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He was more rambunctious in the 30s, but he’s still the same Mickey Mouse

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Mickey through the ages.
Mickey through the ages.

As far as animation legends go, Eric Goldberg is among the best and most passionate, having been the lead animator of Robin Williams’ Genie in Aladdin, the director of Pocahontas, and the supervising animator on the Oscar-nominated 2013 short, Get a Horse.

A life-long Mickey Mouse fan, through and through, he counts himself lucky to work at the Walt Disney Company, essentially having a front-row seat to the life of one of the world’s most beloved icons.

Goldberg has a penchant for bright shirts made by his wife, Susan, a fellow artist, out of quirky material featuring cartoon characters on them.

When we meet him at his drawing board at the Grand Central Creative Campus in Glendale, he is dressed in a bight yellow shirt with illustrations from Plane Mickey – the first ever Mickey Mouse cartoon made, but not released to the public until after Steamboat Willie.

The material was found by his wife from Japan – just one of the places she’ll look to for creating his unique attire.

His choice of dress is testimony to his fervent love of the Walt Disney Company. Having been here since 1990, Goldberg has perfected the art of drawing Mickey, and spotting the differences in him over the years, seeing his evolution as both inspired and inspiring.

“They all have very subtle differences,” he says, seated in front of his drawing board, pencil in hand.

“But what hasn’t changed is his personality. Yes, he might have been a little more rambunctious in the 1930s than he was in the 1950s, but he is still the same Mickey Mouse, and that’s what doesn’t change.”

When Goldberg draws the first sketch of Mickey in his earliest formation – the mouse made famous in Steamboat Willie, he points out the barbell-like formation of Mickey’s body back then.

Drawn by Walt Disney’s prolific creative partner, Ub Iwerks, this is the Mickey who had bananas for fingers, a mouth that didn’t quite fit on its muzzle and bricks for shoes.

“Ub Iwerks was very instrumental in coming up with Mickey’s design, which you see in Steamboat,” says Goldberg.

Although not the first cartoon that Mickey appeared in, Steamboat Willie, which premiered at the Colony Theatre in New York on November 18 1928, is the one that’s considered the anniversary of Mickey because it was the first cartoon to be released to the public.

It was also the first Disney cartoon that had synchronised sound.

“If you look at this Mickey, you can see he had a lot of angles to him. Walt and Ub were doing Mickey in a very graphic way back in the 1920s,” says Goldberg.

A few years later, in the 1930s, Mickey got a little rounder and more supple.

“They started to employ an animation technique called ‘squash and stretch’, and they did what you might call ‘pie eyes’ for Mickey, and gave him larger ears,” says Goldberg.

Animator Floyd Gottfredson, who would go on to draw Mickey for 45 years, helped popularise Mickey during this time, giving him white gloves and rounder shoes, along with skyrocketing appeal.

“Mickey was immensely popular in the 1930s,” says Goldberg. “He was a superstar – nobody could touch him!”

In 1938, animator Fred Moore wanted to make Mickey more appealing and so designed him with more pliable shapes and gave his eyes whites and pupils. There was a new fluidity to the character.

“You really had a feeling that the character had a bodily rhythm to him that he hadn’t had before,” says Goldberg.

“He was designed this way because they felt he needed more emotional range, and he became the Mickey used as The Sorcerer’s Apprentice in Fantasia in 1940,” he adds.

“This is the Mickey we know today.”

Goldberg says this is the Mickey he loves the most, and the one he feels is most iconic.

“My favourite year was 1941. Fred and his compatriot, Ward Kimball, started to animate him so loosely and I’ve never seen Mickey more remarkably fluid than that. His face was even more oval,” explains Goldberg.

But there was a time when Mickey’s updated look wasn’t quite as welcomed. In the 1950s, influenced by the animation studio United Productions of America (UPA), many artists wanted to draw characters influenced by modern art – in a more graphic, flatter way.

“So pervasive were these cartoons that all the Hollywood studios took note and started UPA-ing their characters,” says Goldberg.

At this time, Mickey took on a more suburban look, wearing a short sleeve shirt and long pants with lids on his eyes.

It went a little too far for Disney when he saw how Tom Oreb had modernised Mickey for a black and white TV advert to sell Nash Rambler cars.

That look lasted as long as the length of that one commercial did.

“That’s what I find so fascinating about Mickey,” says Goldberg. “Although he’s been through changes, he still is who he is.”

In the ’70s, he was dressed like John Travolta, with a jacket and big bowtie, but by the ’80s and ’90s, he was back to being drawn more along the lines of Fred Moore’s work.

“This is the one I enjoy drawing the most,” says Goldberg.

“There’s a lot of flair to his movement.”

As animators like Goldberg will tell you, Mickey is one of those characters where, if a line is out of place, he’s just not Mickey any more.

“Part of the trick is always visualising him as always a three-dimensional character,” says Goldberg.

“You have to believe you’re drawing a living personality. Even in mouse form. We’re drawing pictures of them in the same way that authors would say their characters write themselves.”

For Goldberg, like others who’ve drawn Mickey before him, that belief only seems to get stronger every time he puts pencil to paper.

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