The Animators - a personal favorite
by sennedriesen | created - 18 Aug 2017 | updated - 18 Aug 2017 | PublicA list of my personal favorite and most inspirational animators in film history. Including: 'Stop-motion, pixelation, cut-out animation, traditional cel-animation, sand animation, direct animation, ...'
1. Norman McLaren
Producer | Neighbours
Norman McLaren is one of the most awarded filmmakers in the history of Canadian cinema, and a pioneer in both animation and filmmaking. Born in Scotland, he entered the Glasgow School of Fine Arts in 1932 to study set design. His early experiments in animation included actually scratching and ...
Neighbours
2. Max Fleischer
Producer | The Tantalizing Fly
Max Fleischer was an American animator, inventor, and film producer from Krakow. As an inventor, Fleischer is primarily known for inventing the rotoscope, an animation technique that allowed animators to draw realistic images and movements, based on live-action images. He later co-founded the ...
Koko The Clown
3. Tex Avery
Director | I Love to Singa
Tex Avery was a descendant of Judge Roy Bean and Daniel Boone, but all his grandma ever told him about it was "Don't ever mention you are kin to Roy Bean. He's a no good skunk!!" After graduating from North Dallas High School in 1927, Avery moved to Southern California in 1929 and got a job in the ...
Blitz Wolf
4. Stephen Bosustow
Producer | Gerald McBoing-Boing
Stephen Bosustow was born on November 6, 1911 in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. He was a producer and writer, known for Gerald McBoing-Boing (1950), When Magoo Flew (1954) and Rooty Toot Toot (1951). He died on July 4, 1981.
Gerald McBoing-Boing
5. Chuck Jones
Actor | Gremlins
Starting as a cel washer, Chuck Jones worked his way up to animator and then director at the animation division of Warner Bros. He is famous for creating such beloved cartoon characters as Wile E. Coyote, Henery Hawk, Pepé Le Pew, Marvin the Martian, Ralph Wolf, Road Runner, Sam Sheepdog, Sniffles,...
The Dover Boys
6. Winsor McCay
Writer | Gertie the Dinosaur
Like many pioneers, the work of 'Winsor McCay' has been largely superseded by successors such as Walt Disney and Max Fleischer but he more than earns a place in film history for being the American cinema's first great cartoon animator. He started out as a newspaper cartoonist, achieving a national ...
Gertie The Dinosaur
7. Wladyslaw Starewicz
Director | Zhitel nyeobitayemovo ostrova
Although his name nowadays means very little except to animation buffs (and even they have to be pretty well informed), Wladyslaw Starewicz ranks alongside Walt Disney, as one of the great animation pioneers, and his career started nearly a decade before Disney's. He became an animator by accident ...
The Cameraman's Revenge
8. Ub Iwerks
Visual_effects | The Birds
Ub Iwerks worked as a commercial artist in Kansas City in 1919 when he met Walt Disney who was in the same profession. When Disney decided to form an animation company, Ub Iwerks was the first employee he had due to his skill at fast drawing as well as being a personal friend.
When Charles Mintz ...
Steamboat Willy
9. Hayao Miyazaki
Writer | Sen to Chihiro no kamikakushi
Hayao Miyazaki is one of Japan's greatest animation directors. The entertaining plots, compelling characters, and breathtaking visuals in his films have earned him international renown from critics as well as public recognition within Japan.
Miyazaki started his career in 1963 as an animator at the ...
Spirited Away
10. Walt Disney
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
Walter Elias Disney was born on December 5, 1901 in Chicago, Illinois, the son of Flora Disney (née Call) and Elias Disney, a Canadian-born farmer and businessperson. He had Irish, German, and English ancestry. Walt moved with his parents to Kansas City at age seven, where he spent the majority of ...
Oswald The Lucky Rabbit
11. Friz Freleng
Producer | ABC Afterschool Specials
Friz Freleng was born Isadore Freleng on August 21, 1906 in Kansas City, Missouri. With no formal training in drawing, his first job as an animator was with United Film Advancement Services in 1924 at the age of 17. The first work Friz is credited with was for Disney Studios where he worked as an ...
I Haven't Got A Hat
12. Ralph Bakshi
Director | Wizards
Ralph Bakshi worked his way up from Brooklyn and became an animation legend. He was born on October 29, 1938, in Haifa, Israel, the son of Mina (Zlotin) and Eliezar Bakshi, and is of Krymchak Jewish descent. He was raised in Brownsville, after his family came to New York to escape World War II. ...
Heavy Traffic
13. Ray Harryhausen
Actor | Spies Like Us
When it comes to motion-picture special effects, there is only one name that personifies movie magic: Ray Harryhausen. From his debut films with George Pal to his final film, Harryhausen imbued magic and visual strength to motion-picture special effects as no other technician has, before or since.
...
Clash Of The Titans
14. Alexander Alexeieff
Director | Le nez
Russian-born French experimental short artist Alexeieff, who with his wife American-born Claire Parker invented the pinscreen animation technique,is most known for designing the prologue sequence for Orson Welles's The Trial.He grew up in Constantinople, then the Ottoman Empire, where in 1906 his ...
The Nose
15. Émile Cohl
Director | L'agent de poche
Pioneering animator Emile Cohl was born Emile Eugène Jean Louis Courtet in Paris, France, in 1857. He began his career as a caricaturist, cartoonist and writer in his 20s, and in 1908 he was hired by the Gaumont film company as a writer. He soon also became a director, turning out comedies and ...
Fantasmagorie
16. Terry Gilliam
Writer | Brazil
Terry Gilliam was born near Medicine Lake, Minnesota. When he was 12 his family moved to Los Angeles where he became a fan of MAD magazine. In his early twenties he was often stopped by the police who suspected him of being a drug addict and Gilliam had to explain that he worked in advertising. In ...
Monty Python's Flying Circus
17. Bill Plympton
Director | Cheatin'
Bill Plympton was born on April 30, 1946 in Portland, Oregon, USA. He is a director and writer, known for Cheatin' (2013), I Married a Strange Person! (1997) and Idiots and Angels (2008).
Idiots And Angels
18. Otto Messmer
Director | Felix in Hollywood
Cartoonist Otto Messmer was born in Union City (then known as West Hoboken), NJ, on Aug. 16, 1892. He showed an aptitude for drawing as early as grammar school, and his teachers encouraged him to follow that path. After graduating he took a correspondence course in art and attended the Thomas ...
Felix The Cat
19. Nick Park
Writer | Chicken Run
Nick Park was born on December 6, 1958 in Preston, Lancashire, England, UK. He is a writer and producer, known for Chicken Run (2000), Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005) and Wallace & Gromit: The Wrong Trousers (1993).
Sledgehammer
20. Lotte Reiniger
Director | Silhouetten
Lotte Reiniger was born on June 2, 1899 in Berlin, Germany. She was a director and writer, known for Silhouetten (1936), Der Graf von Carabas (1935) and Lotte Reiniger - The Fairy Tale Films (1961). She was married to Carl Koch. She died on June 19, 1981 in Dettenhausen, Baden-Württemberg, Germany.
The Adventures of Prince Achmed
21. Émile Reynaud
Director | Pauvre Pierrot
Émile Reynaud was a French inventor born in Montreuil, Paris to Brutus Reynaud, an engineer who moved to Paris from Le Puy-en-Velay in 1842, and Marie-Caroline Bellanger, a former schoolteacher who educated Émile at home and taught him drawing and painting techniques. By 1862 he started his own ...
Autour d'Une Cabine
22. Jan Svankmajer
Director | Otesánek
After studying at the Institute of Industrial Arts and the Marionette Faculty of the Prague Academy of Fine Arts in the 1950s, Jan Svankmajer started working as a theatre director, chiefly in association with the Theatre of Masks and the Black Theatre. He first experimented with film-making after ...
Otesánek
23. Michael Dudok de Wit
Writer | La tortue rouge
Michael Dudok de Wit was born on July 15, 1953 in Abcoude, Utrecht, Netherlands. He is a writer and director, known for The Red Turtle (2016), Father and Daughter (2000) and The Monk and the Fish (1994).
The Red Turtle
24. Oskar Fischinger
Cinematographer | Frau im Mond
Oskar Fischinger was born on June 22, 1900 in Gelnhausen, Hesse, Germany. He was a director, known for Woman in the Moon (1929), Orgelstäbe (1927) and A Quarter Hour of City Statistics (1933). He was married to Elfriede Fischinger. He died on January 31, 1967 in Hollywood, California, USA.
An Optical Poem
25. Raoul Servais
Director | Taxandria
Raoul Servais was born on May 1, 1928 in Oostende, Belgium. He was a director and writer, known for Taxandria (1994), Papillons de nuit (1997) and Atraksion (2001). He died on March 17, 2023 in Leffinge, Flanders, Belgium.
Taxandria
26. John Randolph Bray
Producer | Let's Talk Turkey
John Randolph Bray was born on August 25, 1879 in Detroit, Michigan, USA. He was a producer and director, known for Let's Talk Turkey (1936), Jewel of Asia (1937) and Wildman's Land (1937). He was married to Margaret Bray. He died on October 10, 1978 in Bridgeport, Connecticut, USA.
The Artist's Dream
27. Walter Ruttmann
Cinematographer | Metropolis
Walter Ruttmann was born on December 28, 1887 in Frankfurt-on-Main, Germany. He was a director and writer, known for Metropolis (1927), Mannesmann - Ein Film der Mannesmannröhren-Werke (1937) and Acciaio (1933). He was married to Christine Margarete Helene Prasch, Nina Hamson, Erna Treitel and...
Opus
28. Hugh Harman
Producer | The Old Mill Pond
Hugh Harman was one of the pioneers of animation. While not a great animator, (compared to co-worker, Rudolf Ising) he was present during the early days. He began his work with Walt Disney in 1922, working on Disney's early Laugh-o-Gram toons. When that company went bankrupt, Harman and partner ...
Peace on Earth
29. Fred Quimby
Producer | The Little Orphan
Fred Quimby was an American animation producer. He served as the executive in charge of the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer cartoon studio from 1937 to 1955. He worked with prominent directors, such as Tex Avery, Joseph Barbera, and William Hanna. His studio won 8 Academy Awards for Best Animated Short Film. ...
Puss Gets The Boot
30. Caroline Leaf
Director | The Metamorphosis of Mr. Samsa
Caroline Leaf was born in 1946 in Seattle, Washington, USA. She is a director, known for The Metamorphosis of Mr. Samsa (1977), Two Sisters (1991) and The Street (1976).
The Metamorphosis of Mr. Samsa
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