Chuck Jones, American (1912 - 2002)

Chuck Jones was born in 1912, in Spokane, Washington. Later his family moved to the Los Angeles area. He was an animator, director, producer, screenwriter and cartoon artist.

After graduating from Chouinard Art Institute he began working his way up at Ub lwerks, where he met his first wife Dorothy Webster.

Chuck started Sib Tower 23 Productions, an independent animation studio with a partner and brought on most of his unit from Warner Bros. In 1963, MGM contracted to have Jones's new Tom and Jerry cartoons as well as a television adaptation of all Tom and Jerry theatricals produced to that date. In 1964, Sib Tower 12 was absorbed by MGM and was renamed MGM Animation/Visual Arts. His animated short film,The Dot and the Line: A Romance in Lower Mathematics, won the 1965 Academy Award for Best Animated Short. Jones directed the classic animated short The Bear That Wasn't.

After the Tom and Jerry series, he produced and directed the TV Special Dr. Seuss How the Grinch Stole Christmas. He also worked on Horton Hears a Who (1970) for MGM. When MGM closed its animation division in 1970, Jones again started his studio, Chuck Jones Enterprises.

Phillip Roman, American (1930 - )

Philip Roman was born in 1930 in Fresno, CA to Mexican migrant farm workers. He is the founder of the animation studios Film Roman and Phil Roman Entertainment.

In 1955 he began as an assistant animator for Disney's Sleeping Beauty. Early on Roman was also an animator for Chuck Jones's independent studios, Sib Tower 12 Productions and later Chuck Jones Productions. He was a lead animator for How the Grinch Stole Christmas!, and later provided an audio commentary with June Foray on the DVD release of the film.

In the 1970s, Roman directed several of the Peanuts animated specials produced at Bill Melendez's studio. In 1984, Roman founded his animation studio, Film Roman and produced & directed all 12 Garfield specials broadcast from 1982 to 1991. He also appeared in the documentary special Happy Birthday, Garfield, which went behind the scenes of both the comic strip and the animated versions of Garfield. In 1992, Roman became animation executive producer for The Simpsons, beginning in Season 4 and he directed Tom and Jerry, *The Movie. It was his studio's first theatrical feature. 1999 he formed Phil Roman Entertainment. The company produced the animated special *Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer. Roman has served as the production supervisor and executive producer in the Mexican American animated film El Americano: The Movie, which was released in 2016. Film Roman was sold and he returned to Phil Roman Entertainment as chairman emeritus.

In 2016, Roman was awarded the Inkpot Award.