Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

– On Google video you can see a seven part interview with Joe Barbera done in 1977 for the TV Academy.

Leonard Maltin starts the interview, parts 1-4.
Sunny Perish (?) concludes parts 5-7.

Part 1. Here
Part 2. Here
Part 3. Here
Part 4. Here
Part 5. Here
Part 6. Here
Part 7. Here

There’s an accurate commentary of Barbera’s career on Harry McCracken‘s site. This is followed by an even darker comment by Mark Mayerson and a defense of Barbera by Thad Komorowski.

I have to say that when Barbera died I had no feeling whatsoever. I still don’t. That last Tom & Jerry which has his name attached was as horrendous as anything he’s done since the second year of The Flintstones.

I saw few Tom & Jerry’s growing up in New York. In theaters, we were always treated to Terrytoon, Paramount and infrequent Disney shorts. I don’t think I saw a Tom & Jerry projected until I went to animation programs at MOMA. Finally, in my college years all those Tom & Jerry shorts were thrown into syndication, and they ran in NY on channel 11, a station once owned by The NY Daily News, at 5:30pm.

I had to rush home from school nightly to see these programs – 3 shorts each. After weeks of viewing, I was blown away. My initial reaction was that I had spent 17 years trying to see any and every piece of animation and had found this trove of fully animated shorts – lots of lives spent – on films that I hadn’t seen. If there were that many films that I hadn’t seen, what did that say about the work of so many other animators whose work lived in limbo?

My second reaction was horror. These films were violent to the point of horrific. The animation was superb, the music was brilliant, but the violence was upsetting. These are the only cartoons ever to have caused me to flinch. Seeing – I think it was – the Oscar winning, The Two Mouseketeers where Jerry runs the course of a table past a turkey that has a knife sticking out of its side – which lies just over his head. Tom pursues. He’s taller. The violence takes place off screen (as H&B did for years to save animation). Tom is cut and I flinched. I didn’t like that and still don’t. Another cartoon had an axe cut off Tom’s tail. It hurt. The characters I never cozied up to were being mangled by their creators. Not like the funny stuff that was going on at WB; it was different here. The directors hurt them, and then hurt them some more.

After MGM, H&B opened. Even before those Tom & Jerry shorts made it to TV, RUff & Reddy, Huck Hound, Yogi and The Flintstones brought new style to limited animation TV. I enjoyed it as a kid (in B&W), and I even felt I could guess-count the drawings in a scene. Timing was good and the design was excellent. The Hoyt Curtain music wasn’t my favorite – it seemed to be playing without regard to what was on screen, but still, I liked these shorts.

Then came the rest. With Johnny Quest I started not liking H&B. I didn’t like Scooby Doo or so many of the rest of the titles I couldn’t name for you. The mechanics were always showing, but now there was no string of good design, good timing, good anything to hold it together. Crap was what H&B produced. That crap provided a lot of jobs – even more to Asia, but it was not good film making.

Their first feature, “Hey There, It’s Yogi Bear,” was ridiculous. I thought that I even saw the edge of a pan cel move through a scene. Colors popped, animation was mediocre at best, and the story was tedious. It didn’t get better with “Charlotte’s Web” or “Heidi.”

So now, Hanna and Barbera have died. Their studio died when Turner bought them out and Cartoon Network rolled over them. After MGM, they made some interesting shorts that was about quantity not quality. They were the type of animators more interested in the dollars they could bring home than the films they were making. I don’t blame them for it, but I can’t glorify their work either. They were who they were, and I give them credit for the long and elaborate careers they had.

– Last Sunday, there was a NY Times review of Neal Gabler’s Disney book.

The review as well as Gabler’s book seems to have riled some people, and John Culhane responded with a letter that was printed in this past Sunday’s NY Times.
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- Chuck Oberleitner has a detailed commentary here on the ousting of Chris Sanders and his American Dog project from Disney’s animation department.
The article comes off as quite accurate without painting villains the way we animators are want to do. Of course, there’s no way any of us will really know what the truth is, and it almost doesn’t matter at this point. Animation history moves on. Maybe Chris Sanders will return to 2D animation; Lilo & Stitch was the last decent film from the Disney (non-Pixar) studio.

– There was an interesting bit in the Page Six gossip column of Tuesday’s NY Post. It’s about how close was the vote among the NY Film Critics for Happy Feet beating A Scanner Darkly.
The article is short enough for me to quote in its entirety:
FATEFUL FUNCTION – THE producers of “Happy Feet” have Andrew Sarris’ bladder to thank for their movie winning the New York Film Critics Circle’s prize for Best Animated Feature. Sarris, of the New York Observer, was in the men’s room during the vote yesterday that gave the prize to the penguin musical, narrowly defeating Richard Linklater’s “A Scanner Darkly.” Back from the toilet, Sarris said he meant to pick “Scanner,” thus making it the winner – but his choice was discounted because the result had already been announced.

Something tells me the Oscar vote won’t be as close. Animators resist calling Linklater/Sabiston’s work animation, but they’re ready to accept the reincarnation of Savion Glover as a penguin.

– The Tribeca Arts Center is featuring a symposium on Contemporary Comics and Graphic Novels. It will host artists Dan Goldman (with Anthony Lappé), Marisa Acocella Marchetto and James Romberger. The program will be moderated by Calvin Reid of Publisher’s Weekly.

Thursday, December 14, 2006 @ 7pm
$5 All Tickets

To purchase tickets: Call the Box Office at 212-220-1460 (Tues-Sat, 12-6pm) or in person at the event at the Tribeca Performing Arts Center at BMCC, 199 Chambers St. NYC (btwn. Greenwich and West St.)

- Debra Solomon is adamant that I should learn how to do Flash, and of course she’s right. So I’ll be taking some classes in doing it right. This is the first time I’ll have taken some formal instruction in a computer program; it’ll be interesting to see how it develops.

After so defiantly espousing annoyance at all the less than mediocre Flash animation out there, I’ll see what I’m able to do.

In the past, I’d taken the Flash trial offer and did two one minute pieces. I let the month pass and only years later have I had the program installed within my studio, but I had no real interest in playing with it anymore. It just didn’t offer – to me – opportunities for good character animation. However, I did those tests so long ago that that I certainly should give the program another try.

There have been some recent interesting comments on my site about Flash, given my not-very-positive comments. I think most people just ignore my obdurate attitude and move on.

It all comes down to one thing: Flash is a tool – a pencil, if you will. I want to see a piece of character animation done using that pencil. I won’t be convinced until I see it, though I’m willing to watch. Just don’t point me to those pop, pop, pop Cartoon Network clones. I want to see something animate.

The best is always just good design with limited movements, the worst is the worst animation has to offer – not even up to the speed of the Aesop Fables of Terry/Moser.

- On Saturday, the NY chapter of the MPAcademy got to see the accepted submissions of the animated shorts. From the 32 shown, a shortlist of 5-10 films will be selected. At a January screening, these will be reduced to the nominees (3-5) which will be announced late January.

About a third of the films were screened at Ottawa, and some of them won awards there, hence I’ve seen a lot of them prior to this screening. A couple of films stood out for me, and I’d like to comment on them.

Sure shots:
Joanna Quinn‘s Dreams and Desires: Family Ties
This is the first time I’d seen the film, though I heard a lot about it. The short features beautiful drawing, delicate animation, a funny story. It’s won a number of big awards at festivals. This is a no-brainer. The film is going all the way.

Regina Pessoa’s Tragic Story With Happy Ending is an attractive 2D film with a great soundtrack.
The art is stunning; it looks like animated etchings. The story is a little murky, but that may be something some people will find in its favor. The film has won a lot of big awards at many festivals. It’ll definitely make the shortlist.

Others that I liked:
Andreas Hykade‘s The Runt was at Ottawa, and stood out at this screening. Bright styling with strong colors. It has a dark story that gets a bit difficult toward the end. A good film.

Don Hertzfeldt‘s latest film, Everything Will Be OK has a complex story that is definitely original for animation. It’s more like a short story with good animated stick-figure illustrations. He certainly pushes the limits of this style in the film. It’s an excellent work; intelligent and adult.

Adam Parrish King‘s The Wraith of Cobble Hill is a clay-animated, B&W student film that slowly tells an original story. There’s some good character development. It’s quite touching and the story forgives some of the basic animation techniques.

Torill Kove‘s The Danish Poet is all story, and it’s well told. There’s a bit of poetry blended in, appropriately given its subject.

Of the CG films, I really liked two:
Géza M Geza’s Maestro Is a beautifully told preparation for the actor about to go on. A clever film with a beautifully rendered style.

One Rat Short from Charlex had a touching story and told it with a lot of feeling. I found a couple of the transitions a bit confusing but was impressed with the work overall.

Other films:
I found the Dreamworks film, First Flight, quite touching. The character design isn’t totally original (the everpresent Tom Oreb lives in the bird.) It’s a bit sentimental and cute, but one of the best efforts from this studio.

Other 2D films:
Michael Dudok de Wit‘s The Aroma of Tea is a quite beautiful and delicate film. I’m not sure how this abstraction will go over with Academy voters, but I found it excellent.

As a matter of fact there were a couple of wholly abstract films, and I was pleased to see this. Not all of them were as successful as Michael Dudok de Wit‘s work, but he is undoubtedly a master.

I’m sure I’ve forgotten to mention some others screened, but there was a bit of a glut – watching seven hours of animated films one-after-another -with many of them blending into each other.

I am somewhat disappointed that a couple of films weren’t among those screened. Run Wracke‘s Rabbit is brilliant, and i suspect would have done well among these contenders. (You can see a QT version of this here.)

Unfortunately, in all there were no surprises. My favorite was Joanna Quinn‘s extraordinary film, but that was hardly a surprise for me. Everything she does is extraordinary; she should have won an Oscar years ago.

In NY, we still don’t get to vote for the feature submissions. Hopefully, that will eventually change. Though watching all those bad features to vote for the few good ones is a daunting task. I suppose it’s no different than voting for the live action features. Their are few good ones for all the flack we watch.

Actually, I do love voting for the live-action shorts. Many of them are usually top-notch.

Thanks to the Academy’s Patrick Harrison for organizing such a well-run program and for making us all comfortable.

- Let’s see.
. First there was an interview with Patrick Smith on AWN.
. Then Amid Amidi commented on Cartoon Brew.
. Then David Levy wrote an editorial on the ASIFA-East newsletter/site.
. Then I had a couple of comments on David‘s comments.
. Then Amid was back to comment on David,
. Stephen Worth had a lot to say on my blog.
. Mark Mayerson commented on his site.
. Amid posted a number of the emails sent to him and led to sites & blogs that commented.
- And he continues to post more and more input on the subject.

Phew!

All that being said; I think there was a lot of good conversation on the subject. I was particularly taken by what Chris Robinson had to say on Cartoon Brew:

This obsession animators have with getting a tv series drives me crazy. Why is it your goal to have a tv series? Who said animation has to have regular characters, actors, and narratives? Your mommy? I see how it influences and ruins so many short films we receive at the OIAF because these works have not one ounce of personality, they are projects made to try to appease the desires/wants/needs of what they think SOMEONE ELSE wants…they are not making art, they are seeking markets to fit into.

This is a very high-minded response to the entire question of pitching vs making an independent film, but it’s the heart of the matter. You’re doing one or the other, but not both. Series samples are just that – samples. They’re not EVER fully developed. The maxim goes that a series doesn’t develop fully until the 2nd or 3rd year. An Independent short is all there is. (Usually. I can only think of one example of a series growing out of a truly Independent short – Bob’s Birthday. (I’ve discounted the Christmas card from the South Park people.) The only example I can think of a pilot acting as a stand-alone film is The Chicken From Outer Space.)

In essence, I think, Chris Robinson is right: Art is Art (a high & mighty term for most animated films), and commerce is commerce.

– Today, at Noon, a series of current family films will show at the Museum of Modern Art. Admission is free on a first come first serve basis. They have one of these each month. There’s a particularly interesting screening coming Dec. 9th.

Josh Staub‘s cg film, The Mantis Parable, is among those featured today.

- Tomorrow, Sunday Oct.22nd at 2pm, the Museum of Modern Art will screen Nina Paley‘s short film, The Stork.

- Mark Mayerson has culled together some numbers for grosses of animated features released since 2001. I’m not sure it reveals anything, but it is diverting information.

- The ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive posts the 1941 Chinese animated feature, Uproar In Heaven. This movie file comes courtesy of Milt Knight. It’s certainly an oddity. Using a rotoscope technique, they’ve redrawn and stayed close to every frame of the live action as the characters, whether pigs, humans or monkeys. It looks like some of those Fleischer song cartoons or even some of the silent Koko films.

Posted just prior to this, on the site, is Uproar In Heaven, the 1961 Chinese feature. This film, Directed by Wan Laiming and animated by the Shanghai Animation Studio, is the second of three versions of the story. It’s an adaptation of the Monkey King epic saga, and, as a matter of fact, I originally saw it with the title, The Monkey King.

- It’s interesting that many of the early non-US films took more from Fleischer than they
did from Disney.

The early Japanese animated films look like the Fleischer films of the early 30′s. I saw a screening of a lot of these films back in the 70′s, and it caught me by surprise. Even the silent films they did look more like Koko than Felix.

I have a copy of the first Belgian animated feature, The Tinderbox. It looks as though they took the worst elements from Gulliver’s Travels, and tried to mimic that style. Lots of broad stretch and squash. All of the characters look like Gabby.
Perhaps, they weren’t able to imitate Disney since it took more knowledge of the craft, and other than Disney, no one would pay for that development.

Since I had no stills from any of the features, the image is a Jiri Trnka illustration for the Hans Christian Andersen story of The Tinderbox.
(Click to enlarge.)

- Though I have no immediate plans to see it on the big screen, I’m pleased that Open Season did fairly well at the box office. The film grossed $23 million on 3800 screens averaging $6000 per screen. It means the film will probably gross (in the U.S.) about $70 million. However, with the negative cost and ad budget I’m not sure it’ll leave much for profit.

That’s not bad considering how poorly Monster House and Everyone’s Hero did. (One wonders if Everyone’s Hero would have done better if had been released at the beginning of baseball season?)

The animation style of Open Season intrigues me a bit. I’ve seen some interesting movement and some really horrible cgi-like (meaning they let the machines do the action) movement in the trailers, and I want to see a bit more. The reviews were unanimous in panning the story, so I don’t expect much there. I’m also interested in seeing the direction of a converted 2D Director, Roger Allers, in a cgi world. Brad Bird did so well with his initial effort in The Incredibles. One would like to think Roger Allers might do the same. However, I’ve never been the biggest fan of the cgi animation Sony has done in the past. The Chubb Chubbs anyone? Their EFFX-cgi work is excellent.

I am curious to know how Roger Allers did both this feature at Sony and The Little Match Girl at Disney this year. I wanted to see the short at Ottawa, but my schedule didn’t work with theirs. It’s also interesting to note that the official website has Roger (Lion King) Allers‘ bio but no mention of the other two co-directors: Jill Culton and Anthony Stacchi.

– I’m pleased that John Mavroudis (who, with Owen Smith, created the New Yorker‘s 9/11 cover) left a comment on my site detailing the development of his image. I’m also pleased that he didn’t seem offended that I questioned his originality in the creation. It’s obvious from his work that the idea was his, and I was wrong to have challenged him.

Mr. Mavroudis also left information about his site which goes into the development process in greater depth and offers other variations on the theme. It gives a good presentation of what goes into one of the magazine’s covers.
Also, take a look around at his other illustrations; he’s a fine artist with a lot of excellent work on display at the site.

- Speaking of originals, Michael Barrier reviews Monster House and A Scanner Darkly. He always has astute, intelligent and interesting things to say, and his review of these two films is no exception. Conjoining these two films in the one review is particularly apt since one was “scanned” via some rotoscoping/computer technique and the other used a motion-capture/computer technique.

- AWN has a good interview with NY Independent, Patrick Smith. Worth a look.

By the way, isn’t AWN able to put these articles on one page so we don’t have to keep clicking forward? This is something that many papers like doing, and I’ve never quite understood it. At least, with the NYTimes you can request have it all on a single page. The only way to do that with AWN is to click on the printable version, but that is missing any illustrations. (Just a pet peeve. Sorry I bothered you with it.)

- I’ve just been asked to be involved in a retrospective of my work at the Seattle Children’s Film Festival. A nice way to start the day. Of course, I’ve said yes. At the moment, I can’t believe the Ottawa Festival is bearing down on me. My schedule is getting intense, and all my attention is really only with my Claude cat at home.

(The images enlarge when you click them.)

– Dumbo was on Toon Disney last night. Since there was little on TV other than the non-News about another terrorist attack, I chose to watch it (for about the 200th time) again.

What a little gem that film is. There will never be anything comparable in my lifetime. It’s so beautifully animated, designed and constructed.

The Tytla scene of Jumbo Jr. running about under his mother’s legs, after his bath, is far and away my favorite animated scene. So simple; so beautiful.
Oliver Wallace’s musical theme for the baby is introduced here; it’s perfect.

But then, they cut to commercials. Tarzan is on tonight. What a jolt to cut from Dumbo to the flatter animation in Tarzan. I enjoyed parts of that film, but the animation is too often jerking from extreme to extreme without really developing character. It didn’t hold up in the sudden comparison. How could it? But then, that was better than the flash animated series Toon Disney is also promoting.

Then there were ads for an insurance company! Over and Over and Over again. In the middle of the afternoon, cutting through Dumbo? That media buyer had better be looking for a new job.

I couldn’t watch anymore and had to leave the film. I’ll watch the dvd again soon. (The commentary track featuring John Canemaker – alone – has to be the best commentary track of any Disney film. A first rate job by John.)

Who Let The Dogs Out?
- As a post script to the note I had the other day about the MTV flash-animated show “Where My Dogs At?”, a response has come from MTV about the future of the show. Here’s the AP link. MTV is not supporting their show. No one there seemed to notice the sexist/racist overtones prior to the press’ comments, and now they’re distancing themselves from the blame.

- Amid Amidi has posted an excellent look at fifties animation books on his Cartoon Modern site. He leads us to books and tapes available on the subject. The Art of the era.

– To get away from Art let’s talk about cleaning up the Barnyard.

Here are some of the local reviews for that Nickelodon film; they’re all negative. Too bad.
When you have a live-action auteur like Steve Oedekirk come in to write and direct an “animated feature,” surely you’re on the right track. Why should the director know anything about the craft?

The animals, for the most part, seem to be walking upright, on their hind legs. I guess it’d have been more difficult doing a four-legged animal with motion capture.

I’ve about had it (as Popeye said: Enough is too much!). I’d rather quote a few of the local critics than try to waste my time articulating what I think about it.

Mahola Dargis, NY Times: The udder looks a lot like the base of a plumber’s plunger and the teats look exceptionally friendly, like chubby little fingers waving toodle-oo. They’re so friendly that it’s hard not to stare at them and wonder what would happen if you milked Otis, which proves both distracting and something of a relief, since there isn’t all that much else in this film to think about.

Elizabeth Weitzman, NY Daily News (1 ½ stars): Nothing in this movie makes any sense, especially considering that it’s ultimately geared toward young children. The high-quality animation can’t distract from tragic funeral scenes and frightening fights, let alone racial stereotypes ranging from a feisty Mexican mouse to a sassy black Bessie. Too mature for little kids and much too corny for older siblings and chaperones, “Barnyard” probably should have been put out to pasture long before it made it to the multiplex.

Scott Tobias, The Onion: The truth about farm animals is that no matter how humane the farmer (or how lush the rolling meadows, or how slop-filled the pen), they’re all kept around to produce food products, and eventually, that means death by unnatural causes. Otherwise, it’s not really farming, is it?
An honest children’s tale at least acknowledges that fact, and the classic Charlotte’s Web turned it into a note of great poignancy, because even prize-winning pigs and their eight-legged friends have to come to terms with the inevitable. When a patriarchal cow dies in the hideous new animated film Barnyard, he’s actually buried six feet under with a ceremony and a tombstone—no steak, no rump roast, not even a pile of tripe. It may seem unfair to expect realism from a movie about anthropomorphic party-animals who walk around on their hind legs, but the film crosses the line. What makes them animals? What makes this a farm? What would George Orwell think?

Kyle Smith NY Post (1 ½ stars): ANIMATED FARM TALE UDDERLY UNREDEEMING If you want to punish your kids, send them to bed without dinner. If you want to disturb, frighten and depress them while making sure they fail biology, take them to the animated feature “Barnyard.”

My only real question is: why do all children’s films have to be so cynical and nasty?

- Last night (Monday) on Craig Ferguson’s show The Late Late Show, Andie McDowell was the guest to promote her VO in Nickelodeon’s Barnyard. Ferguson then told her he’d watched the film but had one question: why do all the male cows in the film have udders?

She said that it was a problem for her, too. She’d been asked the question several times by friends and one of her children. The only reason for it, she guessed was that if they didn’t draw udders they would have to draw the male equivalent.

They both exchanged a couple of sly jokes on that subject, but it was obvious that it was something she didn’t want to have to defend – especially since she lives on a farm.

This is the state of children’s films today. Pigs fly and male cows have udders. Another coup for the designers at Nickelodeon: something for the voice over actors to talk about (albeit with some embarrassment.) It’s just a cartoon; isn’t it?

– Yesterday the NY Times Business section had an article about a program being presented at Siggraph. The Contour system is able to grab the photographed face and reproduce it exactly on a computer model. It’s a leap forward in the motion capture technology since it no longer requires actors to be wired. Actors cover their faces and clothes with makeup containing phosphorescent powder that is not visible under normal lighting and this is interpreted in the computer.

Throw out your pads and pencils. You can already smell the fear at Animation Nation. The good news here, for animators, is that they haven’t figured out how to put the phosphorescent powder on the eyes yet, so animators will still have something to do. My guess is that it shouldn’t take long to make the typical cgi job a bit more like the 2D job . . . obsolete. That is, unless you do art.