Wikipedia:Today's featured article/February 8, 2014

Gertie the Dinosaur (1914) is an animated short film by American cartoonist Winsor McCay (c. 1867–1934). He first used the film before live audiences as an interactive part of his vaudeville act: the frisky, childlike Gertie did tricks at the command of her master. His employer, newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst, later curtailed McCay's vaudeville activities, so McCay added a live-action introductory sequence to the film for its theatrical release. Gertie was the first film to use animation techniques such as keyframes, registration marks, tracing paper, the Mutoscope action viewer, and animation loops. Although Gertie is popularly thought to be the earliest animated film, it was McCay's third, and his earlier films were preceded by animation made at least as far back as J. Stuart Blackton's 1900 film The Enchanted Drawing. Gertie influenced the next generation of animators, including the Fleischer brothers, Otto Messmer, Paul Terry, and Walt Disney. McCay abandoned a sequel, Gertie on Tour (c. 1921), after producing about a minute of footage. Gertie is the best preserved of his films—others are lost or in fragments—and has been preserved in the US National Film Registry. (Full article...)

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