By Ramin Zahed | December 31, 2018

The animation community was saddened by the death of longtime Disney and Hanna Barbera animator and director Don Lusk on Sunday at age 105 in San Clemente, Calif. The news of his passing was announced by his friend Navah-Paskowitz Asner on social media yesterday.

Lusk joined the Walt Disney Company at age 20, working on Mickey Mouse shorts for several years. He then went on to work on Disney classics such as Bambi, Pinocchio, Cinderella, Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan, Lady and the Tramp, Sleeping Beauty and One Hundred and One Dalmatians. He worked on “The Nutcracker Suite” and “Pastoral Symphony” segments of Fantasia.

Lusk left Disney for Hanna-Barbera in 1960, but continued to work as an animator during the 1960s and 1970s. Among his many credits as an animator are Gay Purr-ee (1962), Hey There, It’s Yogi Bear (1964) The Secret Squirrel Show (1965), The Man Called Flintstone (1966), The Atom Ant Show (1966), The New Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1968), A Boy Named Charlie Brown (1969), The Adventures of Gummi Bears (1990), The Thief and the Cobbler (1993), Captain Planet and the Planeteers (1993) and Mickey’s House of Villains (2001).

He was nominated twice for Daytime Emmys for his work on The Smurfs in 1988 and 1989, and again in 1999 for A Pup Named Scooby-Doo. Lusk received the Winsor McCay lifetime achievement Award at the Annies in 2014.