Little Nemo, the Google Doodle edition

Normally, I'm pretty blase about Google Doodles, but today's Doodle pays homage to Winsor McCay's Little Nemo, with a beautiful, pitch-perfect animated series of "Adventures in Google-Land" that you really must see (even the large graphic excerpt here doesn't do it justice, you have to get the animations to get the full effect).

The gigantic Little Nemo collections (Little Nemo in Slumberland and Little Nemo in Slumberland: So Many Splendid Sundays) remain two of my most cherished collections, revealing the full majesty of McCay's imagination by reproducing his original strips at full size. The Google Doodle isn't as humongous as the books, but what it lacks in size it makes up for with lovely animation.

If you're a McCay fan, don't miss the Little Sammy Sneeze collection.

Little Nemo in Google-Land

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

MORE: Comics • Copyfight • google • happy mutants • wide

More at Boing Boing

Ants and Stars: Bruce Sterling and Jasmina Tesanovic visit the Sardinia Radio Telescope in Italy

The Snowden Principle

Paul Renault

I usually don’t even notice the Doodles. But for some reason, this morning, I did. Yeah, it was a good one.
http://twitter.com/cjporkchop cjporkchop

I vaguely remember renting “Little Nemo: The Dream Master” for the Super Nintendo. It was only years later that I learned what it was based on.
- Jorpho
  
  Psst: that was the original NES, not the Super NES.
  - http://twitter.com/cjporkchop cjporkchop
    
    Du’oh! The memory was even more vague than I realized.
GawainLavers

The had a few short storylines in a big historical compendium of comic strips I had as a kid and they were amazing. I would love to have those books for a rainy weekend, but I’m afraid the price tag is still a bit rich for me.
- http://www.facebook.com/laura.holman.33 Laura Holman
  
  I got the collection for <$50 a couple years back. Big, colorful, coffee table sized book, and totally worth it.
Ipo

I had no idea what “Little Nemo” was until I clicked through the doodle, but already liked it.
I’ll make sure I won’t miss that, next time I’m a kid.
Pobol Pobotrol

Books I love but will never own, because they are too frickin’ expensive.
- Emojk
  
  Which I always find ironic when you remember where the pages were originally published, but that’s the way the world goes…
- http://daruiburns.tumblr.com/ Dlo Burns
  
  Check your library. Mine has it in the no-checkout section but it’s easy enough to keep to yourself for an afternoon.
  - Pobol Pobotrol
    
    Thanks, good suggestion. It’s not in their catalogue but I’ve put in a request. Cross fingers.
sean

The Princess, the walking bed, the face on the moon done without any black lines…whoever did that sure knew their Nemo strips. That was wonderful! I guess Flip and the Imp wouldn’t have been politically correct nowadays, although Alan Moore found an interesting way of handling the Imp in “League of Extraordinary Gentlemen”.
Robert Hendrickson

I get magically transported to Google Singapore when I click the link at the bottom of this post.
http://www.ikaink.net Itsumishi

This animation does not play nicely when you’re zoomed at all, even using Chrome!

The first two lines display fine, the 3rd crops the top off, but you can scroll back up. The fourth you can catch if you scroll back up quickly enough and the fifth just gets scrolled away to never-land and you can only reach it again once the animation part has stopped.

I didn’t actually realise I was zoomed in and was getting frustrated trying to watch the damn thing. Finally I figured I was at 110% instead of 100% and after that it worked fine. Still I would have expected Google to make sure their own animations played fine in their own browser.
- http://daruiburns.tumblr.com/ Dlo Burns
  
  I get web security errors on youtube sometimes.
jimh

LOVE this.
I’m usually not impressed by the doodles either. But this one is awesome. I’ll bet they had a lot of fun making it, too!
http://twitter.com/Pipenta Pipenta

I’ve been a McCay fan since, oh, since I discovered him back in the seventies. Man, could he render! His animation is fascinating because it was definitely a learn-as-you-go thing he was doing and it was just too labor intensive to call it an outtake. But the way some of his characters move is just very odd/lumpy and combined with the elegance of his drawings, the energy of his line and the charm of his compositions, well it is all a really strange combination and quite irresistible.

So yeah, I did I little happy dance when I saw it was Windsor McCay.

It also occurs to me that McCay would have LOVED Portal.
Over the River

Normally, I’m pretty blase about Google Doodles

Let’s ask the professionals who work for Goggle what they think about your books Cory. Not cool.
- Ipo
  
  Are you disappointed?
  - Over the River
    
    I have a lot of GOOG stock and anything said disparaging the company may affect my profit.
- Boundegar
  
  How dare he express an opinion? What does he think this is – his own blog?
  - Over the River
    
    He should, he is on the masthead. But coming from Cory, who I dare say influences a lot of people, it may set an artificial bar for those who look to him for cultural guidance. That and it came across to me as being unnecessary and unkind to the designers of the doodles.
Vanwall Green

I read the the somewhat large size Nostalgia Press collection to both my sons when they were little, and now I read it to my grandkids. I snagged both the huge Little Nemo collections along with whatever I could over the years. I’ve been a huge McCay fan since forever. The Sammy Sneeze and Hungry Henrietta are fun, too, as are all the Dream of the Rarebit Fiend books, especially Ulrich Merkl’s big collection, the last word on it, I reckon. And don’t forget “Gertie the Dinosaur”, the seminal animated film by McCay.
Jorpho

I hear the animated movie is quite good and had some real high-end Japanese talent involved. It is also horrendously obscure.
- Steve Taylor
  
  It’s not bad at all – I was surprised how much of the comics it managed to capture. There’s planty to complain about, but it was much truer than I feared it might be. I seem to recall there is some kind of annoying squirrel hanging around him, but hey – you can’t make animation without an annoying cutesy sidekick – it’s the law.
  
  Sadly I got it on VHS when it came out and my copy has degenerated terribly from overwatching.