ComiColor Cartoons

ComiColor Cartoons is a series of twenty-five animated short subjects produced by Ub Iwerks from 1933 to 1936. The series was the last produced by Iwerks Studio; after losing distributor Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1934, the Iwerks studio's senior company Celebrity Pictures had to distribute the films itself. The series was shot exclusively in Cinecolor.
Most of the ComiColor entries were based upon popular fairy tales and other familiar stories, including Jack and the Beanstalk, Old Mother Hubbard, The Bremen Town Musicians, and The Headless Horseman.

Production

, Al Eugster, and Shamus Culhane were among the series' lead animators/directors, and a number of the shorts were filmed using Iwerks' multiplane camera, which he built himself from the remains of a Chevrolet automobile.
In the 1940s, the ComiColor cartoons received home-movie distribution through Castle Films. Cinecolor produced the 16 mm film prints for Castle Films, with red emulsion on one side and blue emulsion on the other. Later, in the 1970s, Blackhawk Films released these for home use, but this time using conventional Eastmancolor film stock. They are now in the public domain in the United States and are widely available on physical and digital media.

Copyright status

The Comicolor cartoons are public domain due to copyright not being renewed.

Home media

All of the ComiColor cartoons are now available in the 2004 Region 2 ComiColor DVD set released by Mk2/Lobster in France. Many are available in Region 1, in particular on the Cartoons That Time Forgot series.
Steve Stanchfield of Thunderbean plans on releasing the restored versions of the shorts across two Blu-ray sets called ComiColor Cartoons Collection V.1 & 2.