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Last week, I had the pleasure of attending the 99th birthday party of animator Willis Pyle. Pyle has had a cartoon career for the ages. On Pinocchio, he cleaned up Milt Kahl’s scene of Jiminy Cricket getting dressed while running to work. He was a key animator during the early days of UPA and animated on the studio’s first theatrical short for Columbia, Robin Hoodlum, as well as the first Mister Magoo short Ragtime Bear. In the classic UPA film Gerald McBoing Boing, Pyle animated the climactic scene of Gerald performing sound effects at the radio station.

I’m incredibly grateful that we still have living links to the Golden Age of animation like Willy, and attending his party made me wonder who else is still around. The list below is every animation industry veteran I can think of who is 85 years or older. I’m sure there are plenty of others too, and I invite you to help fill out the list. The growth and development of our art form owes much to these men and women.

• Bob Balser – 86 years old

Rudy Cataldi – 86 years old

Sam Clayberger – 87 years old

Stan Freberg – 87 years old

Ken Mundie – 87 years old (?)

Walt Peregoy – 88 years old (?)

Ray Favata – 89 years old

Gene Deitch – 89 years old

Charles Csuri – 91 years old

David Weidman – 92 years old (?)

X. Atencio (pictured right) – 94 years old

Martha Sigall – 95 years old (?)

June Foray – 95 years old

Bob Givens – 95 years old

Stan Spohn – 98 years old

Willis Pyle – 99 years old

Tyrus Wong – 102 years old

Director and animator Ken Mundie, who is in his late-’80s, is probably the oldest animator to date who has used Kickstarter. The project he’s pitching is something he’s been working on for years called The Match. Here’s a short test from the project for which he’s aiming to raise $10,000.

Mundie has had a fascinating career in Hollywood, walking the mainstream-indie tightrope for much of it. He is perhaps best known for directing the 1969 Fat Albert pilot, which has absolutely nothing to do with the Filmation crud that followed and ranks as one of the greatestn TV specials in animation history.

One of his indie shorts, The Door (1967), was released by Warner Bros. in 1967:

He did lots of film and TV series titles like The Wild Wild West:

While working on lesser projects in Hollywood, he always did personal projects on the side, like this adapation of Homer’s The Odyssey which he was never able to get off the ground:

It’s exciting to see him with the desire to finish an animated film at such an advanced age. According to the Kickstarter, his son is assisting him, and they’re aiming to complete by September 2014. Unfortunately, the project is poorly set up and is basically a “what not to do” for crowdfunding. Every newbie Kickstarter mistake has been made, though it’s not too late to fix many of these issues. Just some of the issues:

• It’s set up by someone who isn’t Ken Mundie and who hasn’t made his relationship to Mundie clear.

Even with these reservations, I felt the project was worthy of being highlighted because Mundie’s animation tests look phenomenal and the man is one of the unheralded renegades of the American animation industry.