Hawkins was born in Jerome, Arizona to a father who was a all-round cowboy for two years and to a mother who was a painter. He started drawing when he was two years old and his family had a lot of history with artistic careers, including his aunts. He went to North Hollywood High School but was a college dropout. Hawkins always animated on flipbooks. At the age of 16 in 1928, he did a animation of a clown walking and dancing, showed it to Disney, and thought it was a copy of their animation. He then worked on cels at the Charles Mintz studio. He started working at Disney from the short "Flowers and Trees" (and some of the Donald shorts) all the way to "Dumbo". He went on the Disney animators' strike because his colleagues said they would never talk to him again if he didn't strike. He went on to work on Woody Woodpecker. He improved Woody's design to be more streamlined along with Art Heinemann. He briefly did commercials for different companies in the 1950s. Hawkins animated The Greedy on "Raggedy Ann and Andy: A Musical Adventure" along with assistant animator Dan Haskett (who disliked the job).