

In 1967, Warner opened its animation studio again, McKimson re-joining its staff in 1968, but the studio was shut down again in 1969.

At DePatie-Freleng, McKimson directed several The Inspector shorts and worked on some of the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies contracted out to DePatie-Freleng by Warner Bros. DePatie, who had been a producer at the Warners studio.

Īfter the studio closed, he joined DePatie-Freleng Enterprises, co-owned by his old associate Friz Freleng and David H. Limpet with Hawley Pratt, taking over the role of director from Bill Tytla due to his illness. Over this time, he directed his share of shorts and worked on the feature The Incredible Mr.
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According to an interview with his son, he generally did not like how things were going at the studio and missed full animation, as well as disliking the new characters in the new shorts. McKimson continued working at Warner's Cartoon Studio as it began to lose staff (including such key personnel such as Jones) in the early 1960s.

His office in the Termite Terrace studio was on the second floor. Russ Dyson briefly worked with Mckimson in 1956 until Dyson's death that year.
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Soon, McKimson assembled a new team of artists, including layout man/background painter Robert Gribbroek (formerly of Jones' unit) plus animators Warren Batchelder, Ted Bonnicksen, George Grandpré and Tom Ray. At the start of this period, McKimson animated on four of his own shorts, The Hole Idea (in fact, he was the sole animator credited on The Hole Idea), Dime to Retire, Too Hop to Handle (along with uncredited work from Jones' animator Ben Washam), and Weasel Stop (where McKimson had no animation credit). Thomas and animator Keith Darling (who worked uncredited for McKimson prior to the 1953 closure), left to work for other studios because of the change in the industry, including his own brother Charles McKimson. After the studio re-opened, Freleng and Jones quickly re-assembled their respective units, but McKimson discovered every member of his previous team, apart from writer Tedd Pierce, background painter Richard H. McKimson made an Oldsmobile commercial at Cascade Studios when the studio was closed. cartoon studio laid off most of its staff for a period of six months due to the 3-D fad at the time, which Jack Warner found to be too costly a process to use for animated cartoons. McKimson's better known efforts would include Hillbilly Hare, A-Lad-In His Lamp, Stupor Duck, The Windblown Hare, Walky Talky Hawky, and Big Top Bunny. His third cartoon entitled Acrobatty Bunny would be the first Bugs Bunny short Mckimson directed. Hook in 1945), Daffy Doodles, was released in early April 1946. cartoon that he finished (his first cartoon overall was The Return of Mr. This cartoon also introduced Sylvester's son, Sylvester Junior. Ī still from the 1950 Hippety Hopper/Sylvester short Pop 'im Pop!. He also created Speedy Gonzales for the 1953 short Cat-Tails for Two and directed many others periodically (along with Freleng and other directors) for the remainder of his theatrical career. McKimson created characters like Foghorn Leghorn and the Tasmanian Devil, as well as directing every Hippety Hopper/ Sylvester pairing. He accepted his own directorial position in late 1944, when Frank Tashlin left Warner Bros. He was offered a directorial position by Leon Schlesinger in 1938, but declined, allowing the position to go to animator Chuck Jones. Eventually he worked exclusively with Bob Clampett. He was the head animator and go-to guy in the late 1930s at the studio, which overwhelmed him. As a result, he was able to visualize better, thus increasing his production and animation. At that time he had an accident that gave him a concussion. Īt the same time he began working for Grey, McKimson was hired by Hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising, first doing the ink-and-paint duties for the first Looney Tunes, then becoming an in-betweener before becoming an animator by 1931, when the Romer Grey Studio shut down. None of the shorts were released, with only a handful of them being completed (only one of them is known to exist today). Several cartoons were animated at the Romer Grey Studio, but due to the Great Depression, the studio was unable to close a distribution deal. The McKimson family moved to California in 1926 and he then worked for Walt Disney as an assistant animator to Dick Lundy, stayed with Disney's studio for a year and then joined the Romer Grey Studio located in Altadena, California, in 1930, a would-be animation shop started by the son of Western author Zane Grey, and financed by Zane Grey's wife. Born in Denver, Colorado, McKimson spent ten years gaining an art education at the Lukits School of Art.
