Otto Messmer mot known for creating the iconic and loved character “Felix the Cat” in the year 1919. Prior to creating Felix that cat, Messmer studied animation and drawing from a young age. He was born in 1892 in West Hoboken (modern day Union City) New Jersey to a family of German Immigrants. His experience in drawing and animation started when he studied at a local school of art and later worked at Acme Agency but it wasn’t until 1912 when he really got to practice and share his cartoon style drawings when began publishing his comics and illustrations in recognizable magazines such as Life and The New York World. A few years later Messmer began working under an experienced cartoonist named Hy Mayer who mentored him but also gave him a platform to practice his early animation skills at. They both worked on a animated film series called “The Travels of Teddy” before Messmer left Mayer to work under Pat Sullivan’s cartoon studio. It was in this studio that the iconic loved black cat was born, whether it be Sullivans or Messmers creation is still debatable, but credits are more commonly given to Messmer.
Atempting to search for video or clips of Messmers first work, “Travels with Teddy” came with no result which means the film is either not avaiable to the public online or there is no record of the film at all. However, Messmers next work, a series of cartoons based on Charlie Chaplin and a collaboration with Pat Sullivan did yield some results. The clips aren’t that great quality. The videos I found don’t seem to be from the years Messmer worked on the cartoon with Sullivan, but getting the idea of the animation he worked on with Sullivan, the Charlie Chaplin cartoons were a lot more semi realistic in art style compared to the Felix the Cat cartoon a couples years later. This is apparent in Chaplin and in a couple of other side characters faces as well as in the background which seems drawn with more detail. Felix the cat has a lot more movements in its animation and does a good job of storytelling without using any dialogue on the screen for the most part. The Felix the cat animation has a lot more playful tone and style to it, some notable things being the movement of objects such as music notes or trees that otherwise wouldn’t move, having movement. The character Felix is also a lot more happy and laughing which makes the show more lively to watch and would probably be appealing to a younger audience. Felix the cat was also one of the only animations to also be popular in comic form, also drawn by Messmer, which proves the success of Messmers illustrating and storytelling.
Walt Disney is most famously known as the father of the well loved studio Disney and the creator of many loved characters and stories of our childhood. Disney’s early life began with him being raised on a farm in Marceline, Missouri where his family worked for a while before moving back to Kansas City. His first drawing job was illustrating for his high school newspaper when he was a teenager, and continuing to practice illustration before landing a job with Pesman-Rubin Commercial Art Studio, a business that designed advertisements and banners. Unfortunately Disney was laid off but this motivated him and a friend he met at his previous employment, Ub Iwerks, to create their own company, Iwerks-Disney Commercial artists, which sadly, only lasted a month. Disney later became employed with a company called Kansas City Film where he learned about animation. After a couple years he left in order to once again attempt to make his own company, Laugh-O-Gram Films which came to be on May 1922. His first animations where live-action animations, the very first popular one being Alice’s Wonderland. Disney still hadn’t struck it stable just yet though, single he ended up declaring bankruptcy.
Disney continued having setbacks with managing his new companies and employees but animation and creation wise, he had a talent for storytelling and creating lovable characters. His first major character to hit stardom was Oswald from his popular animated series Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. Before long, Disney once again had issues with property rights and ended up havng to surrender Oswald and create a new character that ended up being one of the most loved and recognizable characters to this day, Mickey Mouse. In actuality, Diseny wasn’t the one to create Mickey, it was actually his partner Iwerks who, taking inspiration from the previous Oswald, created the Mickey character while Disney gave the voice to the character.
