Remembering (II)

We continue to memorialize animation people who departed over the past year ....

Gloria (Frakes) Estrada: Gloria Estrada worked as a cel painter and final checker for Screen Gems, Walter Lantz, Warners, Sutherland, Kling, Snowball and Hanna-Barbera among several others. She retired in 1983 after a thirty-seven year career, and was eight-one at the time of her death.

Edward Herskovitz: Mr. Herkovitz was born in Egypt in 1921, joined a traveling circus as a teenager, and eventurally settled down in Japan, where -- in the 1970s -- he became an animation producer. He died in Israel on May 21, 2006.

Thomas Hickson: Layout artist and model designer Thomas Hickson, who worked for Filmation, Ruby-Spears and Hanna-Barbera thorughout the 1980s, died March 14th at eighty-five.

Libby Hilberman: Mrs. Hilberman was an animation artist at UPA, Tempo and Disney whose husband Dave was named by Walt Disney in testimony before the House of Representative's HUAC committe in 1947. It's largely because of Libby and her husband Dave Hilberman that Los Angeles-based animation artists now enjoy some of the best conditions for work in the world.

Rin Inumaru: Ms. Inumaru was a Japanese artist who created the long-running Japanese children cartoon series Ojarumaru, the story of a five-year-old boy from 1,000 years in the past who finds himself transported to present-day Japan. Rin Inumaru died September 10 at the age of 48.

Patrick Kenney: Patrick died in Hollywood. An animation artist, Patrick worked at Disney, PDI, Sony Pictures Imageworks as well as others.

Bill Lorencz: Bill was a background artist who worked in the business for over forty years at most of the studios that existed during that four decade span. They included Bluth, Disney, Hanna-Barbera, Film Roman, MGM and Warner Bros Animation among a host of others.

Dennis Marks: Animation writer Dennis Marks died on January 10, 2006. In addition to running his own company, he wrote for a plethora of animated projects, including The Beatles, Josie and the Pussycats in Outer Pace as well as Tom and Jerry: The Movie and Jetsons: The Movie.

Norm McCabe: Norm was one of the grand old men of animation, with a career longer than almost anybody's. From 1934 until 1999 he worked for every animation studio in town this side of Disney. He retired from Warners in '99, and died January 17, 2006 -- four weeks shy of his 95th birthday. Norman was the last of the "Golden Age" Warners cartoon directors to depart this veil of three-strip technicolor.

Norm in crewcut days. I knew him when he had more of a Beatles look. (from Cartoon Brew.)

Donna Paiker: Donna was a painter who worked in the biz from 1938 to 1978 at studios ranging from Screen Gems to Fleischer to Hanna Barbera. The widow of animator Frank Paiker, she died February 12 at 91 years of age.

Lloyd Rees: Lloyd was an assistant animator who worked over forty years in the business, hanging his hat at Calvert, Ruby-Spears, Disney Warner Bros. and Kroyer FIlms among other studios. He died in Oceanside June 1 at the age of 85.