Animation is a medium that's life relies entirely on story. Many of us take for granted what "good animation" is these days and have to recognize where it came from and how long it actually took to mature into what we know as Pixar style animation. Let's start from the beginning!
Gertie the Dinosaur (1914)
Gertie, the Dinosaur, is a ground-breaking short in personality animation that has influenced numerous artists and pioneers of future animation, including Walt Disney, Otto Messmer, and Paul Terry. The non-vaudeville type begins off with Winsor going to a museum in the company of fellow cartoonists bets that through a sequence of hand-drawn animations he can make the dinosaurs live again. Subsequently, Winsor and his deputies quickly start work on the animation, displaying it to the animators half a year later. The cartoon then demonstrates Gertie herself doing activities such as ingesting a pumpkin thrown at her by Winsor, or hurling a large woolly into a nearby lake Winsor counters by spraying Gertie, which she does not take well.
Critics
Criticism of the earlier shorts produced by Winsor such as How a Mosquito Operates and Little Nemo was the main reason the Gertie the Dinosaur was made. Sceptical members of the audience had wrongly accused Winsor of tracing off of live-action recording to animate the human characters. Consequently, the cartoonist continued his mastery of perception and mass to the limits and came up with something that could not be got from the live action with great success.
Production
The cartoon was produced in two versions: the roadshow footage contains Gertie footage only while the full version Winsor appears in a live-action. Gertie was to get a development short named Gertie on Tour. However it was finally left unfinished and only a section of it has survived, scarcely going for a minute. Gertie was the most popular animation at the time, and it was considered one of the greatest developments in motion picture. The film has also been recreated in articles, books, comic strip and drawings. The film was also an inspiration for early American animators.
Source: http://allthetropes.wikia.com/wiki/Gertie_the_Dinosaur
Steemians, what are your views on animated short films like Gertie the dinosaur?
