On Animation: Old Nemo Finds Little Nemo.“Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.” (brainyquote.com ND)

O~ Carl Gustav Jung

John Lasseter Zenas Winsor McCay

I have long been an admirer of the work of animator John Lasseter, mainly from seeing popular animation epics of his, such as Finding Nemo, (various international releases 2003) Toy Story (1, 2 and 3, with 4 to follow soon). This led me to the artist behind the original Nemo, Little Nemo (1911) the talented Zenas Winsor McCay. Before investigating McCay and his work, I wanted to research thoroughly where the word ‘Animation’ came from, and it’s meaning, not only academically, but also in terms of meaning for real life animators.

The word “Animation” is derived from the: “Latin animatio,” which actually means “the act of bringing to life”; from animo (“to animate” or ”give life to”) and -atio ("the act of")” (wikipedia.org ND). Personally, after reading this definition, it almost sounds to me like something I would read in the Bible, for example Genesis 1:3 when God said, "Let there be light"; and there was light.

The fact that another human being can give something or someone life; walking, talking, and emotions on film, one can almost perceive of playing the role of God or “life’s director of film” such as I like to call it. In the very essence of life we have the conscious and the unconscious psyche, whether that be male or female. Ironically: “In the unconscious of the male, this archetype finds expression as a feminine inner personality: anima; equivalently, in the unconscious

of the female it is expressed as a masculine inner personality: animus.” (www.en.wikipedia.org ND)

Born in Spring Lake, Michigan, U.S; or Canada (disputed) around 1867 and dying in Brooklyn, New York 1934, Winsor McCay, was an artist who produced fun, comical work, like Gertie the Dinosaur (1914) and Little Nemo (1905-1914); 1924-1926).

Zenas Winsor McCay was a great artist, firstly through comic strips and then a highly innovative film animator who took the genre to a new level. The first animation film ever, deriving from his comic strips, was his famous 10 minute short called “Little Nemo”. Also, “The most successful of McCay’s comic strips was Little Nemo in Slumberland 1905-1911.” (www.en.wikipedia.org ND)

Nemo is actually Latin for (no one) in English. The weekly episodes amazingly drawn by McCay were about about a Six-year-old who falls asleep in his bed at night. He finds himself consistently transported to a fantastical Slumberland--at the request of King Morpheus--where he encounters all kinds of interesting and unusual creatures. He is confused at the end of each trip, after waking up wondering if it was all a dream or not. His passion and determination were eventually recognised by the New York Herald in 1903, and in 1905 Winsor McCay had his best comic strips published: Dreams of the Rarebit Fiend, Little Sammy Sneeze and Little Nemo in Slumberland. However, undoubtedly his greatest epic creation was Little Nemo.

“. exquisitely detailed, art-nouveau-style colored panels in this edition are reproduced from rare, vintage file-copy pages…, McCay's work helped to create the grammar of comic art. This Little Nemo collection--an entertaining romp into Slumberland--also provides a lovely glimpse into the origins of an art form.” (www.amazon.com ND)

Gertie the dinosour

Nemo's bed takes a walk in the July 26, 1908, episode of Little Nemo in Slumberland.

screen shots of the first ever drawn animation on film “Little Nemo”

However, McCay also produced serious work like The Sinking of the Lusitania (1918) (www.en.wikipedia.org ND). This was a very striking piece of hand drawn animation about the RMS Lusitania cruise liner, which, on route from New York to Liverpool, was attacked by a torpedo from a German submarine, which killed 1,198 passengers on the 7 May 1915. (www.en.wikipedia.org ND). One needs to remember this catastrophe happened at a time when news broadcasting was not as efficient as it is today, so there was no actual live footage recorded of the event at the time. So incredibly, Winsor McCay created this entire, exceptional animated documentary by hand.

Winsor McCay in my opinion was the most inspirational artists, ahead of his time, in fact a groundbreaking animator who created an animated world on film from pure imagination and desire. The reason I hold McCay in such high regard is because I feel I can relate to him on a personal level.

“McCay made his first drawing in the aftermath of one of the many fires that hit Spring Lake: he picked up a nail and etched the scene of the fire in the frost of a windowpane. Drawing became obsessive for him” (www.en.wikipedia.org ND)

As young boys, my cousin (Marcus Joseph) and I were often looked after by my very strict uncle. I remember we were kept for long periods of time in his mother’s bedroom without the opportunity to move from the spot. Occasionally I would make an excuse to use the toilet and always come back with hidden toilet paper. Meanwhile, Marcus would secretly search through his mother’s make-up box for eyeliner or and suitable material to draw with. We were very much entertained by showing each other our drawings. Similarly, McCay stated: “I just couldn’t stop drawing anything and everything”Winsor McCay (en.wikipedia.org ND)

Robert and Janet McKay, Winsor McCay’s parents lived in Spring Lake, and where Robert McKay: “ met and was later employed by

one Zenas G.Winsor (1814-1890), an American entrepreneur involved in a number of enterprises. He certainly had a profound effect on Winsor McCay’s parents, who adopted his name for their first-born: Zenas Winsor McCay.

Not every artist starts out in life with overwhelming support from their parents. Personally, I can remember, as a child when caught drawing with my cousin being disproportionately punished, but it never stopped me drawing.

“I wanted him to have a business career and I tried to educate him for it. His uncle was a mathematician and he thought it was scandalous the way the boy wasted his time drawing pictures”. (Winsor McCay; his life and art: John Canemaker. P.24)

Winsor McCay’s drew almost all the time, and in detail. One can only imagine the only time he wasn’t able to draw was when he was asleep. However, given his imagination, I guess this was the time he was filling up with ideas.

“….he explained that in learning to draw, he sketched everything he saw. If he were outdoors and a horse was on a wagon happened to be near, he’d draw the horse, then the wagon. He’d look at the house across the street and draw its doorway, the gate, the fence. ……..He would study the wrinkles in drapery and clothing, the differences in shoes, and the shapes of hats”. (Winsor McCay; his life and art: John Canemaker. P.24)

As an early animation pioneer, between 1911 and 1921 McCay self-financed ten animated films, many of which only survive as fragments. The first three included his Gertie the Dinosaur, a vaudeville routine in which McCay gave orders to an apparently trained dinosaur.

For The Sinking of the Lusitania (1918), McCay and his team worked for 22 months. This was a patriotic recreation of the 1915 torpedoing of RMS Lusitania. However, it was not a box office success, unlike his earlier films. “McCay's later movies attracted little attention. His animation, vaudeville, and comic strip work was gradually curtailed as newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst, his employer since 1911, expected McCay to devote his energies to editorial illustrations”. (www.en.wikipedia.org ND)

“His comic strip work has influenced generations of cartoonists and illustrators. The technical level of McCay's animation—its naturalism, smoothness, and scale—was unmatched until Walt Disney's feature films arrived in the 1930s. He pioneered inbetweening, the use of registration marks, cycling, and other animation techniques that later became standard.” (www.en.wikipedia.org ND)

McCay worked closely with John Fitzsimmons and cartoonist William Apthorp "Ap" Adams. McCay spent his own time drawing the film on sheets of cellulose acetate (or "cels") with white and black India ink. This was McCay’s first use of cels in film and was based on a technology that animator Earl Hurd had patented in 1914. “It saved work by allowing dynamic drawings to be made on one or more layers, which could be laid over a static background layer, relieving animators of the tedium of retracing static images onto drawing after drawing. McCay had the cels photographed at the Vitagraph studios. The film was naturalistically animated, and made use of dramatic camera angles that would have been impossible in a live-action film” (www.en.wikipedia.org ND)

In 1891, McCay moved to Cincinnati and spent nine years making posters and other advertisements for the Kohl & Middleton Dime Museum and later Heck and Avery's Family Theater (1896), Avery's New Dime Museum (1898), and Will S. Heck's Wonder World and Theater (1899) on Vine Street. In 1896, he saw a demonstration of Thomas Edison's Vitascope, most likely McCay's first exposure to film. He also did printing work and McCay's ability to draw quickly with great accuracy drew crowds when he painted advertisements in public.]McCay learned to draw with a dip pen and developed his bold use of perspective and mastery of hatchwork. Soon after, he began freelancing for the humor magazine Life as well and in 1900, McCay worked for The Cincinnati Enquirer, producing a prolific number of drawings, did some reporting, and became head of the art department. In his drawings, he began using line thickness to indicate depth, and used thick lines to surround his characters in an Art Nouveau-inspired style that became a trademark of his work”(www.en.wikipedia.org ND)

I find that I have gained great encouragement from the animators of both “Nemos”, McCay and Lasseter, both first and foremost artists. As John Lasseter said:

“…What makes a pencil line become a character? What makes a drawing become emotion? ...Movement…Humour, it comes from the principles of animation, that all these guy’s developed over the years” (www.youtube.com ND)

Bibliography http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/c/carl_jung.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animation

Bible Genesis 1:3

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anima_and_animus

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winsor_McCay

http://www.amazon.com/Complete-Little-Nemo-Slumberland-Vol/dp/0930193636

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RMS_Lusitania

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winsor_McCay

Winsor McCay; his life and art- Author: John Canemaker- foreword by Maurice Sendak (p.22-23-24)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winsor_McCay

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnsBLF5cYpg