HALAS, JOHN; AND BATCHELOR, JOY

born April 16, 1912, Budapest, Hung. died Jan. 20/21, 1995, London, Eng. born May 12, 1914, Watford, Hertfordshire, Eng. died May 14, 1991, London British husband-and-wife motion-picture director-producer team that greatly influenced the development of film animation. Halas was educated in Hungary and Paris and apprenticed to George Pal; he moved to England as an animator in 1936. After art school Batchelor became a commercial artist and met Halas in 1936 while working on Music Man (1938). They later married and in 1940 established Halas and Batchelor Animation, Ltd., which became the largest cartoon film studio in Great Britain. The collaborators codirected and coproduced Animal Farm (1954), England's first full-length colour feature cartoon. Other projects included The History of the Cinema (1956); Automania 2000 (1963); Dilemma (1982), the first fully digitalized film; and over 2,000 other animated films. Many later cartoons, documentaries, and educational shorts were commissioned specifically for television. Halas was appointed O.B.E. in 1972.