Printmaker and illustrator Louis Stanley "Stan" Quackenbush was born in Bellingham, Washington on November 14, 1902. His family moved frequently, as did Quackenbush himself did when he was of age, working as a boxer and an artist. In 1925 he graduated from the University of California at Berkeley and took a job in the advertising business in San Francisco. However, with the onset of the Depression, he lost his job. Rather than remain in the States, he and his wife, Marjorie, decided to travel to Europe, living in Munich, Paris, and Florence, living cheaply and studying immersing themselves in the art scenes of the places they visited. Quackenbush took this time to study the work of up-and-coming European Modernists as well as Old Masters. After he and Marjorie separated he returned to Bellingham, living with his grandparents briefly before moving to Carmel-by-the-Sea, California, and working as a commercial artist.

In the mid 1930s he found work at Walt Disney Studios, working as an animator on the studio's first full-length feature film, Snow White. Following it's completion in 1936 he found work with the Fleischer Brothers' animation studio in Florida, working on Gulliver's Travels. This was interrupted by World War II, and Quackenbush joined the U.S. Navy. He would remain in the Navy from 1940 to 1954, fighting in the Korean War as well.

After his discharge from the military he found work with Canawest, which subcontracted with Hanna-Barbera Productions, in Vancouver, B.C., Canada. He remained an animator in Vancouver until 1972, when he relocated to Mesa, Arizona. There, he volunteered as an art teacher for the Retired Senior Volunteer Program and drawing cartoons for the community newspaper. He remained in Mesa until his death on September 10, 1979.