Preston Blair

Preston Blair (1918–1994) was an American character animator, most noted for his work at Walt Disney Productions and the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer animation department

A native of Redlands, California, Blair began his animation career in the early 1930s at the Universal studio under Walter Lantz and Bill Nolan. He later moved over to Charles Mintz's Screen Gems studio, and in the late 1930s moved over to the Disney studio. At Disney, Blair animated cartoon short subjects, Mickey Mouse scenes in "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" section of "Fantasia", and the hippo-aligator dance in "Fantasia's" "Dance of the Hours" sequence. He also did some work on Disney's "Pinocchio" and "Bambi".

Blair left Disney after the 1941 Disney animator's strike, and was hired to work for Tex Avery's unit at MGM. There, he became particularly noted for animating the sexy female character in "Red Hot Riding Hood". "Red" later re-appeared in more Avery cartoons, including "Swing Shift Cinderella", "Uncle Tom's Cabana" and the "Droopy" cartoon "The Shooting of Dan McGoo", with animation by Blair. In the late 1940s, Blair teamed with Avery animator Michael Lah to direct several "Barney Bear" cartoons.

Blair continued his career in animation into the 1960s, working on "The Flintstones" at Hanna-Barbera. He is most noted, however, as an author of animation instructional books for the Walter Foster publishing company. His first book, "Animation", was published in 1948 and originally included images of the famous MGM cartoon characters he had animated, who were redrawn to obscure their origins in the second edition of the book. Blair would write many more animation how-to texts over the next forty years, culminating with 1994's "Cartoon Animation", a 224-page book which compiles most of the content from all of his books.

Preston Blair was the brother of artist Lee Everett Blair [http://www.sullivangoss.com/lee_Blair/] and the brother-in-law of artist and designer Mary Blair. He died in June 1994.

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