Ed Benedict , 1912-2006

Animation legend Ed Benedict passed away in his sleep on Aug. 28, 2006. He was 94.

Benedict began at Disney in 1930 and animated on the studio's early films like THE CHINA PLATE and BLUE RHYTHM. In 1933, he went to Universal where he worked on Walter Lantz's OSWALD shorts. He stayed at Universal for much of the 30s, with a stint at Mintz and briefly started his own studio, Benedict-Brewer, in partnership with Jerry Brewer.

He returned to Disney in the early 1940s where he did layout on various industrial/educational films such as ENVIRONMENTALL SANITATION and DAWN OF BETTER LIVING. During this time, he received his first and only Disney credit as a layout artist on MAKE MINE MUSIC.

In the mid-1940s, he entered the world of TV commercial animation at Paul Fennell's Cartoon Films, where he first began exploring the more modernized approach to drawing.

In 1952, Benedict was hired by his former Universal colleague Tex Avery to become Avery's lead layout artist and designer at MGM. Benedict designed a number of Avery's classic shorts, including DIXIELAND DROOPY, FIELD AND SCREAM, THE FIRST BAD MAN, DEPUTY DROOPY and CELLBOUND. After Avery left MGM, Benedict continued working there on the Mike Lah-directed DROOPY shorts, while also freelancing for Avery on TV commercials at Cascade. While at MGM, Bill Hanna asked Benedict to design a dog and a cat for a TV project, which turned out to be the first Hanna-Barbera TV series, THE RUFF AND REDDY SHOW.

During the late-1950s and early-1960s, Benedict became the primary designer for Hanna-Barbera, designing most of the studio's early stars, including Yogi Bear, Huckleberry Hound, Quick Draw McGraw, The Flintstones, Snagglepuss and countless others.

Iwao Takamoto, vp special projects at Hanna-Barbera Cartoons, told AWN he was quite an admirer of Benedict. While Benedict was designing characters for Hanna and Barbera at MGM and then their own studio, Takamoto was working at Walt Disney Feature Animation. When Takamoto left Disney for HB, he said Benedict was one of the first designers he was greatly influenced by and helped him understand how to transition from Disney to Hanna-Barbera styling. Takatmoto ultimately became vp of character design for Hanna-Barbera for nearly three decades.

Benedict moved to Carmel, California in the 60s and continued freelancing for various studios during the 60s and 70s before retiring.

Source: AWN

His work will never be forgotten and in fact, we'd like to show you more of it. But we'll leave that to a man who new Ed well, John Kricfalusi. Visit his excellent blog HERE.

For another great tribute to Ed, please take a few moments to read HERE and for one of Ed's cartoons, take a look below.

Blackboard Jumble
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