Ed Cerullo

Ed Cerullo started at Famous Studios in September of 1955 and worked there until January of 1957.

Ed was working as an assistant animator in Al's unit in 1956 and Al promoted him to apprentice animator. After Famous Studios, Ed worked for John Hubley as an assistant on Moonbird and also the original Maypo commercials (which were animated by Emery Hawkins).

Ed commented that there was a high turnover at Famous in the '50's because there were many TV commercials studios in New York at the time and they generally paid better. When Ed was an apprentice animator at Famous, he was earning $96 for a 40 hour week. When he went to Storyboard, the Hubley studio, as an assistant, he was making $100 a week for a 35 hour week.

Starting in July of 1959, Ed worked for Jack Zander at Pelican and stayed there until July of 1970. After Zander opened Zander's Animation Parlour in August of 1970, Ed worked there until early 1984.

I had the good fortune to work with Ed in 1977 at Zander's Animation Parlour in New York. Ed was the top assistant animator there and one of the most talented cartoon draftsmen I've ever met. He was extremely versatile and would clean up drawings with regular pencil, prismacolor pencil, or markers. He had a gift for knowning how to put down a variable weight line where the thicks and thins would produce the maximum attractiveness.

He would also do full color work with prismacolor pencils. The color art would then be cut out and pasted on cel.

The other assistants at Zander's at the time were Mike Baez and Joe Gray, both veterans of Terrytoons, and Ellsworth Barthen, pictured here in the Famous Studio Christmas party pictures. All these assistants were top notch and I learned a lot from all of them.