Early Sketches of 11 Famous Cartoon Characters

Earlier this week, we were pleased to find the very first drawing of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Seeing these earliest forms of Leonardo, Raphael, Michelangelo, and Donatello piqued our curiosity and led us on a hunt for early sketches of our other favorite cartoons. As you’d expect, these first renderings are somewhat strange to behold — faces seem distorted, eyes seem too big, and familiar characters have a foreign air. Needless to say, they’re all pretty fun. Click through to check out the debut sketches of Toy Story, Mickey Mouse, The Simpsons, and more.

Mickey Mouse, 1928 [via]

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TO: Matt. I think they were just drawn on standard art paper, then (the "best examples") cut-out loosely/raggedly with an exacto knife and glued to a presentation board.

Are those Toy Story sketches on napkins or is the paper just a little crinkled?

The third Yogi Bear from the left looks remarkably like the Hamm's (the "beer refreshing") bear.

Just a bit o' trivia for those who never noticed it before: The major innovation Walt discovered when designing Mickey (or are those pix from when he was still called "Mortimer Mouse"?) was the "logo effect": Mickey's ears stick in your mind like a corporate logo because they never "change." No matter how the character moves or turns, the ears are never seen in profile (--they just "slide up or down" on the head). In other words: They ALWAYS look just like the "dead on" mouse-ear silhouette that became Disney's key advertising image. (You can see that this innovation was picked-up by some of the other cartoonists on your list as well, when first thinking through some of their new characters.)