Hal King

Born: Hal King
Birthday: May 5, 1913
Location: MN, U.S.
Occupation: Animator
Years active: 1930s-1986
Died: September 28, 1986

Hal King began his career at Disney in the late 1930s as an in-betweener on animated shorts. He moved on to features such as Pinocchio, Fantasia, Bambi, and The Three Caballeros, and by the early 40s, King was a full-fledged animator on the Donald Duck series. Hal’s first screen credit was for a wartime cartoon Donald Gets Drafted.

In the postwar period, he animated for Disney’s package features like Make Mine Music, Fun and Fancy Free, Melody Time, and The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad.

As an animator, his first feature films were Cinderella and Lady and the Tramp, animating sequences with the Duke and Lady respectively. As he animated other films at Disney, Hal also mentored future animators, like Dale Baer and Ted Kierscey until health issues forced him to retire after Robin Hood.

King briefly returned from retirement in the ‘80s to help animate TV series like Adventures of the Gummi Bears and The Wuzzles before passing away in 1986.

The Author

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.