Little Nemo

Winsor McCay's first animated film, based on his own popular newspaper comic Little Nemo in Slumberland. The short opens with live-action footage of McCay making a bet that he can bring his drawings to life, then cuts to the animation: Nemo and his friends stretch, flip, and grow in surreal ways that were impossible in live action. McCay hand-drew every frame himself, a level of labor that set the standard for character animation. The film is in the public domain in the United States as a pre-1930 work.