“On the eve of Disney’s 100th anniversary, it was such a joy to create the first new Oswald short from our studio since 1928,” says McKim. “Our hand-drawn animation team – including our hand-drawn legends Mark Henn, Randy Haycock, and Eric Goldberg, as well our wonderful team of 2d apprentices – had a ball animating in the style of Oswald’s era.”
“Oswald is such a plucky scamp. We wanted to bring Oswald back, and in the short, he literally returns to his original home, the movie screen,” says Goldberg. “We wanted to have Oswald do all of the ‘squash-and-stretch,’ ‘rubber hose’-animation style, celebrating that first generation of Walt Disney’s artists.”
Oswald is widely considered Disney’s first animated star. His debut came in the 1927 short Trolley Troubles, and more than two dozen shorts were produced by Walt Disney and his team over a two-year period. In 1928, Walt lost creative control of the character, but in 2006 the company struck a deal with NBCUniversal by trading ABC sportscaster Al Michaels to NBC for the rights to Oswald.
In addition to the animated short, Disney has also launched an Oswald the Lucky Rabbit Snapchat lens that allows users to channel Oswald using ar technology.
