page_title: Little Nemo (1911 film)
section_title: Style
hierarchical_section_title: Little Nemo (1911 film) / Style
caption_attribution_description: English: Winsor McCay sketches three of his Little Nemo characters in a still from the 1911 fil Little Nemo
context_page_description: Winsor McCay: The Famous Cartoonist of the N.Y. Herald and His Moving Comics, more commonly known as Little Nemo, is a 1911 silent animated short film by American cartoonist Winsor McCay. One of the earliest animated films, it was McCay's first, and featured characters from McCay's comic strip Little Nemo in Slumberland. Its expressive character animation distinguished the film from the experiments of earlier animators.
  Inspired by flip books his son brought home, McCay came to see the potential of the animated film medium. He claimed to be the first to make such films, though James Stuart Blackton and Émile Cohl were among those who preceded him. The short's four thousand drawings on rice paper were shot at Vitagraph Studios under Blackton's supervision. Most of the film's running time is made up of a live-action sequence in which McCay bets his colleagues that he can make drawings that move. He wins the bet with four minutes of animation in which the Little Nemo characters perform, interact, and metamorphose to McCay's whim.
  Little Nemo debuted in movie theaters on April 8, 1911, and four days later McCay began using it as part of his vaudeville act.
context_section_description: McCay's drawings are in the heavily outlined Art Nouveau style familiar to the readers of his comics.  Its expressive character animation  differentiated Little Nemo from the films of Blackton and Cohl.  There are no backgrounds; McCay's first film with backgrounds was 1914's Gertie the Dinosaur.  McCay demonstrated his mastery of linear perspective in scenes such as when the dragon disappears smoothly into the distance.
  The film's positive reception motivated McCay to hand-color each of the 35mm frames of the originally black-and-white film.  The dragon chariot that carries off Nemo and the Princess originally appeared in three episodes of Little Nemo in Slumberland in mid-1906.
caption: Winsor McCay sketches three of his Little Nemo characters: Impie, Nemo, and Flip.
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