Introduction

In 1914, Winsor McCay created Gertie the dinosaur, the first character created for the purpose of animation.  Following a meteoric rise to fame, Gertie was forgotten to all but the most astute historians in the art of animation.  Eighty-eight years later, with the aid of scores of cpu cycles, countless hours of rendering, and the addition of four dazzling technical pieces; the indomitable Gertie returns.  This new feature, the work of four students in CS 838 is sure to delight and entertain the most hard-hearted of critics.

Gertie has starred in two previous movies, Gertie the Dinosaur (1914) and Gertie on Tour (1921).

Links for Gertie, Interrupted

Technical Pieces
  • Thien- Rigging of Robot
  • Rachel- Particle System
  • Jared- Flocking
  • Michael- Cloth
    • Fun Facts
    • The final movie followed the storyboard almost exactly.
    • Production required 15GB of space to store uncompressed frames, sounds, and other production files.
    • Over 12,000 frames were rendered to produce the final 5000 frames of animation.
    • Rendering of the final frames required approximately 600 hours of computer time.
    • Due to production difficulties, the house crushing scene was rendered more than six times.  Difficulties included: machine reboots, unauthorized logouts, machine crashes, and inadequate memory, as well as occasional human error.
    • The music in Gertie's final dance scene lined up the first time we inserted it into the video.
    • The sound of the angry mech is actually the sound of the swamp monster.
    • All Gertie dancing scenes and the throwing of the mech are adapted from the original movies.
    • In the house crushing scene, the partially visible picture on the wall is actually from an original promotional poster.
    Interesting Links