Benjamin Ashby Clopton Jr. (July 27, 1906 – November 19, 1987) was an American artist best known for his work on Walt Disney and Harman-Ising animated cartoons.
Clopton left for California in January 1927 for what was supposed to be a few months[3] Instead, he was hired by Walt Disney in February and began working under animator Ub Iwerks as an in-betweener.
Clopton assisted Iwerks in drawing the first Mickey Mouse cartoon, Plane Crazy, in late April, 1927, but left the Disney studio in the middle of May to join Hugh Harman and Rudy Ising, who had been hired from Disney to make cartoons for Charles Mintz under contract with Universal Studios.
Harman and Ising then formed their own studio and signed a deal with Leon Schlesinger in 1930 to create the Looney Tunes series.
[9] He was living in Santa Monica, California, at the time of his mother's death in 1966 but re-settled back home in Townsend, Montana, where he died in 1987.