The MegaCollector Presents: Two Mickeys by Fred

Animator Fred Moore is famous for redesigning Mickey, as Ward Kimball told me long ago:

Fred deviated from the rubber hose, round circle school. Fred was just right for the time. He was the first one to escape from the rubber hose school. He began getting counter movements, counter thrusts, in the way he drew. More drawing. He decided to make Mickey’s cheeks move with his mouth, which had never been done before when you drew everything inside that circle. He squashed and stretched him more ...

Fred, of course, was the Disney artist who transformed Mickey from the black-and-white pipsqueak he was in the late 1920s to the Technicolor movie star... and corporate logo ... that we know and love today. Mr. Moore gave Mickey dimensionality and cuteness (Mick's ears even became dimensional in a short or two. But mostly they are those round, black circles above the Mouse's head.)

Mega Collector believes that these Mickeys are from the late 1930s. He hasn't pinned down the production in which the drawings appeared, but he knows the time frame.

(These drawings come from file number 36-526 in Mega's collection, Vault #3. We hope you enjoy them as much as we do.)