ANIMATION LIGHT BOX WITH PEG BAR MOVIE

McCay had already made a cartoon version of his famous Little Nemo in 1911, releasing it to both movie theaters and then using it in his vaudeville act. McCay was a very popular entertainer, but every vaudeville act needed a new gimmick now and then to keep things fresh.ДЄnd thatвЂ™s where Gertie the Dinosaur lumbers into the picture in 1914. McCay would recite the famous lines вЂњAll the worldвЂ™s a stage / And all the men and women merely playersвЂќ while he drew the faces of a man and a woman вЂ“ and then aged the pictures until he reached the final lines. One of his favorite routines was based on ShakespeareвЂ™s monologue about вЂњThe Seven Ages of ManвЂќ from As You Like It. McCay was also famous on the vaudeville circuit, where he supplemented his income as a cartoonist by doing what are still called вЂњchalk talks.вЂќ With a large easel and a crayon, McCay would draw caricatures of audience members, or transform one picture into another while he kept up a comic patter. To this day, his Little Nemo in Slumberland has to be seen to be believed in all its baroque majesty.

But animation historian Michael Barrier, the author of the indispensible Hollywood Cartoons, calls McCay вЂњthe first American animator of consequenceвЂќ because he вЂњmade films that people wanted to see.вЂќ McCay had already been instrumental in helping to originate the comic strip in newspapers.

Granted, McCay is not the first animator, American or otherwise (James Stuart Blackton and Г‰mile Cohl tried the form sooner). As important as Walt Disney and Chuck Jones are in the history of animation as the ultimate masters of the form, McCay was the man who brought together many of the technical innovations that animators still use today, as well as being the first to create characters with whom audiences fell in love. McCay was one of those enormously important innovators who create whole new art forms. But the father of them all, and a man who deserves to be known as the father of American animation, is Winsor McCay, whose creation Gertie the Dinosaur was the very first dinosaur to be on the big screen.

Animation light box with peg bar