everyone knows i love classic and childrens illustration, so today im gonna talk a bit about the one artist who i consider the true master of both.
as far as im concerned, winsor mccay was the greatest illustrator of all time. in a modern day where artists struggle to meet specific deadlines inside weeks and months, we forget that over 100 years ago the father of periodicals, as well as comics, was cranking out finely tuned and sublimely drafted pages every 6 days.
Mccays work on little nemo is the definition of Illustration's golden age. combining incredible line control and draftsmanship with unprecedented imagination and style, little nemo's dreams are famous for their lack of limitations. buildings, airships, robots, animals, witches, monsters, and all manner of characters flooded the pages. amazingly, over 100 years later, few, if any, illustrators can match mccays imagination and originality. where would modern entertainment art be without his contributions?
also note, mccay was one of the very first hand animators. below is a video of a flipbook film he created completely by hand using 3000 still images. its interesting to see how imaginitive, fluid, and precise his work is even today, standing against all the animations that have since been created 100 years later.
So crazy good animations, its like in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs from 37 :) can`t beat that now.
ReplyDeletethanks for sharing Dan. I only knew a little about this Mans work and looking at the images you have provided you can see that he has been an inspiration for a lot of future artists. it is really wonderful stuff to be sure.
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