Gertie the Dinosaur c.1914 : Earliest animated film to feature a dinosaur

Winsor McCay did not create the animated cartoon as he always claimed, but he was responsible for one of its great “big bang” moments. Composed of 10,000 drawings made by the newspaper cartoonist (with the help of his assistant, John A. Fitzsimmons, who traced the backgrounds) and mounted on cardboard, McCay’s third short laid the groundwork for the next century of animation.

Taking inspiration from his son’s collection of flip-books, McCay became interested in testing whether he could turn his illustrations into short films, his first being based on his most famous comic strip, 1911’s Little Nemo in Slumberland. His second, The Story of a Mosquito, appeared a year later, and both were incorporated into his vaudeville act. Audiences approved, but they didn’t truly believe that they’d witnessed McCay’s drawings move. That is, until he introduced them to Gertie the Dinosaur.

The short marked the first use of key animation, registration marks, animation loops, in-betweening, and, most important, character animation. McCay not only gave Gertie life; he gifted her with a personality. Before Gertie the Dinosaur, characters were blank slates. Now they could cry, which Gertie does when McCay scolds her for disobeying, or eat, drink, or breathe, all of which she does with a playful, elegant charm that many later artists would try to emulate and build empires on.

McCay would continue to work in animation until 1921, stepping away shortly after abandoning a sequel, Gertie on Tour, mainly because his editor at the New York Herald, William Randolph Hearst, wanted him focused on editorial cartoons rather than animation. Most of McCay’s work both in comics and in film have been lost, but Gertie the Dinosaur is one of the best preserved; it’s been a part of the U.S. Library of Congress National Film Registry since 2011.

https://www.vulture.com/article/most-influential-best-scenes-animation-history.html