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Jim Simon is an artist and animator. With his animation company, Wantu Studios, he created animations for Soul Train, Fat Albert, The Electric Company, Vegetable Soup and Sesame Street.

Biography
At an early age, Simon spent time on his uncle's cotton and tobacco farm in Darlington, North Carolina. When his parents divorced, his mother moved the family to New York City. While attending school there, his artistic talents were recognized by his teacher, and at his teacher's urging he was admitted to the High School of Art and Design, where he graduated with honors in screen animation and was awarded multiple scholarships, allowing him to attend the School of Visual Arts. Upon graduation from the School of Visual Arts, Simon landed a job at Paramount Studios, where he worked on a variety of projects, including the animated Spiderman series. Though he began as a background artist and advanced to apprentice animator slots, Simon was driven to found Wantu Studios due to a lack of advancement possibilities for minority animators and a frustration, as a black animator, with seeing the treatment of black characters by animation companies of the time. Wantu Animation went on to create over 90 animated shorts, including shorts for Sesame Street, the Black Psychiatrists of America, and Electric Company, and win 25 awards by 1977, including 7 awards at the 1975 Animation Awards Festival, presented by the Association Internationale du Film d’Animation East.

After moving Wantu Studios to Hollywood, Simon and the company struggled to find the same success they'd found in New York, and eventually Simon was forced to put Wantu aside and again work for the corporate animation world on a variety of projects, including The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and X-Men, while looking to develop other animation projects on the side, including one with Don Cornelius called Kid Soul & Lil Soul Train featuring the Soul Kidz. Simon, for a while, frustrated with the business, retired from animation and struggled with depression, alcoholism and homelessness, until inspired by a fellow artist to pick up a paintbrush again.

Simon, as of 2016, lives in San Diego, experiments with many different mediums, including paint and pastels, and has a continuing interest in animation.

References/Notes and references
Category:American animators Category:African-American artists