Famous Animators

Seth MacFarlane has a distinct comedic style and versatility in entertainment. He was born on October 26, 1973, in Kent, Connecticut. He developed an early interest in illustration and animation. This passion led him to study film, video, and animation at the Rhode Island School of Design. There, he created the animated short, "The Life of Larry," which became the precursor to his famous series, Family Guy. MacFarlane's career grew when Hanna-Barbera Productions hired him to work on shows like Johnny Bravo and Dexter's Laboratory.

Walt Disney was a pioneering figure in animation. Born on December 5, 1901, in Chicago, Illinois, his creative vision transformed the entertainment industry and made him a cultural icon. Starting as a cartoonist, he co-founded The Walt Disney Company with his brother Roy O. Disney, establishing a multimedia empire that endures today. His success began with Laugh-O-Gram Studio, which went bankrupt. Undeterred, he moved to Hollywood and created Oswald the Lucky Rabbit.

Director Tim Burton led some of Hollywood's biggest blockbusters despite his contrarian style and indie filmmaker persona. With roots in drawing and animation, Burton created films reflecting the gothic horror influences of his youth. Starting with "Pee Wee's Big Adventure" (1985), Burton developed a reputation for a surreal artistic vision that often ignored narrative needs. His films were successful enough to lead him to direct the first two installments of the Dark Knight series.

Matt Stone was raised in Littleton, CO, though he was born in Texas. He attended the University of Colorado at Boulder as a math major. As an undergraduate, he met filmmaker Trey Parker, who reportedly fed him roast beef. Stone later acted in Parker's first feature, "Cannibal! The Musical/Alferd Packer! The Musical!" (1993). This film retold the story of a 19th-century prospector who ate several colleagues. When the movie failed at Sundance, it was shown at a midnight screening and reportedly inspired the Slamdance Festival.

TV shows sometimes enter popular culture after their premiere, giving the world catchphrases and material for parody. "South Park" (Comedy Central, 1997-) was one such example. It is a crude, crudely animated series about four foul-mouthed third-graders in a fictional Colorado town. From its start, "South Park" caused controversy and received descriptions like "'Peanuts' on acid" and "a cartoon from hell." The substandard animation used construction paper cut-outs to mask the subversive comedy.

Theodor Seuss Geisel (or Dr. Seuss; March 2, 1904 – September 24, 1991) was an American author, cartoonist, illustrator, poet, animator, screenwriter, and filmmaker. He wrote and illustrated over 60 books under the name Doctor Seuss. His work includes many of the most popular children's books, selling over 600 million copies and being translated into more than 20 languages by his death. Geisel adopted the name "Dr. Seuss" as a student at Dartmouth College and later as a graduate student.

Matt Groening, the creator of "The Simpsons" (Fox, 1989-) and the comic strip "Life in Hell," influenced world pop culture. His creations spawned many print and merchandise versions that made him an influential figure.

Terry Gilliam worked on several magazines and British television shows before achieving fame as an animator. He became the quiet sixth member of the Monty Python comedy troupe, then graduated to acclaimed feature director. Gilliam spent little time in front of the camera. However, he created the infamous cut-out animation used in the opening credits and between skits for "Monty Python's Flying Circus" (BBC, 1969-1974). He also co-directed the troupe's first official.

Mike Judge shaped modern comedy. He was the creative force behind "King of the Hill" (Fox, 1997-2009) and its precursor, "Beavis & Butt-Head" (MTV, 1993-97). Judge also created the film classic "Office Space." Throughout the nineties and beyond, Judge was a powerful force in comedy. Like his contemporary Matt Groening of "The Simpsons," Judge built an animated empire full of blue-collar losers and rednecks struggling through life's details.

John Lasseter, an animation director and Pixar executive, loved traditional hand-drawn animation since his adolescence. He pioneered computer-generated animation with "Tin Toy" (1988) and "Toy Story" (1995). Both films became the first CGI feature film and short film to win Academy Awards, respectively. Lasseter joined Pixar Studios after working at Walt Disney Studios and helped turn the fledgling studio into a huge success with hit films like "Toy Story."

Max Fleischer was Walt Disney's main screen animation competitor in the 1930s. He created cartoon figures like Betty Boop, Koko the Clown, and Popeye with his brother Dave (1894-1979). The brothers also produced the silent "Out of the Inkwell" series, which combined live actors and animation. They brought features such as "Gulliver's Travels" (1939) and instructional films like "The Einstein Theory of Relativity" (1923) and "Darwin's Theory of Evolution" (1925) to life. Fleischer also contributed the Rotoscope, a machine that projected live-action film.

Chuck Jones defined many iconic cartoon characters. He created Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Wile E. Coyote, and the Road Runner. Jones mixed intelligent jokes with absurdity in countless cartoons for Warner Bros. and other studios throughout his celebrated career. Charles Martin Jones was born on September 21, 1912, in Spokane, Washington. He and his three siblings grew up in Los Angeles, California. He credited his interest in art to his father.

Friz Freleng shaped the history of animation. He joined the industry in 1927 as an animator on Walt Disney's popular Oswald the Rabbit series. Freleng helped start the sound era in cartoons with the three-minute pilot film "Bosko the Talk Ink Kid" (1929). He served as chief animator for the early Harman-Ising studio, which later became producer Leon Schlesinger's animation unit at Warner Brothers.

Walter Benjamin Lantz (April 27, 1899 – March 22, 1994) was an American cartoonist, animator, film producer, director, and actor. He is best known for founding Walter Lantz Productions and creating Woody Woodpecker.

Jeffrey Katzenberg is an American producer and writer. He produced "Shrek" and "Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron." Katzenberg won an Academy Award in 2013.

Brad Bird was born Phillip Bradley Bird on September 24, 1957, in Kalispell, MT. Bird met Walt Disney Studios animators Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnson when he was 11 during a studio tour. Bird got the animators' interest by completing an original animated short film two years later. At age 14, Bird became Milt Kahl's protégé. Disney gave him a scholarship to the California Institute of the Arts for higher education.

Georgia Hubley is an American percussionist, vocalist, and visual artist. She is one of the two founding members of the alternative-rock band Yo La Tengo. She lives in New Jersey with her co-founder Ira Kaplan. They often met at record shops and shows. Finding common ground in music and a shared love for New York Mets baseball led them to jam together. They formed the band in 1984, released their first album, Ride the Tiger, in 1986 on the Coyote label, and continue their work.

William Hanna and Joseph Barbera created Hanna-Barbera Productions. They produced many of the most loved animated television shows of the 20th century and beyond. These programs include "The Huckleberry Hound Show" (syndicated, 1958-1961), "The Yogi Bear Show" (syndicated, 1961-62), "The Flintstones" (ABC, 1960-66), "The Jetsons" (ABC, 1962-63), "Jonny Quest" (ABC, 1964-65), "Super Friends" (ABC, 1973-1986), and "The Smurfs" (NBC, 1981-89). Hanna and Barbera started their careers with Oscar-winning Tom and Jerry animated shorts for MGM.

William Hanna and Joseph Barbera's Hanna-Barbera Productions created some of the best-loved animated television programming of the 20th century. This includes "The Huckleberry Hound Show" (syndicated, 1958-1961), "The Yogi Bear Show" (syndicated, 1961-62), "The Flintstones" (ABC, 1960-66), "The Jetsons" (ABC, 1962-63), "Jonny Quest" (ABC, 1964-65), "Super Friends" (ABC, 1973-1986), and "The Smurfs" (NBC, 1981-89). Hanna and Barbera also started their careers with the Oscar-winning Tom and Jerry animated shorts for MGM.

Animation writer and director Genndy Tartakovsky worked on classic TV shows like "Dexter's Laboratory" (Cartoon Network 1996-2003) and "Samurai Jack" (Cartoon Network 2001-04). He became one of the most prominent young animators of his generation. Tartakovsky drew for hours, envisioning worlds in his head. As a child in Moscow and later in America, he drew constantly. In his early twenties, he worked as an art director for Hanna-Barbera and later had a role in the studio's history.

Norman McLaren (April 11, 1914 – January 27, 1987) was a Scottish Canadian animator, director, and producer. He worked for the National Film Board of Canada (NFB). McLaren pioneered many areas of animation and filmmaking, including hand-drawn animation, drawn-on-film animation, visual music, abstract film, pixilation, and graphical sound. His awards include an Academy Award for Best Documentary Short Subject in 1952 for Neighbours, a Silver Bear for best short documentary at the 1956 Berlin International Film Festival Rythmetic, and a 1969 BAFTA Award for Best Animated Film for Pa.

Hayao Miyazaki was acknowledged as Japan's preeminent animator and director. He remained a cult figure to American devotees of "manga" (Japanese comic books) and "anime" (Japanese animated features) until the 1999 US release of his masterwork, "Princess Mononoke" (1997). Miramax acquired the film. They redubbed it into English using a script by Neil Gaiman and actors like Claire Danes and Billy Crudup. "Princess Mononoke" introduced rich animation and superb storytelling to mainstream audiences. The film was considered too violent for young children.

Jay Ward was an American writer and producer. He wrote popular series such as "Mr. Peabody & Sherman," "Dudley Do-Right," and "George of the Jungle."

Art Clokey was an American actor, producer, director, and writer. He appeared in "Gumby: The Movie."

Adam Elliot, born January 2, 1972, is an independent Australian stop-motion animation writer, director, and producer based in Melbourne. His five films have participated in over seven hundred film festivals. They have received over one hundred awards, including an Academy Award for Harvie Krumpet and five Annecy Cristals. Elliot calls himself an auteur filmmaker; his films possess a bittersweet nature. He works exclusively on his own projects and avoids commercial work. He bases each of his works loosely on his family and friends.

Tex Avery was one of the most influential theatrical animators of the 20th century. He turned Warner Bros.' Looney Tunes series into an iconic franchise for the studio. This happened through enduring characters like Bugs Bunny, Porky Pig, and Daffy Duck. Avery's work featured strong visual and verbal anarchy. Characters broke the fourth wall or the laws of nature in a pursuit of a madcap ideal that mixed the lunacies of the Marx Brothers with free-form structure.

Walter Crawford Kelly, Jr., known as Walt Kelly (August 25, 1913 – October 18, 1973), was an American animator and cartoonist. He is best known for the comic strip Pogo. Kelly began his animation career at Walt Disney Studios in 1936, working on projects like Pinocchio, Fantasia, and Dumbo. In 1941, at age 28, he moved to Dell Comics, where he created Pogo, which became his platform for political commentary.

Raymond Frederick Harryhausen (June 29, 1920 – May 7, 2013) was an American artist, designer, visual effects creator, writer, and producer. He created stop-motion model animation called "Dynamation." His works include the animation for Mighty Joe Young (1949), mentored by Willis H. O'Brien, which won an Academy Award for Best Visual Effects. Other films include his first color film, The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958), and Jason and the Argonauts (1963), featuring a sword fight with seven skeleton warriors. His last film was Clash of the Titans (1981), after which he retired.

Eli Roth is one of the most profitable directors working in the horror genre. He gained industry respect and fan acclaim after his first thriller, "Cabin Fever" (2002), a low-budget film that brought him to the spotlight. Roth followed up with "Hostel" (2006), an excessively graphic hit that earned him the dubious honor of inventing the so-called horror subgenre, torture porn. Roth gained Hollywood credit through his association with people like Quentin Tarantino while directing fake trailers.

Dean DeBlois is an accomplished animated film director. His works include the Oscar-nominated movies "Lilo & Stitch" (2002) and "How to Train Your Dragon" (2010) and their sequels. DeBlois was born on June 7, 1970, in Aylmer, Quebec. After high school, he attended Sheridan College's three-year Classical Animation program in Oakville, Ontario. During this time, he worked as an assistant animator on projects like the Canadian television series "The Raccoons" (CBC 1985-1991) and "The Nutcracker Prince" (1990), a Warner Bros. adaptation.

Daniel James Harmon, born January 3, 1973, is an American writer, producer, and actor. He created and produced the NBC sitcom Community. Harmon also co-created the Adult Swim animated series Rick and Morty and co-founded the television network and website Channel 101. He published the book You'll Be Perfect When You're Dead in 2013. He hosts a weekly podcast called Harmontown.

Don Bluth is arguably one of the biggest names in feature-length animation since Walt Disney. He learned his craft at the Disney Studio before becoming a competitor after branching out in 1979. While at Disney, Bluth worked as an assistant animator on "Sleeping Beauty" (1958). He left for college and work as a Mormon missionary. He returned in 1971, working as an animator on "Robin Hood" (1973), "The Rescuers" (1977), and "Pete's Dragon" (1977). Bluth decided to form his own company because he felt Disney lost its way through cost-cutting measures.

This article concerns the American filmmaker. See Larry N. Jordan for information regarding the American publisher and writer. Lawrence Jordan, born in 1934, is an American independent filmmaker known for his animated collage films. In 1970, he received a Guggenheim Fellowship to make Sacred Art of Tibet.

Born in Oxnard, California in 1963, Rich Moore attended the prestigious California Institute of the Arts, graduating with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1987. His focus was animation. Immediately after graduation, Moore went to work for animation legend Ralph Bakshi, writing all episodes of "Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures" (CBS, 1987-1988). In 1990, Moore directed his first episode of "The Simpsons" (Fox, 1989-) and would go on to direct another 16 episodes during the show's first five seasons, including classics like "Flaming Moe's" (s3 ep10), "A Streetcar Named Marge" (s4 ep2), and "Cape Feare

John Spurley Challis (born 16 August 1942) is an English actor best known for portraying Aubrey "Boycie" Boyce in the long-running BBC television comedy series Only Fools and Horses and its sequel/spin-off The Green Green Grass. Since 2015, he has made guest appearances as "Monty Staines" from the seventh series onwards in the hit ITV comedy Benidorm, later becoming a regular from series 10 in 2018.

Andreas Deja is a Polish-born German-American character animator, most noted for his work at Walt Disney Animation Studios. Deja's work includes serving as supervising animator on characters in several Disney animated films, including the Disney villains Gaston in Beauty and the Beast, Jafar in Aladdin, Scar in The Lion King and the title character in Hercules.

Kai Pindal is a film director, screenwriter and production designer.

While not a household name like Matt Groening, animation director David Silverman was arguably one of the most instrumental behind-the-scenes craftsmen of the perennial sitcom family "The Simpsons" (Fox, 1989- ). Silverman was a struggling animator in the 1980s before the boom in feature film and primetime animation, and was on the verge of quitting the business altogether when he took a chance on a series of short bumpers about a dysfunctional cartoon family on "The Tracey Ullman Show" (Fox, 1987-1990). A key player in laying the ground rules for transforming Groening's two-dimensional drawin

Robert Emerson Clampett (May 8, 1913 – May 2, 1984) was an American animator, producer, director, and puppeteer best known for his work on the Looney Tunes animated series from Warner Bros., and the television shows Time for Beany and Beany and Cecil. Clampett was born and raised not far from Hollywood, and early on expressed an interest in animation and puppetry. After leaving high school a few months shy of graduating in 1931, Clampett joined the team at Harman-Ising Productions and began working on the studio's newest short subjects, titled Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies. Clampett was pro

Chris Williams (born December 19, 1968) is a Canadian-American animator, film director, screenwriter, and voice actor. He directed the short film Glago's Guest and co-directed Bolt, which was nominated for the Oscar for Best Animated Feature in 2009; Big Hero 6, which won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature in 2015 and Moana, which was nominated for two Oscars for Best Animated Feature and Best Original Song in 2016.

Frédéric Back, (April 8, 1924 – December 24, 2013) was a Canadian artist and film director of short animated films. During a long career with Radio-Canada, the French-language service of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, he was nominated for four Academy Awards, winning two, for his 1981 film Crac and the 1987 film The Man Who Planted Trees.

Animator Butch Hartman received the nickname Butch as a kid, and continued to use this name professionally when he started creating programming for children. While attending the California Institute of the Arts, Hartman got a chance to work as an intern for famed animator Don Bluth on the movie "An American Tail," and after he graduated Hartman was hired to work on the kid's cartoon "My Little Pony." For a few years, Hartman worked for Hanna-Barbera on several of their animated shows, but he got a chance to do his own show for Nickelodeon, "The Fairly OddParents," which premiered in 1997. The

As a producer, Gary Kurtz laid claim to helping shape one of the most influential properties in the history of motion pictures. Kurtz's early work included various duties for producers like Roger Corman|Roger -type="spell-mistake" data-suggestions="Colman|Coman|Carman|Cormac|Norman" data-description="Spelling"Corman|Roger -type="spell-mistake" data-suggestions="Colman|Coman|Carman|Cormac|Norman" data-description="Spelling"Corman|Roger -type="spell-mistake" data-suggestions="Colman|Coman|Carman|Cormac|Norman" data-description="Spelling"Corman and such directors as Monte Hellman on B-movies like

Sophie Merry is a Dublin-based Irish actor, film maker, dancer and part-time model. She is known for her "Groovy Dancing Girl" videos on her YouTube channel BandyToaster, has appeared in music videos, and has made short films.

Bill Melendez, best known for the beloved "Peanuts" TV specials, based on Charles M. Schulz's comic strip, spent 68 of his 91 years working in the field of animation. Born in Hermosillo, Mexico, Melendez was educated in the United States and began his film career as an assistant animator on the early 1940s Disney classics "Pinocchio," "Fantasia," "Dumbo," and "Bambi." But he spent the bulk of that decade with Warner Brothers, animating their cartoon mainstays Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Tweety and Sylvester, and Porky Pig. Eventually Melendez found himself directing and animating commercials, at w

Joseph Henry Ranft was drawn to humor and movie magic as a child. After graduating from Monte Vista High School in 1978, he studied character animation at the California Institute of the Arts. Ranft's student film, "Good Humor," earned him a job at Disney. At Disney, he worked as a writer and storyboard artist. He was promoted to the Feature Animation department and received mentorship from Eric Larson. This experience proved invaluable to Ranft. During the 1980s, he wrote stories for Disney.

Director Benh Zeitlin developed storytelling skills from his folklorist parents and a strong visual sense. He pursued filmmaking as a career. Zeitlin learned film essentials by working with the Court 13 collective of young enthusiasts. He improved his cinematic knowledge through courses from the Sundance Institute. His debut feature, "Beasts of the Southern Wild" (2012), received acclaim as an astonishing and imaginative first effort.

Dave Fleischer became a top directing talent during his Hollywood career. In 1920, he partnered with his brother Max. In 1936, he produced the animated film "Popeye the Sailor Meets Sinbad the Sailor." Later, Fleischer directed several films, including "Gulliver's Travels" (1939) and "Mr. Bug Goes to Town" (1941), both with Max Fleischer. Fleischer received his most recent credit in "Admission Free" (1984). He died in June 1979 at age 85.