Based in Prague after 1959, Deitch was known for creating animated cartoons such as Munro, Tom Terrific, and Nudnik, as well as his work on the Popeye and Tom and Jerry series. It’ll never be forgotten. “All those things,” he said, “the drawing, the writing for an audience, the love of technical gadgetry related to putting on a show, all eventually came together to prepare me for becoming an animation director.”“Where else could you come out of a studio,” he said, “make a cup of coffee at your own stove and look out at that old tower, where a real alchemist used to work at turning base metals into gold?”In a six-decade career, he created Tom Terrific, revived Tom and Jerry and won an Academy Award for a cartoon based on a Jules Feiffer story. "The director of the popular Tom and Jerry animated cartoons, Gene Deitch, has died at the age of 95. He is best known for his work on the Tom and Jerry animated series, and he directed 13 episodes. Petr Himmel, is publisher, confirmed the news to The Associated Press and it was reported the star died 'unexpectedly'. In 1943 he underwent pilot training but caught pneumonia and was discharged just a year later. His animation career started in 1955 when he took an apprenticeship at the animation studio United Productions of America, where he later became known as the creative director of Terrytoons. One obstacle was that none of the Czech animators he worked with had ever seen a “Tom and Jerry” cartoon. (His Record Changer drawings were published in a book, “The Cat on a Hot Thin Groove,” in 2003.) Here is everything you need to know about the cause of death. Animator Gene Deitch has died in Prague of natural causes at the age of 95. But how did Gene Deitch die? After the news of Gene Deitch’s death broke, fans took to Twitter and Instagram to share their thoughts. Deitch’s vast output included shorts shown ahead of feature films in theaters when that practice was common, cartoons for TV’s black-and-white era, and works aimed at the grandchildren of his earliest fans. There were jazz fans at UPA, and he ended up there as an apprentice designer.Mr. GENE DEITCH, the director of the famous Tom and Jerry animated series, has died at the age of 95. "He started his illustrating career at North American Aviation, drawing up intricate and detailed aircraft blueprints. See today's front and back pages, download the newspaper,order back issues and use the historic Daily Expressnewspaper archive.He retired in 2008, and during that year he has been working as the leading animation director of the Weston Woods Studios, adapting children's picture books. Videos and photos depicting his colourful work have been shared across various platforms, so fans can reminisce and appreciate them. He was born in 1924 in Chicago and arrived in Prague in 1959, where he met his future wife, Zdenka.Fans and colleagues have taken to Twitter to pay tribute to him, with one fan saying: "R.I.P Gene Deitch. He was, it seems, born to be an animator.In 1945, after graduating from Venice High School and serving in the Army during World War II, Mr. Deitch was on the art staff in the sales promotion department at CBS when he sent some drawings to The Record Changer, a jazz publication.Part of the deal with Mr. Snyder was that Mr. Deitch had to go to Prague to work on Rembrandt films there. Prague was the city he made his home… Read More » His films often showed a subtle sophistication beneath a seemingly simple premise and design.“Obviously, we could not put ‘Made in communist Czechoslovakia’ on our titles,” Mr. Deitch wrote. Fans on Social Media React to Gene Deitch’s Death. He made his film version of “Munro” look like Mr. Feiffer’s drawings. They married in 1964.The film director and producer was last seen in his apartment in the Litter Quarter neighbourhood. Another fan said on Twitter: "Gene Deitch, the creator of Tom & Jerry has left for the Heavenly Creator. Salute and Respect. His son Kim Deitch confirmed the death.“Nothing ever goes Nudnik’s way,” Tom Maurstad wrote in The Dallas Morning News in 1996, “but he keeps on going, creating little moments of improbable beauty along the way.”But it was his love of jazz that was his entree to the business, which was tough to crack because there was a cartoonists’ union.In 1956, CBS hired him to manage Terrytoons, a venerable cartoon studio it had just bought. Deitch was also known for his work on the famous Popeye the Sailor series and in 2004 he received the Winsor McCay Award for his lifelong contribution to animation. The Oscar-winning illustrator died on Thursday night (April 16) according to reports, and he was found at his apartment in Prague. He became more widely known in the early 60s when he directed Popeye cartoons, as well as the popular Tom and Jerry series which is still recognised across the world today. Just several days after moving to Prague at the end of the 1950s Deitch met Zdenka Najmanová, the production manager at the studio Bratři v triku where he worked.