Animation 10 Mar 2010 08:45 am

Oswald Flipbook

- Imagine you’re a kid in 1949 eating your Grape Nuts Flakes in the morning. You’re about to pour on the milk when you realize you’ve found the Flipbook that was included in the box. Would that start you on your way of wanting to become an animator? Would you just flip it and throw it out?

Back then the Walter Lantz studio had a promotion going where they gave a number of flipbooks free to consumers of the Post cereal.

The pages were double-sided. This side features Oswald the Rabbit blowing up his tire. The flip side has Andy Panda. Andy is in full color, whereas Oswald was just line work, so you know which one was still a “star” in 1949.

The registration wasn’t very good on the printed page, and I had to adjust a bit to make it work. The paper it was printed on is newsprint and delicate. The images in the thumbnail are about twice the size of the original.

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(Click any image to enlarge.)

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The following QT movie is exposed on 3′s to make the action work.

Click left side of the black bar to play.
Right side to watch single frame.

7 Responses to “Oswald Flipbook”

  1. on 10 Mar 2010 at 9:39 am 1.Stephen Macquignon said …

    Fun!

  2. on 10 Mar 2010 at 11:27 am 2.Mark Mayerson said …

    Oswald was still appearing in comic books (New Fun was the Lantz title) in 1949, even though he’d been dropped as an animated character years earlier.

  3. on 10 Mar 2010 at 11:52 am 3.Daniel Caylor said …

    Wow this is pretty cool. Thanks! :)

  4. on 10 Mar 2010 at 6:56 pm 4.James N. said …

    That’s really cool! Works great even on 3s.

  5. on 11 Mar 2010 at 10:53 am 5.Sam said …

    Very cool!

    Certainly I would start on my way to become an animator, if I hadn´t yet.

    Thanks!

  6. on 11 Mar 2010 at 10:24 pm 6.Mesterius said …

    Very cool! Could you possibly post the side with Andy Panda as well?

  7. on 20 Oct 2014 at 12:37 pm 7.Alfredo Kondratowicz said …

    Major thanks for the blog post.Really thank you! Much obliged.

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