Preston Blair (October 24, 1908 - April 19, 1995) was an American character animator, most noted for his work at Walt Disney Productions and the Metro Goldwyn Mayer animation department.
At Disney, Blair animated cartoon short subjects, Mickey Mouse scenes in "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" section of Fantasia, and the hippo-alligator dance in Fantasia's "Dance of the Hours" sequence. He also did some work on Disney's Pinocchio and Bambi, as well as the cartoon shorts The Whalers, Beach Picnic, and Sea Scouts.
Blair left Disney after the 1941 Disney animators' strike, and was hired to work for Tex Avery's unit at MGM.
He is most noted, however, as an author of animation instructional books for Walter Foster Publishing. His first book, Animation, was published in 1948 and originally included images of the famous MGM & Disney cartoon characters he had animated, who were redrawn to obscure their origins in the second edition of the book. Blair would write many more animation how-to texts over the next forty years, culminating with 1994's Cartoon Animation, a 224-page book which compiles most of the content from all of his books.
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