Ub Iwerks

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16 mm color film Aladdin and the wonderful lamp by Ub Iwerks on Cinecolor , ca.1930 .

Ub Iwerks [ ˈʌb ˈaɪwɝks ] (born March 24, 1901 in Kansas City , Missouri , † July 7, 1971 in Burbank , California ; actually Ubbe Ert Iwwerks ) was an American animator and technician. Its name is explained by its East Frisian roots: Iwerks' father Eert Ubbe Iwwerks from Uttum (today the municipality of Krummhörn in the district of Aurich ) emigrated to the United States in 1869.

Life

Iwerks worked as a draftsman in Kansas City in 1919, where he met Walt Disney , who was the same age , and made friends with him. When Disney opened an animation studio, Iwerks was its first employee. The early Disney cartoons like Sleigh Bells were mostly drawn by him. He had a reputation for being the fastest animator ever. He is said to have drawn the first (produced) Mickey Mouse cartoon, Plane Crazy , by himself in just two weeks, which would mean around 700 drawings a day. When a Mickey Mouse comic strip was started in January 1930, Iwerks also created the pencil drawings for this comic strip within three weeks.

It has been widely speculated that Iwerks was the driving force behind the success of the Disney studio . Iwerks and Disney had had occasional differences, and when Pat Powers, who distributed Disney's films, offered Iwerks to open his own studio with his money, Iwerks agreed and left Disney. The Iwerks Studio opened in 1930 and produced the black-and-white cartoon series Flip the Frog ( Flip the Frog ) and Willie Whooper and the color range comicolor cartoons were retold in the famous fairy tale. Fiddlesticks , the first film in the Flip the Frog series, released on August 16, 1930 , also featured colored scenes; the first release by the Iwerk studio was also the first ever colored cartoon with sound. Because the series was unsuccessful, Powers and other financiers stopped supporting the Iwerk studio in 1936, which had to close. Ub Iwerks worked for Columbia Pictures from 1938 until he finally returned to Disney in 1940.

After returning to Disney, Iwerks worked in Disney's research department mainly on the development of new visual effects and processes. So it is z. B. attributed to the development of the Multiplan camera , which enabled three-dimensional backgrounds in cartoons, as well as the first use of xerography in cartoons. He also worked as a special effects consultant outside of the Disney studios. B. 1963 for the traveling matte recordings made using the front-light / back-light process in Alfred Hitchcock's film The Birds .

In 1999 the documentary The Hand Behind the Mouse: The Ub Iwerks Story came out.

Awards

media

literature

  • Leslie Iwerks, John Kenworthy: The Hand Behind the Mouse: An Intimate Biography of Ub Iwerks, the Man Walt Disney Called "The Greatest Animator in the World . " Disney Editions, New York 2001, ISBN 0-7868-5320-4

Film documentaries

  • The Hand Behind the Mouse: The Ub Iwerks Story (1999)

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Iwerks, Ub
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Iwwerks, Ubbe Ert
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American animator and technician
DATE OF BIRTH March 24, 1901
PLACE OF BIRTH Kansas City , Missouri, United States
DATE OF DEATH 7th July 1971
Place of death Burbank , California, United States