Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

- Bill Peckmann had sent me a couple of model sheets from The Symphony Hour. I’m posting two of them below; one is taken from Scene 13, the second from Scene 20. Both scenes were animated by Les Clark, and, as was to be expected, he employs more drawings than those posted on the model charts. Inbetweens fill it out.

You might want to check out Mark Mayerson‘s mosaic and comments on this film.

(Click any images to enlarge.)

These are the two charts as printed.
The following is more of an enlargement of Sc. 13.

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In putting together a rough QT of the piece I put everything on twos
which, roughly, matches the length but not the beautiful timing.
It’s designed only to give an idea of the flow of the action.

Click left side of the black bar to play.
Right side to watch single frame.

- A second model sheet of Minnie shows the animation breakdown for scene 57 from the film, The Little Whirlwind. The scene was animated by Ward Kimball and Reuben Timmins (effx).

Here’s the full model sheet. Note that some of the drawings are out of order (row 2 should be row 3.)

(Click any image to enlarge.)

Here’s a breakdown of those same drawings enlarged for viewing.

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The Following QT movie is exposed on
twos since I have nothing to go by, I just let it play itself.

Click left side of the black bar to play.
Right side to watch single frame.

Thanks to Bill Peckmann for the generous loan of this model sheet.

- One of my favorite directors died yesterday, Eric Rohmer was 89. He made 24 films over a period of 50 years with his principal work being his cycle of films entitled, Six Moral Tales.

The third in the series, My Night at Maud’s (Ma Nuit Chez Maud) (1969), brought him international success and recognition. It was nominated for 2 Oscars, Best Foreign Language Film and Best Screenplay.

That film was seminal to my thoughts about filmmaking; I’ve seen it at least a dozen times. His film My Girlfriend’s Boyfriend (1987) opened my eyes to a style of cutting that I used in my film Abel’s Island.

There was a time when I would wait excitedly anticipating his latest annual film. Unfortunately, his work slowed down somewhat in recent years. His last film, The Romance of Astree and Celadon (2007), was poorly distributed in the US, playing briefly in NY at the Anthology Film Archives.

I met him, only to shake his hand, at the New York Film Festival back in the early 80s. I’ll miss his presence in the world.

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- From one of my favorite directors to Robert Zemeckis. News is that he has his cast. The Beatles will be played by the all-star team of Cary Elwes, Dean Lennox Kelly, Peter Serafinowicz and Adam Campbell according to a story in The Hollywood Reporter. Of course, as with all Hollywood gossip they’re still in negotiation.

Did you notice . . . This time Ringo gets to be the most handsome.

We mustn’t forget that Zemeckis wrote and directed the film I Want To Hold Your Hand as one of his earlier movies. He obviously has a thing for the Fab Four. Too bad he doesn’t have a thing for animation.

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This morning’s NYTimes has an article about The Fantastic Mr. Fox and the run that’s being made against Up for the Best Animated Feature Oscar. Read this article to find out what Jerry Beck has to say about it. This has gotten to be BIG Business. The $40 million film against the $175 million film.

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The New York Times, on Monday, had an extiensive article on Blue Sky studios in Greenwich, Conn. The article addresses the fact that Blue Sky last year outgrossed the International box office of Pixar and Dreamworks with their very successful film, Ice Age 3: The Dawn of the Dinosaurs. The article may have been missed since it’s in the Media & Advertising section, not the Film section of the Times.

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- This past weekend I watched Miyazaki’s Princess Mononoke for about the fifth time. What a gorgeous, intelligent, adult animated film. This, to me, is the very highest of the canon of his films possibly tied with My Neighbor Totoro as my favorites. I love the open spirituality of the film, the conflict between those who want to preserve the earth vs those who want to exploit it. Neither side is a villain; both sides have their points. This, despite the fact, that the director so blatantly supports those who look to preserve the planet and its environs. It’s a film that just gets better, for me, with each viewing.

I could only wish that one day something as responsible as this comes from the US without our obviously commercializing and diminishing such a story. Soon, I hope to pull some frame grabs from this movie to take a closer look at some of the animation and background work.

– Here is the third and final part of this scene from The Jungle Book in which Kaa, the snake, tries to capture Mowgli, the boy.

Dale Oliver (1919-2003) was Frank Thomas‘s assistant for twenty years. His generosity was responsible ultimately for getting these drawings to John Canemaker who has, once again, kindly lent them to me to post on this site. I thought it nice that one of the brilliant Disney assistant animators deserved a small token of positive appreciation for all his extraordinary work on so many of those wonderful scenes.

You can find the first two parts of the scene by going to these links:
Part 1
Part 2

As with last week, we pick up with the last drawing from that part – #69.

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The Following QT movie is of the complete scene.

Click left side of the black bar to play.
Right side to watch single frame.

- Thanks to the generous loan from Bill Peckmann, I have this animation model chart of Minnie in Sc. 10 from The Little Whirlwind. The animation is by Ken Muse, Les Clark and George deBeeson (Effx). I suspect that Les Clark had the greatest hand in animating Minnie.

Here’s the model chart as copied:

I’ve broken the images down and enlarged them a bit for viewing purposes:

The Following QT movie is exposed on
a mix of ones and twos. All guesswork on my part, and
there are probably some drawings left off the model sheet.

Click left side of the black bar to play.
Right side to watch single frame.

- Andrey Khrzhanovsky is one of Russia’s premiere animators. The list of his an1mated shorts can be found here.

He has completed a live action/animation feature that has been scoring excellent reviews. A Room and a Half draws on the biography of Joseph Brodsky, the Russian -Jewish -American poet, who won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1987 and was made poet laureate of the U.S. in 1991.

The reviewer in Variety wrote:

Veteran animator and documaker Andrey Khrzhanovsky’s feature debut, at the age of 69, is a magical, wildly creative fantasia on the life of Russian poet Joseph Brodsky. . .

Khrzhanovsky has stated that Brodsky’s life was the “creative impulse” for his film, meaning it shouldn’t be seen as a biopic. Or rather, it’s as much a biopic as one of Fellini’s self-referential reveries. . .

“A Room and a Half” is unmistakably the work of a mature artist, and it’s the helmer’s absolute mastery of the different formats that makes his work so joyous. Silhouette cutouts reflect pre-Revolutionary elegance, an animated cat appears inside a credenza and musical instruments float across the city skyline, fusing Magritte and Chagall.

The magazine Screen adds:

Some of the most touching moments in the film cover his childhood, painting an intimate, cheerful, closely knit family, that never lets their cramped living space or the penury of the lean years sap their spirit. The film freely elaborates on young Brodsky’s flights of imagination at the time, including a magical animated sequence in which Soviet soldiers throw culture out of the window, followed by a whole orchestra’s worth of instruments.

The Film Forum will be screening A Room and A Half for two weeks beginning Jan 20th.

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- Speaking of Russian animation, there’ve been some additions to Niffiwan’s site, Animatsaya In English. Lots of recent animation has been posted (all subtitled in English) as well as a lot of information.

Niffiwan has put together a Wiki site which offers a large number of animated films, both current and historic, which have been subtitled. There’s a list of films subtitled in English and a list of films that are wordless. You owe it to yourself to start catching up on some of the world’s finest animation.

Some of the treasures include:

Of course, there are Norshtein‘s films: The Heron and the Crane and The Hedgehog in the Fog

There’s also Fyodor Khitruk‘s masterpiece Film, Film, Film as well as several of his Winnie the Pooh flms.

There are number of films by Edouard Nazarov including There Once Was A Dog.

There are classics like Ivan-Vano-Ivanov‘s The Little Hunchbacked Horse or The Stolen Sun.

Plenty (maybe too many) of the commercially successful Well, Just You Wait! films.

Get a taste of the Russian Roadrunner, then move on.

There are at a couple hundred films on this site. Spend some time.

Additionally, Niffiwan leads us to another site: Digital Cake which offers some other animated films (many are the same as his wiki.)

- Last week, I posted the first part of a scene Frank Thomas animated for The Jungle Book. This is the second scene offered that involved the boy, Mowgli, and Kaa, the snake.

This scene follows one I posted several months back. (The two come in the film with only a closeup of Kaa separating them.)

The 103 drawings in the scene will have to be broken into three parts, so you can expect the last third next week.

Once again, many thanks go to John Canemaker for allowing me to share these on line.

I begin with the last of the drawings up last week, #33:

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(Click any image to enlarge.)

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The Following QT movie is of the complete scene.
I love how he shakes his head and mouths the word “No”
just prior to wrenching his hand from Kaa’s grip.

Click left side of the black bar to play.
Right side to watch single frame.

- These are drawings were published in rather small sizes in the Frank Thomas/Ollie Johnston book, The Illusion of Life. I have photos which are somewhat larger and felt that it’s worth calling some attention to them. There’s so much charm in every one of them. Frank Thomas animated the scene.

(Click any image you’d like to see larger.)

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Now lets take a look at frame grabs from the sequence. (I followed the drawings above and eliminated some scenes – mostly of the two restauranteers playing music.

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- Months ago, I posted a scene Frank Thomas animated for The Jungle Book. The scene involved the boy, Mowgli, and Kaa, the snake.

Here is another, companion scene with the same two characters. (It comes in the film with only a closeup of Kaa separating the two.)

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There are 103 drawings to the scene, so I can’t possibly get them all into the one post. Consequently, I’ll try to do it in three.

Once again, many thanks go to John Canemaker for sharing these on line.

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(Click any image to enlarge.)

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The Following QT movie is of the complete scene.
I love how he shakes his head and mouths the word “No”
just prior to wrenching his hand from Kaa’s grip.

Click left side of the black bar to play.
Right side to watch single frame.

Bill Peckmann recently sent me another stash of model sheets, especially of Mickey, Donald and Goofy. Among them were four pages of Mickey from The Brave Little Tailor. This film, of course, is a gem, and I can’t help but admire the drawing on these model sheets.

Two of them are clippings from animation by Fred Moore. There are some clues as to the exposing of the scene, so I took the drawings apart and ran them through AfterEffects just for my own entertainment. Here are the results, below. First all four model sheets; then the QT movie I made of the actions.

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(Click any image to enlarge.)

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Mickey the Tailor

Click left side of the black bar to play.
Right side to watch single frame.