Disney has brought its first character back to life on the small screen.
The popular mass media and entertainment conglomerate recently revealed a short featuring Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, the character Walt Disney used to jump-start his career and make Disney into what it is now.
Disney and animation fans interested in watching the short for themselves can do so at the end of this article or on YouTube.
Oswald The Lucky Rabbit Revival Details
Disney revealed in a blog post that it brought back Oswald the Lucky Rabbit on the small screen in celebration of the company's 100th anniversary.
Eric Goldberg directed and animated the 1920s-based short, while Dorothy McKim produced the animation in question for the occasion, respectively.
McKim said that creating the first new Oswald short from Disney's studio since 1928 was "a joy," as evidenced by the amount of fun the hand-drawn animation dream had when animating in the style of Oswald's era.
The team consisted of "hand-drawn legends" Mark Henn, Randy Haycock, and Goldberg, along with some 2D apprentices.
Goldberg describes the lucky rabbit as a "plucky champ," and that the team wanted to bring Oswald back to the movie screen, his original home, in celebration of the first generation of Walt Disney's artists.
Audiences may notice that the short is complete with the "squash-and stretch rubber hose-animation style" Walt Disney used when he was starting up Disney.
Who Is Oswald The Lucky Rabbit?
You may not be aware of who Oswald the Lucky Rabbit is, and that's alright. He is one of Walt Disney's first animated characters that helped establish Disney into the company it is now.
Disney initially created Oswald through some pointers from Charles Mintz, who eventually became a distributor to Universal Pictures, the same company responsible for films like "Pacific Rim" and "The Purge," per This Day in Disney History.
Oswald was originally supposed to be a cat since the character was inspired by Julius the Cat, Alice's sidekick in 1923's animated short, "Alice's Wonderland," per Silent Film.
However, there were many animations already about cats at the time. As a result, Mintz suggested to Disney to turn the character into a Rabbit, along with making the character look younger than it originally was.
From these points, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit was born, and Universal became richer in it from "tie-in" merchandise and products.
Although Disney saw the potential of a character like Oswald to make money, others are also thinking the same way as him. Universal took direct control of the character through copyright in 1928, leaving Disney feeling betrayed and swearing he'd never surrender control of any of his studio's creations again.
Unbeknownst to Universal at the time, Disney and his best animator, Ub Iwertz, were working on the creation of Disney's most recognizable and iconic character, Mickey Mouse, and his first cartoon, "Plane Crazy."
Unfortunately for Oswald, he passed into movie obscurity after Mickey's rise to fame in 1938, with his last appearance being in 1943, during World War 2.
The character survived by jumping into comics, with Oswald becoming a pop culture hit in Japan in 2005. Oswald would return to Disney in 2006 through an assets exchange with Universal, but he remained mostly in the background through video game appearances, merchandise, and park appearances until now, per Polygon.
