Ub Iwerks

Ubbe Eert "Ub" Iwerks was a two-time Academy Award-winning American animator, cartoonist, director, producer, and special effects technician, who was famous for his work for Walt Disney. He was born in Kansas City, Missouri.

His name is explained by his Frisian roots; his father, Eert Ubbe Iwwerks, emigrated to the USA in 1869 from the village Uttum in East Frisia (northwest Germany, today part of the municipality of Krummhorn). Ub's birth name can be seen on early Alice Comedies that he signed. Several years later he simplified his name to "Ub Iwerks".

Career[]

Ub was considered by many to be Walt Disney's oldest friend, and spent most of his career with him. The two met in 1919 while working for the Pesman Art Studio in Kansas City, and would eventually start their own commercial art business together. Walt and Ub then found work as illustrators for the Kansas City Slide Newspaper Company (which would later be named The Kansas City Film Ad Company). While working for the Kansas City Film Ad Company, Walt decided to take up work in animation, and Ub soon joined him.

He was responsible for the distinctive style of the earliest Disney Animated cartoons. In 1922, when Walt began his Laugh-O-Gram cartoon series, Ub joined him as chief animator. The studio went bankrupt, however, and in 1923 Ub followed Walt's move to Los Angeles to work on a new series of cartoons known as "The Alice Comedies". After the end of this series, Walt asked Ub to come up with a new character. The first Oswald the Lucky Rabbit cartoon was animated entirely by Ub Iwerks. Following the first cartoon, Oswald was redesigned on the insistence of Universal Studios, who agreed to distribute the new series of cartoons in 1927.

True-creator — The 1930 German article "The True Creator of the Mickey Mouse Films" indicate that "The creator of the now world-famous Mickey Mouse is the American film producer Walt Disney. The original concepts for Mickey and his inamorata Minnie stem from him, as do all the ideas for the Mickey Mouse film treatments. The artist Ub Iwerks, falsely credited as the father of the Mickey Mouse films, was initially an employee of Walt Disney. He has long since been expelled from the Disney firm."

In the spring of 1928, Walt lost control of the Oswald character, and much of his staff was hired away; Walt soon left Universal afterwards. Walt asked Ub, who stayed on, to start drawing up new character ideas. Ub tried sketches of frogs, dogs, and cats, but none of these appealed to Walt. Walt eventually came up with the idea for a character that would later be called "Mickey Mouse" and sketched a design. Ub was given the sketch and was told of the concept, allowing him to create a more refined appearance for the new character.

The first few Mickey Mouse and Silly Symphonies cartoons were animated almost entirely by Ub. However, as Ub began to draw more and more cartoons on a daily basis, he soon found himself unable to cope under Walt's harsh command; Ub also felt he wasn't getting the credit he deserved for drawing all of Walt's successful cartoons. Eventually, Iwerks and Disney had a falling out; their friendship and working partnership were severed when Iwerks accepted a contract with a competitor to leave Disney and start an animation studio under his own name.

The Iwerks Studio opened in 1930. Financial backers led by Pat Powers suspected that Iwerks was responsible for much of Disney's early success. However, while animation for a time suffered at Disney from Iwerks' departure, it soon rebounded as Disney brought in talented new young animators.

Despite a contract with MGM to distribute his cartoons, and the introduction of a new character named "Flip the Frog", and later "Willie Whopper", the Iwerks Studio was never a major commercial success and failed to rival either Disney or Fleischer Studios. From 1933 to 1936 he produced a series of shorts in Cinecolor, named ComiColor Cartoons. Backers withdrew further financial support from Iwerks Studio in 1936, and it folded soon after.

In 1937, Leon Schlesinger Productions contracted Iwerks to produce four Looney Tunes shorts starring Porky Pig and Gabby Goat. Iwerks directed the first two shorts, while former Schlesinger animator Bob Clampett was promoted to director and helmed the other two shorts before he and his unit returned to the main Schlesinger lot. Iwerks then did contract work for Screen Gems (then Columbia Pictures' cartoon division) before returning to work for Disney in 1940. (The cartoons created by Iwerks' own studio remained largely unseen for many decades, but have been released to DVD by several companies.)

After the return to the Disney studio, Iwerks mainly worked on developing special visual effects. He is credited as developing the processes for combining live action and animation used in Song of the South (1946), as well as the xerographic process adapted for cel animation. He also worked at WED Enterprises, now Walt Disney Imagineering, helping to develop many Disney theme park attractions during the 1960s. Iwerks did special effects work outside the studio as well, including his Academy Award-nominated achievement for Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds (1963).

Iwerks' most famous work outside of Mickey Mouse was Flip the Frog for his own studio. Iwerks was known for his fast work at drawing and animation and his wacky sense of humor. Animator Chuck Jones, who worked for Iwerks' studio in his youth, said: "Iwerks is Screwy spelled backwards." Ub Iwerks died in 1971 of a heart attack in Burbank, California at the age of 70.

Filmography[]

Year	Film	Position
1923-1927	Alice Comedies	Animator
1928	Plane Crazy	Animator Director
1928	Steamboat Willie	Director Animator Background artist Layout artist (uncredited)
1928	The Gallopin' Gaucho	Animator Director
1928	The Sky Scrapper	animator (uncredited)
1929	The Barn Dance	Animator Background artist (uncredited)
1929	The Opry House	Director Animator Background artist Layout artist (uncredited)
1929	When the Cat's Away	Animator Background artist (uncredited)
1929	The Barnyard Battle	Director Animator Background artist Layout artist (uncredited)
1929	The Karnival Kid	Director Animator Background artist Layout artist (uncredited)
1929	Mickey's Choo-Choo	Director animator (uncredited)
1929	Mickey's Follies	Director Animator (uncredited)
1929	The Plowboy	Animator (uncredited)
1929	The Jazz Fool	Director Animator (uncredited)
1929	Wild Waves	Director Animator
1929	The Skeleton Dance	Animator Background artist Layout artist (uncredited)
1929	El Terrible Toreador	Animator Background artist Layout artist (uncredited)
1929	Springtime	Animator Background artist Layout artist (uncredited)
1929	Jungle Rhythm	Animator
1929	Hell's Bells	Director Animator Background artist Layout artist (uncredited)
1929	The Haunted House	Animator (uncredited)
1929	The Merry Dwarfs	Animator Background artist Layout artist (uncredited)
1930	Summer	Background artist Layout artist (uncredited)
1930	Autumn	Director
1930	Arctic Antics	Director
1930	Fiddling Around	Animator Background artist Effects animator (uncredited)
1930	The Cactus Kid	Animator (uncredited)
1930	Minnie's Yoo Hoo	Animator (uncredited)
1941	The Reluctant Dragon	Director (cartoon sequences, uncredited)
1942	Stop That Tank	Director
1944	The Three Caballeros	process effects: live action sequences
1946	Make Mine Music	process effects
1946	Song of the South	special processes
1947	Fun and Fancy Free	process effects
1948	Melody Time	special processes
1948	So Dear to My Heart	special process
1949	The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad	special processes
1950	Cinderella	special processes
1950	Beaver Valley	special processes
1950	One Hour in Wonderland	special processes
1951	Alice in Wonderland	special processes
1951	Nature's Half Acre	special process
1952	The Olympic Elk	special process
1952	Water Birds	special process
1953	Bear Country	special process
1953	Peter Pan	special processes
1953	Prowlers of the Everglades	special process
1953	The Living Desert	special process
1954-1958	The Magical World of Disney	special processes
1954	20,000 Leagues Under the Sea	special processes
1954	The Vanishing Prairie	special process
1955	Lady and the Tramp	special processes
1955	Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier	special processes
1955	The African Lion	special process
1955-1956	Mickey Mouse Club	special processes
1955	Men Against the Arctic	special process
1956	The Great Locomotive Chase	special processes
1956	The Blue Men of Morocco	special process
1956	Davy Crockett and the River Pirates	special processes
1956	Sardinia	special process
1956	Secrets of Life	special process
1956	Westward Ho, the Wagons!	special processes
1956	Disneyland, U.S.A.	special processes
1957	Johnny Tremain	special processes
1958	Wales	special processes
1958	White Wilderness	special processes
1959	Sleeping Beauty	special processes
1959	The Big Fisherman	special processes
1960]	Toby Tyler	special effects
1960	Jungle Cat	special processes
1960	Goliath II	special processes (uncredited)
1961	One Hundred and One Dalmatians	special processes
1961	The Parent Trap	special photographic effects
1963	The Sword in the Stone	special processes (uncredited)
1964	Mary Poppins	special processes (uncredited)
1967	The Jungle Book	special processes (uncredited)

Influence and Homages[]

A rare self-portrait of Iwerks was found in the trash at an animation studio in Burbank. The portrait was saved and is now part of the Animation Archives in Burbank, California.
After World War Two, much of Iwerks' early animation style would be imitated by legendary Anime artists Osamu Tezuka and Shotaro Ishinomori.
Iwerks Entertainment, a filmographic company, was founded in 1985 in his honor.
The 1986 D.C. Comics character Dr. Ub'x was named in his honor.
In the Ren and Stimpy Show episode "Superstitious Stimpy", Stimpy is chanting in garbled talk and mentions Ub Iwerks.
In the 2005 Fairly OddParents episode "The Good Ol' Days", Timmy and his Grandpa Pappy, are transported to an early Disney-style cartoon. In it, two street signs that intersect are the streets of Ub and Iwerks.
The creators of the 2017 video game Cuphead, brothers Chad and Jared Moldenhauer, stated that the art style was heavily influenced by the works of Iwerks, as well as other animators, such as Max Fleischer, Willard Bowsky, and Grim Natwick.
- It should be noted that Grim Natwick worked on Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Fantasia, being the lead animator and being responsible for animating Mickey Mouse respectively.