Robert Givens
| Bob Givens | |
|---|---|
| Born |
Robert Givens March 2, 1918 |
| Years active | 1937–2001 |
Robert "Bob" Givens (born March 2, 1918) is an American animator, character designer and layout artist. He worked for numerous animation studios during his career, including Disney, Warner Bros. Cartoons, Hanna-Barbera and DePatie-Freleng Enterprises, beginning his career during the 1930s and continuing until the early 2000s. He was a frequent collaborator with director Chuck Jones, working under Jones both at Warner Bros. and Jones' own production company.
Givens attended Alhambra High School, graduating in the summer of 1936. He then worked as a freelance artist for the following year, before joining the Walt Disney Studio in 1937 on the recommendation of school classmate and Disney staffer Hardie Gramatky.
After joining Disney he worked as an animation checker on several of their short subjects (mostly involving Donald Duck), before working on their first feature-length film, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.
He subsequently joined Warner Bros. for his first stint at the studio, which was spent working mostly under Chuck Jones and Tex Avery. For the 1940 cartoon A Wild Hare, Avery asked Givens to redesign a rabbit character previously designed by director Ben Hardaway and character designer Charles Thorson, which Avery thought had potential, but was "too cute" in his existing design. Givens therefore created the first official design for the rabbit, now named Bugs Bunny, who would become the studio's biggest star. Givens' design was subsequently refined by fellow animator Robert McKimson (under whom Givens would frequently work in the decades ahead) two years later.
Givens's initial spell at the studio was ended when he was drafted during World War II (his last cartoon for the studio before leaving, ironically, being 1942's The Draft Horse). As part of his military service he worked with former Warner Bros. animator Rudolf Ising on military training films. He subsequently returned to Warner Bros. in the 1950s and mostly worked as a layout artist under McKimson, and also Jones later on, staying with the studio until its 1954 shutdown. Unlike many of his co-workers, Givens did not rejoin the Warner Bros. studio when it eventually opened again, and worked at various studios including UPA, Hanna-Barbera and the Jack Kinney studio. He returned for one last spell at Warner Bros. in the early 1960s, continuing until the studio's final shutdown, and even acting as the layout artist on False Hare, the final cartoon (in production order) made by the studio.
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