Audel LaRoque

Alexandre la Roque (born May 28, 1956), known by his pseudonym Audel LaRoque, is a French-American director, screenwriter, animator, producer and occasional voice actor at Universal Animation. He was a member of the creative team at Gingo Animation, where he started in 1988 as a supervising animator. He is best known for directing the Computeropolis franchise as well as Quest (2013).

Early life
LaRoque was born on May 28, 1956 to a Jewish family in France, and raised in Brooklyn, New York City.

Career
In early 1980s, he started his career as an animator on Topia at Austrafilm and later at Hanna-Barbera where he worked on several projects at the newly-formed Geo-Wildshill Productions studio.

In 1988, Geo-Wildshill Productions was separated from Hanna-Barbera and renamed as Gingo Animation; founders Geo G. and Michael Wildshill brought in some of the animators from Hanna-Barbera to the studio, and LaRoque was one of them.

LaRoque is Vice-President of Creativity at Universal Animation.

Personal life
LaRoque is married to Joan Green and they have two children: Brett and May. Brett was the voice of young Ridder in Quest.

Short films
Coming soon!

Unmade projects

 * Big Hero 6, a project that would have written and directed by LaRoque. It was originally set to be released on December 20, 2006, but was delayed to 2007. In March 2006, Universal then moved the film to 2008, and announcing Audel LaRoque as the director of Computeropolis 2, which he was directing concurrently with Big Hero 6. However, in March 2007, the project was abandoned by Universal due to script problems and LaRoque was no longer working on the project, and would instead work on an idea that would later become Quest. The project was later moved to Walt Disney Animation Studios and was released on November 7, 2014. It was met with both critical and commercial success, grossing over $657 million worldwide and becoming the second highest-grossing animated film of 2014, behind Universal's Gabriel Garza 2.

Television
More coming soon!

Critical reception
Critical response to films LaRoque has directed:

Accolades
Coming soon!