John Pomeroy started work at The Walt Disney Company in 1973 as a background artist, and became a full animator in 1974 to work on Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too. While working at Disney, he met fellow animators Don Bluth and Gary Goldman, and began working with them on an independent short film project, Banjo the Woodpile Cat. In 1979 he, Bluth, Goldman and several other Disney animators left the studio to form the independent studio Don Bluth Productions (later to become Bluth Group), which produced the film The Secret of NIMH and the animation for laserdisc video games Dragon's Lair and Space Ace. The independent studio encountered financial difficulties and declared bankruptcy in 1984, but reformed soon after as Sullivan Bluth Studios and opened a major animation facility in Dublin, Ireland.
