Maurice Noble

Maurice Noble (May 1, 1911 – May 18, 2001) was an American animation production designer, background artist and layout designer whose contributions to the industry spanned more than 60 years. He was a long-time associate of animation director Chuck Jones, most notably at Warner Bros. in the 1950s. His work contributed to such cartoon classics as Duck Dodgers in the 24½th Century, What's Opera, Doc?, and the Road Runner series.

Maurice James Noble was born in Spooner Township, Minnesota. He spent much of his childhood in New Mexico and Southern California. In the early 1930s he attended the Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles, and while there the Institute displayed his works in its first one-man show of watercolors. Having to leave Chouinard for financial reasons, he ended up doing design work for a department store.

A Disney scout recruited him about 1934, and he decided to accept the job since it paid $10 per month more than the department store did. Noble was put to work on backgrounds for the Silly Symphonies cartoon series. At that time the Disney backgrounds were required to be done in transparent watercolor wash, which was technically difficult because correcting a mistake was usually impossible, requiring a full new attempt.

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was the first feature-length film Noble worked on. This was followed by background work on other Disney features, notably the Rite of Spring sequence in Fantasia. Noble also did story development for the Dance of the Hours in that film. For Dumbo, he did color coordination and character design, including work on the pink elephant sequence.

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