Bob Givens Age, Death Cause, Wife, Family, Biography, Facts & More
Some Lesser Known Facts About Bob Givens
- Did Bob Givens smoke?: Not Known
- Did Bob Givens drink alcohol?: Not Known
- He was born as one of two twin boys in Hanson, Kentucky.
- After graduating from the Alhambra High School in the summer of 1936, he started working as a freelance artist.
- In 1937, on the recommendation of Hardie Gramatky (his school classmate and Disney staffer), he joined the Walt Disney Studio.
- At the Disney, he worked as an animation checker on many of their short subjects (especially, Donald Duck).
- He also worked with the Disney on their first feature-length film, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937).
- At Warner Bros., he was asked to redesign a rabbit character for the cartoon character, A Wild Hare (1940), as it was “too cute” in his existing design.
- Givens, therefore, came out with the first official design for the rabbit, which would become the famous Bugs Bunny.
- Before he left for the World War, his last cartoon happened to be The Draft Horse (1942).
- Givens returned to Warner Bros. in the 1950s and mostly worked as a layout artist; staying with the studio until its 1954 shutdown.
- When the Warner Bros. studio eventually opened again, unlike many of his co-workers, Givens did not rejoin the studio, and worked at various studios, including the Jack Kinney studio, UPA, and Hanna-Barbera.
- In the early 1960s, Givens returned for one last spell at Warner Bros., staying with the studio until its final shutdown, and worked as the layout artist on False Hare (1964)- the final cartoon made by the studio.
- After Warner Bros., Givens worked at DePatie–Freleng Enterprises.
- After that, he worked at the reformed Warner Bros. Animation studio on The Looney Looney Looney Bugs Bunny Movie (1981), Bugs Bunny’s 3rd Movie: 1001 Rabbit Tales (1982) and Daffy Duck’s Fantastic Island (1983).
- Givens then worked at Filmation, founded by his long-time friend Lou Scheimer.
- In the 1990s, once again, he worked with Chuck Jones, handling the production design on the Looney Tunes cartoons.
- His last animation credit was on 2001’s Timber Wolf, a direct-to-video animated film written and produced by Chuck Jones.
- After Jone’s death in 2002, Givens retired from active animation work, though he continued giving lectures and animation talks well into his nineties.