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Darrell Tyrone "Big D" McNeil (November 26, 1957 - July 4, 2018) was an American animator, writer, editor, publisher, producer, and actor. He started at the age of eight performing as a background actor and bit player in various movies and television series. He entered the animation industry at the age of 18 with Hanna-Barbera Productions. He was most recently developing and producing a number of animated and live action projects through his own company, Gold Medal Productions.
McNeil was born in Inglewood, California in the Los Angeles area, (specifically Inglewood) of California in 1957. Always interested in television, McNeil became a member of the Screen Children's Guild. For the next several years, McNeil worked on a variety of different shows and movies, including 13 episodes of "The Brady Bunch", "Family Affair", "Cowboy In Africa", "The Partridge Family", and "Archie's Funhouse" {as one of the live action kids in the audience} for his future animation studio employer Filmation Associates. Even more than acting, he wanted to do animation.
In 1966, when the first of animated series produced specifically for the nascent "Saturday Morning Television" time period began airing, he was especially impressed by Hanna-Barbera's "Space Ghost and Dino Boy". He decided he would not only strive to become an animator, but that he would work for Hanna-Barbera, meet and befriend the main people involved with Space Ghost, and work on Space Ghost himself and get his name in the credits for it....all of which he eventually managed to do.
After graduating from Westchester High School in 1975, McNeil attended Cal State University Long Beach where he took an animation history class taught by veteran Hanna-Barbera producer Art Scott. At a UCLA "Saturday Morning" class he met William Hanna and Joseph Barber themselves, and was encouraged by Barbera to pitch some of his own show concepts as possible H+B shows. He thus became the first black H-B writer/artist as well as the youngest creator (age 18) to sell animated show concepts. Three of the seven series he pitched were optioned. Hanna encouraged McNeil to enter H-B's then new training program, which the studio had created to train the next generation of animation artists. [1]
While still 18, McNeil was hired by H-B to become an inbetweener for the studio. He met and became close friends with Space Ghost developer/creator Alex Toth and Space Ghost voice Gary Owens. He eventually served as lead layout artist on a revival of "Space Ghost" in 1980.
Starting with Hanna-Barbera in 1976, McNeil worked for numerous animation studios over the next four decades, including Filmation Associates, Ruby-Spears, DIC, Bakshi, Encore, Saban Entertainment, Marvel, Murakami-Wolf-Swenson, Disney, Invision, Calico, Vignette, Don Bluth, Universal, Warner Bros, Stan Lee/The Firm, and even a stint at Paramount animating special effects for the first "Star Trek" feature film.
Due to a decision made early in his career to leave working for union animation studios and to work mainly for local non-union studio subcontractors Hutten/Love, McNeil got no screen credit for much of the work and many of the series he worked for.
McNeil also became a noted animation historian, particularly with the studios that produced television animation in the 60s thru the 70's. [2] He started writing about his work on and about various Saturday morning cartoons shortly after he first began animating. Starting with a yearly correspondence with the writer/editor of DC Comics "Super Friends" comic book, E. Nelson Bridwell, he started writing about and covering comic book based animation and live-action productions for a number of publications and periodicals, including The Comics Reader, Comics Buyers Guide (CBG), Comics Scene, and TOON Magazine (which he cofounded) among many others.
He later co-wrote two animation books, "Hanna-Barbera's World of Super Adventure" and "Animation by Filmation". [3] He later joined with his long time mentor and closest friend, legendary comic book/animation artist Alex Toth, to co-write "Alex Toth: By Design". [4]
Under auspices of his Gold Medal Productions, McNeil has created over a hundred new concepts over the decades, several of them co-developed with Alex Toth. He optioned nearly a dozen concepts to various companies including Hanna-Barbera, Encore Enterprises, Riverstar Entertainment, and JDL Productions. Some of these are currently in the process of being launched on the web via his streaming subscription based website, "Big D's PC-TV".
Mark Stephen Evanier is an American comic book and television writer, known for his work on the animated TV series Garfield and Friends and on the comic book Groo the Wanderer. He is also known for his columns and blog News from ME, and for his work as a historian and biographer of the comics industry, such as his award-winning Jack Kirby biography, Kirby: King of Comics.
Super Friends is an American animated television series about a team of superheroes which ran from 1973 to 1985 on ABC as part of its Saturday-morning cartoon lineup. It was produced by Hanna-Barbera and was based on the Justice League of America and associated comic book characters published by DC Comics. The title of the series varied from season to season, as did the superheroes on the team. Nine seasons, comprising a total of 93 episodes, were produced.
Space Ghost is a superhero created by Hanna-Barbera Productions in the 1960s for TV network CBS. He was designed by Alex Toth.
Alexander Toth was an American cartoonist active from the 1940s through the 1980s. Toth's work began in the American comic book industry, but he is also known for his animation designs for Hanna-Barbera throughout the 1960s and 1970s. His work included Super Friends, Fantastic Four, Space Ghost, Sealab 2020, The Herculoids and Birdman. Toth's work has been resurrected in the late-night, adult-themed spin-offs on Cartoon Network’s late night sister channel Adult Swim: Space Ghost Coast to Coast, Sealab 2021 and Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law.
The Herculoids is an American Saturday-morning animated television series, created and designed by Alex Toth, that was produced by Hanna-Barbera Productions. The show debuted on September 9, 1967, on CBS. Hanna-Barbera produced one season for the original airing of the show, although the original 18 episodes were rerun during the 1968–69 television season, with The Herculoids ending its run on September 6, 1969. Eleven new episodes were produced in 1981 as part of the Space Stars show. The plotlines are rooted in science fiction and fantasy.
Shazzan is an American animated television series created by Alex Toth and produced by Hanna-Barbera Productions that aired on Saturday mornings on CBS from September 9, 1967, to January 20, 1968, and continued in reruns until September 6, 1969. The series follows the adventures of two 12-year-old siblings, Chuck and Nancy, traveling around a mystical Arabian world, mounted on Kaboobie the flying camel. During their journey they face several dangers, but they are aided by Shazzan, a genie with magical powers. 18 half-hour episodes were produced, made up of two 11-minute segments.
Buford and the Galloping Ghost is an American animated television series and a spin-off of Yogi's Space Race produced by Hanna-Barbera Productions that was broadcast on NBC from September 9 to December 2, 1978. The half-hour series was composed of two 11-minute segments: The Buford Files and The Galloping Ghost.
Henry Corden was a Canadian-born American actor, best known for assuming the voice of Fred Flintstone after the death of Alan Reed in 1977. His official debut as Fred's new voice was in a 1965 Hanna-Barbera record, Saving Mr. Flintstone, although he had previously provided the singing voice for Reed in the 1966 theatrical film The Man Called Flintstone and the Hanna-Barbera specials Alice in Wonderland or What's a Nice Kid like You Doing in a Place like This? (1966) and Energy: A National Issue (1977). He took over the role as Fred Flintstone full time starting with the syndicated weekday series Fred Flintstone and Friends for which he provided voice-overs on brief bumper clips shown in-between segments.
John Winfield Stephenson was an American actor who worked primarily in voice-over roles.
Space Ghost is an American Saturday-morning superhero animated television series produced by Hanna-Barbera Productions, first broadcast on CBS from September 10, 1966, to September 16, 1967, and continued reruns until September 7, 1968. The series was composed of two unrelated segments, Space Ghost and Dino Boy in the Lost Valley. The series was created by Alex Toth and produced and directed by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera. Sometimes, it is alternatively called Space Ghost & Dino Boy to acknowledge the presence of both shows.
The Fantastic Four is an American animated television series produced by Hanna-Barbera Productions and based on the Marvel Comics superhero team of the same name. The program, featuring character designs by Alex Toth, originally aired on Saturday mornings on ABC from September 9, 1967, to September 21, 1968. It lasted for 20 episodes, with repeat episodes airing on ABC for three years until the network cancelled the program. It was also rerun as part of the continuing series Hanna–Barbera's World of Super Adventure.
Cambria Productions was the West Hollywood, California animation production studio most famous for its wide usage of the Syncro-Vox technique of animation developed by Edwin Gillette, who was a co-partner in the studio.
Endemol Australia, formerly known as Southern Star Group, Southern Star Productions, Southern Star/Hanna-Barbera Australia and Taft-Hardie Group Pty Ltd, was a major Australian independent television production, distribution, and syndication company. On 26 July 2015, the company was merged with Shine Australia to succeed it as Endemol Shine Australia.
Hanna–Barbera's World of Super Adventure is a 30-minute animated anthology wheel series produced by Hanna-Barbera which was broadcast in first-run syndication from 1980 to 1984.
Glenn Leopold is an American writer and musician. He worked for Hanna-Barbera as a story editor, writer, character creator, and show developer. He is also a member of the music band, Gunhill Road.
Len Janson is an American writer and director whose career in animated cartoons and live-action motion pictures spanned several decades beginning in the 1960s. He began work as an in-betweener at the Walt Disney cartoon studio. By 1965 he had become a story man with his first screen credit in Rudy Larriva's Boulder Wham!. Soon after, he teamed with Chuck Menville to produce a series of live-action films which used the pixilation technique. An example is Stop Look and Listen. By the early 1970s, Janson and Menville had become major names in the animation industry and welcome storytellers at studios such as Filmation and Hanna-Barbera. Their partnership ended with Menville's death in 1992. Janson remained active for a few more years, mainly as story editor for Sonic the Hedgehog. He also wrote episodes of Baywatch Nights.
TBS and TNT, the first two cable television networks in the Turner Broadcasting System, aired children's programming for a period of over 20 years, beginning in the 1970s and continuing through 1998.
Jim Duffy was an American animator whose credits included more than twenty years at Klasky Csupo creating productions for Nickelodeon, as well as earlier stints as an animator for Hanna-Barbera, TVC Animation in London, Murakami-Wolf-Swenson, and others. Duffy received two Primetime Emmy Awards for the 2000s animated show As Told by Ginger, as well as several other nominations for his work on Rugrats. Duffy also won three Daytime Emmy Awards during his tenure at Klasky Csupo, and received additional nominations for his work on Aaahh!!! Real Monsters and Captain Planet and the Planeteers. Duffy was also a director, writer, designer and storyboard artist for live-action television commercials, PSAs, and corporate productions, including a series of safety videos for the National Coal Board. He divided his professional time between Los Angeles and London. His shortform animated films were screened at film festivals worldwide.
Margaret Nichols was an American animator and television director. Professionally, she was also known as Margaret Flores Nichols and Margaret Grewell.