When we think of Mickey Mouse we usually think of Walt Disney, but we should really be thinking of Ub Iwerks — the man who first drew the mouse and animated him to life. Here’s the Wiki…
In 1922, when Walt began his Laugh-O-Gram cartoon series, Iwerks joined him as chief animator. The studio went bankrupt, however, and in 1923 Iwerks followed Disney’s move to Los Angeles…The first Oswald the Lucky Rabbit was animated entirely by Ub Iwerks. Following the first cartoon, Oswald was redesigned on the insistence of Universal, who agreed to distribute the new series of cartoons in 1927.
In the spring of 1928, Disney lost control of the Oswald character, and much of his staff was hired away; Disney left Universal soon afterwards. He promised never to work with a character he did not own ever again.[7] Disney asked Ub Iwerks, who stayed on, to start drawing up new character ideas. Iwerks tried sketches of frogs, dogs, and cats, but none of these appealed to Disney…Ub Iwerks eventually got inspiration from an old drawing. In 1925, Hugh Harman drew some sketches of mice around a photograph of Walt Disney. These inspired Ub Iwerks to create a new mouse character for Disney, eventually called Mickey Mouse.
The first few Mickey Mouse and Silly Symphonies cartoons were animated almost entirely by Iwerks. However, as Iwerks began to draw more and more cartoons on a daily basis, he soon found himself unable to cope under Disney’s harsh command;[10] Iwerks also felt he wasn’t getting the credit he deserved for drawing all of Walt’s successful cartoons.[11] Eventually, Iwerks and Disney had a falling out; their friendship and working partnership were severed when Iwerks accepted a contract with Disney competitor Pat Powers to leave Disney and start an animation studio under his own name…
Iwerks eventually returned to Disney, and he also became a special effects pioneer — he was nominated the Academy Award for his work on Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds, and he won a technical Oscar for his invention of an improved optical printer for special effects. Iwerks was awarded another statuette of an Academy Award of Merit for his invention of Colored Traveling Matte Composite Cinematography.
More importantly, during his time away from Disney, Iwerks created some of the most insane, anarchistic animations I’ve ever seen under his Comicolor Cartoon banner during the 1930′s. Here’s a playlist from my YouTube channel with nearly all of these gems to enjoy…
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