Creator Info

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Pat Sullivan




Pat Sullivan was born in Australia,son of a Darlinghurst cab proprietor. After leaving school, he worked many different jobs, such as gatekeeper at Toohey's brewery in Surry Hills. He went to classes at the Art Society of NSW, while doing his first assignments as a caricaturist. Between 1905 and 1907, he submitted humorous cartoons to the trade union newspaper. In 1909, Sullivan emigrated to England. His first actual comics work was contributing to the 'Ally Sloper' strip for a year and a half.Sullivan emigrated to the United States in 1914, where he got a job designing cinema posters. But at that same year, the McClure newspaper syndicate assigned him to do the comic strip 'The Adventures of Sambo'. Other strips by Sullivan include 'Johnny Boston Beans', 'Obliging Oliver' and 'Old Pop Perkins'.In 1915 Sullivan started his career in animation, eventually owning his own studio, where his first recorded effort seemed to be an animated version of 'Pa Perkins'. In 1917, he created an animation called 'The Tail of Thomas Kat', featuring the prototype of th later Felix the Cat. Otto Messmer, a member of Sullivan's studios, created the popular 'Felix the Cat' cartoons from 1919. More than a hundred 'Felix the Cat' cartoons were published, and the animated Felix appeared all over the world by the time of Sullivan's death in 1933.

Born on August 16, 1892 Messmer began his commercial art career with a work-study program illustrating fashion catalogs but became interested in cartooning, especially animated cartooning. Messmer began submitting his own strips to newspapers, and by 1915 began attempting to get work as a set painter at film studios. An executive at Universal liked the young artist's work and signed him on to make a test film. Being totally inexperienced, Messmer nonetheless managed to put together a crude short called Motor Mike. While never released, his first attempt resulted in getting work with an established cartoonist who taught him the ropes of peg board and cel registration techniques necessary in those early days of animation. After helping Mayer on Travels With Teddy, an animated short based on Mayer's friend Teddy Roosevelt, Messmer sought out additional work with Pat Sullivan, who had set up his own studio and produced a number of shorts, including Twenty Thousand Laughs Under the Sea, a satire to be released with the second film version of the Jules Verne classic (1916). As with Disney and Ub Iwerks, Sullivan became more engrossed with the business end of running a studio, while Messmer handled the creative chores.

Otto Messmer


Joseph Oriolo

Joseph Oriolo was born in New Jersey in 1913. As a child, he drew constantly and dreamed of becoming a cartoon animator. In 1933, he went to work for the famous Fleischer Brothers Studios. It was during this time that one of Oriolo's most famous creations, 'Casper The Friendly Ghost', was conceived. In 1943, after Paramount Studios bought Fleischer Brothers Studios, the Oriolo family moved back to New Jersey. At Paramount, Joe was introduced to Otto Messmer, the creator of 'Felix The Cat'. In 1958, Joe became a business partner with Pat Sullivan, nephew of William O. Sullivan, the original copyright owner of 'Felix the Cat'. Together, they created the pilot show for the award-winning 'Felix the Cat' television series. During this period, Joe was inspired to create a new cartoon character: 'Poindexter'. Joe's inspiration was his lawyer, Emmet Poindexter. Joseph Oriolo passed away in 1985.