Little Nemo (1911)
After wagering his newspaper colleagues that he can make four thousand drawings move, cartoonist Winsor McCay brings his comic-strip characters to life on screen: Little Nemo, the Princess, and the mischievous Flip and Impie stretch, morph, and cavort before riding off on a dragon.
Little Nemo was Winsor McCay’s proof that his comic strip could move, hand-animated frame by frame at Vitagraph Studios; it ranks among the earliest American animated films and helped establish animation as a medium in its own right, beyond the newspaper page.
Background
Little Nemo was made to settle a bet: cartoonist Winsor McCay’s newspaper colleagues doubted he could make thousands of drawings move convincingly, and he set out to prove them wrong. He produced the film at Vitagraph Studios, hand-drawing and hand-coloring an enormous number of individual frames to bring his popular comic-strip characters, Little Nemo, the Princess, and the mischievous Flip and Impie, to life. A live-action framing sequence shows McCay accepting the wager among fellow cartoonists.
What to watch for
Watch for how fluid and elastic the animated figures are compared to almost anything else being made at the time; McCay’s background as a skilled newspaper illustrator gave the drawings a confidence and personality unusual for such an early film. It stands, alongside McCay’s later Gertie the Dinosaur, among the earliest American animated films, and it helped establish that hand-drawn animation could be more than a passing novelty.
