I hinted at this while reviewing Secret Of The Loch for last year’s “oldie” Dino Dicember entry, so we might as well go back even further in time.

Okay, maybe somewhere AFTER the zoatrope was the new fangled talk of the town.

I honestly can’t think of anything more ancient (in many ways) for dinosaur audio-visual media than Gertie The Dinosaur by Winsor Mc Cay, one of the earlier cartoonists and animators.

Contrary to popular belief, this is not the first animated film ever made, as McCay himself made an animated version of Little Nemo In Slumberland back in 1911, and in 1912 he also made another film, How A Mosquito Operates.

And if we want we CAN go back further into the proto-history of animation itself, with Reynaud’s Pauvre Pierrot from 1892, or Blackton’s Humourous Phases Of Funny Faces from 1906, this being the more accurate if we consider “proper” animation as in early hand drawn animation, and we discount stuff like Katsudo Shashin from 1907, which didn’t use photographies but had the drawings impressed via stencil on the film itself, via an instrument also used for magic lantern slides, so one could argue that had more in common with the ye old kamishibai shows (basically a magic lantern live action street theather done for kids).

But this is the first animated film to feature a dinosaur, ever, and we’ve come to pay our respect to “Granny Gertie” herself.

Continua a leggere “12 Days Of Dino Dicember # 56: Gertie The Dinosaur (1914)”