Winsor McCay
"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."—Winsor, talking during a WNAC Radio Broadcast, New York, September 1927
Winsor McCay (1867?-1934) was an American cartoonist, writer, and animation pioneer. McCay's art style is immediately recognizable by its incredible detail and awesome perspective. Check the other wiki's media page for some examples.
His most famous comic, Little Nemo in Slumberland, is a surreal adventure through the bizarre world Nemo visits when he falls asleep. Other works include Dreams of the Rarebit Fiend, an entire strip about people suffering Acid Reflux Nightmares. McCay was also one of the first animators, the self-described "originator and inventor of animated cartoons". His first "attempt at drawing pictures that will move" was a two-minute Little Nemo skit in 1911; he drew over a thousand stills by himself, by hand. His most famous cartoon is probably Gertie the Dinosaur, an animated short from 1914 that set the bar for future animators. Gertie was also the first film to ever use the Roger Rabbit Effect.
Comics include:
- Little Sammy Sneeze (1904 to 1906)
- Dream of the Rarebit Fiend (1904-13)
- A Pilgrim's Progress (1905 to 1910)
- Little Nemo in Slumberland (1905 to 1914)
- Poor Jake (1909 to 1911)
Animations:
- Little Nemo (1911)
- The Making Of "Little Nemo" (1911)
- How a Mosquito Operates (1912)
- Gertie the Dinosaur (1914)
- The Sinking of the Lusitania (1918)
- Dreams of the Rarebit Fiend: Bug Vaudeville (1921)
- Dreams of the Rarebit Fiend: The Pet (1921)
- Dreams of the Rarebit Fiend: The Flying House (1921)
- The Centaurs (1921)
- Flip's Circus (1921)
- The Barnyard Performance (1921)
- The Flying House (1921): Winsor's last animated project. Was unfinished, but a modern day group of animators are taking up the bold task of finishing this film.