 McCay was an early animation pioneer ; between 1911 and 1921 he self @-@ financed and animated ten films , some of which survive only as fragments . The first three served in his vaudeville act ; Gertie the Dinosaur was an interactive routine in which McCay appeared to give orders to a trained dinosaur . McCay and his assistants worked for twenty @-@ two months on his most ambitious film , The Sinking of the Lusitania ( 1918 ) , a patriotic recreation of the German torpedoing in 1915 of the RMS Lusitania . Lusitania did not enjoy as much commercial success as the earlier films , and McCay 's later movies attracted little attention . His animation , vaudeville , and comic strip work was gradually curtailed as newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst , his employer since 1911 , expected McCay to devote his energies to editorial illustrations . 
