A Glimpse of the New Mickey Mouse Shorts

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Here’s the first trailer for the new series of Mickey Mouse shorts that will debut on the Disney Channel on June 28.

(Thanks, Axel D Camacho, via Cartoon Brew’s Facebook page)

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  • ominousorb

    I’m sure these are great and I look forward to them – I just wish they were traditionally animated

    • Aaron Mincey

      Well get a horse is traditionally animated in the same rubber hose animation technique so I guess its a win win

  • Pudleiner

    What a great gig for an animator : to animate on the rubber hose mickey short.
    Don’t know any animator that wouldn’t love that project ! Very cool :-)

  • Shazbot

    I hope these new toons get huge ratings so that Disney will be encouraged to make more. I love what I’m seeing (yes, it’s Flash, but it totally works for those great character designs).

    • Dana B

      A new Gravity Falls episode will premiere on the same night as this, so hopefully it’ll get good ratings.

      The shorts look like a lot of fun. I was kinda hoping the characters were not going to have speaking roles, but in this day in age that’s one hard bargain :/

    • Uncle W.

      It’s not Flash, it’s Harmony.

      • truteal

        potato, potahto, tomato, tomahto

  • http://the-animatorium.blogspot.com/ Natalie Belton

    2D is not dead yet at Disney apparently.

    • ILDC

      On TV, at least.

  • Mike

    Oh my gosh….I’m sorry but I…just…..no.

    Gone are the appeal, the characterization, the joy in watching these characters move. These really upset me.

    • ILDC

      Just wondering, are you comparing this to the original shorts or something like Clubhouse?

    • Roberto González

      While I can sort of see that point of view I think these have some appeal of their own and probably the characterization is , in some ways, funnier than other stuff we got recently. It’s a ‘modern’ take with a touch of retro. It’s probably better to do something new instead of an imitation of the old. And this seems to be done with care for the characters and it’s not badly done for the tv medium. I much prefer this over House of Mouse, and I don’t even think House of Mouse is too awful.

      • Nikolas

        This immediately reminded me of House of Mouse (the attitude, not the art style). I’m not really a fan of the “look” of these new cartoons, but it’s nice to see the old classic animated shorts characters in use again.

  • jhalpernkitcat

    I got a really big laugh at Mickey imitating Donald.

    • Inkan1969

      No pants?

      • jhalpernkitcat

        It was the noise he was making–I’m very easily amused.

  • tredlow

    These look great! I actually like the flash-y feel it has.

  • Cory Gross

    Regardless of the animation quality, medium and so on, I’m digging these new toons. I enjoyed “Croissant de Triomphe” and I’m looking forward to the next ones. I love the old-school Mickey look and how he’s acting kind of like a sarcastic a*****e. This trailer had me laughing out loud a few times.

  • Roberto Severino

    Lots of great artists working on these! I’m hoping these are good enough so that kids and adults alike watching them will eventually become interested enough in checking out the classic shorts, resulting in Disney reissuing the older Walt Disney Treasures collection sets.

    There are things I probably would have done differently. I’d like to see some of Floyd Gottfedson’s stories adapted into some new Mickey Mouse shorts and experimenting with getting his vision onto the screen somewhere. Capture the spirit of those but be bold, inventive and experimental with the personalities and animation. Maybe some more Carl Barks adaptations would be cool too.

  • Jim Hat

    reeks of adobe flash. or a similar engine.

  • Close3k

    This looks like it could be fun. Not sure if it’s Flash, ToonBoom or something new, but the animation looks pretty cool.
    I just don’t get it. Disney keeps saying that they’re done with 2D, and yet . . .

  • Zach B.

    If you take any show and edit it like a commercial and add a lame Disney announcer voice its gonna look off no matter what. But don’t judge it until you see it. We will never have anything like the original shorts and I’m glad they didn’t try to re-create that style. These feel fresh and new.

  • Uli Meyer

    I must be such a terrible old fart not to be able to get anything out of this. Like that parent who says to their teenage off-spring that the music they listen to all sounds the same, this looks like most everything else out there to my eyes. Visually and audibly in your face and crude. I wish there were headphones for the eyes. I just can’t see it, I wish I could. I’ll shuffle off now to watch “Brave Little Taylor”, and reminisce about the days when animation of that calibre was possible. Somebody bring me blanket and some chicken soup.

    • Roberto Severino

      That’s how I felt about that new Looney Tunes Show that had Jessica Borutski’s designs in it. It seems like the creators and people behind that cartoon were doing it for completely wrong reasons and didn’t quite understand what made the old shorts so great.

      I don’t think Spike Brandt and Tony Cervone have been that good at handling the characters and it would have been far better for a guy like Eddie Fitzgerald or Bob Camp to have overseen that project. They even had Jim Smith do a storyboard of one of those cartoons initially! Oh what could have been.

      I didn’t think the other Mickey Mouse short that was posted here a couple of months ago was that bad at all. I showed it to Eddie Fitzgerald over at his blog and he liked it too but generally thought there was too much insistence on this video game like pacing that the original cartoons never had. He also told me that there needs to be a lot more passion in new cartoons.

      It really does sound like they had a lot of good talent working on these new Mickey Mouse cartoons, but I think it’s best to try to move on from certain characters, promote the classic shorts on TV and whenever Disney or WB can, and try to move animation into a different, exciting direction. The fact that these companies are having to reboot established properties like this is a sign that they don’t really have too many better ideas.

    • Roberto González

      Well, just look at it this way. Something like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1wDn5o-3Ok

      may look more like classic Mickey on the surface, but I think the new shorts provide a feeling of creativeness and fun that other new versions don’t show.

      I have my own issues with the new style. Personally I love how the faces of the characters look and even some of the John Kricfalusi-like facial expressions are great to me, but I think the construction of the bodies are a little too abstract and bordering bad construction and some of the movement lack fluidness, but overall I dig the style and the gags. This looks like the old classic feisty Mickey Mouse that in my opinion had more charisma than his later 40s persona.

      I guess it’s really difficult to make new versions of old cartoons that everybody likes. If it’s too simmilar, why bother? If the look is different, some people may prefer the old visuals and if the plots or characters are different some other people would be disappointed. I’d rather take this over The Looney Tunes Show, cause this looks funnier. Personally I didn’t mind the new designs in The Looney Tunes Show, in fact I quite like most of them and I think the show should look MORE like Jessica Borutski’s original designs. But the gags and the characterizations are sometimes too dull for Looney Tunes. I don’t even mind if it’s a sitcom…it could be an hilarious and surreal sitcom but it’s a very mundane one, that I wouldn’t expect from Looney Tunes.

      This Mickey cartoons, on the other hand, look like they would represent the ‘spirit’-I know that’s abstract- of the old cartoons, the same kind of adventures, the same personality of the characters, and even some simmilarities in the kind of gags. Maybe the pacing is faster and the look is weirder and not so polished but those other ingredients are more important to me.

      • Uli Meyer

        That ‘House of Mouse’ thing is terrible. It doesn’t look like classic Mickey either and is just as bad. I’m certain that those were pumped out on an animation conveyor belt somewhere overseas. Animating for TV is financially restricted and large quantities of footage have to be cranked out in little time. I realise one can’t expect more even with all the talent working on this. It is just so terrible to think that we live in an age where animation is so restricted and fully animated cartoons that could compare to the ones done 70 years ago are never going to be possible again.

        • Roberto Severino

          Notice the melting volumes of characters like Jiminy Cricket and inconsistent timing! It’s like someone just watched only one of the 1940s Mickey Mouse shorts, did a bit of tracing here and there and didn’t really learn how to animate the right way.

          I don’t know whether the overseas animators over in the Philippines didn’t have too much experience animating before or what, but it’s hard to hide all the mistakes of shipping animation overseas, especially when it’s not somewhere like Rough Draft.

          Mr. Meyer, what would you suggest be done about the current state of having to outsource animation like this?

          • Marcus Randy

            >I don’t know whether the overseas animators over in the Philippines
            didn’t have too much experience animating before or what, but it’s hard
            to hide all the mistakes of shipping animation overseas, especially when
            it’s not somewhere like Rough Draft.

            Kinda got irritated with this statement… I know Rough Draft does a splendid job when it comes to outsourcing, I mean they’re really experienced, going back as far from the 90′s. But that doesn’t mean the Philippines sucks at outsourcing. They did recent shows like MLP and mostly the series from toei, such as One Piece, Pretty Cure and Toriko. Toon City does an awesome job in whatever series they handle.

          • Roberto Severino

            I thought Studio B did My Little Pony and I wasn’t familiar with any of the anime work. Interesting.

            I need to be much more careful with how I say stuff.

        • coolzone

          These were made for tv, not theatrical release. It’s like bemoaning the quality of a yogi bear or rocky and bullwinkle because it doesn’t look like a 1940′s donald cartoon.

          For tv, these could be worse, and I’d be interested to see how well others would do with the budget/time restrictions. To expect full animation in tv is kind of ridiculous. And yes, it will never be possible again with your attitude. What about all those hotshot animators from france doing really solid animation. They seem to have no problem producing fully animated shorts. They also don’t have a huge company funding them.

          These kind of comments and the Nik Raneiri article really just drive home the hopelessness of traditional animation in the US, because the artists themselves are hopeless. If you let it be that way, it will be that way. let “your medium” get pissed and stepped on from amoral corporations. Have a broken artist’s union that neither protects the artists or regulates the ever shrinking production schedules and just let things get lamer by the minute.

          Poor traditional animators with no outlet like the internet or resources like 2013 mac pros, cintiqs, and after fx etc. to work on traditionally animated projects.

          Let’s go h8 on people who are trying to do with the best with what they are given in the crippling medium known as tv animation. That’ll shake shit up!

          • Roberto Severino

            Best comment made in this entire post! I commend you sir for telling the truth. David Gemmill has been hard at work posting tons of awesome stuff on his Tumblr and blog and doesn’t resort to saying something like this when he’s feeling depressed about the current state of the industry: “It is just so terrible to think that we live in an age where animation is so restricted and fully animated cartoons that could compare to the ones done 70 years ago are never going to be possible again.”

            It sort of sounds like an asinine thing to say when you look at all the cartoonists now who are getting inspired by the many many animation history blogs out there, studying the drawings and getting their skills up to speed so that they can make great animation from home. I’ve been on a gap year from college, thinking about what specific major I need to study and spending a ton of my time drawing and practicing and trying to have a more hopeful attitude towards animation’s future.

            I have quite a lot of ideas myself that I’ve been exploring and experimenting with that are a hell of a lot better than what TV animation is churning out partially because there are animators who have become complacent and gone into this attitude that there never be this piece of animation that will be as good as this random short from 1946, blah, blah, blah instead of trying to be pragmatic and forward with their vision and realizing that it’s important to uphold the high standards that these great men from the past had set for the medium but there are so many unexplored directions in animation that have yet to be taken.

            The amount of talent out there in the blogosphere is enormous and there are so many ideas that would make for great cartoons that don’t really see the light of day because of the way the system is set up for the exact same reasons “coolzone” pointed out here.

          • Uli Meyer

            Hello ‘Coolzone’, I’m awfully sorry I got you so heated up. I never meant to belittle the artist’s effort on any of the shows and if you read again, I acknowledged the restraints of TV budgets. Of course they weren’t made for theatrical release, that was my point! Shorts like the old ones do not have a platform that would provide a viable income and therefor will never happen again. I certainly do not “h8″ anybody making an effort to create anything, but please allow me to bemoan the loss of an era I miss so much.

  • mick

    no stigma with Harmony looking ropey… just Flash. Unless prejudice is cherry picked it loses it’s potency

  • Shazbot

    God no. I hope John K. never gets anywhere near Mickey Mouse.

    • Inkan1969

      I’m sure John K. hopes that, too. :-)

  • Ridgecity

    I think it’s not the animation but the personality that feels weird. If this was starring Donald Duck no one would complain, since that character can be neurotic enough to get in trouble. Mickey Mouse has been a good-doer for the last 50 years, not a troublemaker.

  • Steven

    Why does it look Flash animated? >.>

  • Sparky

    Well I’m excited. Those backgrounds and that fluidity. Gorgeous! Love the design work, too. Disney Channel is finally finding a groove!

  • Nice Marmot

    Looks incredible to me. My girls & I will be checking it out for sure…

  • Jen Hurler

    It’s a little too zaney for the more current Mickey Mouse, in my opinion. I did enjoy the Cinderella cameo though. I just hope it’s not all cliche situations and gimmicks with predictable setups and payoffs. And the animation is different, obviously. But I suppose it does suit them trying to keep up with today’s kids (or whatever logic one would think they’d have..).

    They used to show some of the old cartoons in between TV shows on Disney Channel, and then they had this horrible idea of cutting them up and putting them to different music which was just depressing. I’ll take new Mickey toons over defacing old ones. And maybe if this is popular they’ll decide to start airing some of the old ones (unedited) too.

  • Mark Neeley

    Paul Rudish has earned enough of my trust to view these with the most optimistic of open minds. And honestly, so far so good based on the promo and stills.

  • lovenorthern

    The movement leaves a lot to be desired… but the designs, while certainly busy and perhaps even a bit too loud, are fresh and interesting to look at. Maybe the style will calm down later. It seems like a lot of business to keep up.