Happy Birthday Gertie The Dinosaur!
It seems that I'm back to making animated graphics again and my latest one is an ode to Winsor McCay's original "Gertie The Dinosaur" from 1914. Winsor McCay is considered the father of animation and Gertie is an absolute classic piece of animation. I was lucky enough to grow up in the beautiful city of Spring Lake, Michigan which is also Winsor McCay's hometown. My local library was an animation treasure trove. The first book I read about Winsor McCay was John Canemaker's 1987 "Winsor McCay- His Life And Art". It has since been updated and in 2005 a hardcover version of this book was published. To this day, John Canemaker is one of my absolute favorite authors. You can find the 2005 version on Amazon for about $25.00 and it's a wonderful book.
A little about Gertie The Dinosaur from Public Domain Review:
"Gertie the Dinosaur is a 1914 American animated short film by Winsor McCay. Although not the first animated film, as is sometimes thought, it was the first cartoon to feature a character with an appealing personality. The appearance of a true character distinguished it from earlier animated “trick films”, such as those of Blackton and Cohl, and makes it the predecessor to later popular cartoons such as those by Walt Disney. The film was also the first to be created using keyframe animation. The film has been selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry, and was named #6 of The 50 Greatest Cartoons of all time in a 1994 survey of animators and cartoon historians by Jerry Beck."
You can see the entire video on Public Domain Review's website.
It can also be seen in full on YouTube by Change Before Going Productions.
And also a clip of just the animated part of Gertie The Dinosaur from Youtube.
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