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Bill Melendez
(Nick Ut/Associated Press)

Born: José Cuauhtémoc Meléndez
Birthday: November 15, 1916
Location: Hermosillo, Sonora, Mexico
Alma mater: Chouinard Art Institute
Occupation: Director, Producer, Animator
Years active: 1935–2006
Died: September 2, 2008

Bill Melendez was born in Hermosillo, Mexico. His family moved first to Arizona in 1928 and then onto Los Angeles in the early 1930s. There, Melendez trained at the Chouinard Art Studio.

Inspired by Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Bill earned a spot at Disney in 1938 as an assistant animator to Hawley Pratt. He worked on feature films Pinocchio, Fantasia, Dumbo, and Bambi and also as an animator for a Donald Duck short, The Flying Jalopy.

In the aftermath of the 1941 Disney strike, Melendez was hired by Leon Schlesinger Productions (which would become Warner Bros. Cartoons) for the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies shorts. He worked in Bob Clampett’s unit, first as Rod Scribner’s assistant animator, and then as a full animator. In 1949, when the number of animation units at Warner Bros. was downsized, Melendez was moved to Robert McKimson’s unit, but after animating a few shorts, Bill was fired by producer Edward Selzer.

Melendez moved on to UPA, where he animated on cartoons such as Gerald McBoing-Boing (1950). While there he also produced and directed thousands of television commercials for UPA, John Sutherland Productions and Playhouse Pictures.

While at UPA, Melendez began doing work for the J. Walter Thompson ad agency, whose client list included Ford Motor Co. The auto manufacturer was interested in using PEANUTS characters to sell its cars on television. Bill prepared his animation work and showed it to PEANUTS creator Charles M. Schulz in 1959. Melendez became the only artist Schulz personally authorized to animate the characters.

In 1963, Melendez founding his own studio, Bill Melendez Productions in the basement of his Hollywood home.

Bill Melendez animated the “Peanuts” productions: 63 half-hour specials, five one-hour specials, voicing Snoopy himself. He recorded gibberish and then sped it up to give Snoopy language without having to use specific words.

Melendez also animated “Garfield on the Town,” “Cathy,” “Babar Comes to America,” and “The Lion, the Witch, & the Wardrobe.”

Over the course of his career, Melendez amassed 17 Emmy Award nominations and eight Emmy wins, an Oscar nomination, two Peabody Awards, one Clio, three National Cartoonist Society Awards, and more than 150 Advertising Awards. Bill was also a faculty member at the University of Southern California’s Cinema Arts Department.

Bill Melendez Productions, Inc., its sister studio Melendez Films in London and Sopwith Productions (Melendez’s art distribution unit) continued to animate, direct, and produce feature films and commercials under Bill’s son, Steven C. Melendez.

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Lavalle Lee

Lavalle Lee

Lavalle Lee has been creating animated cartoons online since 1999/2000 for his website flashcartoons.org. Many cartoons on the site have gained viral video status reaching millions of viewers online. In 2009, Lavalle started learning hand drawn animation from Don Bluth in his animation classes, as well as attending his Masterclasses in Arizona. He has also personally studied animation and visual effects from Veteran Disney animators in Orlando, FL.

Lavalle is widely known in the animation industry as the creator of the TraditionalAnimation.com website. After seeing that most animation sites were about all types of animation, not any specific to classical hand drawn animation, Lavalle knew Traditional Animation needed to be represented online. TraditionalAnimation.com has become the leading website and social media account for all things 2D. The website served as inspiration for “The Traditional Animation Show” in which Lavalle was both producer and host.

His partnership with Don Bluth began when he championed the Dragon's Lair Indiegogo campaign as lead project manager, editor, voice actor and in-betweener. The campaign reached $730,000 dollars to produce a 7-minute pitch video. In 2017, Lavalle brought the idea of creating a school to Don Bluth, and Don Bluth University was born. After a decade of learning from Don Bluth and working together on multiple pitches and business ventures, Lavalle accepted the position as Vice President of Don Bluth's new company Don Bluth Studios.

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