Georges Méliès Facts: Illusionist Honored With First Virtual Reality Google Doodle

Google worked with several teams to bring Thursday's Google doodle to the homepage of users across the globe. The doodle honors French illusionist Georges Méliès, known for his elaborate films which included technical advances that blazed the way for the future of movies. He was a pioneer of special effects on screen.

The doodle is the first ever doodle that incorporates virtual reality and not only honors Méliès, but also his film The Conquest of the Pole, or À la conquête du pôle, on the anniversary of the film's release.

The doodle features a man shining a light on the moon. Clicking on the doodle brings users to a 360-degree video that can be experienced on YouTube, through Cardboard, Daydream or in the Google Spotlight Stories app, according to Google.

The film, Back to the Moon, is a nod to the Méliès film, A Trip to the Moon and features some of the signatures of a Méliès film such as elaborate movements and stop motion. Google's doodle site features side-by-side elements of a Méliès film along with the Google film to illustrate the technique the film-maker used in modern animation.

Seven facts about filmmaker and illusionist Georges Méliès:

Georges Méliès was born in 1861 in Paris, France, and showed an interest in the arts from the time when he was just a small boy, according to the Georges Méliès official website.

Méliès was a magician and a theater manager. When he saw his first movie, this is when he got the idea to create fictional movies, according to Encyclopedia Britannica.

The first movie studio in Europe was opened by Méliès. It was all glass and he was the first person to widely use storyboards and sketches when planning his films, according to Internet Movie Database.

He's credited with being the first to use editing techniques like fade-ins and outs, object replacement, conjuring and more, according to Google.

It was actually an accidental film jam that led to his discovery that film could be manipulated to make objects look like they appear or disappear from the scene, according to the Georges Méliès official website.

By the time he died at age 76, Méliès had made more than 500 films, according to the official website dedicated to the illusionist.

He's buried in Paris at the Père Lachaise cemetery, according to IMDb.