Tom Ray

This article is about the animator and director. For the ecologist, see Thomas S. Ray.

Thomas Archer Ray (August 2, 1919 – April 6, 2010) was an American animator.

Career

Ray was born in Williams, Arizona. He began work at Warner Bros. Cartoons in 1937. Over the first two decades of his career, he was a junior animator who received no screen credit until Destination Earth in 1956. In 1958, he became a master animator in the Robert McKimson unit. Later, he transferred to the Chuck Jones unit, where he co-directed Adventures of the Road-Runner and several Bugs Bunny Show episodes. He followed Jones to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1963; there, he directed two Tom and Jerry compilation shorts, Matinee Mouse in 1966 and Shutter Bugged Cat in 1967.

His later credits include animatian on Pink Panther shorts, Bakshi’s Heavy Traffic and Coonskin, Chuck Jones TV Specials, numerous Filmation and Hanna Barbera series, Tiny Toon Adventures and Animaniacs. Ray directed many episodes of various series including Transformers and Garfield and Friends.

After his retirement from the Los Angeles animation business in 1998, Ray founded his own animation studio, Tomstone Animation, first located in East Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania. Ray moved his studio to Virginia Beach, Virginia just before he died in Virginia on April 6, 2010.

Ray's wife, Brenda Ellen Ray, continues to live in Virginia Beach, Virginia. Ray's son, Thomas G. "Greg" Ray, and daughter, Donna Mouliot, followed him into the animation business.

Movies

• A Boy Named Charlie Brown - December 4, 1969

External links

• Tom Ray Filmography
• Tom Ray at the Internet Movie Database
• Tomstone Animation Studios