Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

- As I noted in a recent post, Frank Thomas/Ollie Johnston’s book, Bambi: the Story and the Film, came with a flipbook of four animated bits from Bambi. It was an extra added attraction and somewhat better than the flipbook corners of their previous books. The images were larger and more readable. I’m posting the drawings of Thumper laughing and a QT movie at the bottom. The images were exposed on two’s.

This is an excellent laugh and should be studied by anyone interested in animation. It’s hard not to use any of the obvious approaches to animate a laugh, but here Frank Thomas not only uses those obvious choices, but he exploits them. There can be no doubt that it’s a child laughing – just a little too hard. It’s a real character choice, and it’s brilliantly and intelligently done. You can also FEEL the softness of the rabbit. Like any great piece of animation, so much more shows up when it’s in motion.

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– At the start of Disney’s production of Bambi, Rico LeBrun, an established Italian artist, who was teaching at Chouinard Institute, was employed to help teach the studio’s artists to learn how to draw animals. He created some intense classes where animators concentrated on the anatomy of deer and other animals. The story goes that LeBrun went so far as to cut open a deer’s corpse and slowly peel away parts of the animal for drawing and study. Over days, as the smell grew more putrid, fewer and fewer people attended.

LeBrun prepared a book of some 40 or so pages of the skeletal system of deer for the artists to use as reference in learning to manipulate the animal characters. His art was copied onto animation paper with typed notes added.

I had posted one of these pages which I located on ebay (reposted above right) and am quite pleased with this original piece. Presumably the others are all, also, on animation paper.

Sky-David had contacted me after a recent item I had posted about the Tyrus Wong drawings on Bambi. Sky
told me that he had a copy of all of the pages of LeBrun’s study. Furthermore, he shared it with me and I’m sharing it with you. At least, here are the first 18 pages. I can post more at a future time.

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Rico LeBrun (standing), in his class, advising Eric Larsen.

Animators in LeBrun’s drawing class. (Left to Right) Louie Schmitt, Ollie Johnston,
Milt Kahl, Bill Shull, and Jack Bradbury.

For futher information on Rico LeBrun’s biography, go here.

- Last Saturday, I was able to post some images of Mickey in The Sorcerer’s Apprentice taken from Robert Cowan‘s excellent collection.

This led me to search down some old xerox copies I have of animation keys from one of the great scenes from this sequence. It was animated by Disney legend, Les Clark.

These drawings are probably all over the net; I haven’t looked. Part of this sequence was printed (rather small) in Frank Thomas/Ollie Johnston‘s book, Illusions of Life. I do know that Hans Perk posted the drafts for this film on his site back in 2006. However, I thought it worth posting just in case.

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I’ve also made a QT copy of the the extremes (assuming that the drawing number represented the frame number – as was usually done at Disney.) Here it is, below.

– The release of the dvd for The Jungle Book inspired my posting of these animation drawings by the brilliant, Milt Kahl.

These are some of the animation drawings by Kahl from a sequence featuring King Louie doing a dance. It’s interesting that I think immediately of Shere Kahn as Milt Kahl’s work, and I don’t think of Louie. Yet I’ve had these copies for the past 25 years.

Somewhere – I have to find it – I remember Walt Disney being quoted as having said the one thing you should never animate is a monkey. They’re funny enough in real life; animation can’t improve on them. I remember thinking of that quote the day I first saw this film. I also wondered how Louis Prima felt knowing that they were representing him as an orangutan. I suppose that’s not a monkey.

The copies of these drawings I have are xeroxes. I’m posting them for the magnificent drawing alone; I don’t have timing sheets to be able to work out the movement. Honestly, with Milt Kahl’s work, looking at the images alone should be enough. I apologize if these are at all fuzzy or grey; that’s the quality of the images I have. They’re also not full sheets of animation paper. I copied only the peg holes and drawings.

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Talk about breaking of joints,
_______________this scene couldn’t be a greater lesson in animation for you.

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I know I don’t have to say, but I will; these drawings are extraordinary.
#100, here on the left, is a masterpiece in weight, balance, forshortening and sheer brilliance. And it’s only one frame from a scene.

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A large thank you to the inestimable Robert Cowan sent me the cel setup, pictured above, from his amazing collection of animation art. It consist of three cels over a master background: Baloo, Louie & 4 monkeys.

- With the Frank Thoomas/Ollie Johnston book, Bambi: the Story and the Film, an elaborate flipbook came as an extra added attraction. This owl sequence, animated by Eric Larsen, was part of that flipbook. I’ve exposed it on “two’s” for the QT movie at the bottom.

This is the centerpiece for the “twitterpated” sequence which I wrote about in a post last week. It’s quite clever animation; it just feels like it belongs in another film.

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- As I stated recently, we’re currently preparing for the release of four more of our films on DVD this coming June. Each of two disks will hold two films. Included among the extras will be lots of stills including sequences worth of the storyboards.

For The Marzipan Pig we’ve including a copy of a section of the animatic. This we’ll offer with the actual film superimposed over the stills so you can make a comparison as the film runs. I like this format; you can really take in the animation and layout of the piece when both are on the split screen.

I thought I’d post here some of the storyboards and the animatic for that section. Of course, this is in a low res version; more can be discovered in the dvd version.

Tissa David did the storyboard and animated the entire film by herself. This film is a beauty, if I do say so myself. It’s a truly adult film, though it was sold as a family film. It deals with love in all its forms, albeit, obviously, through metaphor. It was adapted from a brilliant children’s book by Russell Hoban, one of my favorite authors.

Quentin Blake illustrated the original book, and we didn’t purchase the illustrations. Hoban told us that it wasn’t how he’d imagined the pig to look, so he drew it for us. He was once an art director in an ad agency, so he can draw. This is the pig we used.

Hoban had hated what was done with his book, The Mouse and His Child, so demanded that all the spoken dialogue in the film be found among his words. We wrote a script; Maxine Fisher went to London to work with him in revising it. Finally, when it came to recording Tim Curry, I threw out the script and had him read the book. It was a good decision, and it made for a great performance from a great actor.

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- I’d like to call some attention to a new production blog by Tim Rauch. He, together with brother Mike Rauch, created an animated short, Germans In The Woods. They started with a piece of pre-edited sound cut from a 40 minute interview in which a World War II veteran recalls his “saddest memory”.

As Tim says, “This piece had aired on NPR and was included in the recent StoryCorps book. . . There was incredibly strong emotion in the voice and yet we knew there had to be something we could add with animation.”

The blog gives some stills and clips from the film. I’ve been hearing from Tim for a while now and have seen several developing versions of the film. I’m quite impressed with the level of the animation and the graphics employed. I hope the film will be a success for them and encourage you to look into this blog.
You can see a teaser for the film here.

Some images from Germans In The Woods off Tim Rauch’s blog.

The brothers also have an artists’ demo site which includes information about other films they’ve done. These guys are artists in the making, and you should be aware of them.

- Michael Barrier‘s site has a letter from Borge Ring which details the LEICA reel experience, as it properly should be understood. Naturally enough, it involves the inestimable Hans Perk who comments on the experience. By the way, continuing the 101 Dalmatians study (started by Hans on his site, elaborated on by Mark Maryerson on his site, and with some small additions on this site) Hans is posting Bill Peet‘s original script for the feature.

Today’s Wall Street Journal includes an excellent piece by John Canemaker about Ollie Johnston.

- I’ve been enjoying analyzing the walk cycles in 101 Dalmatians. I particularly liked the last one I posted “girl with french poodle.”
Here’s the young child with her puppy. She not only walks, but she licks her lollipop. The pup is just an absolute innocent. It’s another great walk by Blaine Gibson.

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The piece, in the film, includes a zoom into the cycle. I’ve tried to adjust for it but don’t think I was wholly successful. There’s a marginal enlargement of the drawings as it goes on – noticeable only in motion. It’s actually interesting in the walk.

- Continuing with my exploration and breakdown of the walk cycles which appear at the start of Disney’s 101 Dalmatians, I have scene 21 “French girl walks French poodle” animated by Blaine Gibson. It employs the same BG as scene 14, the art student (posted Apr 3), but it extends, beyond what we’ve seen before, to include a telephone booth.

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This is a slightly faster walk than others, and I’ve been able to grab all of the drawings. It’s animated on “ones.”

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Once again, check out Hans Perk‘s excellent site A Film LA to get the drafts for this film to be able to identify who was behind what. Then go to see Mark Mayerson‘s arduously constructed and informative mosaics as well as his detailed commentary about the film and its animators.

Check out Floyd Norman‘s story about Blaine Gibson on Jim Hill Media.

- Let’s talk a little about the problems of trying to study animation from a dvd. You can get a screen grab easily from the free media that comes with your computer. If you move ahead “1″ frame at a time and grab each image, you can study the animation. The only problem is it doesn’t really work.

I’ve made a few posts where I’ve pulled every frame and separated the character (via photoshop) from the background, then put it through Aftereffects to create a walk cycle. You can see this with Betty Boop or Popeye or, now, from 101 Dalmatians a walk cycle of the Art Student.

The only problem is it’s a fake.

I’ve captured EVERY FRAME of those cycles, and I’ve meticulously assembled them up to Aftereffects. Hypothetically, the images should be posted on “ones” to make it work, but it doesn’t The timing is different – too fast. With each one of those three cycles, I’ve had to put the images I’ve captured on “threes” to get close to the timing of the original.

This would certainly have not made sense with a walk cycle from 101 Dalmatians. It most certainly is on “ones” in the actual film, yet the timing as captured is off. This can only mean that the compression on dvds is not allowing the images captured on a “frame by frame” basis to be all the images on the disk. I have to compensate. So far this compensation has worked.

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But now I’ll show you one that doesn’t work. It has to be viewed on “ones”, and you have to see all the images to get it to work. This is the second walk cycle from 101 Dalmatians. The “Buxom girl and bulldog” walk comes close, but no cigar. There are only two positions for the little dog – expanded legs and crossing position. On “ones” this might look ok for a rapid walk, but to get the timing for this walk cycle – as it appears in the film – you actually have to put these frame grabs on something between “threes” and “fours”. It absolutely does not work.

So I give you a failed attept at showcasing another brilliant walk cycle from this excellent film. Here’s the “Buxom girl and bulldog” seq. 001, scene 21 from 101 Dalmatians. Blaine Gibson animated it.

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Again, note that Hans Perk is posting the studio Drafts for this film on his site, and Mark Mayerson is posting Mosaics and comments on his site.