What blows my mind is that there were no cells, no frames, CGI wasn't even science fiction yet and yet this piece remains today a simply amazing masterpiece. Alot of modern animators could learn from Winsor McCay's genius.
9:28, my jaw dropped when Nemo drew Princess Camille. As a cartoon fan I am in awe at this whole animation test. In only a months time he created this stunning master piece? I think i'm going to cry.
Look how consistent and solid-looking everything is when it rotates. Look at Nemo's feet and hat. This guy was a total genius- the shapes of everything in his head were fantastically rounded, and it comes through in the beauty of his characters' movements. McCay knew something that was long forgotten when hand-drawn animation got into major production. Fantastic.
McCay's animation is amazing! He's turning those shapes in space and drawing his characters from all sorts of angles yet they still look solid. He's brilliant at depicting scale too. I read an old article in which McCay recommends that beginners start by drawing a cone, a cylinder and a cube for two months. "When you have learned to draw them well, you will be able to draw anything -including cartoons," he wrote.
I am studying animation right now, and this just absolutely jaw dropping. Emile Cohl prior to this was impressive, but McCay practically invented western cartoon vocabulary as we know it with this short. To have gone from stick figures and chalk drawings to this--pitch-perfect perspective, consistently on-model characters that rotate, elaborately appealing designs, all animated with flawless fluidity and believable weight--is outrageous. Before Disney, before Fleischer, and most amazingly, before cel animation and any sort of existing technical systems were in existence for making this stuff. He also colored it, as primitive as it was, a practice that wasn't common for more than a decade afterwards. It's so goddamn perfect compared to what came before AND after. If I hadn't seen it prior and someone had told me it was made in 2014 and shown at a film festival, I would be none the wiser.
YusMat700 Seriously? Where are you learning animation, that they studied Cohn and not McCay? Incredible. Jaw-droppingI What are you getting aside of that, Lil' Abner? Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarves? I guess you are in the US with their racism towards Canada and Canadian born artists back in the day... I bet you haven't seen any early South American or Russian shorts then? Or Yellow Kid animations?
ghironda balorda What? I was merely admiring the artistic genius of McCay and acknowledging the importance of Emil Cohl. They, along with many others, have their place in animation history. What are you going on about? Why are you trying to start a fight? Man, there are all kinds of ppl on the internet...
YusMat700 I'm wondering only. Since I'm an amateur with an interest in animation (I create storyboards in my leisure time) I've done some research of my own and have noticed many of the pros and students are spoon-fed mainstream animation, completely overlooking the pioneers and creators. Some are unfamiliar with Max Fleischer even! I was just making a somewhat exasperated point at the teachers, not you. And if you notice... a troll does not give you suggestions like I did at the end of the comment. A good resource used to be Don Markstein's Toonopedia... but last I recall it was down.
One of the friends was perhaps Geo. McManus (Maggie and Jiggs) I wish I could figure out which one was him.. (Maybe the big guy on the right at table) Google images doesn't have pics of him back to 1911 so it's a bit difficult. George was a swell artist as well..very fine lines. But McCay gets the cigar--oops, he's not smoking? ha ha. I watched this once before and thought one of the men moving in ink and paper was Samuel Horwitz, SHEMP of Three Stooges fame?
What truly amazes me is how flawlessly he would free-hand with pen and ink. By the time I had finished the first figure, I would have smudged half the ink and gone through the better part of a bottle of cover fluid! Thanks for posting this. I can never get enough of McCay's work.
The animation's interesting (and historical as you-name-it), but what a profound treat it is to watch McCay's drawing hand in action. Like another animator, Bob McKimson, McCay always seemed to be inking over pencils nobody else could see. Photographic memory, and an unerring hand. It was also interesting finding that Nemo is black and orange, like, well, a clown fish.
At the end of the cartoon, when the camera zooms out: No. 4000. It stops and makes you think about the work that goed into a cartoon. And this was all done by one man. That is absolutely amazing. Windsor McCay, what a talented person.
133 Drawings a day (not counting all the other strips he was doing at the time...Dreams of the Rarebit Fiend, Hungry Henrietta, Little Sammy Sneeze, Tales of the Jungle Imps, Poor Jake, classic editorial cartoons, his vaudeville routine...not all in 1911, of course!)
never in a thousand years did these fine gentlemen would ever think that their high quality videos were going to one day be just regular potato videos on youtube
It's amazing how far animation has come. You got this guy who basically started it all, people like me who make amateur toons and then the professionals like Pixar and Dreamworks who are slowly making animations look more and more realistic which each new film.
How is it that we don't have brilliant people like Winsor anymore? To think, he's what helped inspire Disney to make all of his cartoons and create some of our childhood memories.
I LOVE THIS. It's so adorable. Idk what this movie is. But this is almost the greatest movie ever made, almost 100 years ago. OMG. I can't get over how cute that was. 0.0 AMAZINGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG
This connected to my childhood in more ways than 1. I saw this last night and plugged in my NES Just to play the game again. after finishing the whole game... i went to sleep. Ironically i was woke up by my mother's phone call at 8am to ask did i see lil-nemo on google... Im 25, and it's still part of the family,
I use to have the Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland 1992 movie on VHS when I was little. I loved that movie and wish I knew what happened to it. If you haven't had the pleasure of seeing it, go watch it!
For it's era, that's pretty great animation and would be an immense amount of work to create. I like the shadow's under the feet, and drawing's drawing each other. The sequel 'Finding Nemo' just isn't the same quality. Kidding people! Thanks Google Doodle, this has been enriching.
YES! I checked around and that definitely does appear to be John Bunny, his list of credits include this short Winsor McCay film - good call! John Bunny is generally considered to be the very first Hollywood "star" - a real pity he died while film-making was still in its infancy, back in 1915!
Considering the technical media from the time, all hand production, no computer assistance, this was pure art and talent to bring those images into motion. Absolutely fascinating.
You, sir, have been awarded the "Most Gracious Acceptance of Being Corrected on a UA-cam Comments Thread" award! Congratulations! Humility is kind of rare around these here parts! :)
Now that's classic animation. There should be a Little Nemo movie done soon. By a studio that cares more for McCay's work than selling Happy meals. Winsor McCay rocks.
Windsor McCay (Silas) era un artista con una gran profusión de detalles en sus dibujos, verdaderas obras de arte, que hasta el momento pocos dibujantes han igualado... Gracias por el corto animado... era también Gertie la dinosauria, uno de los primero cortos animados, de su inspiración...
Imagine back then when this came out people said holy crap that's the most amazing thing ive seen in my entire life and today when the next hd film comes out people just say meh and go onto something diffirent
as a computer animator, I'd have to take exception. The computer is just another tool, and we can create incredible beauty with it. The problems with the industry though are absolutely born of greed. Most animators are the greatest most genuine people you'd want to meet. The studio heads, for the most part, are squeezing the talent and killing the industry. And the new talent isn't helping by working for free.
Has any other American artist ever matched McCay? I don't think so,not in proficiency, draughtsmanship or consistency. My favorite artist for decades now.
Amazing,it would be impressive if done today but close to a century ago,never having seen animation himself,wow. What fluid beautiful movement,an incredible talent. Every page of Little Nemo in Slumberland is a masterpiece.
You ever notice in history that the ideas that are laughed and scoffed the most are the ones we still use decades after the original idea? They laughed at the idea that pictures could move, yet here it is, 2010 and we still create animated works.
It's really educational to see what they went through with animations, when now we have programs like flash that we can make them so easily with. This is really cool. Thanks ^.^
Given the fact that this is one of the first bits of true animation ever, I'd have to say that it was extremely well done. The squash and stretch and distortion looks like it was made by using a feature on photoshop. Only Winsor had to do it entirely by hand and one picture at a time.
What blows my mind is that there were no cells, no frames, CGI wasn't even science fiction yet and yet this piece remains today a simply amazing masterpiece. Alot of modern animators could learn from Winsor McCay's genius.
9:28, my jaw dropped when Nemo drew Princess Camille. As a cartoon fan I am in awe at this whole animation test. In only a months time he created this stunning master piece? I think i'm going to cry.
Look how consistent and solid-looking everything is when it rotates. Look at Nemo's feet and hat. This guy was a total genius- the shapes of everything in his head were fantastically rounded, and it comes through in the beauty of his characters' movements. McCay knew something that was long forgotten when hand-drawn animation got into major production. Fantastic.
McCay's animation is amazing! He's turning those shapes in space and drawing his characters from all sorts of angles yet they still look solid. He's brilliant at depicting scale too. I read an old article in which McCay recommends that beginners start by drawing a cone, a cylinder and a cube for two months. "When you have learned to draw them well, you will be able to draw anything -including cartoons," he wrote.
I love the barrel of ink and the ton of drawing paper!
Such artistic ability AND a splendid sense of humour.
Winsor McCay, I salute you.
I am studying animation right now, and this just absolutely jaw dropping. Emile Cohl prior to this was impressive, but McCay practically invented western cartoon vocabulary as we know it with this short. To have gone from stick figures and chalk drawings to this--pitch-perfect perspective, consistently on-model characters that rotate, elaborately appealing designs, all animated with flawless fluidity and believable weight--is outrageous. Before Disney, before Fleischer, and most amazingly, before cel animation and any sort of existing technical systems were in existence for making this stuff. He also colored it, as primitive as it was, a practice that wasn't common for more than a decade afterwards. It's so goddamn perfect compared to what came before AND after. If I hadn't seen it prior and someone had told me it was made in 2014 and shown at a film festival, I would be none the wiser.
Was it a one man show? Must have been a lot of work for a person to finish.
Sumgai It took him about a year to make the drawings of a 30 second animation.
YusMat700 Seriously? Where are you learning animation, that they studied Cohn and not McCay? Incredible. Jaw-droppingI What are you getting aside of that, Lil' Abner? Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarves? I guess you are in the US with their racism towards Canada and Canadian born artists back in the day...
I bet you haven't seen any early South American or Russian shorts then? Or Yellow Kid animations?
ghironda balorda
What? I was merely admiring the artistic genius of McCay and acknowledging the importance of Emil Cohl. They, along with many others, have their place in animation history. What are you going on about? Why are you trying to start a fight? Man, there are all kinds of ppl on the internet...
YusMat700 I'm wondering only. Since I'm an amateur with an interest in animation (I create storyboards in my leisure time) I've done some research of my own and have noticed many of the pros and students are spoon-fed mainstream animation, completely overlooking the pioneers and creators. Some are unfamiliar with Max Fleischer even! I was just making a somewhat exasperated point at the teachers, not you. And if you notice... a troll does not give you suggestions like I did at the end of the comment. A good resource used to be Don Markstein's Toonopedia... but last I recall it was down.
thumbs up if you already loved winsor mccay and just got reminded of his awesomeness, nothing more : )
I wish we could've saw his friends' reaction after the animation
One of the friends was perhaps Geo. McManus (Maggie and Jiggs) I wish I could figure out which one was him.. (Maybe the big guy on the right at table) Google images doesn't have pics of him back to 1911 so it's a bit difficult. George was a swell artist as well..very fine lines. But McCay gets the cigar--oops, he's not smoking? ha ha. I watched this once before and thought one of the men moving in ink and paper was Samuel Horwitz, SHEMP of Three Stooges fame?
What truly amazes me is how flawlessly he would free-hand with pen and ink. By the time I had finished the first figure, I would have smudged half the ink and gone through the better part of a bottle of cover fluid!
Thanks for posting this. I can never get enough of McCay's work.
The animation's interesting (and historical as you-name-it), but what a profound treat it is to watch McCay's drawing hand in action. Like another animator, Bob McKimson, McCay always seemed to be inking over pencils nobody else could see. Photographic memory, and an unerring hand.
It was also interesting finding that Nemo is black and orange, like, well, a clown fish.
At the end of the cartoon, when the camera zooms out: No. 4000. It stops and makes you think about the work that goed into a cartoon. And this was all done by one man. That is absolutely amazing. Windsor McCay, what a talented person.
133 Drawings a day (not counting all the other strips he was doing at the time...Dreams of the Rarebit Fiend, Hungry Henrietta, Little Sammy Sneeze, Tales of the Jungle Imps, Poor Jake, classic editorial cartoons, his vaudeville routine...not all in 1911, of course!)
never in a thousand years did these fine gentlemen would ever think that their high quality videos were going to one day be just regular potato videos on youtube
It's amazing how far animation has come. You got this guy who basically started it all, people like me who make amateur toons and then the professionals like Pixar and Dreamworks who are slowly making animations look more and more realistic which each new film.
How is it that we don't have brilliant people like Winsor anymore? To think, he's what helped inspire Disney to make all of his cartoons and create some of our childhood memories.
Ah the awesome animation of one of the early masters Winsor McCay
I still love his work as well as gertie the dinosaur
Thanks for sharing. This is priceless. I loved Mccay's work for years, and I always will.
Very classic and beautiful....
I have the whole Collection of Little Nemo Cartoons, but i never knew, Winsor did animation, too :O amazing!
From a goat depicted jumping to eat a leaf atop a tree 5200 years ago to today's greatest animated shows, animation sure have come a long way :)
I LOVE THIS. It's so adorable. Idk what this movie is. But this is almost the greatest movie ever made, almost 100 years ago. OMG. I can't get over how cute that was. 0.0 AMAZINGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG
AWESOME, great, brilliant. Beautiful!
Is that like dramatization/documentary of behind the scenes of Little Nemo? Wow!.. And the animation is so trippy!!!!
That was magical!
Winsor McCay was just the best.
Wow that animation is soo hard to do, its so well done as well. Very incredible.
Thanks so very much for this; I've just completed the complete works of Little Nemo and this was a rare treat.
It's pure fascination even till today.
A mano alzada, sin necesidad del grafito . De un solo tiro....grandioso!!!!
This connected to my childhood in more ways than 1. I saw this last night and plugged in my NES Just to play the game again. after finishing the whole game... i went to sleep. Ironically i was woke up by my mother's phone call at 8am to ask did i see lil-nemo on google... Im 25, and it's still part of the family,
Fantastic, I loved the movie.
Questo credo sia il primo cortometraggio di disegni animati della storia.. a quel tempo era un capolavoro
Absolutely amazing!!!
Beautiful...
I think it's amazing how people did animation like that way back when.
Thank you for the video.
Thank you!!!
I use to have the Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland 1992 movie on VHS when I was little. I loved that movie and wish I knew what happened to it. If you haven't had the pleasure of seeing it, go watch it!
La verdad ver esto lo deja a uno sin palabras
Hermoso, inspirador, me encanta! gracias google!
Merci google Doodle en effet, je ne connaissais pas Winsor McCay du haut de mes 29 années. Et j'apprécie le travail :)) Bravo Sir McCay !!!
Absolutely marvelous!!
Absolutely mind-blowing.
That's really amazing to see such a talent at work. Very cool.
One of THE BEST animations used for Google :)
better quality than other video I've seen on youtube
Genius at work there!!!
pure genius - Winsor McCay was decades ahead of his time!
Wow that was impressive for it being from 1911, nice post!
People would come into a theater just to watch that alone I bet!
i love it! :*) its beautful hardwork!!
Amazing.
wow. the importance of winsor mccay on all animation up to now is incalculable. incredible.
It gives me a desire to applaud
It was the first appearance of Mickey, not the first cartoon by a long shot. Mccay was a superstar in his time.
Heart pleasing.....
this is amazing
For it's era, that's pretty great animation and would be an immense amount of work to create.
I like the shadow's under the feet, and drawing's drawing each other. The sequel 'Finding Nemo' just isn't the same quality. Kidding people! Thanks Google Doodle, this has been enriching.
YES! I checked around and that definitely does appear to be John Bunny, his list of credits include this short Winsor McCay film - good call!
John Bunny is generally considered to be the very first Hollywood "star" - a real pity he died while film-making was still in its infancy, back in 1915!
sigh... 1911 seemed like just yesterday... I was only 334 years olds then! My has time gone by! :)
I love that the first animations ever were actually pretty fucking good.
Wauw! Amazing!
me encanto me imagino la emcion q dio al ver las primera animaciones
awesome!!!!
That was amazing.
Considering the technical media from the time, all hand production, no computer assistance, this was pure art and talent to bring those images into motion. Absolutely fascinating.
You, sir, have been awarded the "Most Gracious Acceptance of Being Corrected on a UA-cam Comments Thread" award! Congratulations! Humility is kind of rare around these here parts! :)
really so nice
spectacular
Now that's classic animation. There should be a Little Nemo movie done soon. By a studio that cares more for McCay's work than selling Happy meals. Winsor McCay rocks.
Windsor McCay (Silas) era un artista con una gran profusión de detalles en sus dibujos, verdaderas obras de arte, que hasta el momento pocos dibujantes han igualado... Gracias por el corto animado... era también Gertie la dinosauria, uno de los primero cortos animados, de su inspiración...
great man,,
Fascinating. It's like looking into a 100 year old time capsule.
amazing moves
ITS SO GOOD
Imagine back then when this came out people said holy crap that's the most amazing thing ive seen in my entire life and today when the next hd film comes out people just say meh and go onto something diffirent
VSAUCE thank u!!!!!!!!!!
completely mind blowing! Who knew? Wow!
as a computer animator, I'd have to take exception. The computer is just another tool, and we can create incredible beauty with it. The problems with the industry though are absolutely born of greed. Most animators are the greatest most genuine people you'd want to meet. The studio heads, for the most part, are squeezing the talent and killing the industry. And the new talent isn't helping by working for free.
definition of a cartoon
im speechless
Realmente fantástico. Gracias Google!!
Absolutely awesome work. This must have taken months to do. Thanks Google!
Has any other American artist ever matched McCay? I don't think so,not in proficiency, draughtsmanship or consistency. My favorite artist for decades now.
Sweet!
this is so cool to think that they only made cartoons 100 years ago
nice one...wonder if them drawings are still around..the color bit was fantastic even a 100 years later...master piece
Absolute genius
Amazing,it would be impressive if done today but close to a century ago,never having seen animation himself,wow. What fluid beautiful movement,an incredible talent. Every page of Little Nemo in Slumberland is a masterpiece.
สุดยอดดดด!!! ขอบคุณ google ที่แนะนำเรา
As someone who likes to draw and given a task, If I was given THAT MUCH paper and ink.. I'd be one happy clam!!!!
Master!!
Great video - Thanks Google!
You ever notice in history that the ideas that are laughed and scoffed the most are the ones we still use decades after the original idea? They laughed at the idea that pictures could move, yet here it is, 2010 and we still create animated works.
It's really educational to see what they went through with animations, when now we have programs like flash that we can make them so easily with. This is really cool. Thanks ^.^
Here because of google and glad I am !!
awesome
Una belleza
Today this cartoon has become 107 years old 😁
Like the cave paitnings in France, primitive and precognizant. Astonishing. Thank you,internet!
Thanks Google, for highlighting this work.
Given the fact that this is one of the first bits of true animation ever, I'd have to say that it was extremely well done. The squash and stretch and distortion looks like it was made by using a feature on photoshop. Only Winsor had to do it entirely by hand and one picture at a time.
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