Ward Walrath Kimball (March 4, 1914 – July 8, 2002) was an animator for the Walt Disney Studios. He was one of Walt Disney's team of animators known as Disney's Nine Old Men.
While Kimball was a brilliant draftsman, he preferred to work on comical characters rather than realistic human designs. Animating came easily to him and he was constantly looking to do things differently. Because of this, Walt Disney called Ward a genius in the book The Story Of Walt Disney. While there were many talented animators at Disney, Ward's efforts stand out as unique.
Kimball created several classic Disney characters including the Crows in Dumbo; Tweedledum and Tweedledee, the Mad Hatter and the Cheshire Cat from Alice in Wonderland; the Mice, Lucifer the Cat and Bruno the Dog from Cinderella; and Jiminy Cricket from Pinocchio. He also animated the famous "Three Caballeros" musical number from the Disney film of the same name.
In 1953, Kimball became a director and was responsible for the Academy Award-winning short Toot, Whistle, Plunk and Boom, and three Disney television shows about outer space that put the United States into the space program. He received an Academy Award for the short animated cartoon It's Tough to Be a Bird.