Harold Whitaker obituary

Animator who captured Orwell's Farmer Jones in Britain's first animated feature film, Animal Farm, in 1954

Jez Stewart

Harold Whitaker's characters included Farmer Jones in the animated version of George Orwell's Animal Farm. Photograph: Alamy

Harold Whitaker, who has died aged 93, drew some of the most memorable scenes in British animation history. He successfully captured the pathetic, drunken brutishness of George Orwell's Farmer Jones in Britain's first animated feature film, Animal Farm (1954), but was most at home in the comedic realm. Figures such as the naive inventor of the self-reproducing car in the allegorical Automania 2000 (1963) were full of boisterous energy, earning that film an Oscar nomination for best animated short – another British first.

A quiet, reserved figure, with a healthy resentment of any camera pointed his way, Harold had no desire to run his own company and preferred to work under the direction of others. Despite this, he became a key player in an industry from which he kept a discreet distance.

He was born in Cottingham, east Yorkshire, but was brought up around Manchester. He attended Stretford grammar school, where his father taught mathematics and conducted the school orchestra. Harold was introduced to the piano at seven, but his true interest was in drawing, which he pursued at Macclesfield art school. His father directed him to a position at a bank, but via a convoluted path (involving his woodwork teacher's brother-in-law) he gained a position at one of London's biggest commercial art studios, James Howarth and Brother.

Used more as an office boy than an artist, he continued studying illustration and life classes part-time. He found an agent and in 1940 won a Punch scholarship for humorous art (he told me the only other recipient was Ronald Searle), which helped defer his call-up to the army.

Harold Whitaker's self-portrait. His first love was drawing

Harold made flick books from an early age and lapped up Disney shorts – then in their heyday – in his free London evenings. His agent got him a meeting with Anson Dyer, then Britain's leading animation producer, who gave him a job as a background artist. Dyer's studio was being used by the Ministry of Defence to make aircraft recognition and gunner training films, and was moved from London to Stroud to escape the blitz. Harold went with them, seizing any opportunity to show off his intuitive skills for animation. He then had to leave for second world war service in February 1941.

Demobilised at the end of 1946, he returned to Stroud and quickly became a key figure at the studio where Dyer himself, now 80, had little creative input. Harold's skills and prolific work rate brought him to the attention of a group of French producers who courted him in Paris and made plans to take on the studio. As well as producing work for them, and Dyer, Harold managed to turn in a full-page comic strip in colour for every issue of Mickey Mouse Weekly for more than three years.

Ultimately Dyer's studio was taken over by Halas & Batchelor, already Britain's biggest animation producers and now needing to expand to make their version of Animal Farm. Harold was one of five lead animators on the film, responsible for the notoriously difficult human characters under the instruction of the animation director John Reed, an American who had worked at Disney. Harold treasured Reed's typewritten notes on his work, along with countless drawings in a growing archive of his working life.

In his 30 years at Halas & Batchelor the company had many ups and downs, but Harold remained a constant backbone to production, travelling into London for instruction and then quietly returning to Stroud to get on with the work. As an animator he was primarily interested in making things move, and had little concern over whether it was for a sales film for laxatives (Dulcolax, 1963) or risqué sci-fi action (Heavy Metal, 1981). If given free rein, his characters tended towards an exaggerated expressive bounciness that was not to everyone's taste, but he was perfectly capable of matching any style required of him.

In 1973, John Halas asked Harold to teach a crash course in animation to help build the next generation of the industry, and two sets of students benefited greatly from their time in Stroud. When Halas & Batchelor was sold in the early 80s, one of his alumni, Brian Larkin, was delighted to be able to snap up Harold as a "master animator" at his new company, Animation People. Harold continued to work into the mid-90s before finally retiring; his animation desk remained in his attic studio, left as it was when he finished his last drawing.

Harold never married, but was close to his sister's family. He later told his great-nephew that his proudest moment was the publication of his book Timing for Animation in 1981. It has been reprinted many times, and was revised in 2002 with an introduction by Pixar's John Lasseter.

• Harold Jackson Whitaker, animator, born 5 June 1920; died 26 December 2013B

http://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/jan/14/harold-whitaker