Google Pays Tribute to Winsor McCay

Posted on October 15, 2012 at 12:38 pm

I am so happy that Google is paying tribute to one of my favorite artists, Winsor McCay, creator of Little Nemo in Slumberland and Dreams of the Rarebit Fiend.

McCay also invented animation.

He was the one who figured out that if movies were just a series of still pictures, he could draw a series of still pictures and make a movie out of them.  He personally drew thousands of pictures for his first animated movie, about Gertie the Dinosaur.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UY40DHs9vc4

I was enchanted by the short films inspired by McCay Roger Ebert showed us at Ebertfest this year.  This one is by Thomas Edison, circa 1904.

And I am proud to be a Kickstarter supporter of animator Bill Plympton’s new film about McCay.

 

 

 

 

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Smile of the Week: Professor and His Shadow

Posted on June 22, 2010 at 3:51 pm

I love the gentle trick Biola math professor Matthew Weathers played on his class (with a little help from the University President at the end).

If I can just be a movie nerd here for a moment, I’ll point out that it reminds me of a pioneer of animated cartoons, Winsor McCay’s “Gertie the Dinosaur.” McCay was enormously successful as a political cartoonist and creator of comic strips “Dreams of the Rarebit Fiend” and “Little Nemo.” He realized that if he made a lot of drawings, varying each of them slightly, and made each into a frame of film, he could animate movement. So, he drew thousands of individual pictures. And, like Professor Weathers he interacted with the animated character. I love to see new technologies and approaches sharing this most analog and human element of story-telling.

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