Following graduation, Pruiksma was hired as an assistant animator at Disney and worked on the films
The Black Cauldron,
The Great Mouse Detective,
Oliver & Company,
The Little Mermaid and
The Rescuers Down Under. He rose to supervising animator and created the characters of Mrs. Potts and her son Chip in
Beauty and the Beast. Other characters including The Sultan in
Aladdin, Pumbaa's luau scene in
The Lion King, Flit in
Pocahontas, and Mrs. Wilhelmina Bertha Packard and Mister Fenton Q. Harcourt in
Atlantis: The Lost Empire. After completing working on 2001's
Atlantis: The Lost Empire, Pruiksma left Disney because of his disenchantment with "Disney's greed-driven corporate structure." He then worked freelance as an animation director and storyboard artist for the
Cartoon Network series
Hi Hi Puffy AmiYumi. He also accepted a position teaching at the
Laguna College of Art and Design (LCAD) from the animation department's former chair Dave Kuhn, who Pruiksma had trained at Disney. Pruiksma was a full-time faculty member at LCAD in
Laguna Beach, California until his retirement in 2018. ==Filmography==