Windsor McCay is my newly discovered personal animation-comics hero. He’s inspired and/or influenced nearly every major player ever to make modern or classic animation, I’ll get into his career story in a minute. First, his achievement/invention: Animation: Making drawings move on camera and on screen. He was the first traditional animator ever. He invented the category of animator IN GENERAL, even earlier than Ub Iwerks and Walt Disney. He was animating before there was ever a studio to animate in! He influenced such artists as Walt Disney, the Fleischer studios, Chuck Jones, Osamu Tezuka, Moebius, Katsuhiro Otomo, Shamus Culhane, Maurice Sendak, Bill Watterson, and anyone who’s ever made experimental, traditional, or modern studio or independent animation. Anyone who’s ever animated a drawing owes something to Windsor McCay. If you animate or produce or make animation for a hobby or living, you’re borrowing from Windsor McCay. He invented the medium: Animation, and was well aware of his own greatness in relation to history. He predicted animation would rival or surpass traditional fine art one day, and (financially, and popularity wise at least), it did. To say nothing of Pixar, Toei, Viz, Funimation, Tokyopop, Production I.G., Walt Disney Feature and Television Animation Studios, Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network, MTV Animation, Adult Swim, and LucasFilm. All today’s major players in animation owe him everything. I’ve got a lot left to write about Windsor McCay. He’s one of the most successful artist-writers, animators, storytellers, cartoonists. It’s hard to fathom that kind of influence. That’s Bill Gates or Henry Ford level influence. McCay created such classics as Gertie The Dinosaur and Little Nemo in Slumberland, which was more comic than animation really.
-J.M.-
