Introduction
Earl Hurd (September 14, 1880 – September 28, 1940) was a pioneering American animator and film director. He is noted for creating and producing the silent Bobby Bumps animated short subject series for early animation producer J.R. Bray's Bray Productions. Hurd and Bray are jointly responsible for developing the processes involved in cel animation, and were granted patents for their processes in 1914.
Animator Andy Luckey is a maternal cousin, twice removed, of Hurd's.
Career
Hurd, a native of Kansas City, Missouri, later worked for Paul Terry's Terrytoons studio before starting his own Earl Hurd Productions studio in 1923.
Hurd was also a comic strip artist, illustrating the strips Trials of Elder Mouse (1911–1915), Brick Bodkin's Pa (1912) and Susie Sunshine (1927–1929). He worked later at the Ub Iwerks studio and the Walt Disney studio as a storyboard artist. Animation historian Giannalberto Bendazzi has called Hurd "probably the best American animator of his time" after Bray and said of his films that they "display an uncommon visual inventiveness, gentle humour and attention to drawing and scenography".
Hurd died on September 28, 1940, in Burbank, California.