Question About Winsor Mccay

**From oneuglybunny:**


Wow, speculative history. Okay, Winsor McCay didn't "invent" animation any more than William Gates "invented" computers or Henry Ford "invented" automobiles. What these three pioneers have in common is that they took the concept into the public arena and demonstrated that it was marketable. If something has the potential to be profitable, it becomes very interesting.

Before Henry Ford, automobiles were built one-at-a-time, pre-ordered and paid for by wealthy customers, who would wait weeks or months for the mechanics and craftsmen to assemble their product. By introducing the assembly-line method, Henry Ford brought automobiles to the retail level: you pick, you pay, you get.

Computers and their operating systems had already been invented when Bill Gates came along. However, Gates created a way to translate the cryptic C:> prompt commands into point-and-click menus. Giving computers the equivalent of a pretty receptionist put Microsoft on the map.

Animators such as J Stuart Blackton, Emile Cohl, Lotte Reiniger and Vladimir Starevich had already produced animated works on film. The problem was that these works were known only to a few and seen by fewer. Animation was, at the time, little more than hobbycraft and geek projects. Winsor McCay showed that audiences would pay to see animation, making cartoons into a public and profitable venture.

Without McCay, there would still be animation. But the medium itself would surely suffer. McCay proved that animation is marketable, and by attracting money to it, McCay gave a tremendous boost to the medium.

Previous animated films had been either crudely animated or simply drawn. The idea of producing 960 complex drawings for a minute's action seemed prohibitive. McCay demonstrated that it was possible to to do just that - although he made good use of holds and repeat actions. It was probably the film How a Mosquito Operates - McCay's first complete story film - that inspired Raoul Barré to start his own studio, one of the first two animation studios to mass-produce animation (the other one being Bray). For more on McCay, check out this post in the Other/Multiple Studios>Silent Animation forum.