Joshua Meador
American film special effects artist and animator (1911-1965)
Joshua Lawrence "Josh" Meador (March 12, 1911 - August 24, 1965) was an American animator, effects animator, special effects artist, and animation director for the Walt Disney studios.
Biography
Meador was born in Greenwood, Mississippi. His family later moved to Columbus, Mississippi in 1918. He later studied at the Chicago Art Institute. There, a fellow alumnus told Meador he was traveling to California to be interviewed at Walt Disney Productions, and suggested for him to come along. At first, Meador refused as he wanted to do commercial art, but he was coerced into interviewing at Disney. There, he was hired to work in their animation effects department, where he worked on numerous films such as 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, for which the studio won an Academy Award. Meador also created the animation effects for the 1956 MGM science-fiction film Forbidden Planet, most notably the "Monster from the Id" that attacks the spaceship.
Privately, Meador described himself as "first and foremost a painter", in which he painted more than 2,000 canvases and impressionistic landscape and seascape paintings. He frequently appeared and was acknowledged by host Disney in the live-action color shorts produced for the studio's behind-the-scenes documentaries during the 1950s, becoming unofficially the 10th member of Disney's Nine Old Men (Tricks of Our Trade, 4 Artists Paint 1 Tree).
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Joshua Meador” is american film special effects artist and animator (1911-1965). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Joshua, Meador and American, not as a finished interpretation.
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The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 27, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3186035. VIAF identifies the subject as 2560159941675425440007. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1911, 1965, 1918 and 1956.
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This entry incorporates text from “Joshua Meador” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.