Win Smith

• Born 1888-01-22 · Died 1941-10-08

Win Smith was a Canadian-born cartoonist who emigrated to the United States at a young age. An advertising cartoonist in the 1920s, Smith was working as Ub Iwerks' assistant at the Disney studio by the late '20s, where he is credited with developing the idea of the story board as a means of organizing the story flow in the animation process. He was also involved, with Iwerks, in the development of the Mickey Mouse comic strip in 1930. Iwerks pencilled the first three weeks of the strip, with Smith providing inks. Following Iwerk's departure, Smith took over pencils and inks for the next three months before he, too, left the strip, leaving it to Floyd Gottfredson. After leaving Disney, Smith ghosted the Bosko strip in 1934, wrote stories for the Walter Lanz studio in the late '30s, and drew comics for Dell. He died in Los Angeles in 1941.