Virgil Ross; Animator for Warner Bros., Hanna-Barbera

Virgil Ross, 88, an animator for Walter Lantz, Warner Bros. and Hanna-Barbera who helped create Bugs Bunny, Sylvester the Cat, Tweety Bird and Yosemite Sam. After starting out drawing title cards for silent movies, Ross spent most of his career at Warner Bros. working on its Academy Award-winning “Looney Tunes” cartoons. He was particularly known for his gift of animating the expressions on the rabbits, birds and other characters. Among the cartoons Ross helped to create were Bugs Bunny’s first Oscar-nominated short, “A Wild Hare,” and four Oscar winners, “Tweety Pie,” “Speedy Gonzales,” “Birds Anonymous” and “Knighty Knight Bugs.” In 1992, Ross developed a series of limited-edition animation cells to be sold by the Warner Bros. chain of novelty stores. He spent his final years traveling about the country visiting the stores’ art galleries and speaking about the early days of animation. On May 15 in Los Angeles.