Charlie Downs began his animation career in Disney's Animation Department in 1950 as an inbetweener, breakdown artist, key rough artist and cleanup assistant to several of The Nine Old Men. He also worked as a staff animator on many Disney features during that same period. Around 1960 he worked at Snowball with Bob Clampett. After animating on The Black Cauldron he moved to other studios to animate on Looney, Looney, Looney Bugs Bunny Movie, GI Joe, the Movie and Heavy Metal. He was instrumental in the beginning efforts of Disney's new TV Animation division and animation director for many television series at other studios, including The Pink Panther, Jem, Garfield, Heidi's Song, Scooby Doo, Flintstone's Christmas, Raggedy Ann and Andyand Coonskin. Charlie is a founding member of The Motion Picture Screen Cartoonist Local 839 (The Animation Guild) and is one of its past presidents.