Cartoons wouldn’t be the same without Walt Disney. But, only a few know that Walt Disney wouldn’t have been the same with our first-in-a-series Frederator Original Cartoon Hero Ub Iwerks.
From Wikipedia: Ubbe Eert “Ub” Iwerks was an American animator, cartoonist, character designer, inventor, and special effects technician, who co-created Oswald the Lucky Rabbit and Mickey Mouse. The works Iwerks produced alongside Walt Disney went on to win numerous awards, including multiple Academy Awards.
You read that right. Ub co-created Mickey Mouse. The Mickey Mouse. Aside from leading the animation, he actually designed Mick. You see, Disney was an artist, but Ub was a better one. You can read all the details over at Wikipedia, and there are a few books over at Amazon.
Frederator wants to honor the almost forgotten man behind our industry.
Here’s the background on our “hero” series. Artist Jeaux Janovsky was the first community manager at Channel Frederator and created a bunch of artwork for a number of our ventures (and, not for nothing, he also designed the original Cartoon Hangover logo). Anyhow, along the way he did a couple of illustrations of Ub, Ralph Bakshi and Chuck Jones in a style that I really liked. Having started a “cartoon inspirations” postcard series back in 2008, I asked Jeaux to develop a few more. And, of course, I got lost in other stuff over the past decade and never got around to publishing.
Until now.
Thanks Jeaux!
…..
From the postcard back:
Congratulations!
You are one of 300 people
to receive this limited edition
Frederator postcard!Frederator presents
Original Cartoon Heroes
Ub IwerksSeries 46.1 [mailed out September 21, 2018]
