LOS ANGELES -- Ward Kimball, one of the world's pioneering cartoon animators who created such classic Walt Disney characters as Jiminy Cricket, died on Monday at the age of 88, Disney executives said.

Kimball, one of family movie mogul Walt Disney's trusted band of key animators known as the "Nine Old Men," died of natural causes in a hospital near Los Angeles, Disney said in a statement.

Kimball, who joined the Walt Disney Co. in 1934 and worked for it for 39 years, was best known as the creator of the mischievous animated top-hatted cricket who advised wooden boy Pinocchio in the 1940 film of the same name, AFP reported.

But, working closely with Disney and the eight other "Old Men," imaginative and often eccentric Kimball helped create the magic of Disney animation that achieved its peak of global fame in the 1940s and 1950s. Kimball was closely associated with Disney characters such as Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Snow White and those in the animated version of Lewis Carroll's classic "Alice in Wonderland." He was also largely responsible for animating Donald Duck in 1944's exuberant film "The Three Caballeros," and was also principally behind the Cheshire Cat, the March Hare and the Mad Hatter in "Alice and Wonderland."

He served as directing animator on the ever popular "Snow White and the Seven Dwarves," (1937), on Disney's classic "Fantasia," "Cinderella," (1950) "Peter Pan," 1964's "Mary Poppins" and "Bedknobs and Broomsticks" (1970).

The death of Kimball -- who was known in later years for his trademark large, round plastic-framed glasses -- on Monday all but closed a chapter in cinematic history, leaving just two of the original "Nine Old Men" surviving.