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
The Art of Walt Disney after when Walt decided to leave the Kansas City Film Ad Company to start another one of his own, called Laugh-O-Gram Films, where he created his first popular cartoon called Alice’s Wonderland, which turned into a series called Alice Comedies. Unfortunately for Walt, not enough money was coming in, which lead to many of his employees quitting his company, and forcing him to declare bankruptcy. In 1927, Walt created a new character called "Oswald the Lucky Rabbit", which also became popular. However, the distributor he was working with at the time, Charles Mintz, hired all of Walt’s animation employees and