When Chuck Jones died Saturday of congestive heart failure, the world, and Hollywood, took little notice.

You may not know Chuck Jones by name, but you certainly know his work. If you’ve ever heard the names Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck or Elmer Fudd, then you know Chuck Jones. If you’ve ever seen "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" or "The Phantom Tollbooth," then you know Chuck Jones. If you watch "Dawson’s Creek" weekly and see the WB’s mascot Michigan J. Frog before every show, then you know Chuck Jones.

Together with animators Tex Avery, Bob Clampett and Friz Freleng, Jones gave birth to many of our most indelible animated icons: Bugs, Daffy, Elmer, the Road Runner, Wile E. Coyote, Marvin Martian, Porky Pig and, my personal favorite, Pepe Le Pew. While at Warner Bros., he worked on hundreds of animated shorts and feature films.

The lack of attention for Jones’ passing probably stems from deep-rooted Hollywood biases against animation and comedy. The film industry has notoriously ignored these two genres as serious art forms; to devote your life to both is to forever relegate yourself to the background. You make kids’ cartoons. You write comedy? Any idiot can do that. You do both? Are you nuts?

What these people don’t realize is how difficult Jones’ work was. In the age of rapidly advancing technology, it’s difficult to take anyone working with hand-drawn ’toons seriously. How easy it is to forget that in the early days of animation, cartoons were drawn by hand.

For example, Jones’ first film, "The Night Watchman," was only six minutes long, but featured more than 5,000 drawings. It’s safe to say that without pioneers like Jones, there would be no "South Park," no "Simpsons," and certainly no "Toy Story."

Technical innovations aside, the one thing easily forgotten in the wake of Jones’ death is that this stuff was funny. Really funny. Many people today refuse to watch older comedic films because the jokes are dated.

I dare anyone to watch a "Looney Toons" or a "Merrie Melodies" short and not laugh loudly and repeatedly. Jones and his animation cohorts infused their films with such daring comic originality that the films have failed to age a day in the 50-plus years since their creation. They have become timeless.

In the not-too-distant future, when computer animation has taken over and the age of hand-drawn animation is nothing more than a distant memory, I fear that men like Chuck Jones will be too easily forgotten. My hope is that the next time you watch movies like "Shrek" or "Monsters, Inc.," you remember that without men like Jones, these films wouldn’t exist. The man was a true pioneer, and he will be dearly missed.