Animator of Henry's Cat and Roobarb, he won an Oscar for his short film Great
Bob Godfrey, who has died aged 91, was the godfather of British animation, celebrated for short films including the initially banned Kama Sutra Rides Again (1972) and the Oscar-winning Great (1975) as well as his children's TV series Roobarb (1974), narrated by Richard Briers, and the Bafta-winning Henry's Cat (1982-93), narrated by Bob. His seemingly simple drawings drew their strength from posture and gesture and his constant innovations in style were the result of shoestring budgets. He was in every way a true amateur film-maker who produced, directed, animated, acted in and did the voiceovers for his films. His influence on leading animators cannot be overestimated: Richard Williams (Who Framed Roger Rabbit) worked in his basement; Terry Gilliam made his Monty Python animations overnight in Bob's studio, as he could not afford his own place; and Nick Park credits The Do-It-Yourself Animation Show, presented by Bob in the 1970s, as a major influence.
Other successful producers and directors kept their awards and certificates in prominent places; Bob's were in his loo. He was always very approachable and was never happier than when surrounded by students; he even took his classes to the pub. His studio had a lifesize hanging effigy of Margaret Thatcher. On receiving a letter from the then prime minister, and fearing the worst, he was surprised to find he had got the MBE, appointed in 1986.
Bob was born in West Maitland, in New South Wales, Australia, and emigrated to the UK with his parents a few years later. He went to school in Ilford, north-east London, and attended art school in Leyton. Work as a graphic artist for the manufacturer Lever Brothers in the 1930s was followed by a spell with the GB Animation outfit financed by J Arthur Rank. As a Royal Marine during the second world war, he took part in the D-day landings.
He began to concentrate on animation in the early 1950s and drew upon influences ranging from Donald McGill's seaside postcards to the Goons. He particularly liked satirising political figures and British attitudes to sex. Small men and dominant women played their part, and his loose style of drawing belied his artistic skill. It was his speciality to combine live action with various animation styles. He directed and acted in several live-action films; enjoyed bit parts in the Beatles films A Hard Day's Night (1964) and Help! (1965); and won a Bafta award for Henry 9 til 5 (1970).
The anecdotes of Bob's life abound. There was the time that Yoko Ono paid him £5 to photograph his derriere for her exhibition. His irreverence often landed him in trouble. A film laboratory refused to develop a scene that had the Queen singing Good Evening Friends as a finale. His cutout technique of animation featured photographs from magazines that were used without permission, leading to threats by photographers. He also pushed the limits of the medium: Kama Sutra Rides Again was banned but it later earned an Oscar nomination, as did Dream Doll (1979) and Small Talk (1994).
His unfulfilled ambition was to make a feature film – it nearly came true with a project called Jumbo – but he was at least partly satisfied with Great, a half-hour cartoon on the Victorian engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel, voiced by Briers. Despite the Oscar it brought Bob, he rarely made money on his films. The fact that he survived in the industry was in part due to it being more fun to work with him on ideas he was enthusiastic about than it was to work in a studio making dull commercials. It was taken for granted that if you worked with Bob you would almost certainly be used as a cartoon character in one of his movies, and there was a more than even chance that you wouldn't get paid on time.
The financial situation changed a little for the better when Roobarb, made for the BBC, took off. In the series, Roobarb, a green dog, sets out to achieve certain goals which are meaningful to him, but considered useless by his arch-enemy, Custard, a pink cat. The onlooking birds take great delight in seeing Roobarb fail, yet he lives to fight another day. When the BBC wanted a new series of Roobarb, Bob asked if I would write a series to suit the same audience. I put forward the idea of Henry's Cat, and it was accepted, but this time he decided to finance it himself. The series enabled Bob's studio to keep going during a difficult time for the animation industry.
Bob's love of ridiculing pretentious attitudes was the underlying theme of both Roobarb and Henry's Cat. Henry's Cat is never seen in profile, and he doesn't have a name, as the first story was based on Winnie-the-Pooh and Christopher Robin. The boy, Henry, got lost in the second story and was never part of the TV series or the published books. Henry's Cat also sets out to achieve impossible goals, but has a group of friends who aid and abet him in his objectives. Unlike Roobarb, most of the Henry's Cat stories have happy endings. The cat's face is made up of an M (for the ears), two eyes (giving an I), an O (for the nose) and a W (for the mouth) to form the word MIOW.
I once had a phone call from Bob with good news and bad news. The good news was that the studio's computer had been stolen. The bad news was that they had caught the thief and got it back. As the industry moved from traditional animation to the new, computer-driven technology, styles changed. It was the end of an era and the studios full of bric-a-brac and pinned-up sketches, with their truly bohemian atmosphere, were replaced by screens and machines.
Bob is survived by his wife, Beryl, whom he married in 1947, their daughters Claire and Tessa, and six grandchildren. His daughters Susan and Julia predeceased him.
• Roland Frederick Godfrey, animator and film-maker, born 27 May 1921; died 21 February 2013