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Iwao Takamoto (April 29, 1925 – January 8, 2007) was a Japanese-American animator, character designer, television producer, and film director. After his family had been sent to the California internment camps in the early 1940s, Takamoto learned to draw, presented his sketchbook to Walt Disney Animation Studios and was hired on the spot.
Noted for his career as a production and character designer for Disney, on films including Cinderella (1950), Lady and the Tramp (1955), and Sleeping Beauty (1959), Takamoto subsequently moved to Hanna-Barbera Productions, where he designed a great majority of the characters, notably the characters Scooby-Doo and The Jetsons. He eventually became a director and producer.
After the bombing of Pearl Harbor and signing of Executive Order 9066, Takamoto's family, like many Japanese-Americans, was forced to move to the Manzanar internment camp in the early 1940s. They spent the rest of World War II there, and it was at the camp that Takamoto received basic illustration training from two co-internees who were former Hollywood art directors.
To get a break from camp life Takamoto became a laborer, picking fruit in Idaho.
Takamoto entered the cartoon world after the end of the war. Without the benefit of a formal portfolio of his work, he created a sketchbook of, by his own admission, "everything I saw." It was based on this sketchbook that he applied to work at the Disney studios.
He was hired as an assistant animator by Walt Disney Animation Studios in 1945. Takamoto eventually became an assistant to Milt Kahl. He worked as an animator and character designer on such titles as Cinderella (1950), Peter Pan (1953), Lady and the Tramp (1955), Sleeping Beauty (1959), and One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961).
Takamoto was Vice-President of Creative Design at Hanna-Barbera and was responsible for overseeing Hanna-Barbera's many merchandising lines as well as design work for their Animation Art Dept. In 1996, he received the Winsor McCay Award for lifetime achievement and contributions in the animation field. In 2005 he received the Golden Award from the Animation guild, to honor his more than 50 years of service in the animation field.
After Time Warner merged with (then owner of Hanna-Barbera Studios) Turner Broadcasting System in 1996, Takamoto became Vice President of Special Projects for Warner Bros. Animation.
Takamoto's memoirs were published posthumously in 2009 by University Press of Mississippi as Iwao Takamoto: My Life with a Thousand Characters by Iwao Takamoto and Michael Mallory. An intimate memoir, Living With A Legend, was published posthumously in 2012 by TotalRecall Press by his stepdaughter, Leslie E. Stern.
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