How a Mosquito Operates (1912) - Winsor McCay

How a Mosquito Operates (1912), also known as The Story of a Mosquito, is a silent animated film by American cartoonist and animator Winsor McCay. The second of McCay's animated films, it is about a giant mosquito who torments a sleeping man. The short is one of the earliest examples of animation and is noted for the high technical quality of its naturalistic animation, considered far ahead of its contemporaries. McCay followed this film up in 1914 with his best-known animated work, Gertie the Dinosaur.

McCay had a reputation for technical dexterity in his cartooning, displayed most famously in the children's comic strip Little Nemo in Slumberland (1905--1911). Beginning in 1906, he displayed his abilities in chalk talks before live audiences on the vaudeville circuit. After seeing flip books that his son Bob brought home, McCay delved into the infant art of film animation. He finished his first film (Little Nemo) in 1911, and incorporated it into his vaudeville act. McCay followed Little Nemo's success with How a Mosquito Operates, in which a mosquito preys on a sleeping man; the mosquito's abdomen swells as it draws blood until it explodes. The technical quality of McCay's animation was unmatched until Walt Disney's feature films appeared in the 1930s.