Tributes to animator Mark Hall
Posted: Friday, 25th November 2011
Cosgrove and hall received honorary degrees in 2012
THE UNIVERSITY has paid tribute to Danger Mouse co-creator and honorary fellow Mark Hall, who died this week after a short battle with cancer.
Mark, who with fellow Manchester School of Art graduate Brian Cosgrove founded the animation company Cosgrove Hall, also created Count Duckula and Chorlton and the Wheelies entertaining four decades of children before the company folded in 2009.
The pair met while studying at the school of art in the 1950s, and returned in 2010 to collect honorary doctorates after which they took a tour around the School.
Professor Steve Hawley said: “Mark Hall was a modest man, despite his great achievements, and was full of warm and good humoured tales of the times they both had been students in the 1950s. He will be greatly missed.”
Emmys
After graduation, Cosgrove and Hall became graphic designers at Granada Television and went on to win six BAFTAs, two International Emmys plus countless other awards and nominations.
They were recognised for honorary awards for their outstanding contribution to animation and to television and for putting Manchester on the animation map of the world.
Founded in 1976, Cosgrove Hall was the Pixar studios of its day, changing the style and tone of cartoon entertainment and giving the world an alternative perspective on ‘the North’ far removed from the stereotype of flat caps and factories. Some credit the hippie-surrealism of ‘Chorlton and the Wheelies’ with helping to make Chorlton the bohemian place it is today.
Anarchic
In an interview at the time of their honorary award, the pair said: “Danger Mouse broke all the rules at that time and was quite anarchic.
“The thing with children’s TV programmes is that the ones you loved as a kid always stay with you in your mind as you get older.”