Multimedia Essay #1: Winsor McCay

 Zenas Winsor McCay was born on September 26th, 1871 in Spring Lake, Michigan.  He grew up in Michigan with his parents, his older brother, Arthur, and his younger sister, Mae. Winsor McCay was an extremely talented child. McCay's drawing skills got better the more he drew, which was all time. People started to notice his talent when he would do something that he would call "memory sketching." This type of drawing involved drawing a scene or a room or a person from memory. McCay would memory sketch to impress others, and others were certainly impressed. When McCay got older, his father demanded that he go to Business school, in order to get a "business education." McCay agreed and attended Cleary Business College in Michigan. At school, McCay hardly attended classes. Instead, he was hired by a dime museum (a indoor circus-like show) to draw portraits of patrons. This is what proved to McCay that drawing was more than a passion, it could be a career (Canemaker, 1987).

Eventually, McCay came in contact with John Goodison, who was a professor of drawing at Michigan State Normal School. Goodison acted as one of McCay's first mentor figures in his early career, providing him with formal lessons and urging him to move to Chicago to attend a real art school. McCay did end up moving to Chicago, however, he did not go to art school like his mentor has suggested. Instead, McCay took a job at a Printing shop where he continued to do portrait work for dime museums on the side (Unknown, N/A). About two years later, McCay got a couple of small jobs including a billboard painter and an artist for Kohl and Middleton's Dime Museum in Cincinnati, designing their promotional posters (like the one pictured below). 

One of McCay's works for the Kohl & Middleton's Dime Museum

While in Cincinnati, McCay met Maude Defour, whom he eventually married and had two children with. During this time of starting a family, McCay realized that he could not support his family with his current smaller occupations. So, McCay decided to accept a job offer for a more stable job as a reporter and artist at the Cincinnati Tribune (Unknown, N/A). As time went on in his career with newspapers, McCay leaned more into his artist role as a cartoonist and eventually became the head of his department of cartoons for the Cincinnati Tribune. His cartoons in the Tribune got the attention of higher ups in New York at the New York Herald and he was hired in 1903. 

McCay and his family circa 1907

McCay went on to create about 2 years worth of comic strips before he created Little Nemo. Little Nemo was a comic strip that skyrocketed McCay's career. It followed a young boy named Nemo that would often go to sleep and find some sort of journey within his dreams and then, he would wake up at the end of the comic to return to the actual world. While McCay basked in the success that was his creation of Little Nemo, he decided to fill his need to perform by doing vaudeville shows. His early shows featured quick lightening sketches with gags. However, in 1909, McCay dreamed of something bigger than just lightening sketches. McCay created his first even animated short based on his famous character Nemo, from the Little Nemo comics. McCay's animated short became popular due to the popularity of the character, his talent of art, and his hard work put into the film. McCay drew over 4000 intricate drawings of this character and other recurring characters within the Little Nemo comics. This amount of drawings combined with how detailed the drawings were created one of the most advanced pieces of animation for its time (Canemaker, 1987).

"Little Nemo" animated by Winsor McCay (1911)

This was not McCay's last animated film. McCay went on to create another animated short, this one to accompany his new vaudeville show, titled "Gertie the Dinosaur." This interactive animated short featured the very first dinosaur to be on the big screen, Gertie. It featured the dinosaur listening to the commands of McCay, who would stand in front of the screen and speak to the cartoon like it could hear him. Audiences were astounded that the cartoon would listen and do what McCay had said. It also featured a surprise at the end where McCay would step behind the screen and an animated version of himself would appear on the screen, as he would ride Gertie to end the film and the show (James, 2014).

"Gertie the Dinosaur" animated by McCay in 1914

This interactive medium had been done before with smaller lightening sketch type acts, but never to this scale of a fully animated short. Gertie the dinosaur was a huge success and inspired some of the biggest names in animation. McCay's artistic style and use of realistic weight, gravity, and movement used in Gertie the dinosaur and another one of his films titled How a Mosquito operates, inspired people like Walt Disney and Chuck Jones (an animator of Looney Tunes).  Walt Disney often publicly credited McCay for his intricately designed characters and use of a 3D space within his films. Disney even showed his adoration for McCay by reenacting the famous Gertie the Dinosaur vaudeville show in a television show called "Disneyland" in 1955 (Suess, 2014). It also influenced a large Dinosaur character's ice cream stand present in Hollywood studios at Walt Disney World. This large dinosaur that looks and is named after Gertie is an homage to McCay's original drawing of Gertie from 1914. 

Dinosaur Gertie's Ice Cream Stand at Hollywood Studios in Walt Disney World

Even though McCay did not produce a lot of animated short films like some of his competitors, his work was extremely advanced for his time, which made it important to others. It was about the quality and not the quantity for McCay. He animated around more shorts, including his most experimental and detailed film yet, the Sinking of the Lusitania in 1918. This film included an animated depiction of a real world event that supposedly initiated America's involvement in World War I. This film was much different than his previous works. It was dark and serious compared to his beloved Little Nemo feature or his interactive, fun-loving dinosaur Gertie. The Sinking of the Lusitania also featured uses of shadows and realistic depictions of water and wind. This film took over 25,000 drawings and allowed audiences to see that McCay was more than just a comic strip creator. He was a real artist. 

"The Sinking of the Lusitania" animated by McCay in 1918

After the Sinking of the Lusitania, McCay went on to create a contract with William Randolph Hearst, prohibiting him from doing any more vaudeville shows and restricting him to comic strips and a couple of animated shorts. Around the age of 54, McCay decided to stop his work with Hearst due to his age and declining appreciation of his work. McCay died suddenly in 1934 of a cerebral hemorrhage in his home. Even though McCay did not produce a long line of iconic and world record breaking films like his admirers Disney or Jones, he did produce animations that were unlike any other. McCay's legacy lives on in animation produced to this day.  

Bibliography 

Canemaker, J. Winsor McCay: His Life and Art. New York: Abbeville Press, 1987.

James, R. (2014, October 16). Animation history: Winsor McCay and Gertie. Artograph. Retrieved February 4, 2022, from https://www.artograph.com/infocus/winsormccay/ 

Suess, J. (2014, March 19). Enquirer artist influenced Walt Disney. The Enquirer. Retrieved February 4, 2022, from https://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/2014/03/19/enquirer-artist-influenced-walt-disney/6608049/ 

Unknown. (n.d.). Winsor McCay. Biography. Retrieved February 4, 2022, from https://biography.yourdictionary.com/winsor-mccay