PEOPLE KNOWN FOR: animation
Walt Disney
American film producer
Walt Disney, American motion-picture and television producer and showman, famous as a pioneer of animated cartoon films and as the creator of such cartoon characters as Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck. He…...
Dr. Seuss
American author and illustrator
Dr. Seuss, American writer and illustrator of immensely popular children’s books, which were noted for their nonsense words, playful rhymes, and unusual creatures. After graduating from Dartmouth College…...
Miyazaki Hayao
Japanese director
Miyazaki Hayao, Japanese anime director whose lyrical and allusive works won both critical and popular acclaim. Miyazaki’s father was the director of Miyazaki Airplane, a manufacturing concern that built…...
Otto Messmer
American animator
Otto Messmer, American animator who created the character Felix the Cat, the world’s most popular cartoon star before Mickey Mouse. The attribution has been questioned by some, in part because of the claims…...
Jan Švankmajer
Czech artist, puppeteer, animator, and filmmaker
Jan Švankmajer, Czech Surrealist artist, puppeteer, animator, and filmmaker known for his dark reimaginings of well-known fairy tales and for his avant-garde use of three-dimensional stop-motion coupled…...
Trey Parker
American screenwriter, actor, and producer
Trey Parker, American screenwriter, actor, and producer, best known as the cocreator, with Matt Stone, of the subversive animated comedy series South Park (1997– ). Parker grew up in small-town Colorado.…...
Tex Avery
American director
Tex Avery, influential American director of animated cartoons, primarily for the Warner Bros. and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) studios. Avery’s only formal art training consisted of a three-month course at…...
Matt Stone
American screenwriter, actor, and producer
Matt Stone, American screenwriter, actor, and producer who was best known as the cocreator, with Trey Parker, of the subversive animated television series South Park (1997– ). At a young age, Stone moved…...
Winsor McCay
American animator
Winsor McCay, American newspaper cartoonist who was also a pioneer of animated films. At age 21, McCay started working as a poster and billboard artist for a Chicago company. In 1904, after working as…...
Chuck Jones
American animator
Chuck Jones, American animation director of critically acclaimed cartoon shorts, primarily the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies film series at Warner Bros. studios. As a youth, Jones often observed film…...
George Pal
Hungarian-born animator, director, and producer
George Pal, Hungarian-born animator, director, and producer who was a leading figure in the science-fiction genre, especially noted for his work with special effects. He also created Puppetoons, a popular…...
Terry Gilliam
American director
Terry Gilliam, American-born director who first achieved fame as a member of the British comedy troupe Monty Python. While a student at Occidental College in Los Angeles, Gilliam began working on the student…...
Seth MacFarlane
American writer, animator, actor, and producer
Seth MacFarlane, American writer, animator, actor, and producer who was perhaps best known for creating the television series Family Guy (1999–2003, 2005– ), American Dad (2005– ), The Cleveland Show (2009–13),…...
Mel Blanc
American entertainer
Mel Blanc, entertainer renowned as America’s greatest voice-over artist who created more than 400 unique voices for popular radio, television, movie, and cartoon characters. Blanc was interested in music…...
Marjane Satrapi
Iranian artist and writer
Marjane Satrapi, Iranian artist and writer whose graphic novels explore the gaps and the junctures between East and West. Satrapi was the only child of Westernized parents; her father was an engineer and…...
John Lasseter
American animator
John Lasseter, American animator widely credited with engineering the success of Pixar Animation Studios through a synthesis of cutting-edge computer animation and classic storytelling. He is best known…...
William Hanna
American animator
William Hanna, American animator who, as part of the team of Hanna and Barbera, created popular cartoon characters such as Tom and Jerry, the Flintstones, and Scooby-Doo. Hanna had dropped out of college…...
Ray Harryhausen
American filmmaker
Ray Harryhausen, American filmmaker best known for his pioneering use of stop-motion animation effects. Harryhausen grew up in Los Angeles, acquiring a love of dinosaurs and fantasy at a young age. His…...
Tim Burton
American director
Tim Burton, American director known for his original, quirky style that frequently drew on elements of the fantastic and the macabre. Burton, who became interested in drawing and filmmaking while quite…...
Matt Groening
American cartoonist and animator
Matt Groening, American cartoonist and animator who created the comic strip Life in Hell (1980–2012) and the television series The Simpsons (1989– ) and Futurama (1999–2003, 2010–13). Groening began drawing…...
Jeffrey Katzenberg
American entrepreneur
Jeffrey Katzenberg, American entrepreneur who played a pivotal role in transforming the Walt Disney Company into a multibillion-dollar empire and who, along with filmmaker Steven Spielberg and music mogul…...
Ub Iwerks
American animator and special-effects technician
Ub Iwerks, American animator and special-effects technician who, among many other achievements, brought the world-renowned cartoon character Mickey Mouse to life. Iwerks was the son of an immigrant German…...
Nick Park
British animator, writer, producer, and director
Nick Park, British animator and director of stop-motion films that often feature his characters Wallace and Gromit. Park demonstrated an early ability to draw, and by age 13 he was animating his cartoon…...
Robert Clampett
American director
Robert Clampett, one of the top directors at the Warner Bros. cartoon studio and the creator of the Beany and Cecil television series. Clampett joined Leon Schlesinger’s fledgling animation unit on the…...
Edward Gorey
American writer and illustrator
Edward Gorey, American writer, illustrator, and designer, noted for his arch humour and gothic sensibility. Gorey drew a pen-and-ink world of beady-eyed, blank-faced individuals whose dignified Edwardian…...
Walter Lantz
American animator
Walter Lantz, American motion-picture animator, cartoon producer, and creator of the cartoon character Woody Woodpecker. At age 16, Lantz worked as a newspaper cartoonist and began experimenting with animation…...
William Kentridge
South African artist and filmmaker
William Kentridge, South African graphic artist, filmmaker, and theatre arts activist especially noted for a sequence of hand-drawn animated films he produced during the 1990s. The pungent humanism he…...
Henry King Ketcham
American cartoonist
Henry King Ketcham, (“Hank”), American cartoonist (born March 14, 1920, Seattle, Wash.—died June 1, 2001, Pebble Beach, Calif.), was the creator of the Dennis the Menace comic strip, which daily chronicled…...
Alexandre Alexeïeff
French animator
Alexandre Alexeïeff, Russian-born French filmmaker who invented the pinscreen method of animation with his collaborator (later his wife), the animator Claire Parker (1910–81). Alexeïeff spent his childhood…...
Friz Freleng
American animator
Friz Freleng, American animator of more than 300 cartoons, primarily for the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies film series at Warner Bros. Freleng joined Warner Bros. studios as head animator in 1930, after…...
Satoshi Kon
Japanese filmmaker
Satoshi Kon, Japanese filmmaker (born Oct. 12, 1963, Hokkaido, Japan—died Aug. 24, 2010, Tokyo, Japan), wrote or collaborated on the screenplays and directed the action for a series of highly acclaimed…...
Jiří Trnka
Czech filmmaker
Jiří Trnka, preeminent filmmaker of the Czech puppet animation tradition who was also a painter, designer, cartoonist, and book illustrator. Trnka, who was trained as a painter in art school, won a design…...
J. Stuart Blackton
American film director
J. Stuart Blackton, British-born U.S. film director and producer who introduced animation and other important film techniques that helped shape and stimulate the development of cinematic art. While interviewing…...
Joseph Roland Barbera
American animator
Joseph Roland Barbera, American motion-picture animator (born March 24, 1911, New York, N.Y.—died Dec. 18, 2006, Los Angeles, Calif.), collaborated for more than half a century with William Hanna, and…...
John Halas
British director
John Halas, British motion-picture animator and producer (born April 16, 1912, Budapest, Hung.—died Jan. 20/21, 1995, London, England), was, with his wife, Joy Batchelor (died 1991), the force behind the…...
Alex Anderson
American cartoonist
Alex Anderson, (Alexander Hume Anderson, Jr.), American cartoonist (born Sept. 5, 1920, Berkeley, Calif.—died Oct. 22, 2010, Carmel, Calif.), created the beloved animated characters Bullwinkle J. Moose…...
Ward Kimball
American animator
Ward Kimball, American animator (born March 4, 1914, Minneapolis, Minn.—died July 8, 2002, Arcadia, Calif.), was among the “Nine Old Men” who made Walt Disney Studios the leader of film cartoons by drawing…...
Bill Melendez
Mexican-born American animator
Bill Melendez, (José Cuauhtémoc Melendez), Mexican-born American animator (born Nov. 15, 1916, Hermosillo, Mex.—died Sept. 2, 2008, Santa Monica, Calif.), animated and/or produced dozens of television…...
Ollie Johnston
American animator
Ollie Johnston, (Oliver Martin Johnston, Jr.), American animator (born Oct. 31, 1912, Palo Alto, Calif.—died April 14, 2008, Sequim, Wash.), was a member of Walt Disney’s “Nine Old Men,” a group of top-notch…...
Bill Peet
American animator and writer
Bill Peet, (William Bartlett Peed), American animator, screenwriter, and author-illustrator (born Jan. 29, 1915, Grandview, Ind.—died May 11, 2002, Studio City, Calif.), worked for Walt Disney for 27 years,…...
Dwayne Glenn McDuffie
American comic book writer and animated film producer
Dwayne Glenn McDuffie, American comic book writer and animated film producer (born Feb. 20, 1962, Detroit, Mich.—died Feb. 21, 2011, Burbank, Calif.), cofounded (1993) Milestone Media, an imprint of DC…...
Joseph Grant
American animator
Joseph Grant, American animator (born May 15, 1908, New York, N.Y.—died May 6, 2005, Glendale, Calif.), served as both a designer and a writer on some of the classic animated works of the Disney studios.…...
Iwao Takamoto
American animator
Iwao Takamoto, American animator (born April 29, 1925 , Los Angeles, Calif.—died Jan. 8, 2007, Los Angeles), worked at Walt Disney Studios on such classic films as Cinderella (1950), Peter Pan (1953),…...
Maurice Noble
American animator
Maurice Noble, American animator (born May 1, 1910, Spooner, Minn.—died May 18, 2001, La Crescenta, Calif.), helped create some of the most famous animated features in entertainment history. Noble’s career…...
James Archibald Houston
Canadian artist, author, and filmmaker
James Archibald Houston, Canadian artist, author, and filmmaker (born June 12, 1921, Toronto, Ont.—died April 17, 2005, New London, Conn.), lived for 14 years (1948–62) among the Inuit people of northern…...
Frank Thomas
American animator
Frank Thomas, American animator (born Sept. 5, 1912, Santa Monica, Calif.—died Sept. 8, 2004, Flintridge, Calif.), created some of the most memorable moments in animated film history, most notably the…...
Faith Elliott Hubley
American animator
Faith Elliott Hubley, American film animator (born Sept. 16, 1924, New York, N.Y.—died Dec. 7, 2001, New Haven, Conn.), made films that combined music, magic, and myth in their celebration of life and…...
Marc Davis
American cartoonist
Marc Davis, American cartoonist (born March 30, 1913, Bakersfield, Calif.—died Jan. 12, 2000, Glendale, Calif.), was an animator for Walt Disney Studios from 1935 to 1978 and helped create the title characters…...
James Culhane
American animator
James Culhane, ("SHAMUS"), U.S. pioneering animator who gave life to the characters in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Walt Disney’s first feature-length cartoon (b. Nov. 12, 1908--d. Feb. 2,...
