ComiColor Cartoons

Animated Pictures, the studio run by ex-Walt Disney Productions director and Mickey Mouse co-creator Ub Iwerks, had been producing black-and-white Flip the Frog cartoons for a contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer since 1930 with extensive financial backing from Pat Powers, who was also formerly associated with Disney, through Powers' own company, Celebrity Productions. As early as June 1934, Iwerks' studio announced plans for two new series: one a black-and-white series of cartoons featuring Willie Whopper, as an extension with their MGM deal, and the other an all-color series of ComiColor cartoons.

Walt Disney had an exclusive contract with Technicolor for use of their three-strip process for his studio's short cartoons, so other studios had to opt for different color processes, which particularly used only two strips of color and resulted in more limited palettes. The ComiColor cartoons were shot with the cheaper Cinecolor process, a process which used two red-orange and green-blue strips of film for color. As a result of extensive financial backing from Pat Powers, the cartoons' soundtracks were recorded with Powers' Cinephone system. A number of the shorts were filmed using Iwerks' early attempt at a multiplane camera, which he built himself from the remains of a Chevrolet automobile. Several shorts also utilized the technique of rotoscoping, a process where animation is drawn over live-action footage. Circus performer Wellington Mack served as a live-action reference for such sequences.

Staff was enlarged and Iwerks' Beverly Hills studio expanded to accommodate the increased production. In the beginning, Shamus Culhane and Al Eugster, animators hired from Fleischer Studios, were appointed as the series' lead animators and directors, while Grim Natwick and Berny Wolf, two other ex-Fleischer animators, directed most entries in the Willie Whopper series. Culhane and Eugster fulfilled the role for at least four credited ComiColor films. Iwerks' deal with MGM ended on the Willie cartoons in 1934, with Culhane leaving for a directorial job offer at The Van Beuren Corporation soon after. With the ComiColor cartoons as Iwerks' remaining series, Grim Natwick was subsequently credited as lead animator in two cartoons, Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp and The Valiant Tailor, and he contributed to the series until he resigned from the studio later that year, taking up a job offer to animate for Walt Disney on his first feature, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

With no distribution deals from larger studios like MGM for the ComiColor series, distribution duties of the cartoons were primarily negotiated by Pat Powers' Celebrity Productions. Distribution rights for the series were sold to multiple smaller production companies based on state and location, organizations including Allied Pictures Corporation in Los Angeles and San Francisco, Gold Medal Film Company in Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., and Principal Film Exchange in New York City, among many others.

Pat Powers continued distributing these cartoons even after financially backing out of Iwerks' studio. In the 1940s, the ComiColor cartoons received home-movie distribution of 16 mm Cinecolor prints through Castle Films. Blackhawk Films continued releasing them for home film use in the 1970s, but this time using conventional Eastmancolor film stock.

Copyrights were not renewed on most of the ComiColor cartoons, so most of them has fallen into the public domain in the United States. As a result, they are widely available on a variety of physical and digital media. All of the ComiColor cartoons are now available in the 2004 Region 2 ComiColor DVD set released by Mk2/Lobster in France. Many are available in Region 1, in particular on the Cartoons That Time Forgot series. Steve Stanchfield of Thunderbean plans on releasing the restored versions of the shorts across two Blu-ray sets called ComiColor Cartoons Collection V.1 & 2.