I stood in front of this clock and inhaled and exhaled and found that, imitating the great dinosaur, I inhaled in four seconds and exhaled in two. McCay recalled: “When was lying on her side, I wanted her to breathe and I could come to no exact time until one day I happened to be working where a large clock with a big second dial accurately marked the intervals of time. There were no schools or books that taught animation so he had to invent a method to do animation. Over the months, McCay drew roughly 10,000 drawings of the characters (by his own account) to make approximately five minutes of animation. The rice paper was thin enough so that Fitzsimmons could easily see through it to trace. Fitzsimmons, a 20-year old art student, as his assistant.įitzsimmons primary responsibility was the mind-numbing task of carefully retracing the background from a master drawing 6” by 8” onto thousands and thousands of pieces of rice paper in Higgins black ink. McCay began production in earnest on Gertie during the summer of 1913. In actuality, it should have been more properly identified as an Apatosaurus excelsus.įor reasons known only to McCay, he referred to his cartoon dinosaur as a Diplodocus, which is another sauropod genus entirely. It was the first such creature to be reconstructed and displayed to the public and was identified as a Brontosaurus. McCay was supposedly inspired by a dinosaur skeleton put on display in 1905 at the American Museum of History in New York. “There are skeletons of them on exhibition and I expect to draw pictures of these animals as they appeared in real life thousands of years ago and show them as they trampled their way through dense jungles, ate a stump or pulled down a tree, or had a battle with others of their kind.” He told a film trade magazine: “I have already had a conference with the American Historical Society looking to a presentation of pictures showing the great monsters that used to inhabit the earth. He told a newspaper colleague who was urging McCay to copyright everything, “Any idiot who wants to make a couple of thousand drawings for a hundred feet of film is welcome to join the club.”ĭuring the summer of 1912, McCay was telling interviewers that his next animated film would include dinosaurs. McCay never applied for a copyright or patent on any of his techniques. McCay did not create the first animated cartoon (although he often claimed that he had), but he established a process for doing animation (including key drawings, effective registration of images to prevent “jitters”, and the concept of “cycling” action that reused drawings) that would later be refined by others into what became the standard way of producing animation. In 1906, he began his career on the variety stage with a routine where on a large easel and with orchestral accompaniment, he did a highly popular “lightning sketch” act where he quickly drew freehand everything from funny caricatures to his own comic-strip characters. Today, he may be best known for the color Sunday comic strip Little Nemo in Slumberland (about a young boy who falls asleep and finds himself in a fanciful world) that he wrote and drew, but he also produced hundreds of editorial cartoons, advertisements, and other comic strips, as well as being a top-ranked act on the vaudeville circuit. Winsor McCay was a prolific and talented artist. In the film, using stop-motion clay models, Keaton made his entrance on the head of a brontosaurus reminiscent of Gertie. I saw it in the nickelodeon when I was 14. Sharon Calahan, A.S.The Three AgesFor his 1923 film The Three Ages, Buster Keaton told his writer Clyde Bruckman: “Remember Gertie the Dinosaur? … The first cartoon comedy ever made. Michael Venturini DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY-LIGHTING Mary Alice Drumm ORIGINAL CONCEPT AND DEVELOPMENT BY Outstanding Character Voice-Over Performance Outstanding Achievement, Storyboarding inĪn Animated Feature Production JP Vine, Tony Rosenast, In an Animated Feature Production| IFA-HOLLYWOOD ANNIE AWARD NOMINEE Outstanding Achievement, Production Design Outstanding Achievement, Character Design Outstanding Achievement, Character Animation In an Animated Production ASIFA-Hollywood Annie Award Winner Visual Effects Society Winner Outstanding Achievement, Animated Effects Louis Film Critics Association Nominee Las Vegas Film Critics Association Nominee Florida Film Critics Circle Nominee Austin Film Critics Association Nominee North Carolina Film Critics Association Nominee Central Ohio Film Critics Association Nominee Producers Guild of America Nomineeīest Sound Mixing Cinema Audio Society Award Nomineeīest Sound Editing: Sound Effects, Foley,ĬASTING SOCIETY OF AMERICA (CSA) NOMINEEs New York Film Critics Online Nominee Golden Globe Nominee San Diego Film Critics Society Nominee Critics’ Choice Award Nominee Chicago Film Critics Association Nominee Houston Film Critics Society Nominee St.
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