Oscar-winning animator Derek Lamb died on Nov. 5 of cancer at a friend’s house in Washington State, reportedly with wife Tracie Smart by his side. He was 68.

Lamb was executive producer of the National Film Board’s English Animation Studio from 1976 to 1982, a stellar period during which the shorts Special Delivery (1978) and Every Child (1979) garnered Academy Awards. Lamb was particularly proud of Every Child, which he wrote for the United Nation’s International Year of the Child. The comedic yet touching short depicts a homeless child being passed from one adult’s hands to another, with none willing to take responsibility for the infant’s welfare.

Lamb insisted on clarity in storytelling and was particularly concerned with using animation in socially constructive ways. Years after leaving the NFB, he returned with Street Kids International to produce and direct Karate Kids (1990) and to codirect Goldtooth (1996), a duo of animated shorts dealing with poverty and AIDS in impoverished areas of the world.

Born in England in 1936, Lamb emigrated to Canada and the NFB in 1959, where Academy Award winner Norman McLaren mentored him. He quickly scored a success working on the story and design of The Great Toy Robbery (1964), a short distributed with Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove.

Lamb later taught at the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts at Harvard University, McGill University and India’s National Institute of Design. He also worked as an independent producer in the U.S. before returning to the NFB in 1976.

While at the board in 1979, Lamb animated the opening credits to Mystery!, the long-running PBS series, using the distinct black-and-white drawings of Edward Gorey. Striking out again as an independent in 1983, he and animator Janet Perlman (then his wife), formed their own production company with offices in Montreal and Cambridge, MA.

Lamb’s last major credit was as executive producer for the Emmy-winning PBS series Peep and the Big Wide World, based on characters by his NFB friend Kaj Pindal.

Lamb also got a memorable mention in Ryan, the 2004 short about animator Ryan Larkin, whom Lamb fired from the NFB in the late 1970s. Larkin recalled his former boss as ‘a beautiful man.’