Darrell McNeil

Darrell Tyrone ("Big D") McNeil (born November 26, 1957) is an American animator, writer, editor, publisher, producer, and actor. He started at the age of eight performing as a background actor and bit player in various movies and television series. He entered the animation industry at the age of 18 with Hanna-Barbera Productions. He is currently developing and producing a number of animated and live action projects through his own company, Gold Medal Productions.

McNeil was born in Inglewood, California in the Los Angeles area, (specifically Inglewood) of California in 1957. Always interested in television, McNeil became a member of the Screen Children's' Guild. For the next several years, McNeil worked on a variety of different shows and movies, including 13 episodes of the "The Brady Bunch", "Family Affair", "Cowboy In Africa", "The Partridge Family", and "Archie's Funhouse" {as one of the live action kids in the audience} for his future animation studio employer Filmation Associates. Even more than acting, he wanted to do animation.

In 1966, when the first of animated series produced specifically for the nascent "Saturday Morning Television" time period began airing, he was especially impressed by Hanna-Barbera's "Space Ghost and Dino Boy". He decided he would not only strive to become an animator, but that he would work for Hanna-Barbera, meet and befriend the main people involved with Space Ghost, and work on Space Ghost himself and get his name in the credits for it….all of which he eventually managed to do.

After graduating from Westchester High School in 1975, McNeil attended Cal State University Long Beach where he took an animation history class taught by veteran Hanna-Barbera producer Art Scott. At a UCLA "Saturday Morning" class he met William Hanna and Joseph Barber themselves, and was encouraged by Barbera to pitch some of his own show concepts as possible H+B shows. He thus became the first black H-B writer/artist as well as the youngest creator (age 18) to sell animated show concepts. Three of the seven series he pitched were optioned. Hanna encouraged McNeil to enter H-B's then new training program, which the studio had created to train the next generation of animation artists.

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