science

Ub Iwerks

Ub Iwerks is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Ub Iwerks rather than just read about it. In short: Ub Iwerks ( ub EYE-wurks; born Ubbe Ert Iwwerks, March 24, 1901 – July 7, 1971) was an American animator, cartoonist, film director, film producer, character designer, inventor, and special effects technician. He was widely known for his early work with Walt Disney Productions, especially for having worked on the creation of Mickey Mouse and Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, among other characters.

Key takeaways

Ub Iwerks belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Ub Iwerks to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Ub Iwerks from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Ub Iwerks ( ub EYE-wurks; born Ubbe Ert Iwwerks, March 24, 1901 – July 7, 1971) was an American animator, cartoonist, film director, film producer, character designer, inventor, and special effects technician. He was widely known for his early work with Walt Disney Productions, especially for having worked on the creation of Mickey Mouse and Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, among other characters. Iwerks met Walt Disney in 1919 while working at an art studio in Kansas City, Missouri. After briefly working as illustrators for a local newspaper company, they ventured into animation together. Iwerks joined Disney as chief animator on the Laugh-O-Gram shorts series beginning in 1922, but a studio bankruptcy would cause Disney to relocate to Los Angeles in 1923. At Winkler Pictures, Iwerks continued to work with Disney on the Alice Comedies as well as the creation of Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. One of Iwerks's most long-lasting contributions to animation was a refined version of a sketch drawn by Disney that would later go on to become Mickey Mouse. Iwerks was responsible for much of the animation for the early Mickey Mouse and Silly Symphony cartoons, including Steamboat Willie, The Skeleton Dance and The Haunted House, before a falling out with Disney led to Iwerks's resignation from the studio in January 1930. Following his separation with Disney, Iwerks founded Animated Pictures and produced the Flip the Frog and Willie Whopper series as part of a contract between Celebrity Productions and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, but the new studio failed to rival its competitors. An independent series of Cinecolor ComiColor Cartoons were also not successful in the long term. The studio was later reorganized in 1937. Subsequently, Iwerks directed two Looney Tunes cartoon shorts for Leon Schlesinger Productions and over a dozen Color Rhapsody cartoons for Screen Gems from his studio as contract work before joining Disney again in 1940. As head of Disney's Special Processes and Camera department, Iwerks developed visual effects processes on productions such as Song of the South (1946), Mary Poppins (1964), and even Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds (1963). He also adapted the xerography process to be able to photocopy animation pencil drawings onto animation cels and contributed technical solutions to Disney's WED Enterprises group (now Walt Disney Imagineering) for Disneyland, Walt Disney World, and 1964 World's Fair attractions. Iwerks had two children, Donald Warren and David Lee, with his wife Mildred Sarah Henderson. Iwerks died of a heart attack in Burbank, California, in 1971 at age 70. Iwerks was posthumously named a Disney Legend in 1989. His likeness has been featured in his granddaughter Leslie Iwerks' 1999 documentary The Hand Behind the Mouse: The Ub Iwerks Story as well as the 2014 feature film Walt Before Mickey, in which he is portrayed by Armando Gutierrez. Iwerks received nominations for three Academy Awards, for which he won two. He also posthumously received the Winsor McCay Award at the 1978 Annie Awards and the Hall of Fame award at the 2017 Visual Effects Society Awards. Iwerks is considered one of the greatest animators of all time.

Early life Iwerks was born Ubbe Ert Iwwerks in Kansas City, Missouri. His father, Ert Ubbén Iwwerks, was born in the village of Uttum in East Frisia (northwest Germany, today part of the municipality of Krummhörn) and immigrated to the United States in 1869 around the age of 14. The elder Iwwerks, who worked as a barber, had abandoned several previous wives and children. When Ub Iwerks was a teenager, his father abandoned him as well, forcing the boy to drop out of school and work to support his mother. Iwerks despised his father and never spoke of or saw him again; upon learning that he had died, he reportedly said, "Throw him in a ditch." Years later, when Iwerks's son Don asked about his grandfather, Ub stopped Don, telling him "We don't talk about that." Ub Iwerks attended Ashland Grammar School, graduating in 1914. Ub's full name, Ubbe Ert Iwwerks, can be seen on early Alice Comedies that he signed. After moving to Hollywood in 1924, he began simplifying his name to "Ub Iwerks", sometimes written as "U.B. Iwerks", and legally changed his name to "Ub Iwerks" in 1926.

Career

Early work with Walt Disney (1919–1926) Iwerks spent most of his career working with or for Walt Disney. The two met in 1919 while working for the Pesmen-Rubin Art Studio in Kansas City, and eventually started their own commercial art business together. Disney and Iwerks then found work as illustrators for the Kansas City Slide Newspaper Company (which was later named The Kansas City Film Ad Company). While working for the Kansas City Film Ad Company, Disney decided to take up work in animation, and Iwerks soon joined him. At Kansas City Film Ad, Iwerks displayed what became a life-long devotion to mechanics and invention. To make the process of photographing the animation drawings more efficient, Iwerks attached a motor drive to the animation camera with a switch that resembled a telegraph key. This allowed the camera to be operated by a single seated person who could both photograph the drawings and switch out and adjust the drawings - without requiring a second person to stand and work the camera.

In 1922, when Disney began his Laugh-O-Gram cartoon series, Iwerks joined him as chief animator. The studio went bankrupt, however, and in 1923 Iwerks followed Disney's move to Los Angeles to work with Walt and his brother Roy on a new series of cartoons known as the Alice Comedies. The Alice shorts featured a live-action little girl (portrayed by Virginia Davis and later Dawn O'Day (Anne Shirley), Margie Gay, and Lois Hardwick) superimposed into an animated cartoon world. The shorts, produced for Margaret J. Winkler of M.J. Winkler Productions (later Winkler Pictures), proved popular enough to remain in production through 1926.

… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Ub Iwerks

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Ub Iwerks claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Ub Iwerks before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Ub Iwerks ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Ub Iwerks

In research: Ub Iwerks appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Ub Iwerks in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Ub Iwerks is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1901 births, 1971 deaths, Academy Award for Technical Achievement winners, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Ub Iwerks outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Ub Iwerks in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Ub Iwerks means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Ub Iwerks out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Ub Iwerks in simple terms?

Why does Ub Iwerks matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Ub Iwerks?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Ub Iwerks.