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
Oswald the Lucky Rabbit Universal Studios wanted to get into the cartoon business and needed a cartoon character of its own. So Disney's distributor Charles Mintz told Disney and Iwerks to create a new character they could sell to Universal. Wanting to make cartoons with an all-animated look, Disney signed a contract with Universal Studios leading to the creation of Oswald the Lucky Rabbit and Universal's first cartoon series. Work on both the character and series began soon after Disney moved his studio to Hyperion Avenue. Disney chose to make the character a rabbit since there were already two popular animated cats at the