The late twentieth century marked a significant change for animation and children’s publishing. Animation studios extended into TV and film work, licensing grew into a significant industry, and film and TV-related children’s books established a consistent market. Public art transcended its association with governmental monuments. It took on a cultural significance that combined popular music, memory, and place. Through all this change, artists often combined different professional activities: animation, illustration, and other work. Susan DiCicco Smith, known professionally as Sue DiCicco, emerged from this environment and built a career that spans animation, publishing, sculpture, and nonprofit work, with projects extending from studio production floors to national commemorative design.
DiCicco studied at the California Institute of the Arts from September 1977 to October 1979, participating in the Character Animation program during a formative period for the school. CalArts, founded in 1961, had become a pipeline for animation talent by the late 1970s. Among her classmates were Tim Burton, John Lasseter, and Chris Buck, who would later become prominent figures in film animation. The program emphasized draftsmanship, motion studies, and character development for theatrical production. DiCicco’s time there coincided with a generation that entered the industry as feature animation regained commercial strength heading into the 1980s.
At age twenty, DiCicco was hired by Walt Disney Animation Studios. During that period, the studio was rebuilding its animation department following a transitional era in the 1970s. She advanced to animator, working in a studio environment where women were still underrepresented in senior animation roles. Industry records from the period show that animation departments were largely male-dominated, with women more commonly employed in ink and paint divisions. DiCicco’s progression to animator placed her within a small cohort of women working directly on animated production. She remained with Disney until 1985, gaining experience in feature and studio processes before choosing to establish her own practice.
DiCicco went into business for herself in 1985, establishing her own studio, which was later named DiCicco Digital Arts and later DiCicco Studios. She specialized in commercial work, including television ads and media illustrations. This was a reflection of the larger trend of the animation industry at the time, where more people were turning towards independent animation and the use of digital tools was becoming more prevalent, especially towards the end of the 1980s and the early 1990s.
In 1991, DiCicco illustrated Walt Disney’s “I Am Mickey Mouse,” one of the early children’s book to be completely and totally digitally rendered. DiCicco’s studio was soon expanded to include licensed publishing, riding the wave of the popularity of licensed publishing, especially towards the end of the 1990s and the early 2000s.
Throughout the 1990s and the 2000s, DiCicco went on to illustrate and author a number of children’s books for major publishers such as Penguin Random House, Scholastic, Tuttle Publishing, and Golden Books, among other publishers, including a broad range of licenses such as Disney characters, Sesame Street, Dragon Tales, Jim Henson, and Star Wars Episode I, released in 1999, which was part of a global media blitz. At the time, the licensed children’s book market was a huge part of the publishing business, driven by the retail chains and distributors of educational materials throughout North America.
In addition to franchise work, DiCicco authored original titles. Among them are You Are My Work of Art in 2011, Superhero Potty Time in 2011, Princess Potty Time in 2011, and early learning books such as 1, 2, 3 in the Sea and 1, 2 at the Zoo in 2012. She also created the Totally Monster series in 2013 and Adventures in Asian Art: An Afternoon at the Museum in 2017. Origami Peace Cranes: Friendships Take Flight was published in 2017 through Tuttle Publishing. These works reflect a shift from licensed illustration toward thematic projects centered on childhood development, cross-cultural learning, and art education.
Her career also extended into sculpture. In 2002, DiCicco was commissioned to create a heroic-sized bronze statue of singer John Denver for the Windstar Foundation in Colorado. The work, later titled Spirit, depicts Denver in a reflective pose and was cast in bronze at a monumental scale. After the Windstar Foundation closed in 2013, the sculpture was donated to the Colorado Music Hall of Fame. In spring 2015, it was unveiled at Red Rocks Amphitheatre near Morrison, Colorado. Red Rocks, a venue that has hosted performances since 1906, receives more than one million visitors annually. The sculpture has since served as a site of tribute and is connected to commemorative events marking Denver’s career.
The bronze study for the statue has also been used for fundraising and as the basis for the annual John Denver Spirit Award. The sculpture’s relocation and continued visibility tie DiCicco’s work to a major American performance venue and to a musician whose recordings have sold tens of millions of albums worldwide. Commissions for public art on this scale depend on collaboration with cultural institutions and nonprofit organizations. They are, in a way, a different kind of practice than publishing and animation. In 2013, DiCicco founded Armed with the Arts and the Peace Crane Project, encouraging children to fold origami cranes as symbols of peace and share them globally.
The campaign followed the 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School. It was made to promote cross-cultural communication among young people. As time went by, its followers grew, and the numbers just kept on rising, now with participants in over 150 countries. She is also the co-author of The Complete Story of Sadako Sasaki with Masahiro Sasaki (Tuttle Publishing). The book is a documented narrative of Sadako Sasaki’s life, informed by family collaboration and historical research.
The United States Postal Service revealed that a paper origami crane folded by DiCicco will be featured on the 2026 International Peace Forever stamp. In the U.S., the Postal Service sends billions of stamps through the mail each year, and commemorative designs are often culturally or historically inspired.
Across animation, publishing, sculpture, and nonprofit development, DiCicco’s career traces a path shaped by industry change and independent production. From her training at the California Institute of the Arts in the late 1970s to her early employment at Walt Disney Animation Studios in 1979, and from founding DiCicco Digital Arts in 1985 to public art commissions and book publication through 2020 and beyond, her work spans commercial media and civic expression. Sue DiCicco’s professional record reflects a sustained presence across multiple sectors of American visual culture.
