Harman-Ising Productions

Harman and Ising first worked in animation in 1922 at Laugh-O-Gram Studio, Walt Disney's studio in Kansas City. When Disney moved operations to California, Harman was back at United Film Ad Service and Ising had a photofinishing business. Their plans went nowhere, however, and the men soon came back to Disney on June 22, 1925, to work on his Alice Comedies and Oswald the Lucky Rabbit films for Winkler Pictures. Ising was fired from Winkler in March 1927, when Disney signed the contract to distribute Oswald films to Universal Pictures. It was during this time that Harman and Ising developed a style of cartoon drawing that would later be closely associated with, and credited to, Disney.

When Winkler producer Charles Mintz ended his association with Disney, the majority of Disney's animators, including Harman and Ising, went to work for Mintz, whose brother-in-law, George Winkler, set up a new animation studio to make the Oswald cartoons. The Oswald cartoons which Harman and Ising produced in 1928 and 1929 already show their distinctive style, which would later characterize their work on the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoon series for Warner Bros. Late in 1929, Harman and Ising attempted to take over the production of the Oswald series through a proposal to Carl Laemmle, only for Laemmle to terminate their contract with Winkler and start its own animation studio headed by Winkler alumni Walter Lantz and Bill Nolan. Harman and Ising left Winkler along with artists such as Rollin Hamilton and Friz Freleng.