Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

- Tissa David did some of her most elaborate and fluid animation in Raggedy Ann and Andy. Her first scene to animate (after the pilot) was the introduction to her song number. This scene was a whopping long one and was particularly elaborate. It was also the first whole scene put into production.

The cameraman Al Rezek constructed a makeshift multiplane setup for it. This was a bit difficult to do in Panavision, but he did it. There had to be an ominous shadow of a bush overlapping the pair of dolls as they entered the deep dark woods. The scene must have been shot a dozen or more times until we were happy with it.

I have all the drawings to this scene, rough and clean up. There are a lot of them. I’ll post a couple of Tissa’s roughs here to give you an idea of the scene. Dick Williams cleaned it up, himself, and it took him a while. In a future posting, when I have more energy I’ll post more of the roughs against Dick’s clean ups.

I’m also posting some frame grabs from a bad pirated dvd version I have of the film.

(Click any image to enlarge.)

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– Finishing up posts featuring artwork from John & Faith Hubley’s Cockaboody, I have this walk cycle from Tissa David.

Tissa is careful not to use too much paper. Hence she reuses old paper for her very rough preliminaries as she figures out her animation.

It’s frequent, when visiting her work space, to see lots of pages featuring char-acters on both sides of the paper upside down as well as sideways. She doesn’t often let these rough roughs out of her hands before she throws them out. I guess I was there at the right time and talked her into giving me these drawings.

She animates the walk, here, on top pegs bacause that’s all she has left of space. Tissa nomally works on bottom pegs. Actually, since this is going to be a sliding cel, it would have been done top pegs anyway.

Georgia, the younger girl, leaves the bathroom and moves to the floor to play with a doll (whose head she accidentally pulls off).

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(click any image to enlarge.)

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The walk is heavy and a bit flatfooted. She doesn’t come down on her toes but plants the entire foot.

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Her arms are high because, a baby, she’s still a bit off balance.

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– To hook up with the Cockaboody storyboard I’ve posted in three parts (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3)
I thought I’d post some of the key drawings done by Tissa David.

To make them a bit more meaningful, to see what a really sensitive animator adds to a film, with the help from her director, I’m also posting the storyboard drawings that relate to these animation keys.

(Click any image to enlarge in a different view.)

If you watch the film with the storyboard in front of you, you’ll find a lot of discrepancies. The film grew as the animation began.

While working for Phil Kimmelman & Ass. for a short period (which just so happens to have been the exact time the Hubleys were making Cockaboody – I came back to their studio and joined their film in the very last stages) I learned an interesting saying that was the credo at Kimmelman’s. At every stage the film should get bigger. By this, they meant that the animator should take the storyboard and build on it. The Assistants should add whatever they could to the animator’s work, etc. I liked the sound of that and remind myself of it often and try to plan my films so that will be likely to happen.

I certainly think that Cockaboody does this.

If you want to see the film, it’s currently on YouTube.

Tissa takes this play with the blocks and places it on the floor. This keeps all of the action down at the girls’ level and allows the blocks to be used throughout the film. They show up
a bit later as part of the background art.

The blocking also puts more attention onto the character of the girls instead of having to have them climb up the chairs to get in place at the table.

The storyboard drawing above left (with the “goosey”) is the only representation of the girl wearing her father’s shoes. Tissa took this small bit and ran with it.

Obviously the action in the boards has nothing to do with the action in the film.
Tissa moved the girl to the closet quietly getting us into the next sequence with this girl
still in grownup shoes.

Both of these drawings (above and below) use the father’s shoes on another level.
It forces the girl to bend far to pick up the “blankey.”

Again we’re off the table on the floor, and this sequence now builds out of what came
in the past. There’s a lot of definition in the two kids at this point.

Even the toy has more definition in Tissa’s hands. I’m sure there was some discussion
of this with John. The film takes a solid shape, built on the storyboard drawings and developed with another voice.

- Last Monday, May 21st, was John Hubley‘s birthday, so it seems appropriate to focus on one of his excellent films. Continuing yesterday’s posting of Tissa David artwork from Of Men and Demons, I have more of the layouts she did for this opening sequence of the film. As I mentioned, Art Babbitt did the opening scenes and Tissa then was hired to revise these scenes and go on from there.

This is the BG Layout for the first scene with the farmer.

These character positions go with the opening scenes that Art Babbitt animated
and Tissa revised. These are Tissa’s drawings.

This is the BG Layout for the scenes Tissa started animating.

These two rough drawings indicate overall poses for the scene wherein
the two characters begin sharing their lives.

The drawing above and the following drawings represent the poses
Tissa prepared for her animation of the scene.

Finally, here are frame grabs from the scene
so you can see how it all came together:

– Since first seeing the Hubley short, Of Men & Demons, back in 1967, I’ve been a fan. The artwork was stunningly different and original. It had a rich tone to it and some beautiful artwork. The music by Quincy Jones was as original as the film, itself.

The short was actually an industrial film done for IBM to explain the binary code to its employees. The Hubleys, however, built on that story to make something of a personal film that received an Oscar nomination.
(Click any image on the page to enlarge.)

Art Babbitt was one of the first animators hired. At some point, Tissa David was brought on to rework some of Babbitt’s beautiful animation. Unfortunately, it was on about a fourteen levels and had to be combined and reconstructed and shortened. (Today, of course, there are no limits to levels, but in the days of the camera you kept things to 4 cel levels, as a rule, and never more than 5.) It was complicated by the fact that John Hubley had decised to shorten the piece, and Quincy Jones’ score was shorter than Babbitt’s animation. This chore took some effort and involved dissolve animation. Tissa then continued on the sequence animating the little protaganist and his female companion through the remainder of the film.

About 25 years ago, Tissa David gave me an envelope full of art from this film, and going through a lot of my old material recently, I came upon that envelope. I’m going to post a few of these drawings in the next day or two.

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These are storyboard drawings for a short sequence. Tissa got these drawings and prepared LayOuts for the sequence. You can see how much is actually in John’s drawings so it’s easy to build on what he’s given you.

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The following are key drawings Tissa prepared for the sequence in laying it out.

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- The 1977 Hubley film of Gary Trudeau‘s Doonesbury Special has just shown up on YouTube. It comes in five parts. This is the film that was the last started by John Hubley.

The Hubley Studio was an apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. It was always crowded with beautiful, framed art: paintings by John and Faith, Backgrounds from their films, and the more attractive awards given to them.

Stepping into the apartment/studio was like stepping into an art gallery brimming with modern art. I always felt like I should be whispering.

Fresh off Raggedy Ann & Andy, I was brought on board the show to assist John. I had missed the prior 18 months while John was in London working on and getting over the Watership Down debacle. ***

(One of Tissa’s 24 drawing walk cycle. Someday I’ll
post them all with rougher preliminary sketches.)

Returning to the studio was both a joy and a shock. All that great art, had Doonesbury strips ripped out of the newspapers and taped over all the framed Hubley art. I found it embarrassing given how great the art was underneath those strips.

The show was just barely getting started. Actors had just started recording. John, Faith and Gary spent many of their days at the studio recording while I started development of the film’s art from the storyboards.

Kate Wodell, one of Hubley’s talented ex-students from Yale who had worked through Everybody Rides the Carousel, was the only other person on staff; I think she started a few days after me.

(Click any image to enlarge.)

Gary and I didn’t really speak more than to say hello, but it was obvious that he and I didn’t really get along. John strongly held onto me, and wouldn’t alow me to leave or be left.

However, about a month into the work, he called me to his room. John told me that he had to lay me off for a couple of weeks. He was about to go into the hospital for an operation up at Yale, and would halt work until his return.

John Hubley didn’t return. He died on the operating table.

After a short period, Faith announced that they would finish the film in John’s honor, and she and Gary Trudeau would direct in tandem. I decided not to return. I took a job assisting R.O.Blechman direct his first one-hour special, Simple Gifts.

About a month into my work, I got a call from Tissa David. She was animating the class play in the Doonesbury Special, and she needed help. She couldn’t find an assistant who could keep up with her on the schedule she had to meet for them. About 100 feet a week of pretty full animation.

I agreed to work free lance on Tissa’s work for Faith. During the day I was an Asst. Director on one PBS Special; at night I was an Asst. Animator on another CBS Special. When I completed Tissa’s scenes – about a month’s work – I got a call from Kate Wodell. Ruth Kissane had animated a piano rotating 90 degrees with a character playing the piano on another level, but she’d left many of the drawings for an assistant. No one at the Hubley studio could do it, and they asked if I would help out. I did the scene which took about a week.

Unfortunately, that was the last time I worked for Faith, even though we remained close up to her death.

(This is Ruth Kissane‘s sequence. I have the original drawings somewhere and
I’ll eventually post them.)

*** (I’m sorry this was not written clearly. I do not think Watership Down, the film, was a debacle. John Hubley’s involvment with the film and his treatment by Producer, Martin Rosen, was. See my comment below.)

- One of my favorite experiences in my animation career was working on the Hubley film Everybody Rides The Carousel. This was a feature done for CBS. It was adapted from the work Childhood and Society by the noted psychologist, Erik Erikson‘s. His book was a treatise on the development of humans; he broke the stages of man down to eight.

In Hubley’s film, each stage was represented by a horse on the Carousel.

At the sixth stage, my favorite part of the film, two young adults find each other, fall in love, separate and come back together. The female Voice/Over was done by a Yale student in her first film role, Meryl Streep.

Here’s a layout by John Hubley, given to Tissa David for a seminal scene in the film. The boy and girl have fallen in love and present themselves to each other wearing symbolic masks; they cannot reveal their true feelings to each other. The masks, which don’t come off, cause them to grow apart and separate.

In this one rough drawing, John expressed volumes, and Tissa animated what is, to me, possibly the best scene in the film.

To show how it ended up, I’ve taken some key frame grabs from the actual film. The scene actually plays out slowly, and acts as a coda at the height of the sequence.

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(Click any image to enlarge.)

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The artwork was colored on layers of vellum designed for architects. It came in rolls and had to be cut and punched. Little of the paper’s grain showed when it was bottom lit. The drawings were inked and colored with magic markers: water based ink lines and alcohol based fill colors. (This prevented the ink lines from smearing.)
It was photographed from below – like a pencil test. To soften the background a blank layer of the vellum was used between the background and the characters. The masks were doubled into the scene after it was shot. They were filmed top-lit at 80% exposure.

This was the technique for this one sequence in the feature. Most of the rest of the show was shot traditionally, top lit. Each stage had its own technique and color scheme.

– Back in 1985-86, Tissa David spent at least half of her time in Europe – Holland, to be specific. She was animating and directing an hour television version of The Midsummer’s Night Dream. She continued animating while in her apartment in New York and shipped the drawings out to be colored and shot.

The film took characters from the Shakespeare play, mixed them in with a live-action orchestra which was playing Mendelsohn’s suite, A Midsummer’s Night Dream and brought the animated characters into a fully animated sylvan setting where much of the story takes place.

About a third of it was a combination of live-action and animation, and the remainder was a dance to the music, interpreting the story. There were no words spoken to this version of Shakespeare.

Tissa animated and directed this film. Kalman Kozelka photographed it, did endless effects and xeroxed the art, Ida Kozelka painted the cels, and Richard Fehsl drew/painted and animated the backgrounds. The bg’s are inked on multiple levels of cels, which moved in a multiplane setting. The art was shot from above and below; all the cels acted as their own mattes to create a beautiful luminescence in the final images.

The film was a coproduction of Channel 4, NOS. and SudDeutch TV. I have a vhs copy of the program and would like to pull some stills, but I think the tape is hidden in storage. However, I have a lot more of the art from this show and will post more soon. Each setup uses as many as five cels and is large – all bg cels are prepared for pans and are larger than 12 fld. It takes several passes to scan the art and some of that light effect is lost in the scanning (it’s not bottom lit as well as top lit).

(Click on any image to enlarge.)

– Back in 1973, the Hubleys produced Upkeep, a short film for IBM. It chronicled the history of the service repairman in a light hearted way. Actually an industrial, it was treated like a personal film. (There’s a thin line between some of their industrials and their personal films.) Of Men and Demons was done for IBM though they considered it a personal film; it instructed in the positive aspects of the binary code and was nominated for an Oscar.
(John & Faith Hubley with
composer, Benny Carter)

Tissa David did the lion’s share of the animation for Upkeep. Phil Duncan, Lu Guarnier and Jack Schnerk were the other key animators on it. Helen Komar and I assisted all of them, and I inked the whole film. Gen Hirsch and I colored it. John did all the Bg’s.

The initial animation on the service man was done by Phil Duncan. Tissa had to pick up the character, and she found the walk Phil had done so funny that she kept it throughout the film adding shades and tones to it as she thought appropriate.

The art was inked with a sharpie, bled with thinner, then colored with magic markers. Each drawing was then cut out and pasted to cels. Hubley’s Bg’s followed the same style: sharpie on board, washed & bled with thinner, added watercolor washes.

Posted below are the drawings for that 18 drawing walk cycle.

(Click any image to enlarge them.)

We are all a product of our influences. My initial animation experience was with John & Faith Hubley. I quickly learned from them that there was usually a wealth of good references behind any film. When we worked on Voyage To Next, Paul Klee’s paintings were everywhere. His art, from a particular period, influenced everything. I’m not sure how much of his visual style made it to the film, but he was the spirit we tried to imbue into the artwork. When we did the 60 episodes of Letterman for The Electric Company, Krazy Kat and George Herriman‘s art was everywhere.

The only time John referenced other cartoons and/or cartoon art to me was to tell me to take the “Terrytoons” out of the eyes an animator had drawn in a scene. Then he gave me a two minute comparison of eyes from “Disney,” “Terrytoons,” and “Warners.” It was pretty funny, and he could draw them in a heartbeat. All joking aside, it was obvious by the time we’d finished talking that there was, “none of that, here.” Life was our model.

I took some frame grabs off an AT&T commercial animated by Tissa David in the early 70′s. It’s amazing what art made it to the commercials back then! Even with the color deterioration of the print, it’s outrageous material. A couple meet cute on a tightrope, they have a relationship, and it ends in an engagement. All in 30 secs. All in abstraction.