[2] He is described by the film critic Leonard Maltin as "a principled filmmaker who has worked both outside and within the mainstream, attempting to find projects that support his humanistic beliefs".
[4] He took a liberal arts education at Antioch College in Ohio and obtained work as an animator for television commercials while still in school.
[5] In a 1963 article he wrote for the Bolex Reporter,[6] he notes that he first took an interest in animation during his second year at Antioch.
He developed a cut-out technique and also used various other imaging methods including scratching the film stock, painting, and using objects such as photographs, string, cloth and scissors.
He would continue to develop these techniques in projects through his career, culminating in his 1983 animated feature Twice Upon a Time.
Using a Bolex H-16 camera, his television commercial work amounted to more than 30 spots, which he made with four other students at Antioch.
[13][14] The film lost money, and Korty would not return to animated productions for more than twenty years.
The film starred Kim Darby and William Shatner, was produced by Francis Ford Coppola, and was based on the science-fiction novel The Pilgrimage by Zenna Henderson.
In the mid-1970s and late-1980s, several Korty animated shorts were featured on the PBS children's programs The Electric Company and Sesame Street.
There was a recurring character known as Thelma Thumb, and all of the films (some as short as 18 seconds) used Korty's backlit cut-out technique which he called Lumage (Luminous Image).
He tended to use a synthetic fabric called Pellon for the Sesame Street animations, which lent a consistent style to the work.
John Korty also produced animated shorts for the first season of Vegetable Soup with the assistance of Drew Takahashi and Gary Gutierrez.
In 2006, inspired by the state of political debate in America at the time, Korty produced two short animated pieces which he posted to the World Wide Web.