Hanna-Barbera animator/producer/creative producer/director Iwao Takamoto, instrumental in directing numerous Disney and H-B projects and cocreating the character Scooby-Doo, has passed, not long after Joe Barbera's demise. Yahoo! News (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070109/ap_en_tv/obit_takamoto) has an obituary.

To absent friends... :( :crying: ohno: :rip: :( :crying: ohno: :rip:

I recognize the name from those bonus interviews on some of the Hanna Barbera dvd sets I have. Hope he rests in peace.

:rip:

Thank you Iwao for the great cartoons you produced and thank you for the Scooby Doo cartoons especially. I grew up on those and Saturday mornings was all abt Scooby Doo. May you rest in eternal peace.

From BBC NEWS :
Iwao Takamoto, the US animator who created cartoon dogs Scooby-Doo and Muttley, has died aged 81.
He was responsible for characters from The Flintstones and The Jetsons when he worked for the Hanna-Barbera studio.

And he assisted in the design of films including Peter Pan, 101 Dalmatians and Cinderella, during a career spanning more than six decades.

Mr Takamoto was a vice-president at Warner Bros Animation at the time of his death, caused by heart failure.

He said he created Scooby-Doo after talking to someone who looked after Great Danes.

Informal training

The dog breeder showed him pictures and "talked about the important points of a Great Dane, like a straight back, straight legs, small chin and such", Mr Takamoto explained.

"I decided to go the opposite [way] and gave him a hump back, bowed legs, big chin and such. Even his colour is wrong."

The character was named after a scat-style phrase at the end of Frank Sinatra's song Strangers in the Night, which contained the phrase "dooby-doo".

Mr Takamoto - who also co-directed the 1973 film Charlotte's Web - was born in Los Angeles in 1925.

He received informal training in illustration techniques from fellow Japanese-Americans in a prison camp, where he spent part of World War II.

His death occurred less than a month after that of Hanna-Barbera co-founder Joseph Barbera, who was 95.

Mr Barbera's business partner, William Hanna, died in 2001.
source : http://news.bbc.co.uk/ (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/6243717.stm)

A talented cartoonist who will be sorely missed :(