Ben Bocquelet

The French-British animator who turned his rejected ad characters into Elmore.

Benjamin Bocquelet (born 27 June 1980) is a French and British animator, writer, director and producer, best known as the creator and executive producer of The Amazing World of Gumball and its revival, The Wonderfully Weird World of Gumball; he also directed the 2003 short film The Hell's Kitchen. Hired in 2007 by the newly created Cartoon Network Development Studio Europe to help other people pitch their projects, he combined rejected characters from his commercial work into a series set in a school; his first version, about reject cartoon characters at a remedial school, was judged too sad, so he reworked it as a family sitcom, and the show premiered on Cartoon Network on 3 May 2011.

He named Nicole, Richard and Anais after his mother, father and sister, and the Wattersons after Calvin and Hobbes creator Bill Watterson. In 2016 he announced that he would leave after season 6; he later promised a film to resolve the finale's cliffhanger, and he returned for the revival, released on Hulu on 28 July 2025.