Gertie The Dinosaur was created in 1914 by a popular American cartoonist and animator of the time called Winsor McCay. Gertie was considered to be the first ever animation to ever feature a dinosaur, so therefore probably played a small part in influencing how we thought cartoon dinosaurs looked. Winsor had previously made two animated films before Gertie, "Little Nemo" and "The Story of a Mosquito".
The idea of bringing a dinosaur to life, essentially, was amazing at this time and was the height of animation technology. When McCay debuted Gertie in Chicago, he appeared to interact with Gertie by offering her an apple and "tossing" it onto the screen. This was an incredible performance and showed the audience how an animator could interact with his creations and affect what was happening on screen - or so it appeared.
In the process of creating Gertie, McCay required the help of one of his neighbours, John Fitzsimmons, who assisted McCay in tracing the backgrounds of a whopping ten thousand images onto rice paper and then mounted them onto cardboard to be processed.
Gertie The Dinosaur was indeed a huge milestone in the way animation was created. Winsor then went on to create many other animations and was one of the first animators to use cels!
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