With over 60 years in the industry, Floyd Norman has become an animation legend, working with such giants as Walt Disney, William Hanna, Joe Barbera, Friz Freleng, Chuck Jones, Tex Avery and the creative teams at Sesame Street and Pixar. He has served in nearly every department of animation. From cel painter to story director. Of course, he’s also an animator.

Norman was born in Santa Barbara, CA in 1935 and started his career assisting Archie cartoonist Bill Woggon on the Katy Keene comic book while still in high school. After attending the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, CA, he was hired at Walt Disney Studios in 1956. Sleeping Beauty (1959) would become his first feature title (though he went uncredited), while also making him the first African- American artist to work for the company. After serving in the Korean War, Norman returned to Disney to work on One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961), The Sword in the Stone (1963), and Mary Poppins (1964). Walt Disney recommended the young artists’ move to the Story Department when he saw the gag sketches Norman was creating to entertain his colleagues. In his new position, He helped storyboard and write The Jungle Book (1967). After Disney’s passing in 1966, Norman left to form his own company, Vignette Films, with fellow animator Leo Sullivan. Vignette was one of the first companies to create live-action and animated films about Black history. These films were screened in high schools and colleges across the United States in the pre-Civil Rights era. The company also worked on fun studio projects; they created the Soul Train main title animation and animated the original pilot for Fat Albert. Finally, Norman created animated segments for Sesame Street.

In the 1970s, Norman joined Hanna Barbera, where he worked alongside the two Saturday morning cartoon pioneers to animate and write some of TV’s most notable shows including: The Smurfs, Scooby-Doo, The Flintstones, among others.

Norman would return to Disney in the 1970s to animate on Robin Hood (1973). In the 1980s Floyd would join Disney Publishing where he wrote and illustrated a number of Disney children’s books, as well as pen the daily “Mickey Mouse Comic Strip.” It was a job that lasted nearly six years. He would later return to Disney Animation to work in the Story Department on The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996) and Mulan (1998). That same decade, Norman would begin work with Pixar on such movies as Toy Story2 (1999) and Monster’s Inc. (2001). He helped create numerous classic sequences for both films.

Norman has written about his career in several books, including Faster! Cheaper!: The Flip Side of the Art of Animation, and Animated Life: A Lifetime of Tips, Tricks, Techniques and Stories from an Animation Legend. He also contributes to the website Afro-Kids.com.

The Disney studio would honor Floyd Norman in 2007, naming him a “Disney Legend.” This top honor is only bestowed to the best and brightest of the Disney organization. Other honors include his induction into the Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame in 1979 and the Winsor McCay Award in 2003. He was also presented the Lifetime Achievement in Animation in 2015 from the International Family Film Festival and was honored with the Milton Caniff Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Cartoonists Society in 2019.

In 2016, Norman’s storied career was the focus of the feature documentary Floyd Norman: An Animated Life. The movie premiered on Netflx and was in consideration for the 2017 Oscars. It won top honors at numerous film festivals including the San Diego Comic Con International Film Festival and the Bentonville Film Festival created by actress Geena Davis to bring attention to diversity in film and TV production.

At 88 years of age, Floyd Norman remains the picture of perseverance. Not one to retire, he continues to have an impact on animation as a filmmaker and mentor, taking on freelance work in and outside of Disney. Recently, Floyd returned to Sesame Street for their 50th Anniversary to direct and write a new animated segment for the classic series. Like the show, Floyd shows no sign of calling it quits.