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Steamboat Willie and Flip the Frog

Read comic online In 1930, Disneys closest friend and most important animator Ub Iwerks left the studio and went into business for himself. The man that designed Mickey Mouse and single-handedly drew Mickeys first cartoon shorts, decided to create a new star, Flip the Frog and produced the very first color cartoon with sound, as Flip debuted in his first short Fiddle Sticks on August 16, 1930.













Above: Opening and closing title cards of Fiddlesticks, crediting Ub Iwerks not only as animator but also as producer.

Flips first two cartoons were created using the two color Technicolor process, the others were done in Black & White (although only a black & White print survived of Flying Fists, the second cartoon). One of the main artists working with Ub at his studio was Grim Natwick, who had worked for Max Fleischer, where he had designed and animated on Betty Boop. In all, Ubs new studio produced 38 Flip the Frog cartoons between August 1930 and October 1933. After that, Iwerks created 14 cartoons starring a character called Willie Whopper until September 1934. The studio also produced the Comicolor cartoons, a series of 25 shorts, starring characters like Sinbad, Aladdin and Don Quixote, which used the Cinecolor process, developed by William Crespinel in 1932.

Lets check out some of the similarities between Steamboat Willie and the early Flip the frog cartoons. If youve been following my posts, the first one should be familiar to you by now. Its Black Pete again, chewing his tobacco behind the wheel in Steamboat Willie. His mouth opens, his teeth too and he spits (if you have trouble viewing any of the images below, just click to enlarge).


Heres Flip the Frog in Fiddlesticks, behind his piano. A very familiar looking mouse is playing the violin and hes wearing a red pair of trousers too, just like Mickey (the actual Mickey Mouse cartoons from that time were in Black & White, but his trousers were already shown to be red in the various merchandising items). Flip is shocked when he sees some black goo hit his piano, he looks up and sees a bird doing a familiar act.


Heres another one.The next scene is from The Village Smitty, released on 1931. Flip is a town smith and while repairing a horseshoe, he flies backwards through the air and ends up in the fire. Flip is screaming his lungs out and the horse successfully extinguishes the fire!


Heres Black Pete once more, in a scene from Steamboat Willie, yelling at Mickey to scrub the decks. Mickey sticks his tongue out at him and Pete reacts, trying to kick Mickey down the stairs, he ends up hurting himself.


Below is a scene from The Soup Song, another Flip the Frog cartoon from 1931. In this short, Flip works at a diner, but serves multiple roles. He takes coats at the door, works in the kitchen making soup, waits tables and does a few sing and dance acts on stage with a cute girl. In the following scene, Flip throws himself in the arms of the girl (or so he thinks) at the end of their dance routine, but unfortunately for him, he ends up in the arms of another character, who isnt to happy about Flips stunt.