In 1999, Smith co-founded Jambalaya Studios with Hyperion Pictures to bring more "racially and ethnically" diverse animated projects to television, movies, and the internet. The Proud Family was the first project created for the company. The series started development in 1998. Smith was inspired to create the series because he did not see the characters of color represented in animation. Upon creating the series, Smith drew his experiences with a middle-class African-American family in Los Angeles. The conception of the series was also inspired by his fatherhood of three children. In 2000, Smith told Charles Solomon of The Los Angeles Times that he wanted to create a middle-class African-American family that was "not so much Cosby-esque as Cosby-esque with a really interesting slant." The name of the series was inspired by his meeting with co-founder Tom Wilhite when Smith showed him the main characters drawn in a family portrait.
In 1999 Smith co-founded Jambalaya Studios with Hyperion Pictures to bring more "racially and ethnically" diverse animated projects to television movies, and the internet The Proud Family was the first project created for the company. The series started development in 1998. Smith was inspired to create the series because he did not see the characters of color represented in animation. Upon creating the series, Smith drew his experiences with a middle-class African-American family in Los Angeles. The conception of the series was also inspired by his fatherhood of three children. In 2000, Smith told Charles Solo.mon of The Los Angeles Times that he wanted to create a middle-class African-American family that was "not so much Cosby-esque as Cosby-esque with a really interesting slant." The name of the series was inspired by his meeting with co-founder Tom Wilhite when Smith showed him the main characters drawn in a family portrait.