RON CAMPBELL WILL BE APPEARING AT THE 102.9 WMGK CLASSIC ROCK ART SHOW IN PHILADELPHIA

Animator Ron Campbell, best known for directing “The Beatles” cartoon series and for working on “The Yellow Submarine” movie, will be appearing at the 102.9 WMGK Classic Rock Art Show at the Neshaminy Mall.

Ron Campbell’s back is aching. For two weeks, he’s been painting a 7-foot-long watercolor commissioned by the Beatles-inspired Hard Days Night Hotel in Liverpool, England.

“It’s killing me,” he says in a telephone conversation from his home north of Phoenix. “My back is going out leaning over it all this time.”

Ron Campbell illustrates the Beatles performing "Hey Jude"

Not that Campbell is complaining. Five years after retiring from a 50-year career as a TV and film animator, his paintings are still in demand at art shows around the country.

He can thank the Beatles for his lasting fame.

He’s worked on dozens of beloved characters — George of the Jungle, the Flintstones, the Jetsons, Popeye, Scooby-Doo, Winnie the Pooh, the Smurfs, Rugrats and so many others — but is best known for his Beatles connections: a director on “The Beatles” animated TV series in the mid-1960s and an animator on the iconic, wonderfully psychedelic “Yellow Submarine” movie (1968).

Campbell, 73, will be appearing and creating original Beatles artwork this Friday (May 17) through Sunday at the 13th annual 102.9 WMGK Classic Rock Art Show at the Neshaminy Mall in Bensalem. The show, which is being held in Bucks County for the first time, continues through June 2.

At the time, it never occurred to Campbell that working on “Yellow Submarine” would change his life. He was already a successful animator for Kings Features, and the popularity of “The Beatles” cartoon had enabled him to move from his native Australia to Los Angeles with his wife and young child.

A friend, Al Brodax, producer of “Yellow Submarine,” brought him on to help rescue what was becoming (pardon the pun) a sinking ship.

“Three quarters of the way through the making of the film, they had run out of money, run out of time, run out of animators,” the affable Campbell says. “My colleague Duane Crowther and I came on and did about 11 minutes — most of the linking themes between the songs, a lot of the interplay between the Blue Meanie and his assistant Max, a lot of the scenes with Hillary Boob, and also the Sea of Time sequence.

“I loved it. I came from the same school (of thought) as the people making the film in London. I came from the advertising milieu, so I was accustomed to sharp design.”

“Yellow Submarine,” with its bright colors, bizarre villains, trippy imagery and, of course, Beatles soundtrack, became a cultural landmark. As Campbell says, “very few films captured the spirit of the ’60s like that film did.”

But he was too busy professionally and personally (his wife, Engelina, was pregnant with their second child at the time) to think of the film as much more than just another job.

“I was just an animator working on animation,” Campbell says. “I didn’t say to myself that I’m working on something that will be significant in my life, or that I’d be selling drawings based on this cartoon for the next 40 years. I never thought anything remotely like that.

“Sometimes, a producer or colleague will say to me, ‘That’s an impressive calling card, working on ‘Yellow Submarine.’ But I never thought of it that way.”

Campbell has never met any of the Beatles, but at least one member of the group appears to be a fan of his work. Campbell’s painting of Ringo Starr could be seen over the drummer’s shoulder during an interview he did with “60 Minutes” from his studio.

“My friends were all calling to tell me they saw it,” he says. “Ringo has a couple of my paintings, I think Paul has one. I thought my work might end up passing on in garage kinds of things, but the fact that Ringo thought enough to hang it in his recording studio in L.A. — I’m pleased by that.”

Campbell has heard stories of other reactions by the group to his work, including the time Starr left a screening of the animated TV series wondering, “Why did they have to make me the idiot?”

Campbell’s forays into late-’60s psychedelia were not limited to the Beatles. He also worked on “Sesame Street,” whose early animation was as freaky as anything else on TV at the time.

He struggles to recall which cartoons he did specifically on the groundbreaking children’s show, although the Internet has unclouded some of those memories. When a man he met in Oklahoma asked him that question, he vaguely remembered a gorilla, a mouse and an elevator.

“He picked up his stupid little telephone, click, click, click, hands it over to me, and there’s my cartoon, playing right there on his telephone,” Campbell says. “Not only did I think it would never be seen again, but I never thought I’d even remember it. Many things that were supposed to be forgotten in the trash can of history are coming back to haunt me.”

Campbell is joking, really. As he says, “I’ve always been blessed to be able to work on shows that I’ve liked.” He’s extremely proud of the animated sequences he wrote and produced for the award-winning PBS children’s series “Big Blue Marble.”

Since selling a Rugrats painting on eBay for about $500 in 2004, he’s enjoyed a second career as a traveling artist — meeting fans, sharing his work and hearing stories about how his Beatles art — or at least its subject matter — has impacted people’s lives.

“I sell a lot of my paintings to baby boomers, maybe because it reminds them of their youth,” Campbell says. “Maybe they made out with their first girlfriend in the backseat of a car to ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand.’ I love meeting so many people who watched the (Beatles) show. It’s very satisfying and pleasant.”