More than a decade before Snow White first flitted across the screen in Walt Disney’s seminal feature-length animated film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), a young woman in Germany produced her own animated feature. Rather than hand-drawn animated cels, however, this woman’s film was made with silhouettes, using a technique that she herself had devised that allowed for seamless movement onscreen. The film, featuring hand-tinted frames in glorious, full-blown color, took the...
Read moreBefore there was a mouse in the Walt Disney house, there was a rabbit. A rather unassuming creature-black and white with a rounded, simplistic design masterminded by Disney's brilliant early animator, Ub Iwerks-the hare, dubbed Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, made his debut in theaters in 1927. Oswald's tenure as Disney's first animated star was brief; the studio produced twenty-six Oswald shorts over the course of the next year, before Disney was forced to give up ownership of the character to his dis...
Read moreIn 1941, a number of animators at the Walt Disney studios walked out on the job, effectively going on strike. At issue was the question of unionization, which some employees demanded as a way to guarantee their rights and fair pay. Disney, who had long propagated the notion of his shop as one big, happy family, was infuriated by the strike, and stubbornly held out for more than a month. By the time the strike ended, the Disney studio lost nearly half its workforce. The artists who ...
Read moreBy the summer of 1933, the Fleischer brothers’ self-named animation studio was riding high. Based largely on the success of flapper dream girl Betty Boop, whose risqué series of cartoons became immensely popular in the early 30s, Max and Dave’s studio rivaled that of Walt Disney in popularity. And that July, the Fleischers inked the film debut of a character that would go on to effectively challenge Mickey Mouse for the title of the most popular animated figure in the world. Popey...
Read moreAnimation, as a cinematic medium, does not begin and end with Walt Disney. He did not create the concept; truth be told, on his own merits, he was not even all that great of an artist. Instead, what Disney had was vision—the vision that animated cartoons could be something greater than mere novelty. He was not the only person to have this idea; since the very beginnings of film, there had been men and women intrigued by the possibilities presented by this new innovation. But unlike most of his p...
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