Christmas has come early Disney fans. This last week the very first Disney Christmas film was uncovered in Norway. “Empy Socks” stars Mickey’s predecessor, Oswald the Rabbit in a Christmas caper. Originally thought to be lost, the 1927 film was rediscovered by The National Library of Norway. The library has…
It is telling that one of the ways Imagineers fixed Disney California Adventure was by adding more of ‘Disney’ and Walt Disney’s personal history into the park. Part of that history became Buena Vista Street, which was supposed to represent Hollywood much as Walt himself would have encountered it in…
I visited Disney’s Hollywood Studios for years before I ever stepped foot in the learn to draw Animation Academy. It was a blast and I’ve been back frequently since then. What many guests don’t realize is that there is a second learn to draw opportunity at Walt Disney World. The…
Oswald the Lucky Rabbit was one of Walt Disney’s first animated stars. The story of how Walt lost control of the rights to Oswald to a New York publisher and created Mickey Mouse on the train ride back to Los Angeles is Disney legend. The story is more complicated than…
When the folks at Disney Interactive Studios released “Epic Mickey 2: The Power of Two” at the E3 conference earlier this summer, there was a lot of noise generated in the Disney fan community. Unfortunately for Disney Interactive, that noise was about the promotional merchandise they had created and not…
Last year a British film archive discovered a print of an 1928 Oswald The Lucky Rabbit short that had previously been thought lost. “Hungry Hobos” was the 20th out of 26 Oswald films worked on by Walt Disney and his team of animators before he lost control of the character….
The linchpin of Walt Disney’s creative genius was that even when faced with the sort of loss that would devastate most people, he never gave up. Walt’s biggest creative loss was when Charles Mintz stole away the rights to Oswald The Lucky Rabbit (and most of Walt’s animators). The creative…
A veritable bonanza of Oswald the Lucky Rabbit posters over at Greenbriar. He also tells the tale of how ‘unlucky’ Oswald was for Disney. Ub Iwerks tried to warn Disney that Mintz was poaching his artists, but Walt wouldn’t believe it. The roof eventually fell with plots revealed and Disney…