Ernest Nordli (June 15, 1912 – April 22, 1968) was an American animation designer and layout artist, most notably for Walt Disney Studios. [1]
He was born in Salt Lake City, Utah to Norwegian immigrant Hans Magnus Nordli (1884-1975) and Hedvig Charlotte Esterblom (1888-1976) who was of Swedish heritage. He studied art at the Santa Barbara School of the Arts.
Nordli, nicknamed "Ernie", was a talented artist whose work had an appealing modern sensibility. He started at Disney in 1936 and served as an art director/layout artist on Dumbo and Fantasia , and worked on many of the studio's shorts through the mid-1940s, including such Donald Duck shorts as The Plastics Inventor and Donald's Double Trouble. He left Disney and in the 1950s became the layout artist for Chuck Jones, in the absence of Maurice Noble. He was the layout man on eight Jones shorts, including some memorable films like Broom-Stick Bunny and Rocket-bye Baby (both 1956). After his short stint with Jones, Nordli returned to Disney where he worked on Sleeping Beauty and One Hundred and One Dalmatians , on which he was a layout stylist. He played an important role in designing the background drawing style on Dalmatians. [2] [3] [4]
Nordli continued working until his death. His later credits include The Alvin Show , Gay Purr-ee (1962), Hey There, It's Yogi Bear! (1964), The Man from Button Willow (1965) and the show Johnny Cypher in Dimension Zero . In the early-1950s, Nordli also designed many covers for Dell Comics including for issues featuring Lone Ranger, Cisco Kid and Red Ryder. [5] [6]
He died in 1968 at age 55 in San Francisco, California. Fellow layout artist Walt Peregoy stated the opinion said that he may have committed suicide. [7]
Ubbe Ert Iwwerks, known as Ub Iwerks, was an American animator, cartoonist, character designer, inventor, and special effects technician. Born in Kansas City, Missouri, Iwerks grew up with a contentious relationship with his father, who abandoned him as a child. Iwerks met fellow artist Walt Disney while working at a Kansas City art studio in 1919. After briefly working as illustrators for a local newspaper company, Disney and Iwerks ventured into animation together. Iwerks joined Disney as chief animator on the Laugh-O-Gram shorts series beginning in 1922, but a studio bankruptcy would cause Disney to relocate to Los Angeles in 1923. In the new studio, Iwerks continued to work with Disney on the Alice Comedies as well as the creation of the Oswald the Lucky Rabbit character. Following the first Oswald short, both Universal Pictures and the Winkler Pictures production company insisted that the Oswald character be redesigned. At the insistence of Disney, Iwerks designed a number of new characters for the studio, including designs that would be used for Clarabelle Cow and Horace Horsecollar.
The golden age of American animation was a period in the history of U.S. animation that began with the popularization of sound cartoons in 1928 and gradually ended in the late 1960s, where theatrical animated shorts began losing popularity to the newer medium of television animation, produced on cheaper budgets and in a more limited animation style by companies such as Hanna-Barbera, UPA, Jay Ward Productions, and DePatie-Freleng.
Robert Porter McKimson Sr. was an American animator and illustrator, best known for his work on the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of cartoons from Warner Bros. Cartoons and later DePatie–Freleng Enterprises. He wrote and directed many animated cartoon shorts starring Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Foghorn Leghorn, Hippety Hopper, and The Tasmanian Devil, among other characters. He was also well known for defining Bugs Bunny's look in the 1943 short Tortoise Wins by a Hare.
John Frederick Hannah was an American animator, writer and director of animated shorts.
William Bartlett Peet was an American children's book illustrator and a story writer and animator for Walt Disney Animation Studios.
Maurice James Noble was an American animation production designer, background artist and layout designer whose contributions to the industry spanned more than 60 years. He was a long-time associate and right-hand man of animation director Chuck Jones, especially at Warner Bros. including Disney, MGM, Walter Lantz and Hanna-Barbera in the 1950s. His work contributed to such cartoon classics as Duck Dodgers in the 24½th Century, What's Opera, Doc? and the Road Runner series.
Walt Disney Animation Studios (WDAS), sometimes shortened to Disney Animation, is an American animation studio that creates animated features and short films for The Walt Disney Company. The studio's current production logo features a scene from its first synchronized sound cartoon, Steamboat Willie (1928). Founded on October 16, 1923, by brothers Walt Disney and Roy O. Disney, it is the oldest-running animation studio in the world. It is currently organized as a division of Walt Disney Studios and is headquartered at the Roy E. Disney Animation Building at the Walt Disney Studios lot in Burbank, California. Since its foundation, the studio has produced 61 feature films, from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) to Strange World (2022), and hundreds of short films. The animation studio indirectly takes its name from Isigny-sur-Mer, in Calvados, Normandy, France, where Disney's ancestors were based there for a few years.
Warner Bros. Cartoons, Inc. was an American animation studio, serving as the in-house animation division of Warner Bros. during the Golden Age of American animation. One of the most successful animation studios in American media history, it was primarily responsible for the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of animated short films. The characters featured in these cartoons, including Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, and Porky Pig, are among the most famous and recognizable characters in the world. Many of the creative staff members at the studio, including directors and animators such as Chuck Jones, Friz Freleng, Robert McKimson, Tex Avery, Robert Clampett, Arthur Davis, and Frank Tashlin, are considered major figures in the art and history of traditional animation.
Wolfgang Reitherman, also known and sometimes credited as Woolie Reitherman, was a German–American animator, director and producer and one of the "Nine Old Men" of core animators at Walt Disney Productions. He emerged as a key figure at Disney during the 1960s and 1970s, a transitionary period which saw the death of Walt Disney in 1966, with him serving as director and/or producer on eight consecutive Disney animated feature films from One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961) through The Fox and the Hound (1981).
Floyd E. Norman is an American animator, writer, and comic book artist. Over the course of his career, Norman has worked for various animation companies, among them Walt Disney Animation Studios, Hanna-Barbera Productions, Ruby-Spears, Film Roman and Pixar.
Hawley B. Pratt was an American film director, animator, and illustrator. He is best known for his work for Warner Bros. Cartoons and as the right-hand man of director Friz Freleng as a layout artist and later as a director. Pratt also worked for Walt Disney Studios, Filmation, and DePatie-Freleng Enterprises where he co-created The Pink Panther.
Ed Benedict was an American animator and layout artist. He is best known for his work with Hanna-Barbera Productions, where he helped design Fred Flintstone, Yogi Bear, and Reddy on Ruff and Reddy.
Peter J. Alvarado Jr. was an American animation and comic book artist. Alvarado's animation career spanned almost 60 years. He was also a prolific contributor to Western Publishing's line of comic books.
Jack A. Cutting was an American international content supervisor and animator for Walt Disney Animation Studios, where he worked for 46 years.
Mickey Mouse is an American animated comedy television series produced by Disney Television Animation. Featuring Disney cartoon characters Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse, Donald Duck, Daisy Duck, Goofy and Pluto in contemporary settings such as Paris, Venice, Tokyo and New York, the series has the slapstick feel of the earliest Mickey Mouse shorts while providing a modern update, and "presents Mickey in a broad range of humorous situations that showcase his pluck and rascality, along with his long-beloved charm and good heartedness". The animation is provided by Mercury Filmworks.
Robert Herman Givens was an American animator and character designer, responsible for the creation of Bugs Bunny. He was the leading character designer for Leon Schlesinger, creating over 25 successful characters for both Leon Schlesinger Productions and later Warner Bros. Cartoons. He also did the storyboards and layout designs. He worked for numerous animation studios during his career, including Walt Disney Animation Studios, Warner Bros. Cartoons, Hanna-Barbera, and DePatie–Freleng Enterprises, beginning his career during the late 1930s and continuing until the early 2000s. He was a collaborator with the Merrie Melody/Looney Tune directors at Warner Bros. and Chuck Jones' production company.
Vance Bryden Gerry was an American storyboard artist, concept artist, and character designer known for his work on One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961), The Sword in the Stone (1963), The Jungle Book (1967), The Aristocats (1970), The Rescuers (1977), and The Lion King (1994). He also operated his own letterpress printing business called Weather Bird Press.
Events in 1914 in animation.
Events in 1912 in animation.