Internment camp inmate who gave life to Scooby-Doo

IWAO Takamoto, the animator who created the cartoon dogs Scooby-Doo and Muttley and directed the classic film Charlotte's Web has died. He was 81.

Mr Takamoto, who began learning his craft in an American internment camp during the Second World War, died of heart failure at Cedars-Sinai Medical Centre in Los Angles on Monday, Gary Miereanu, a spokesman for Warner Bros Animation, said yesterday.

In a career spanning more than six decades, Mr Takamoto helped to design some of the biggest animated films and television shows, including Cinderella, Peter Pan, 101 Dalmatians, Lady and the Tramp and The Flintstones.

But it was Scooby-Doo, the legendary cowardly canine ghost-hunter that captivated audiences, for which he was best known. Mr Takamoto designed Scooby-Doo in the late 1960s while working at the Hanna- Barbera animation studio. The Great Dane's name came from the end of Frank Sinatra's song Strangers in the Night, which contained the phrase "dooby-doo".

Mr Takamoto created Scooby-Doo's character after talking to a dog breeder, who showed him pictures and "talked about the important points of a Great Dane, like a straight back, straight legs, small chin and such", he told Cartoon Network Studios.

"I decided to go the opposite (way) and gave him a hump back, bowed legs, big chin and such. Even his colour is wrong," he added.

He also designed Muttley, who featured in a number of productions, Astro, the family dog on The Jetsons, and the Great Gazoo, a green alien for The Flintstones.

Born in Los Angeles in 1925, Mr Takamoto and his family were sent to the Manzanar internment camp in the California desert after Pearl Harbour. There he received informal training in illustration from fellow Japanese-American internees.

After the war, despite lacking formal training, he was hired as an apprentice animator by Walt Disney Studios.

Mr Takamoto worked under the tutelage of Disney's "nine old men," the studio's team of legendary animators responsible for its most successful full-length films, before moving in 1961 to Hanna-Barbera Studios.

Mr Takamoto died less than a month after Hanna-Barbera's co-founder, Joseph Barbera, who was 95.

At the time of his death, Mr Takamoto was the vice- president of creative design at Hanna-Barbera.

Donald Holwill, the head of animation at Edinburgh College of Art, said: "His appeal across the generations will continue because his animal characters expose the underside of human foibles."