[[quoteright:180:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/winsor_mccay_7900.jpg]]

->''"I hope and dream the time will come when serious artists will make marvelous pictures that will love and live in life-like manner and be far more interesting and wonderful than pictures you now see on canvas. I think if Michelangelo was alive today he would immediately see the wonders... The artist can make his scenes and characters live instead of stand still on canvas in art museums."''
-->-- '''Winsor [=McCay=]''' (talking during a WNAC Radio Broadcast, New York, September 1927)

Zenas Winsor [=McCay=] ([[VagueAge circa 1866–71]] – July 26, 1934) was an American cartoonist, writer, and animation pioneer. [=McCay=]'s art style is immediately recognizable by its incredible detail and awesome perspective. Check the other wiki's [[http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Little_Nemo media page]] for some examples.

His most famous comic, ''ComicStrip/LittleNemo'', is a surreal adventure through the bizarre world Nemo visits when he falls asleep. Other works include ''ComicStrip/DreamOfTheRarebitFiend'', an entire strip about people suffering [[AcidRefluxNightmare Acid Reflux Nightmares]], which inspired perhaps the first LiveActionAdaptation ever, in Edwin S. Porter's 1906 film ''Film/DreamOfARarebitFiend''.

[=McCay=] was also one of the first animators, the self-described "[[TropeMaker originator and inventor]] of [[UsefulNotes/TheSilentAgeOfAnimation animated cartoons]]". His first "attempt at drawing pictures that will move" was a two-minute ''Little Nemo'' skit in ''1910''; he drew over a thousand stills by himself, by hand. His most famous cartoon is probably ''WesternAnimation/GertieTheDinosaur'', an animated short from 1914 that set the bar for future animators. ''Gertie'' was also the first film to ever use the RogerRabbitEffect.[[note]]Or at least a variation thereof. He didn't insert the drawings into live-action photographs. He ''interacted with the film on a Vaudeville stage,'' bringing with him a bullwhip and instructing Gertie to wave, look at him and eat an apple that he would pretend to throw at her, among other things.[[/note]]

[=McCay=] was the first to treat animation as a serious, dramatic art form, producing a detailed documentary rendition of ''WesternAnimation/TheSinkingOfTheLusitania'' in 1918. It contained over 25,000 realistic drawings, again all done personally by hand, taking nearly two years to complete. This also counts as the first WartimeCartoon, as it explicitly served as a piece of propaganda in favor of the U.S. entering UsefulNotes/WorldWarOne. At the time it was the longest piece of animation ever made. Historians say it took until the 1930s for other animation studios to catch up with the level of technical skill [=McCay=] demonstrated.

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!!Comics include:

* ''Little Sammy Sneeze'' (1904 to 1906)
* ''ComicStrip/DreamOfTheRarebitFiend'' (1904-13)
* ''A Pilgrim's Progress'' (1905 to 1910)
* ''ComicStrip/LittleNemo'' (1905 to 1914)
* ''Poor Jake'' (1909 to 1911)

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!!Animations:

* ''WesternAnimation/LittleNemo'' (1911)
* ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvzAJouHh7k How a Mosquito Operates]]'' (1912)
* ''WesternAnimation/GertieTheDinosaur'' (1914)
* ''WesternAnimation/TheSinkingOfTheLusitania'' (1918)
* ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2cGjb_LPyE Dreams of the Rarebit Fiend: Bug Vaudeville]]'' (1921)
* ''Dreams of the Rarebit Fiend: The Pet'' (1921)
* ''Dreams of the Rarebit Fiend: The Flying House'' (1921)
* ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_6N3giozPbI The Centaurs]]'' (1921)
* ''Flip's Circus'' (1921)
* ''The Barnyard Performance'' (1921)
* ''The Flying House'' (1921): Winsor's last animated project. Was unfinished for ninety years until indie animation legend Creator/BillPlympton [[http://mayersononanimation.blogspot.com/2011/06/flying-house-resurrection-or-ruination.html put together a crew to finish it]].
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