Edward H. Love; Studio Animator

Edward H. Love, 85, an animator who spent decades creating cartoon and commercial characters for entertainment ranging from “Fantasia” to “The Flintstones,” died Monday in Valencia of heart failure.

Job-hunting in Depression-era Los Angeles in 1930, the little-trained Love signed up for animation lessons with a cartoonist he found in the Yellow Pages. He took his first assignment--Mickey Mouse playing the violin and falling down--to Walt Disney and was hired on the spot for $18 a week.

During a decade with Disney, Love brought trees to life in the 1931 Academy Award-winning film “Flowers and Trees,” the world’s first color cartoon, and helped animate Mickey for “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.”

Moving to MGM, Love animated the wolf in Tex Avery’s “Red Hot Riding Hood” and creatures for “Screwy Squirrel” cartoons.

During his 65-year career, Love also worked on “Playful Pelican” for Walter Lantz Studios. For Hanna-Barbera, he animated “Huckleberry Hound,” “The Flintstones” and “The Jetsons.”