Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Little Nemo (1911 film)/archive1


 * The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was promoted by User:GrahamColm 10:01, 5 October 2013 (UTC).

Little Nemo (1911 film)

 * Nominator(s): Curly Turkey (gobble) 07:45, 9 September 2013 (UTC)

Another of Winsor McCay's wonderful short films of a century ago—actually, the first. While it lacks anything resembling a story, it more than makes up for it with McCay's magically instant mastery of a medium in which he had no choice but be self-taught—there simply weren't any worthy examples to learn from. I'm hoping to have all the McCay animation articles pass FA by next 8 February, which is the 100th anniversay of his best-known film, Gertie the Dinosaur. If the public has any sense at all, they'll overwhelm the Commons servers that day devouring these little treasures. Curly Turkey (gobble) 07:45, 9 September 2013 (UTC)
 * I'll pitch in with some copy-editing, and grammar fixes. --Rsrikanth05 (talk) 13:36, 10 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Please let me know what needs to be fixed; and what are the problems. I'll get started; once I know what to do. --Rsrikanth05 (talk) 13:52, 10 September 2013 (UTC)
 * This rather misunderstands the functions of the FAC reviewer. Articles come to FAC to be assessed as to whether they meet the FA criteria for promotion. The job of the reviewer is tell the nominator what needs doing, not the other way round. Brianboulton (talk) 23:11, 10 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Hi, I'm not a reviewer here. I'm just volunteering to help with the article. --Rsrikanth05 (talk) 11:55, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

Comments from Ruby2010

 * Lead and Background section: Inspired by flip books his son brought home, McCay "came to see the possibility of making moving pictures" of his cartoons -- the quote seems odd here and it's not clear if McCay said that or if another biographer did. Could the quote be put into your own words?
 * Changed to "McCay said he" (it's a McCay quote). Curly Turkey (gobble) 23:18, 11 September 2013 (UTC)
 * You mention theatres and audiences, but don't really make it clear where these releases occurred. I assume in the US?
 * I can't find dates in my sources, but I do know it was released in at least Britain and France as well as the US. Here's the poster for the French release.  It's also reproduced in Canemaker's book, but without a date. Curly Turkey (gobble) 23:18, 11 September 2013 (UTC)
 * According to this source (in French) it premiered in France in June 1911. I'm not sure the source itself would pass WP:RS, though.  I can find no other online source for this date. Curly Turkey (gobble) 02:45, 13 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Who is Mark Winokur?
 * An English PhD. I've now qualified him as an "Academic". Curly Turkey (gobble) 23:18, 11 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Robert McCay is linked twice
 * Fixed. Curly Turkey (gobble) 23:18, 11 September 2013 (UTC)
 * It seems to me that the Style section would be better placed above or under the production section, but that's just my opinion. * Ruby  2010/  2013  19:47, 11 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Moved. Curly Turkey (gobble) 23:18, 11 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Another observation: You don't link McCay until the background section, which makes me think it might be better to have that section precede the plot section. Thoughts?
 * I've moved up the Background section. Curly Turkey (gobble) 02:35, 13 September 2013 (UTC)
 *  Ruby  2010/  2013  18:28, 12 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Great, happy to support this one for promotion (the release issue isn't enough of a problem to bar my support). Nice work!  Ruby  2010/  2013  03:54, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

Media check - all OK (PD-1923). Sources and authors provided.
 * Tweaked a caption and some license tags to PD-1923 (usage of "PD-US" is discouraged as vague template tag) - OK. GermanJoe (talk) 08:52, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

Comments by FunkMonk (talk) 17:57, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

 * Should animated perhaps be wikilinked in the lead?
 * Sure! Curly Turkey (gobble) 21:39, 20 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Some of the direct quotes seem so general that I'm puzzled why they're not just rephrased: "came to see the possibility of making moving pictures"? "the first man in the world to make animated films"
 * Mainly because they're direct McCay quotes, rather than quotes about McCay. Curly Turkey (gobble) 21:39, 20 September 2013 (UTC)
 * I'd expect a bit more details under production? How long did it take? What was the extend of assistance to the project? Whatever else that can be found.
 * McCay didn't have assistants until Gertie the Dinosaur. It appears that John Canemaker got a lot of the production details he had from later assistant John Fitzpatrick, and I suspect that's why there are more producion details available for Gertie and The Sinking of the Lusitania, and much frewer fo r the first two films. Curly Turkey (gobble) 21:39, 20 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Otherwise quite nice, short article. FunkMonk (talk) 17:57, 20 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Alright, pretty close then. One last thing, which you could also use to make your other articles with videos look nicer. You can add a parameter (|thumbtime=00:00|) that lets you choose which frame to show as a thumbnail. In this way, you can pick a representative/interesting frame that can also act as a nice image for the article, instead of just an automatically chosen random frame like now. FunkMonk (talk) 11:47, 21 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I did that with ssome of the other McCay articles, but I liked the image that popped up for this one, so I left it (since it has McCay in it, it means I don't need to put his phot anywhere else in the article). Curly Turkey (gobble) 12:07, 21 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Ok, but I was also thinking of the Blackton cartoon, which has a kind of uninteresting frame. FunkMonk (talk) 12:19, 21 September 2013 (UTC)
 * You're right. I've put in a thumbtime for that one now. Curly Turkey (gobble) 13:04, 21 September 2013 (UTC)


 * Support. A last thing to consider is that you can always find Library of Congress images in insanely huge res, like the one of Blackton here, you've used such in many of your articles just in low res. You could consider updating them all at some point. FunkMonk (talk) 13:09, 21 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Hmmm ... the LoC does have a copy of the Blackton photo, but the download links are greyed out ... I'll spend some time looking for better copies of some of the other images, though. Curly Turkey (gobble) 21:27, 21 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Ah, you're right, first time I've seen that I think. Not sure why. And by the way, nice you're working on all these articles. I'm an animator by profession myself, so it is quite valuable. FunkMonk (talk) 21:28, 21 September 2013 (UTC)

Crisco comments
How about: "Animation historian Giannalberto Bendazzi saw the plotnless Nemo as an example of a "first film" in the sense that the transforming series of images serves as little more than a demonstration of the medium's capabilities." Or should I just drop the phrase "first film" entirely? Curly Turkey (gobble) 07:29, 26 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Little Nemo debuted in movie theatres - as this is an American film, it should use the American spelling (theaters)
 * Done (two instances I could find). Curly Turkey (gobble) 06:15, 24 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Some of these images create too much whitespace. The black-and-white ones could certainly be reduced.
 * Hmmm...okay, I've reduced the one in the "Style" section of McCay sketching, though I'm not thrilled—McCay was known for the detail in his artwork, and I like to show it. Also, I've dropped the Blackton photo (at least temporarily) as it doesn't fit well with the the rearrangement of the sections. Curly Turkey (gobble) 06:39, 24 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Alright, looks better. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 07:18, 24 September 2013 (UTC)
 * The Hauted Hotel - Really now
 * ...oops...Done. Curly Turkey (gobble) 06:15, 24 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Shouldn't subsection Little Nemo be elsewhere not part of the synopsis? I'd split the first paragraph with background and the last with Legacy
 * Done. Accidentally left the subsection behind when I moved the "Background" section up. Curly Turkey (gobble) 06:15, 24 September 2013 (UTC)
 * First bit of "synopsis" feels like it's blurring fact with fiction
 * Would "Following proclamations of McCay as" be better? Curly Turkey (gobble) 06:39, 24 September 2013 (UTC)
 * familiar - familiar to whom?
 * ==> "McCay's drawings are in the heavily-outlined Art Nouveau style familiar to the readers of his comics." Curly Turkey (gobble) 06:39, 24 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Academic Mark Winokur noted racial hierarchies in the Little Nemo strip and film. The Anglo-Saxon Nemo is depicted as "most human", while flip is drawn as a minstrel caricature, and the mute Impie is most grotesquely caricatured.  - Race of characters not clear in prose
 * Added (and corrected "flip" ==> "Flip"). Curly Turkey (gobble) 06:15, 24 September 2013 (UTC)
 * By late 1910, McCay had made 4000 drawings on rice paper for the animated portion of the film. - why?
 * "By late 1910, McCay had made the 4000 rice-paper drawings for the animated portion of the film."
 * Isn't production usually supposed to go before themes/style?
 * Done. Curly Turkey (gobble) 06:15, 24 September 2013 (UTC)
 * The animated portion took up about four minutes of the film's total length. - total length of how many minutes?
 * The video file is 11:33, but that's not stated in my sources, and I'm not positive that was the original total length—for example, the entire live-action intro to How a Mosquito Operates was lost, and Nathan and Crafton discovered this year that there is at least a few seconds missing from all extant prints of Gertie (a final scen in which Gertie gives a bow). I think it's best to leave it unstated. Curly Turkey (gobble) 06:15, 24 September 2013 (UTC)
 * such as The Moving Picture World and The Morning Telegraph. - what do they say?
 * Added. Sorry this ook so long.  Every time the book was within arm's length, I was too busy to grab it. Curly Turkey (gobble) 10:22, 25 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Giannalberto Bendazzi called Little Nemo "truly a 'first movie'" - what does he consider the earlier works?
 * Sorry, I've only got snippet view of this book. The book's a history of animation, so I imagine Bendazzi has a lot to say, but it doesn't seem like it's being said in the context of a comparison with Nemo. Curly Turkey (gobble) 01:41, 26 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Rather confusing for readers then, as we're not able to understand why he ignores films which are clearly animated. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 06:57, 26 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Hmmm ... I'd thought the quotes around "first film" made it clear. My understanding was he was trying to express that the film has a "film film" feel in the sense of a lack of "maturity"—it's all playing around and special effects, showing off what could be done rather than trying to express something.
 * That would be better. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 02:11, 1 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Done. Now reads "Animation historian Giannalberto Bendazzi saw the transforming series of images in the plotless Nemo serving as little more than a demonstration of the animation medium's capabilities.  Bendazzi wrote that McCay overcame this overt experimentalism in How a Mosquito Operates."


 * Overall a nice article and good read. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 04:34, 24 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the responses. Just one more outstanding comment. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 23:09, 25 September 2013 (UTC)
 * My mother says all my comments are outstanding. 01:41, 26 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Support on prose. Yet another fantastic article on Winsor's animations. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 03:26, 1 October 2013 (UTC)


 * Comments - read through it once - looks pretty good - just taking another look now. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 22:01, 26 September 2013 (UTC)


 *  The group laughs and implies he is drunk or crazy. - "implies" is used oddly here, I'd maybe find another verb like intimates, indicates or declares.....
 * Changed to "gestures that". Curly Turkey (gobble) 00:19, 27 September 2013 (UTC)
 * you have "rice paper" and "rice-paper" - also should be linked in the body of the text.
 * Linked. In the first case, it's "drawings on rice paper", in the second it's "rice-paper drawings".  In the second case "rice-paper" is a compund noun adjunct, which I believe requires hyphenation. Curly Turkey (gobble) 00:19, 27 September 2013 (UTC)
 * ahh, my bad. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 06:21, 27 September 2013 (UTC)


 * Support on prose and comprehensiveness, though concede not my area of expertise! Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 06:21, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

Source review - spotchecks not done
 * Per WP:LEADCITE, direct quotes should be cited in the lead, even if they're repeated in the body
 * I've paraphrased rather than sully the lead with unsightly inline cites. Curly Turkey (gobble) 03:37, 27 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Check alphabetization of Works cited
 * Done. Curly Turkey (gobble) 03:37, 27 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Canwell and Weiss titles should use endashes.
 * Done. Curly Turkey (gobble) 03:37, 27 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Nikkimaria (talk) 02:02, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

Graham Colm (talk) 09:40, 5 October 2013 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.