Little Nemo

Not a real story of Winsor McCay's comic strip, it uses the main characters to illustrate how McCay can make drawings move.

We see a gathering of McCay and his friends, including George McManus, the creator of the comic strip "Bringing Up Father," in a restaurant. McCay makes a bet that he can produce a film, utilizing some thousands of scenes of drawings that move. He starts by hand-drawing a picture of Little Nemo and a couple of other characters. We next see a pair of laborers dragging barrels of ink and bales of drawing paper into McCay's studio, and McCay seated behind his desk, with piles of drawings on it. His clumsy, nosey assistant knocks over a pile of drawings, the result of weeks of work. McManus comes in, and McCay shows him a couple of the drawings. Some time later, McCay and his friends are back in the restaurant. He shows them a projector and a drawing of one of the characters, who then comes to life. We next see Nemo on screen, with one of McCay's characters on each side of him. By raising his arms and lowering his body, he causes the characters to elongate and squash. Nemo then draws a picture of a beautiful princess. They then sit on a chair, which turns out to be located in the jaws of a huge dragon, who then walks away with them.

Little Nemo

Silent cartoon.

The live action portion is in black and white, but the animated portion is in color, as it was actually hand-tinted by McCay.

Generally considered to be the first fully realized animated cartoon, it was based on characters from Winsor McCay's comic strip "Little Nemo in Slumberland."

This was the first appearance of comic strip characters in an animated film. McCay was inspired by his son's flipbooks to bring his characters to life.

McCay labored for at least two years on this film, creating 4,000 drawings on rice paper. Each had its own serial number and register marks in the upper corners, and each was mounted on larger, thicker paper to facilitate filming. Live-action segments shot at the Vitagraph Studio depicted a fictional bet between McCay, other cartoonists and comedian John Bunny about whether or not he could make his drawings move.

Besides being released to theaters, the film was featured in McCay's vaudeville act.

In 2009, the United States Library of Congress deemed the film "culturally significant" and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry. "Its fluidity, graphics and storytelling was light years beyond other films made during that time," the Library of Congress said of the film. "A seminal figure in both animation and comic art, McCay profoundly influenced many generations of future animators, including Walt Disney."