Who is this Winsor McCay?

When I discussed this independent study with my advisor we decided that the best place to start from would be a with man named Winsor McCay.  He did animated short films before anyone else and essentially all on his own.  He was a prolific comic strip writer, but preferred to be on the vaudeville stage doing chalk drawings of people in record time.  What set McCay apart from his contemporaries at the time was his “elaborate graphics, the fluid movement of his characters, the attempts to inject personality traits into those characters, and the use of strong narrative continuity.” (Canemaker 13) McCay’s talent was mainly self taught until he was taken under the wing of Professor John Goodison who taught McCay strict rules about perspective drawing helping him give more life like qualities to his comics.  What some consider his magnum opus is Gertie, in which McCay animated a film about a large, lovable dinosaur and inserted himself into it as a live action character.  This was the first animation of it’s kind with fluid movement and characters with personalities.  Gertie was completed in 1914.

More on Windsor McCay to come…He was pretty cool and so were his drawings.