THE ANIMATED WORLDS OF UB IWERKS

Ub Iwerks (1901–1970) met Walt Disney while both were working at a commercial art studio. Together, they embarked on the adventure of animation and soon found success with Oswald the Lucky Rabbit and Alice Comedies, a series of shorts inspired by the work of Lewis Carroll. Iwerks was responsible for all the animation in those early Disney films. He redesigned the original sketch of Mickey Mouse, turning it into the character we know today, and animated classics such as Steamboat Willie (1928) and The Skeleton Dance (1929).

In 1930, feeling underappreciated, he founded his own studio and independently created the ComiColor Cartoons series to compete with Disney. Filmed in Cinecolor —an early two-strip color process that produced vivid and surprising tones— these short films were based on folk tales and children’s fables. Incredibly imaginative and inventive, the ComiColor Cartoons were animated by legendary figures such as Shamus Culhane, Grim Natwick, and Al Eugster, and featured music by the iconic Looney Tunes composer Carl Stalling. Little known for decades, these films now stand as a testament to Iwerks’s visual genius and remain a hidden gem in the history of animated cinema.