Live-action animated film match with a live kitten. In a variation from this and inspired to do so Walt Disney's first directorial efforts, years before Oswald the Lucky Rabbit was born in 1927 and Mickey Mouse in 1928, were the live-action animated "Alice Comedies" cartoons, in which a young live-action girl named Alice interacted with animated cartoon characters. Many previous films combining live action with stop-motion animation using back projection, such as Willis O'Brien and Ray Harryhausen films in the United States, and Aleksandr Ptushko, Karel Zeman and more recently Jan Švankmajer in Eastern Europe. The first feature film to do this was
Rabbit folklore as the trickster archetype, as he uses his cunning to outwit his enemies. The rabbit as trickster is a part of American popular culture, as Br'er Rabbit (from African-American folktales and, later, Disney animation) and Bugs Bunny (the cartoon character from Warner Bros.), for example. Anthropomorphized rabbits have appeared in film and literature, in "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" (the White Rabbit and the March Hare characters), in "Watership Down" (including the film and television adaptations), in "Rabbit Hill" (by Robert Lawson), and in the "Peter Rabbit" stories (by Beatrix Potter). In the 1920s, "Oswald the Lucky Rabbit", was a