success, Columbia would enter a formal distribution partnership with UPA. Hubley was tasked with directing the first "trial" films, Robin Hoodlum (1948) and The Magic Fluke (1949). UPA and Mr. Magoo: 1949–1952 Hubley and the UPA team felt restricted with The Fox and The Crow shorts, and approached Columbia with an idea for an original short. Hubley, inspired by his uncle Harry Woodruff, pitched an idea for a short-tempered, aggressive old curmudgeon. "The character was based upon an uncle of mine, Harry Woodruff" he later said. Hubley and writer Millard Kaufman would name the character Mr. Magoo after Point Mugu in Malibu, California.While Hubley is often credited as the sole creator of Mr. Magoo, the character was a combined effort with Kaufman, who based Magoo partially off his own uncle. Hubley and UPA founder Zachary Schwartz made their intentions with UPA clear in a 1946 issue of Film Quarterly. Hubley and Schwartz believed it had become "necessary for the craftsman-animators of the motion picture industry to analyze and reevaluate their medium". Hubley and Schwartz were influenced by their shared experience in the First Motion Picture Unit making training films, specifically by how animation was being used as an educational tool, as the two believed "animation usage in the educational film [was] singularly undeveloped" before the war. Now, Hubley and Schwartz understood the "signifigance of the animated film as means of communication" and aimed to create films that could "express the essence of an idea" with "line, shape, color, and symbols". Hubley served as the supervising director of Gerald McBoing-Boing (1950), written by Theodor Geisel and directed by Robert Cannon. The film won UPA their first Academy Award for Best Short Subject Cartoon, which "stung" and "really shocked" Hubley, claimed layout artist Bill Hurtz. Hubley, now determined to win his own Academy Award for the studio, directed Rooty Toot Toot (1952), UPA's most expensive and ambitious film at the time. Hubley wrote the film alongside Bill Scott and hired Phil Moore to compose the score. At the recommendation of Art Babbitt, Hubley hired dancer Olga Lunick to choreograph the film's dance elements, and much of the film's animation was done by Betty Boop creator Grim Natwick. The film's dark themes of murder, sex, violence, jealousy, and infidelity were a "groundbreaking moment for animation". While the film was nominated for the Academy Award, it lost to The Two Mouseketeers. The same year,