Gertie the Dinosaur was an animated short created by Winsor McCay in 1914. The short is rather simple by modern standards but back then it was a breakthrough piece of animation. While it was not the first animated production, it was the first to use keyframe animation, a style of animation characterized by using only a few frames to outline overall movement, and then filling in the time between key frames with 'in-between' frames. What McCay was able to do that no other had done before was to give his character, Gertie, personality.