Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

- I decided this week, I wouldn’t go to a Disney cartoon to give a frame grab display. Instead, I’ve chosen to showcase images from Jiri Trnka‘s brilliant film, THE HAND. This is an anti-totalitarian film done from behind the Iron Curtain when it was forbidden for him to do so. There, presumably, were consequences (though I don’t know any specifics.)

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The film’s title plays in four different languages.

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We see inside the sculpter’s house. LS to . . .

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. . . closer shot of him in bed.

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His pots and workplace.

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One plant in a pot in the window.

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He gets up, exercises and . . .

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. . . cares for his plant.

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He says a formal good morning to his plant.

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Then it’s down to work.

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Creating pottery.

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A loud knock – is it the door?

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Or the window?

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A giant hand bursts through the window knocking the plant to the ground.

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The potter goes through the same formality of bowing, good morning, to the hand.

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The hand tells the potter he wants a commissioned statue of himself.

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The potter says “NO” many times.

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Even rushing to get back to creating a new pot.

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Then he pushes the hand out of the shop . . .

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. . . and he attends to the damaged plant.

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The hand is back again and the potter tries to keep him out.

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The hand pushes in a cardboard box.

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The hand bursts out and impatiently demands a statue of himself.
The potter pulls out a broom.

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He uses the broom to push the hand out the door.

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A phone rings in the crardboard box, and the potter answers it.
The phone demands the statue . . .

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. . . and offers lots of money.
The potter throws the phone away.

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And goes back to his bed.

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He dreams of flowers until he’s awakened.

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The hand has brought a tv.

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We see many examples of great hands in history.

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Again the hand implores and then demands the statue.

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The sculptor drags a heavy mallet out from under the bed.

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He swings it at the hand to get rid of him.

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The hand goes into the box.

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The sculptor pushes the box and the tv out the door.

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In no time the hand is back . . . demanding.

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The sculptor stands resistant.

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He’s pushed back into a corner.

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The hand grabs him by the head.

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And he is dragged to the potter’s wheel.

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The hand produces cord.

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He makes a marionette of the potter.

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The potter’s encaged and forced to sculpt the statue.

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He’s forced to work endless days and nights sculpting.

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Until, finally, the statue is completed.

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The sculptor uses the statue to crash through the bars of the cage.

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He jumps free of the bondage of the “State.”

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Eventually, damaged, he makes his way back home.

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He boards up the door and window.

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He cares for the hurt plant.

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And places it in a secure spot out of reach.

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The sculptor is haunted by the sound of the hand.
He dies.

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The hand enters, places him in a casket he makes of the cabinet.
(Thus destroying the plant.)

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The hand salutes the sculptor.

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The end.

This post, with some slight variation, originally appeared on May 16, 2006. I was thumbing through one of Shamus Culhane’s books and decided to post it anew.

- Acting as a companion piece to Mark Mayerson‘s posts re Shamus Culhane‘s direction on The Pied Piper of Basin Street for Lantz in 1944, I am posting these drawings from the early spots Culhane directed for Ajax Cleanser.

As Culhane reports in his autobiography, the call came out of the blue in 1949 from an advertising agency offering these commercials which became enormously popular. Culhane formed a studio hiring Art Heinemann to design the three elves in the spot, and Art Babbitt teamed with Shamus to animate it. The ad campaign lasted until the late 1950′s. I can remember the spots clearly, though I was never overwhelmed by them, even as a child.

It’s interesting to see how varied the rough and the clean–up are from each other (they both are for the same number.) The clean-up is also obviously designed to be inked not xeroxed (which predates 1959).

I bought these drawings which while marked as animation drawings by Culhane, are probably not. The rough could possibly be his work, but I don’t think so.

It looks more like Emery Hawkins, but that’s not much more than a guess. The clean up looks like the work of Gerry Dvorak, but that’s also an educated guess. If anyone out there has a better idea, let me know.

I’m also sure that this spot ran in the mid 1950′s. I distinctly remember seeing it originally on tv when I was a child. To see one of the Ajax commercials go here to see a number of early tv spots.

If you click on either image you’ll enlarge it to full animation paper size.

- Since NY has been buried in snow, I thought I’d post this run cycle Jim Tyer animated for a “Heckle & Jeckle” cartoon called Sno Fun. The copy of the film is a bit soft, so the images aren’t the greatest. However, it was an interesting exercise for me. Tyer doesn’t really do cycles. He keeps the thing going constantly changing bits and parts of the character’s body. Things keep in motion and distort, distort, distort.

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Here’s a QT of the cycle with a mix of one’s and two’s.

- Grim Natwick animated a wacky character in Raggedy Ann & Andy for Richard Williams. Dick, himself, did the rough cleanup. You can see Grim’s drawings erased and cleaned up. (The semi-erased semblance of Grim’s very large numbers remain on many of the drawings, as do Grim’s notes. The inbetweens were all done by Dick. (It’s his writing in the lower right corner, and I remember him doing this overnight.)

The scene is all on twos. There are two holds which Dick changed to a traceback cycle of drawings for a moving hold. It actually lookw better on ones, but there was a lip-synch that Grim had to follow. It is interesting that both Tissa David, one of the five key animators on this film, and Grim Natwick, who Tissa had assisted for at least 20 years, both shared the one assistant on key scenes in this film – Richard Williams. Eric Goldberg assisted on many of Tissa’s other scenes.

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Drawings 44-47 are all Grim’s roughs with minor CU.
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Here’s a QT movie of the complete action from the scene.
The scene is exposed on twos per exposure sheets.

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Here are the folder in which the two exposure sheets
are stapled (so they don’t get separated.)

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Folder

- When Cartoon Brew posted their comment about Yoni Goodman‘s site, DailyMation, I didn’t expect to be clicking into a daily inspiration. But that’s what it’s become.

Goodman, the Israeli animation director of Waltz With Bashir, says that he designed the site because he was tired of moving cut-outs around with Flash and wanted to break loose with some free-form animaton based on moving masses and having fun with it.

This shows. The pieces he puts up frequently are filled with life and are great to watch. All of the film clips are animated bits he’s pulled from life – his children are a major source of inspiration. This is alien to most American animation I’ve seen lately which seems more designed to rework other animated films rather than on the real world.

I wonder how many times Milt Kahl or Marc Davis went back to study past animated scenes? We study and learn from these old masters, but there has to be a time to let go and start looking at how real people act and react. This is what we have to animate. Yoni Goodman is doing great work, and it’s hard to understand why I’m not doing the same, myself.

I will.

- Aardman Animation seems to have fallen into good hands. Sony has just agreed to a deal which would have them distributing the new features coming from the Bristol-based factory. The first of their joint films will be Arthur Christmas, a film Aardman had in the works which employs hand-held cameras in a cg environment. The film, Sarah Smith and Barry Cook are directing from a script by Peter Baynham, would be released next November.

A sampling of Pirates!

They’re also planning a difficult and elaborate stop-motion film in Pirates! based on “”The Pirates!”, the best-selling series of books by Gideon Defoe. This film will be a swashbuckling affair directed by Peter Lord.

Hopefully, this deal with Sony will be more productive than the one they had with Dreamworks.

– Darrell Van Citters‘ blog Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol seems to be going right up to the wire. Will posts continue even after Christmas? After his Abe Levitow career bio, he posted information about the films UPA did immediately after Magoo’s Carol. and there’s also the “Unknown Christmas Carol”, segments that were deleted from the show even after being planned and animated.

The film recently played to full houses in LA at the Egyptian Theater and the Aero Theater. It was a treat to see it on a big screen when they screened it last year on the occasion of the book’s initial publication.

As I said back then, this book is a gem, self-published by Darrell Van Citters. I highly recommend you get it for your collection.

The first time in 372 years that a Lunar Eclipse took place on the Winter Solstice. (There was also a meteor shower.)
Many thanks for sharing, Steve.

- Woolie Reitherman animated one of the best scenes in Peter Pan. Hook climbs a rope ladder out to battle Peter in the sails of the ship. He climbs getting ever closer to the camera (and, obviously, Peter.)

The scene is all on ones, but the inbetweens I have are only in this last half of the scene, so the QT movie has that stop-go look at the start.

As with all such posts we start with the last drawing from part 1.

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Here’s a QT movie of the complete action from the scene, including Part 1.
Since the scene has been inbetweened, it’s exposed, for the most part, on ones.

- Having posted some story sketches from Mickey’s Orphans, I feel bound to post frame grabs from the finished film, for comparison. Thanks to Hans Perk‘s post of the animator draft on his blog AFilmLA, I’m also able to identify each scene’s animators.

Starting to get into the Christmas spirit with this odd little film.

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Let’s look at the wacky size relationships.
A human leaves a kitten at the doorstep.
The human is the same size as Mickey MOUSE.

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The kittens are tiny in comparison to the mice, Mickey & Minnie.
The dog, Pluto, is also smaller than Mickey and Minnie.

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Mickey, as Santa, brings loud musical instument for the Orphan Kittens.

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He also brought them hammers . . .

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. . . guns . . .

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. . . and saws!

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- Frank Thomas is one of those animators that I took too much for granted. The more I look at his work, the more I realize he was one of the greatest animators to have graced the business.

His animation of Captain Hook is brilliant.

Per comments by Wil Raymakers and Sandro Cleuso, I’ve learned that this particular scene was animated by Woolie Reitherman. Naturally that would be under the supervision of Thomas, who controlled the character, Hook.

I can’t speak more highly about this scene. In a flash, I can tell you exactly where this scene sits in Peter Pan, and I’ve remembered it since I was a child; it’s that key to me.

The scene is obviously designed to be on ones, and I have the drawings for the second half (on ones), but the first half includes only the keys. Consequently, there’s some staccato movement in the QT movie I’ve made. Regardless, it’s beautiful.

The scene comes to me courtesy of Louis Scarborough Jr., who made the loan.

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Here’s a QT movie of the complete action from the scene, including Part 1.
Since the scene has been inbetweened, it’s exposed, for the most part, on ones.

- Karl Essex read on my blog about Glen Keane‘s poses and saw some negative comments about Andreas Deja which I rebutted. He had a number of artwork pieces that he sent me to post. There’re no cliched poses among them; I like Deja‘s work.

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Hercules 1

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Hercules 2

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Hercules 3

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Hercules 4

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Lilo from Lilo & Stitch

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Jafar from Aladdin

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from Deja’s sketchbook King Triton from The Little Mermaid

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Roger Rabbit

- This is the last half of this scene by the brilliant, Milt Kahl, for The Rescuers in 1977.

Penny has been sent down a hole to find a diamond while Medusa from above screams at her to look harder. Kahl had a field day animating Medusa and felt it was one of his better pieces. And it was. Unfortunately, it couldn’t quite top Marc Davis’ Cruella DeVille.

Many thanks to my friend, Louis Scarborough Jr. for the loan of the scene to share with you.

As with all of these pieces we start with the last drawing from last week.

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Here’s a QT movie of the complete action from the scene, including Part 1.
Since the scene has been inbetweened, it’s exposed, for the most part, on ones.