More than a century ago, before Mickey Mouse, Betty Boop or Felix the Cat became cultural icons, cartoonist Winsor McCay brought a dinosaur to life.

Released in 1914, Gertie the Dinosaur is one of the landmark works of early animation. It was not the first animated film, but it demonstrated something that would become fundamental to the art form: an animated character could have a personality.

Gertie doesn’t simply move.

She hesitates, misbehaves, responds to commands, becomes distracted and seems to develop a relationship with her creator. Through thousands of hand-drawn images, McCay created the illusion of a character capable not only of movement, but of thought and emotion.

The film grew out of McCay’s vaudeville act, in which he appeared to interact live with Gertie on a projection screen. A theatrical film version added a live-action framing story and intertitles, allowing audiences to experience the performance without McCay being present.

Primitive by today’s technical standards, Gertie the Dinosaur nevertheless contains an idea that still sits at the heart of animation:

A drawing can become a character.

Why you’ve GOTTA.WATCH it

Watch Gertie move.

Then remember that you’re watching a film made in 1914.

Cinema itself was still young. Feature filmmaking was only beginning to take shape, and the enormous animation industry we know today simply didn’t exist.

Yet Winsor McCay was already exploring one of animation’s greatest possibilities: creating the illusion that something drawn on paper has a mind of its own.

Gertie has weight. She has moods. She reacts. She performs. Most importantly, she has personality.

Gertie the Dinosaur wasn’t the first animation, but it became one of the medium’s great early milestones and helped demonstrate what character animation could become.

From Gertie, the rabbit hole leads almost everywhere.

Felix. Mickey. Betty Boop. Bugs Bunny. Disney. Anime. Pixar.

Somewhere near the beginning of that enormous story stands a hand-drawn dinosaur.