Student Cinema History Papers

Micah Levin
Robin Starbuck
September 13, 2009

The Importance of Winsor McCay’s
Animation and Animated Film

“I hope and dream the time will come when serious artists will make marvelous pictures that will love and live in life-like manner and be far more interesting and wonderful than pictures you now see on canvas. I think if Michelangelo was alive today he would immediately see the wonders… The artist can make his scenes and characters live instead of stand still on canvas in art museums.”(Pg 1, Ledbetter-Winsor McCay 1927)
Imagine this: a little boy goes to sleep after eating too much rarebit and finds himself exposed to a dreamlike scenario that revolutionized the American industry of cartoons and pioneered a completely new take on how we viewed the Sunday Funnies. Winsor McCay was an American artist, journalist and creator of such memorable comic classics like Dreams of a Rarebit Fiend, Little Nemo in Slumberland and Little Sammy Sneeze. Aside from working heavily from 1905-1913 for the New York Herald(Pg 1, Ledbetter), McCay was also an key frame animator. Remembering that the difference between an animator and a cartoonist is that use of real-time movement for one medium, and still art for another, Winsor McCay was seen as a visionary for his time, when stop-motion was relatively new to the States in the early 20th century.

The mutoscope was the first ever device built specifically for the purpose of utilizing multiple frames of pictures taken over a short span of time (1-2 minutes). By applying the concepts of the mutoscope developed in America in 1894(based off the British invention of the flipbook), the first silent shorts were produced(non-animated) for viewing entertainment. At this time of the invention of the mutoscope, Winsor McCay was employed as a freelance journalist and political cartoonist for the Cincinnati Inquirer, and hadn’t found cartooning at that time, dabbling in experimental sketches on newspaper and eventually making his first major cartoon series, Tales of the Jungle Imps in 1903 (Pg 2, Ledbetter).
After his initial success with cartooning in the New York Herald, being among the first men to use color in their Sunday comics, Winsor McCay became interested in certain “trick films” by early film directors such as Stuart Blackton and French animator Emile Cohl. Their use of simple animation mixed with real-life acting resulted in a time for Winsor McCay where most of his efforts were concentrated on making an animated feature short for himself. Released September 15, 1914(Pg 1, Ledbetter), Gertie the Dinosaur was released to the general public as one of the first animated films that took advantage of the “thousands-of-frames-per-second” technique which must have taken a lot of effort and patience, being of the first animated shorts of its time. Clocking in at around 12 minutes and only opening up in two theaters in America, Winsor McCay single handedly brought about a new meaning for animated feature, introducing his own unique artistic talents and writing to the production in a resulting performance that would later be deemed the sixth most important animated feature of all time by the National Film Registry in 1994.

After watching the film in class, I was completely blown away by the detail and complexity of the movie. Not only were such crucial elements of nature implemented in the film, such as shadows, blowing of the wind and anatomically correct dinosaur features, but the short also proved to the film industry at the time that animation was not just a gimmick, but a full fledged movement, and one that would later influence mid-twentieth century animators such as Walt Disney and Max Fleischer. I remember thinking to myself after viewing the cartoon, what was the importance of this film? What was so special about a 12 minute little short without any dialogue. Don’t get me wrong, I personally enjoyed the piece, but was initially hesitant to label it as an automatic classic in my book; classics in my mind were Oswald the Lucky Rabbit and Koko the Clown. And although these three animated creations were similar in their classical stylings of big eyed, long limbed and cutesy cut-out look, they are separated by their times. Gertie the Dinosaur was important because of the time in which it was produced. Imagine the circumstances involved in making a 12 minutes short, only half of which was animated, and the funds that must have been used to make it! Apparently the project was partially self funded by Winsor McCay himself(Pg 2, Ledbetter).
For the time it was made, Gertie was revolutionary in her actions. Standing on two legs and dancing, drinking all the water in a lake and tossing a woolly mammoth far back into the distance, all on top of being within the confines of a fully drawn environment, McCay took the best of his talents and literally brought to life an extinct dinosaur. Another important aspect of Gertie the Dinosaur, was that it was not a linear story like his newspaper comics. Gertie was more of a vaudevillian act of sorts then a simple twelve panel laugh-in-a-half. For instance, Little Nemo in Slumberland, was a cartoon about a little boy and his adventures in Slumberland, a fictional place where up is down and where the princess only wants to be playmates with Nemo whilst trying to avoid the crude and childish character “Flip.” These stories every Sunday would chronicle the continuing adventures of Nemo as he tried desperately not to wake up and spoil the fun of Slumberland. These stories were unique in the sense that they drew interest from the journey, not so much the end of the adventure. Gertie the Dinosaur could be watched over and over because of the authentic use of the character Gertie. Get a dinosaur to dance and that was all you needed to get people excited, because how else would one get to see a dancing dinosaur in their lifetime? Little Sammy Sneeze, another interesting comic serialized in 1904-06, more closely resembled Gertie in the sense that it was not about a continuing adventure or enchanted setting, but merely the amusing fixture on a particular action, an action which happened to be about a little boy’s tremendous sneeze and what it did to those around him!(Pg 3, Ledbetter)
By drawing all those frames for Gertie the Dinosaur McCay did a wonderful thing, he defined what it was to be an animator and at the same time, raised the bar for other artists who aspired to enter the field.

The reason I chose to cover the importance of Winsor McCay’s film and it’s background was due to the fact that I had always had a strong interest in Little Nemo in Slumberland. A lot the reason for my strong interest in his art style was the realism mixed with imaginative abstraction. Everything about Little Nemo, I felt, translated perfectly into Gertie, and his art style still remained almost untouched when crossing the boundaries of still cartoons to moving pictures. Looking at the cartoons now in my lap, and looking back on Gertie the Dinosaur, it becomes much easier to appreciate the importance of McCay’s creation. Every frame must be relatively equal in proportion and shape, every detail must be replicated thousands of times, and if one mistake is made, it would have been almost impossible to go back and find where the splotch or hiccup was in the collection. Chuck Jones, the animator for Bugs Bunny and Looney Tunes once said this much about Winsor McCay’s contribution to animation:
“It is as thought the first creature to emerge from the primeval slime was Albert Einstein; and the second was an amoeba, because after McCay's animation, it took his followers nearly twenty years to find out how he did it.” He was a true pioneer and a man with dreams truly much bigger then life. To say Winsor McCay contributed to art would be a gross understatement; Winsor McCay defined what it was to make art when it came to the medium of abstract animation, and if Gertie the Dinosaur wasn’t enough to convince you otherwise, then perhaps you are just having a nightmare of a rarebit fiend.






Bibliography/ References Page
1. Ledbetter, Cammie. Winsor McCay’s Little Nemo in Slumberland. New York: Checker, 2004

2. Smith, Samuel, “About the Mutoscope” Mutoscope Manufacturers- History 2000. U.K. . http://mutoscope-manufacturers.co.uk/history/index.asp?adapt

3. Pearson, David, “BIOGRAPH The oldest movie company in America History” History. 2009. http://www.biographcompany.com/history_home.html

4. http://www.listsofbests.com/list/42337

5. http://springlakemccay.blogspot.com/2007/11/chuck-jones-quote.html