John Lamb

Who is John Lamb?

John Lamb is an artist, animation film producer/director, and entrepreneur. From the first animated surf and skateboarding cartoons, to perhaps the first American animated, rotoscoped rock n' roll video, to an Academy Award for Scientific and Technical Achievement for invention of the Lyon Lamb Video Animation System, Lamb's work has consistently been in the public eye since the 1970s.

In the early 1970s, Lamb's animation was seen in two seminal surf movies. "The Forgotten Island of Santosha" by Larry and Roger Yates featured Lamb's first animated film "Secret Spot", while "Five Summer Stories" by McGilivray-Freeman Films featured Lamb's animated short "Rocket 88".

"Secret Spot" is said to be the world's first animated surf cartoon and introduced Lamb's trademark character "Willy Makitt." Notable for another first, "Secret Spot" features an "air" maneuver where the surfer flies out of the wave into the air and lands back on the wave to continue surfing - a trick now standard in the world surf community. "Rocket 88" also features Willie Makitt doing a "shuvit" maneuver, which would later become a standard trick among skateboarders.