This blog highlights the most famous animators who helped shape the world of animation. From Walt Disney and Hayao Miyazaki to Matt Groening and Seth MacFarlane, each brought their own style, vision, and impact to the craft. Their work pushed the boundaries of storytelling and made animation a lasting part of global culture.

They say you can’t know where you’re going, until you know where you’ve been.

The history of animation is as complex and storied as filmmaking itself– and arguably even older!

We wouldn’t have gotten where we are without a handful of brilliant artists and visionaries that elevated this narrative artform over the past century or so.

And yes, it is an artform– not just a style or medium or format. It’s a full-blown artform that stands on its own, although it overlaps a lot with other narrative art forms like comics, graphic novels and movies.

It’s an artform that has shaped the way we tell stories, connect with characters, and experience emotion through visual art, motion and sound. And behind every memorable cartoon or animated feature are brilliant minds who brought those drawings to life—animators whose work has not only entertained generations, but redefined pop culture.

Whether you grew up with classic Saturday morning cartoons, groundbreaking anime, or Pixar magic, this list of animation legends will remind you why the medium remains one of the most versatile and powerful tools in storytelling.

So let’s take a look at some of the most influential animators in history—and why they matter.

The Most Famous Animators of All Time: Our List

The Most Famous Animators of All Time: Our List

Walt Disney

This one needs no introduction, even to those unfamiliar with animation in general.

Walt Disney didn’t invent animation, but he did create the Walt Disney Company, an empire that arguably turned animation into a bonafide industry of its own. He’s probably the most famous animator of all time, having created Mickey Mouse. Disney made history when they produced the first full-length animated feature in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the first feature-length animated feature film to be nominated for an Academy Award, thereby cementing animation as a serious industry that can compete with the best Hollywood live-action films have to offer. He laid the groundwork for what animation could achieve emotionally and technologically.

Disney's influence extends beyond animation into Walt Disney World theme parks, music, merchandising, and cultural myth-making. His company still shapes global entertainment even today, in a way many have imitated but few have achieved.

Hayao Miyazaki

Co-founder of Studio Ghibli, Miyazaki redefined animated cinema in Japan and worldwide with films like Spirited Away, My Neighbor Totoro, and Princess Mononoke. His work blends fantasy, environmentalism, and deeply personal storytelling.

Japan’s animation has never thought of cartoons as “just for kids” and has long been churning out serious adult animation for many decades now. But Miyazaki really proved animation doesn’t have to be for kids—it can be poetic, philosophical, and transcendent, a treat for adults too. Studio Ghibli truly raised the bar for animation as an artform.

Tex Avery

Avery’s work at Warner Bros. and MGM pushed cartoon physics, timing, and humor to surreal new heights. He helped create Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, and Droopy Dog—and was all about speed, exaggeration, and visual comedy. It holds up even today.

If you’ve ever laughed at a cartoon character's wild reaction or impossible gag, thank Tex. He wrote the visual grammar of slapstick animation, creating the subtle rules that make a cartoon character really work.

Chuck Jones

Another Warner Bros. legend, Jones directed some of the greatest Looney Tunes shorts, including What’s Opera, Doc? and Duck Amuck. He elevated character-driven humor to an art form.

Jones gave Bugs Bunny his cool, Daffy his chaos, and Wile E. Coyote his relentless optimism. His work remains timeless and never fails to entertain, whether you’re eight or eighty years old.

John Lasseter

As one of the founding members of Pixar, Lasseter directed Toy Story, the first fully 3D-animated feature film. He also oversaw a golden era of storytelling at Pixar that included Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, and Up.

It’s hard to overstate the paradigm shift this caused. He’s one of the key figures who launched mainstream animation into the computer age that we take for granted today.

Lasseter showed the world that computers could be used to tell stories with heart.

Brad Bird

Bird is one of the few who’s excelled in both 2D and 3D animation. From The Iron Giant to The Incredibles and Ratatouille, his films combine thrilling action with emotional storytelling.

Bird proves that animation can be cinematic in every sense—intense, beautiful, and deeply human, showcasing what the best animation can really be capable of, regardless of the format or style.

Matt Groening

Groening gave us The Simpsons, a series that redefined the animated sitcom and became the longest-running primetime scripted series in TV history. He also created Futurama, which cemented his place as one of the sharpest voices in animated satire.

While Japanese animation has long been appreciated by older audiences for many decades now, this wasn’t the case in the Western world, where cartoons were relegated as “just for kids” and not taken seriously– until The Simpsons came along.

With The Simpsons, Groening helped animation grow up, showing that it could be just as effective (and profitable) as live-action TV for adults.

Hanna-Barbera (William Hanna & Joseph Barbera)

The studio duo behind classics like The Flintstones, Scooby-Doo, The Jetsons, and Yogi Bear.

Animation is incredibly tedious, time-consuming, and labor-intensive. Even with the powerful computers and apps of today, it’s still not a quickly done thing.

How Hanna-Barbera brought animation into the TV era, was by pioneering clever techniques that made producing weekly shows viable and practical.

Henry Ford didn’t invent the automobile, but he pioneered the idea of an assembly line, which meant large numbers of identical cars could be mass-produced quickly by many people all working a line, where each worker was responsible for doing just one task to help build the car.

Hanna-Barbera’s techniques and tricks are comparable to that revolution, but for animation.

Hanna-Barbera created an entire universe of iconic characters that defined Saturday morning for decades—and helped animation survive and thrive in the TV format.

Nick Park

Park is the claymation genius behind Wallace & Gromit, Chicken Run, and Shaun the Sheep. His stop-motion work with Aardman Animations is full of charm, wit, and distinctly British humor.

Park gave us proof that painstakingly handcrafted animation can still be commercially successful and emotionally resonant.

Trey Parker and Matt Stone

South Park may have started as a crude internet short, but Parker and Stone turned it into one of the most politically charged, fearless animated series ever made. With razor-sharp satire and rapid production cycles, the duo redefined topical humor in animation.

Is the animation great? Well, not really. But that’s not important. In fact, the crude style meant they could churn out entire finished episodes in as little as two weeks, an unheard-of timeline in animation. For perspective, a typical episode of The Simpsons would take a team of dozens of animators about six months to complete.

This meant that Parker and Stone could skewer and mock current events in the news in nearly real-time. For example, South Park aired an episode making fun of the capture of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein in the same week that it happened, while it was still dominating the news headlines.

On that note, do also check out our analysis of bad animation versus bad writing, and what counts more for creative and commercial success.

Their influence stretches into Broadway (The Book of Mormon) and beyond. South Park’s success proved that animation could be timely, smart, and unapologetically bold.

Seth MacFarlane

Love him or hate him, MacFarlane has been a dominant force in adult animation thanks to Family Guy, American Dad!, and The Cleveland Show. His blend of satire, musical numbers, and pop culture gags has become a staple of the animated sitcom landscape.

You can think of him as Matt Groening for Millennials. In the same way that Groening took the animated sitcom and cemented it as a format adults could enjoy too, MacFarlane can be seen as a spiritual successor to that kind of paradigm-breaking with Family Guy. Where The SImpsons made a sitcom animated, Family Guy and its ilk made the animated sitcom surreal, zany, even edgy and controversial for the next generation of television viewers. He helped usher in the second wave of adult animated comedies and brought musicality and risqué humor to primetime TV.

Most Famous Animators of All Time and Their Impact