reading this will have his or her own memories of the ‘Eveready Bunny’ that was Daniel Ridgers.”
We send our heartfelt condolences to Daniel’s family and friends in the animation community during this difficult time. if you have memories of Daniel that you would like to share with us, please email edit@animationmagazine.net and we’ll add to this story.
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