Born: Howard E. Swift
Birthday: August 29, 1912
Location: AR, U.S.
Occupation: Animator, Director, Writer
Years active: 1938-1983
Died: January 13, 1983

Howard Swift was a straight-ahead animator who got his start at Disney in 1938. With no formal art training, he learned the craft of animation when he was assigned to work under Norm Fergusen.

Howard is best known for animating some unforgettably surreal scenes like the dancing ostriches in Fantasia’s the “Dance of the Hours” and the “Pink Elephants on Parade” sequence of Dumbo. Examples of the latter include the ice skating elephants, the elephants running into each other, the elephant with the lightning bolt, the camel elephant, and the monster made up of elephant faces.

When the Disney animator’s strike 1941 happened, Howard joined the stikers on the picket line. When the strike ended, Swift left the studio and worked in the Air Force animation unit until the war’s end, when Frank Tashlin brought him over to Screen Gems as a director.

Howard would move on to become a director at Hanna-Barbera from 1966-81 before forming his own business venture, Swift-Chaplin Productions.

Previous post

Retta Scott

Next post

Kathy Zielinski

The Author

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.

No Comment

Leave a reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.