When it comes to the history of animated shorts, we hear and read volumes about “Steamboat Willie,” the early Fleischer Studios cartoons, and Warner Brothers, but one of the very first artists to seriously push the format often unjustly goes under the radar–Winsor McCay. Combining his skills as a draughtsman with a seemingly unbridled sense of fantasy and imagination, McCay pushed the limits of perspective and surrealism long before many of his contemporaries in his famous comic, Little Nemo in Slumberland, which he first brought to animated life in this 1911 short.