Ub Iwerks

When I was a kid I loved the daily comic strips and my one big dream was draw my own comic strip, a dream quickly abandoned once I realized I could draw about as well as a squirrel with no hands.  Luckily, I can still thrill at watching the documentary The Hand Behind the Mouse: The Ub Iwerks Story, which is showing on Ovation this afternoon.  Super slice!  :)

He was responsible for the distinctive style of the earliest Disney animated cartoons, and was also responsible for creating Mickey Mouse. 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 to work on a new series of cartoons known as “the Alice Comedies” which had live action mixed with animation. After the end of this series, Disney asked Iwerks to come up with a new character. 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.