We’ve talked previously on this blog about the influence of cartoonist/animation pioneer Winsor McCay, but I’m going to mention it again (and again and again and again), as it would be nearly impossible to overstate his importance in promoting animation as a viable artistic medium. Films like Little Nemo (1911) and Gertie the Dinosaur (1914) directly inspired countless…
Just a warning: this post is brought to you by the letter “X” and his two friends who are–funnily enough–also named “X.” (This is my roundabout way of telling you that there may be what we will politely term “delicate content” in this post, and if you are easily offended by pornography, you may want…
As recounted in Stefan Kanfer’s fantastic history of animation, Serious Business (1997), early in 1933, Walt Disney gave a personal tour of the Disney animation studio to movie star Mary Pickford. Disney was considering making a live-action version of Alice in Wonderland with Pickford in the title role, and in fact shot some test footage of the actress…
(This post was originally published on the sadly now-defunct site The Cinementals.) After the phenomenal success of Gertie the Dinosaur (1914), cartoonist Winsor McCay realized that he had found his passion in animation, and he was eager to create even more films. But his animated output was limited at the demand of his employer, publishing…
Like many early figures in the slowly-emerging field of animated film, Winsor McCay initially developed his artistic talent as a comic strip artist and vaudevillian. Born in Canada and educated in the United States, McCay got his start in entertainment doing “chalk talks” on the vaudeville circuit. Much like J. Stuart Blackton, a groundbreaking figure in…
True Classics 