Joshua Lawrence "Josh" Meador (March 12, 1911 - August 24, 1965) was an American

animator An animator is an artist who creates multiple images, known as frames, which give an illusion of movement called animation when displayed in rapid sequence. Animators can work in a variety of fields including film, television, and video gam ...

, effects animator, special effects artist, and animation director for the Walt Disney studios.

Biography

Meador was born in Greenwood, Mississippi. His family later moved to

Columbus, Mississippi Columbus is a city in and the county seat of Lowndes County, on the eastern border of Mississippi, United States, located primarily east, but also north and northeast of the Tombigbee River, which is also part of the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterwa ...

in 1918. He later studied at the Chicago Art Institute. There, a fellow alumnus told Meador he was traveling to California to be interviewed at Walt Disney Productions, and suggested for him to come along. At first, Meador refused as he wanted to do commercial art, but he was coerced into interviewing at Disney. There, he was hired to work in their animation effects department, where he worked on numerous films such as ''20,000 Leagues Under the Sea'', for which the studio won an Academy Award. Meador also created the animation effects for the 1956 MGM science-fiction film ''Forbidden Planet'', most notably the "Monster from the Id" that attacks the spaceship. Privately, Meador described himself as "first and foremost a painter", in which he painted more than 2,000 canvases and impressionistic

landscape A landscape is the visible features of an area of land, its landforms, and how they integrate with natural or man-made features, often considered in terms of their aesthetic appeal.''New Oxford American Dictionary''. A landscape includes the ...

and

seascape A seascape is a photograph, painting, or other work of art which depicts the sea, in other words an example of marine art. The word originated as a formation from landscape, which was first used of images of land in art. By a similar devel ...

paintings. In August 1965, Meador suffered a heart attack and died at his residence in

Casper, California Caspar is a unincorporated community in Mendocino County, California, United States. It is located on the Pacific Ocean, north of Mendocino, at an elevation of . It is bounded on three sides by state parks: the historic 1909 Point Cabrillo Ligh ...

. He is buried at Friendship Cemetery in Columbus, Mississippi, which was also his hometown. There is a historical marker at his childhood home.

Filmography

References

External links

* 1911 births 1965 deaths American animators Special effects people American animated film directors American landscape painters Artists from Mississippi Landscape painters People from Greenwood, Mississippi Walt Disney Animation Studios people {{US-animator-stub