This is the first of a what I hope to be a series of blogs. I love animation and want to share that with you folks at home. This month I'm discussing Steamboat Willy from 1928. This is the first Mickey Mouse cartoon ever shown to an audience. (The first ever produced was Plane Crazy).
What makes this little cartoon a piece of history is the innovation in sound.
Cartoons had sound before Steamboat, but this was usually just music pasted onto silent cartoons already produced.
The small, scrappy Walt Disney Studio needed something big after flagging sales and badly handled deals in which Disney lost all rights to his first original character, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit.
As you watch, keep in mind that nobody ever conceived that cartoons could be the source of sound or vocal effects. Steamboat was the first cartoon ever to attempt such an effect. The voice of Mickey is Walt Disney himself. Credit goes to Ub Iwerks, Mickey's co-creator and the primary animator on the early Mickeys.
This little parody of Buster Keaton's Steamboat Bill is the film that launched Mickey into super-stardom and promised that his co-creator, Walt Disney would not be far behind.
-Tom
Sunday, December 16, 2007
Tom's Toon of the Month December 07
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2 comments:
haha.. the part where he plays the pigs nipples is slightly disturbing.
Ashton has now watched "Mickey Mouse with that cat" three times. He's a fan. Although he makes funny comments sometimes like, "I think this is a bad ship with that cat."
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