This is the 14-minute, black-and-white, silent short film that laid the basis for this uncountable number of cartoons that came out in the following decades. It's a black-and-white movie and basically split into two halves. The first half is about two gentlemen having a bet that one of them will bring dinosaurs back to life in the coming month. The second half is the way he did it and shows us a day in the life of dinosaur Gertie. And not only did Winsor McCay manage to bring her to life, he also included a couple other extinct creatures, such as a mammoth with whom Gertie plays and jokes around in a friendly manner. Gertie may not possess the popularity because she was just not as prolific as most other cartoon characters (there is only this one film about her and a shorter sequel), but she will always be known to true animation lovers. This one here is certainly not a truly great film in terms of content, but it definitely is in terms of historic significance. And apart from that, it's also a cute little story. Oh yeah, the pumpkin part was pretty nice to show us how great Gertie actually is. And pay attention to everything she does what McCay is not explicitly telling her. In my opinion it is among the best films from over 100 years ago. Recommended.

It is a cliché of his earlier work following the same premise as "Winsor McCay, the Famous Cartoonist of the N.Y. Herald and His Moving Comics" from 1911 where he made a bet with some colleagues that he can make a moving picture from his drawings. It also includes the same gag of someone dropping/knocking over stacks of thousands of papers. Gertie the Dinosaur's movements are quite repetitive and not nearly as incredible as some of McCay's earlier work. It doesn't have 12 minutes worth of material, and would have been better if its running time was cut in half. It is still very impressive for its time but not nearly McCay's best work.

Winsor McCay's "Gertie the Dinosaur", is an early animation masterpiece that I believe can be enjoyed by both extreme animation buffs, and the average casual viewer. On different levels of course. The average viewer would see a pleasant little film about a baby like dinosaur showing off for us. An animation fanatic like me would see a lot more. For the time it was made, the animation is fantastic. It's leaps and bounds ahead of anything else I have seen from that time. The detail is sharp, the movements are smooth, and the backgrounds, all hand drawn frame by frame, are vivid and hardly shake at all. I overheard someone mentioning during the class break that he could see an early use of rotoscoping when "McCay" walks onto the screen. The guy was mistaken. Rotoscoping wasn't invented until the 1930's. This is a testament to McCay's artistry: to make characters so life-like that people still think today that they are real.That previous statement was in reference to McCay's realistic drawing style. However, it could also be applied to the character of Gertie. She is very believable as a real "person." We come to like Gertie and her child-like antics, understanding her needs to be the focus of attention. I liked the way Gertie tried to hog the screen from Jumbo, first by throwing him into the lake, then by hurtling a rock at him. This of course shows us Gertie's infantile character, but, going back to the artwork, is also a perfect example of McKay's mastery of smooth animated movement. All said, this is probably one of the key films in the transition from cartoon characters just being moving drawings to being characters that we can understand and care about.

This short and rather old cartoon about a dinosaur is quite enjoyable. It was one of the earlier cartoons, and one of the first dinosaur movies. It may also have introduced cartoon violence to the world; Gertie chucks a mammoth named Jumbo into the ocean. I have found that it is more fun to watch the original silent version than the one with sound, although others may disagree.