It’s Sunday! Thanks for joining us. Here’s the plan for the latest issue of the Animation Obsessive newsletter:

• 1. A story about Iwao Takamoto, Disney legend.

• 2. Animation newsbits.

With that, here we go!

1. A big turn

Today, his name’s tied to Hanna-Barbera. He designed Scooby-Doo’s cast, refined The Jetsons’ look.1 You know his work — and not only from those places. The hand of Iwao Takamoto (1925–2007) is visible in animation’s history.

In fact, he started out as a key player on Walt Disney’s team. Takamoto spent 15 years at the Disney studio, working under different titles: assistant animator, cleanup artist. Generally, his job was to make animation perfect before it went to the inking crew. An animator’s broad sketches of movement became tight, exact, technical drawings under his watch. That was his gift to the films.

He worked closely with Milt Kahl — one of the Nine Old Men, and a perfectionist. They had an understanding. Disney artist Floyd Norman remembered that “Iwao was an awesome draftsman in his own right, and had the chops to follow up Kahl.” To quote one of Takamoto’s apprentices at the studio:

Every little line, everything, had to be perfect. So, I would stand in front of him as he would correct my drawings. And, sometimes, I would just think, “You know ... maybe I should have taken [my dad] up on … getting a license so I could become a barber. Because I don’t know if I’m going to be able to cut the mustard with him.”2

Takamoto entered Disney’s studio in 1945. You find his touch in films like Sleeping Beauty and Lady and the Tramp — he led “quality control” on Princess Aurora and Lady. Among other things, he guided and polished the spaghetti kiss. “Iwao was the only one who could’ve been entrusted in doing that scene as perfectly as it was done,” said Willie Ito, an artist assigned to the same shot.

A Disney career was a big turn in Takamoto’s life. Shortly before he joined, he’d been in the camps.

As a kid in California, Takamoto was a strong student, although not a rich one. He grew up during the Great Depression — in “what might be considered a tough section of downtown Los Angeles,