about the artist...

T-Dan started his caricature career doing "bighead-smallbody" quick sketch profiles of tourists at the International Market Place in Waikiki, Hawaii at the age of 14 under the tutelage of his father, Tom "Huf" Hofstedt, "The Fastest Pen Alive." Papa Huf has drawn over one million sketches in his storied caricature career. T-Dan also drew at Knott's Berry Farm,. Universal Studios and Magic Mountain while he was attending California Institute of the Arts Disney Character Animation Program. At Cal Arts T-Dan received instruction from the great caricaturist, story artist and designer T. Hee, from whom he was awarded the Bobe Cannon Memorial Scholarship. Also among his instructors were Donald Duck's most prolific director Jack Hannah, figure drawing from Elmer Plummer, color and design from Bill Moore, animation from Bob McCrea & Hal Ambro, and layout perspective from Louis Gadal. During production of "Aladdin," T. Dan attended workshops given for the animators by legendary caricature artist Al Hirshfeld.



			T-Dan started his caricature career doing "bighead-smallbody" quick sketch profiles of tourists at the International Market Place in Waikiki, Hawaii at the age of 14 under the tutelage of his father, Tom "Huf" Hofstedt, "The Fastest Pen Alive." Papa Huf has drawn over one million sketches in his storied caricature career. T-Dan also drew at Knott's Berry Farm,. Universal Studios and Magic Mountain while he was attending California Institute of the Arts Disney Character Animation Program. At Cal Arts T-Dan received instruction from the great caricaturist, story artist and designer T. Hee, from whom he was awarded the Bobe Cannon Memorial Scholarship. Also among his instructors were Donald Duck's most prolific director Jack Hannah, figure drawing from Elmer Plummer, color and design from Bill Moore, animation from Bob McCrea & Hal Ambro, and layout perspective from Louis Gadal. During production of "Aladdin," T. Dan attended workshops given for the animators by legendary caricature artist Al Hirshfeld.






	T. Dan Hofstedt's resume reads like an all-time great list of animated classics. His gift for caricaturing both a likeness and an action of a character has served him well so far in a 25 year career. After putting himself through the Character Animation program at California Institute of the Arts as an amusement park caricaturist, T. Dan has garnered a widespread "in-house" reputation at Sullivan-Bluth, Disney, Warners and Sony Imageworks as one of the top caricature artists around. He has taught Character Animation for Maya at Studio Arts in Glendale, CA, taught a Caricature Workshop at Sony Imageworks, and guest lectured at the Cal Arts Character Animation program, where he studied in the early '80's. He has made a successful transition from the 2D animation world to the 3D computer generated realm. He was an Animation Supervisor at Sony Imageworks on the Academy Award nominated animated feature "Monster House." T. Dan is back at Disney Animation Studios working on the 2009 release of "Princess and the Frog."


	While he has earned credits on 21 feature films, his personal art has become his music. T. Dan has written over 200 songs and has studied the art of Hawaiian slack-key guitar (ki ho'alu) under some of the masters of the genre, John Keawe, Keola Beamer and Kevin Brown.