Alice and Julius

I've been reading an excellent biography on Walt Disney and it's made me re-visit some of Disney's very early cartoons. The Alice cartoons were the first series he made after opening a fledgling studio in Hollywood in the 1920s. He was barely scrapping by, but with the help of artists like Ub Iwerks, he was rapidly learning the art of animation.

The Alice shorts aren't anywhere near as good as the Silly Symphonies and Mickey Mouse cartoons Disney and animator Ub Iwerks be doing in just a few years, but they still have a lot of charm and still entertain..

The cat in the Alice shorts, by the way, was named Julius. I didn't know that until I read it in the biography. You can tell that he was based very heavily on Felix the Cat, whose cartoons were very popular at the time.

Here's an Alice and a Felix cartoon for comparison.