Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

- Let’s continue with some more Ollie Johnston animation from Bambi. These drawings were selected to illustrate one of the books by Johnston & Thomas. I’m not sure they were ever used, but here they are, just the same. The work’s too beautiful to ignore.

1a
_________(Click any image to enlarge.)

3e
There’s some real life in this character. This last part has smaller drawings, so I assume there’s a cut in there.

- Last week I posted part of a book of notes Dick Williams took while attending a lecture series Art Babbitt gave in Dick’s studio in 1973. That was obviously a forerunner of Dick’s book, The Animator’s Survival Kit which led to his newer set of DVD’s – the Masterclass Series.

Dick’s site is interesting in that it gives a full preview of these dvd’s, so I heartily suggest you take a look. If nothing else, Dick inspires while informing.

In that last post, I talked about a second series of notes Dick had. These were more formal and swiped a lot of information from everywhere and everyone – Disney lecture notes, Preston Blair – and also notes from some of the other masters that Dick had visiting his studio.

So here are a few pages from that oversized book. No pictures – all writing. Old xeroxes.

1
(Click any image to enlarge to a more legible size.)

2 3

4

5 6

7 8

9

Boy does this guy know the stuff of great animation.

Back to Bambi.

Here are some animation bits by Ollie Johnston. They were prepared, I believe, for a book. I don’t know if they made it. If they did, this is another variation.

1a
_________(Click any image to enlarge.)

4b
Ollie’s point in highlighting this bit is all about the staging of the action. But the action, itself, is pretty damn great.

What a film! You can’t study it enough.

- Continuing the post I offered last Tuesday, here’s a display of some more of the artwork created for The Midsummer’s Night Dream, directed and animated by Tissa David. The film features a live-action orchestra with Shakespeare’s characters running wild over the footage. Eventually, the picture opens to an animated woods. It was photographed by Kalman Kozelka, color styled by Ida Kozelka-Mocsary, and Bg designs by Richard Fehsl.

The film aired on the BBC in 1983 and was released on VHS by Goodtimes Video.

(click any image to enlarge.)
Bottom chases Titania in the woods.

At one point the instruments of the orchestra take on an animated life of their own.

The dark coloring loses some of the emotional delicacy of the drawing,
but is appropriate within the context of the film.

Titania catches Bottom in her arms.
Three cels from a sequence.

Titania dances with Bottom’s stool. (He’s brought it into the woods
when he transformed from the tympanist to the animated character.)

Tee Bosustow has been making podcasts of the many interviews he recorded for the documentary he has in progress. This is a history of the UPA studio. Slowly these interviews are appearing on his site.

You can hear Tee’s interviews with the likes of Dave Hilberman, Barrie Nelson, Bill Melendez, Tissa David, Derek Lamb, Mark Kausler, Howard Beckerman and many others. Go here and pick your poison. More interviews are added weekly.

One he recorded with me has just gone up. I seem to speak at an enormous speed and giggle throughout. The recording was done as we’d just completed our film, The Man Who Walked Between the Towers. To hear it go here.

Tee is also selling, on this site, a good book edited by Amid Amidi, Inside UPA. If you’re a fan, you have to search out a copy of the book. It’s a beauty. The book is predominantly a collection of amazing photographs of the studio and artists of UPA in its heyday.

Just to fill out this post, here’s a Grim Natwick drawing of Nellie Bly from Rooty Toot Toot (minus a face.) It seemed appropriate to match it with Tee Bosustow’s site.

- From 1983-85, Tissa David teamed with three other friends in Holland to begin work on an animated version of Mendelssohn’s Midsummer’s Night Dream.

This film would introduce several animated characters from Shakespeare’s play over a live action orchestral performance of Mendolssohn’s music. These characters chased each other around the orchestra until, eventually, the animation took over, and the orchestra melted away. The tympanist, himself, melded into Bottom.

This film was completely animated by Tissa, including all inbetweens and layouts. She was the film’s director, though in all the time she worked on this film, she never once described her role to me as such. She was just making a film she loved with several extraordinarily talented friends.

Kalman Kozelka was a brilliant cameraman who shot the entire film in a home built multiplane camera. It’s unjust to call it simply photography, because every scene involved seven to ten exposures with mattes and special lighting. Half of the scenes combined live action with the animation, and all of the scenes involved multiple levels with back and front lighting.

Ida Kozelka-Mocsary, Kalman’s wife, designed all the character coloring and colored all the cels . She worked closely in helping Kalman to prepare everything for the photography including mattes.

Richard Fehsl was the brilliant designer who colored and, in many cases, animated the Bg’s. All of these Bg’s were painted with dyes on frosted cels under rather delicate inking.

All four took story credit.

I have a good handful of the overlarge cels and artwork from the film. Here are a few of those cels along with a number of representative frame grabs from the film.

__
__________________(Click any image to enlarge.)

__________________Titania, the drawing and the cel.

__

__

__________________Three of Richard Fehsl’s Bg elements. These were back lit
__________________and front lit and combined with other Bg levels.

__

__

___I have so much more art from this film, that there’ll surely be more posts to come.

This video (vhs) can still be located – used copies – on Amazon here.

_

- The stag, young Bambi, hears something. He grows alert; then jumps. This is a fine piece animated by Milt Kahl. The drawing is brilliant, as usual, with fine acting in the animation. I had a bit of trouble properly registering the piece; it wasn’t easy, and I’m sorry it isn’t tighter, but it’s close.

This is the final piece from the flipbook that came with the initial publication of the Frank Thomas/Ollie Johnston book, Bambi: The Story and the Film.

2
_____________________ (Click any image to enlarge.)

4

6

8

10

12

14

16

18

20

22

24

26

28

30

32

34

36

38

40

42

44

46

- I have a few really down and dirty older xeroxed copies of layouts for some Fantasia scenes. Without defining what they are, I thought I’d just post them and let you figure them out. When I have the folder info, I post that as well so you can see who did what.

I follow the LO’s of each scene with frame grabs from that scene.

___Falling flowers land on water. Unfortunately, a small part of the
midsection for this drawing is missing. The xeroxes, of course,
are all large and reconstructing them was a bit complex.

The BG layout is below.

(Click any image to enlarge.)

These two drawings represent twirling blossoms as well as
the perspective planning for them and the background for the scene.

The following two long pans show a background of leaves and the
progression of Faeries that sparkle around those leaves.

___

Zeus

Clouds open

Zeus steps out of a silhouette.

Zeus in closer shot

The BG layout

- Here’s another of the animated bits from the flipbook that came with the Frank Thomas/Ollie Johnston book, Bambi: The Story and the Film. It’s peculiar that they selected this sequence to put into a flipbook since it doesn’t quite work. Obvously they don’t use all of the animation drawings for the flipbook, and they’ve washed over the short holds that are in the animation. There are lots of interesting poses, though.

The piece was animated by Ollie Johnston.

3

6

9

12

15

18

21

24

27

30

33

36

39

42

45

[ Javascript required to view QuickTime movie, please turn it on and refresh this page ]

– Retta Scott has been fascinating to me from the earliest days in my interest in animation. I believe it was on a “Disneyland” when I first heard her name. Back then the research readily available to me was not great. Bob Thomas’ book The Art of Animation listed her as an animator on Bambi. It doesn’t even give her credit for Fantasia, despite her principal work on the Pastoral sequence. Nor does it mention her work on Dumbo, The Wind In the Willows or The Ruluctant Dragon.

She was layed off at Disney’s when they hit a slump in 1941 but came back to do a number of Little Golden Books for Disney. The most famous of her books was her version of Cinderella, one which was so successful that it remains in print today as a Little Golden Book. She was an animator on Plague Dogs.

When asked why females weren’t animators at the studio, the Nine Old Men who traveled the circuit, back in the 1970′s, often mentioned her. They usually also said that she was one of the most forceful artists at the studio, but her timing always needed some help (meaning from a man.)

Ms. Scott was known predominantly for her animation in Bambi. Specifically, she’s credited with the sequence where the hunter’s dogs chase Faline to the cliff wall and Bambi is forced to fight them off. The scene is beautifully staged and, indeed, is forceful in its violent, yet smooth, movement.

Ms. Scott died in 1990.

Continuing with prior posts featuring some of the sketch work from this film, I feature some of the original work from this sequence. Many of these drawings are storyboard pieces and are not actually the work of Ms. Scott. However, they certainly inspired what she would animate.

__
___________________(Click any image to enlarge.)

_________These, above, are two frame grabs from the sequence.

__

__

The dogs corner and chase Faline up a rock wall where she tries to stave off the violence of the attacking dogs. She remains there until Bambi comes to save her, fighting off the dogs.

__
__
__

__

_____Though most of the drawings above aren’t the work of Retta Scott, this one is.