Halas, John

▪ 1996

      British motion-picture animator and producer (b. April 16, 1912, Budapest, Hung.—d. Jan. 20/21, 1995, London, England), was, with his wife, Joy Batchelor (died 1991), the force behind the largest cartoon film studio in Great Britain and creator of some 2,000 animated films, notably Animal Farm (1954), the first British full-length colour feature cartoon. Halas was educated in Budapest and at the Academy of Fine Arts in Paris. After studying with the Hungarian-born director and special-effects expert George Pal, he moved to London (1936), where he met Batchelor, who was already a movie animator. They later married, and in 1940 they founded Halas and Batchelor Animation, Ltd. In later years the company experimented with holography, three-dimensional graphics, and computer animation, and they eventually produced the first fully digitalized cartoon, Dilemma (1982). Halas was president of the British Federation of Film Societies (1980-95) as well as president (1975-85) and honorary president (1985-95) of the International Animated Film Association. He also served as a UN adviser and wrote numerous books, including The Technique of Film Animation (1959), Computer Animation (1974), and Graphics in Motion (1981). Halas was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 1972.

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