"Gertie" was McCay's first piece of animation with detailed backgrounds. McCay drew the foreground characters, while art student neighbor John A. Fitzsimmons traced the backgrounds. McCay pioneered the "McCay Split System" of inbetweening, in which major poses or positions were drawn first, and the intervening frames drawn after. This relieved tedium and improved the timing of the film's actions. McCay refused to patent his system, and was sued in 1914 by animator John Randolph Bray, who took advantage of McCay's lapse by patenting many of McCay's techniques, including the use of registration marks, tracing paper, the Mutoscope action viewer, and the cycling of drawings to create repetitive action. The lawsuit was unsuccessful, and there is evidence that McCay may have countersued—he thereafter received royalty payments from Bray for licensing the techniques.