Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

The Life of Pi has been winning awards left and right for the best special effects. They won the BAFTA (British Oscar equivalent) just last week. These effects were done by the Los Angeles based company Rhythm & Hues Studios a company which has come to specialize in creating photo realistic animals for films with such wonders as Babe, the animals in The Chronicles of Narnia as well as “Richard Parker,” the tiger in Pi.

On the Monday following receipt of their award, Rhythm and Hues called a meeting of the entire company to announce that all jobs were on notice. The company had to file for bankruptcy protection, which they did that same day. It was thought that they’d resolved their financial problems getting the Indian visual effects company, Prime Focus, to help them out. However, that deal fell through and the Chapter 11 went forward. There was limited cash on hand. and they were not able to meet their immediate payroll.

The company is scheduled to do quite a bit of work in the upcoming year with films such as The Hunger Games II, and Universal’s Percy Jackson among numerous others which are ready for effects work. 160 employees were already part of a lay off last week and their remaining employees had to be put on notice this week. At this point, there’s no other decision as to where they will go for cash flow.

Hopefully they will win the Oscar for Pi (they’re also nominated for Snow White And The Huntsman), and that will somehow help them financially. They definitely deserve the award.

There’s a short EFFX film on the NYTimes site, worth a look. See the scene above come together from scratch.

There will be something os a Richard Williams tribute this coming Wed., Thurs., and Friday. It’s in celebration of Dick’s 80th birthday on Wednesday. The programs will be shown at the downtown Y – Tribeca celebrating some of the more famous work of the master and culminating in a screening of the Kevin Schreck’s documentary, Persistence of Vision, about the making and undoing of The Cobbler and the Thief.

On Wed, Feb 27th, at 7:30 pm there will be a screening of Who Framed Roger Rabbit. This marks the 25th anniversary of the ground breaking feature which took the combination of live action and animation to a new level. Tarring character actor, Bob Hoskins, the film features almost every character ever created for motion pictures, from Bugs Bunny to Mickey Mouse to Betty Boop.

On Thurs, Feb 28th, celebrating the upcoming 80th Birthday of Richard Williams (March 19th), there will be a retrospective of some of Dick’s best commercials (including including Cresta Bear, Jovan, Pushkin Vodka and others), title sequences (“The Charge of the Light Brigade”; “The Return of the Pink Panther”; and “What’s New, Pussycat”) and the program concludes with Dick’s first theatrical short, The Little Island (1958). The short gained immediate success for the young animator and his studio.

I was asked to host this program, and I couldn’t be prouder than to do so. I’ll also be excited to see some of the commercials on the big screen again (particularly the Puskin Vodka spot). There are many beauties among these, and I’m hoping more of my favorite gems are among them.

On Friday, Feb 29th, at 7:30 pm there will be a program featuring Persistence of Vision, Kevin Schreck‘s documentary about the making of Williams’ long-in-production feature, The Cobbler and the Thief. This film will be followed by a Q&A between director, Schreck and Amid Amidi. I’m really looking forward to seeing this. Having not yet see the doc, I’m expect some information to be revealed for me.

This despite the fact that I’d watched the entire history of this film from my armchair.

Go to 92y.org

Dates: Wed, Feb 27th, 7:30 pm, Thu, Feb 28, 7:30 pm, and Fri, Feb 28th, 7:30 pm

Venue: 92YTribeca Screening Room
Location: 92YTribeca, 200 Hudson St

Price: from $12.00

My appearance should be somewhat disarming to some of you. I recently had a dramatic bout with the flu and really suffered for a full two weeks with fevers, chills and less attractive ails. In the course of the flu, I lost a full 15 pounds (over th two weeks) and have also lost a lot of strength. Consequently, don’t be surprised by the Cryptkeeper hosting the Thursday event. The worst part is that my voice gives out easily, and I’ll be shouting in a whisper to host the program. It’s a sidebar of the event that should be entertaining for you.

This past week TCM aired a small little film called The Window. It was for this film that child actor, Bobby Driscoll, was awarded an Oscar as the Outstanding Juvenile of 1949. You’ll remember that Bobby Driscoll would then go under contract to Walt Disney, for whom he starred in Song of the South, So Dear to My Heart, Treasure Island and as the voice of Peter Pan.

The film was a curious little “B” movie that was about a boy who exaggerated once too often, and after witnessing an actual murder no one believes him. The film is cast in dark and looming shadows coming close to a film noir stylization. Bobby’s acting is very “A” movie as his dilemma keeps you spellbound for the entire 90 minutes. The father, Arthur Kennedy, is also excellent in the film.

Bobby Driscoll had an unfortunate end. He came into hard times as an adult and died in 1968 of hepatitis. His body was found by two children playing in Greenwich Village. He was buried in a pauper’s grave until his fingerprints were later identified.

The New York Times, today, has an artricle about film titles. It suggests that film titles should also be honored by the Academy Awards. They decide that if there were a film to win the Oscar this year they would offer up some possible nominees.
Their suggested choices are:
- Jorge Calvo‘s titles for Red Lights, a thriller directed by his compatriot Rodrigo Cortés.
- The opening titles of Prometheus, the science fiction film directed by Ridley Scott. They don’t name the title designer or production company.
- The Chilean design group Smog for its work on the closing sequence of Joven y Alocada, directed by Marialy Rivas.
- Raleigh Stewart for Crave, a thriller directed by Charles de Lauzirika.
- The U.S. design group Prologue Films for its work on Ben Affleck’s political thriller Argo.

Personally, I love Life of Pi. They’re delightfully buoyant and openly playful titles that just wholly set the mood for the great movie to follow. These were designed by Garson Yu, founder/creative director of yU+co in Hollywood, California. I will follow his work in the future.

Something’s happened over at Cartoon Brew, ant the two partners, Amid Amidi and Jerry Beck, have split. I’m sure most of you already know this by now. Jerry has set up a new “temporary” blog called Cartoon Research, and has just begun posting there. It’s obviously, at the moment, dedicated more to cartoon history, than Cartoon Brew. I’ve put the link i the sidebar of my Splog and will follow if it changes address.

Good luck to both guys. Their both good animation historians worth reading.

- It’s not always easy to kill a witch. This sequence from Snow White couldn’t be designed better. It’s short, it’s tense, it’s a tight sequence that handily does its job. The witch is killed in record time. Today, the sequence would be dragged out for half the length of the film.

Some of these drawings are great.

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(Click any image to enlarge.)

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- Cable TV has changed and not for the better, just toward the more corporate. In the old days you could turn on the Disney channel and catch some Disney animated shorts – the classic kind, not the Flash kind. You could see some of the 60s Paramount cartoons on Nickelodeon. You could tune into TNT and see early MGM cartoons. Today, if you’re lucky, you might see one of the more popular Harman-Ising shorts sandwiched in between two late-Droopy cartoons on Boomerang’s MGM show.

(Click any image to enlarge.)

I was a big fan of those Harman-Ising MGM cartoons. The sheer opulence of the productions was staggering to watch. For over a year, I taped an early morning program on TNT trying to grab all of the Harman-Ising shorts they aired. I was able to capture about 90% of them. It’s unfortunate that no DVD has been released of these gems so that collectors like me can feel satisfied. The Turner transfers were pretty good, and a simple DVD release of these would be worth a lot to me.

Not too long ago, I was able to buy a couple of drawings on ebay from the Harman-Ising shorts. There wasn’t much competition for them, and I was able to afford them.

One drawing is from the odd series featuring the “two curious pups.” I had an old Blackhawk 8mm copy of this short (in an edited version) and would run it back and forth still frame. I’ve captured some stills of this very scene to give you an idea of what’s happening.

The Pups’ Picnic (1936)

I don’t know who animated this scene,
but the drawing is a beauty, as far as I’m concerned.
The paper siize is 9¾ x 12 w/two round holes.

Mike Barrier just contributed the draft (below) to this film. It indicates that Pete Burness animated this scene. (I did buy the drawing from the Burness estate.)

- Congratulations to Bill Plympton on an amazing Kickstarter campaign< . $75000 and the needle goes right there, so Bill ups it to $100000, and that’s how much he raises. I hadn’t seen anything like that before, and I’m impressed. Let’s face it the guy’s a star.

Then, Signe Baumane begins her Kickstarter campaign to complete her excellent movie. A $42900 goal, and she’s attained that total with five days to go. Excellent! I love this film and think it’s going to be brilliant when it’s completed. Maybe in the next five days, she can get a bit more so that she reaches a nice, small comfort zone to complete it. She interviewed Bill and me for a little testimonial of a DVD, and just posted it last week. (I think that’s what brought her the money raising it so high – joke – joke.)

In case you hadn’t noticed there’s a third Kickstarter Campaign to notice.

Ralph Bakshi.

The Last Days of Coney Island. Talk about great titles!

Bakshi’s hoping to raise $165,000 and he’s uncovered almost $40000 so far. With only 20 days to go, he’ll need a quick infusion of cash to get things moving, so I’m not sure it’ll work. I hope so; this project interests me.

The idea is to do a series of 6 to 8 minute films which eventually will be grouped together as a feature. This could be nice if it’s well orchestrated. Somehow, given his track record, I have a lot of faith in Ralph. He has the ability to do it. He has Ian Miller aboard as a background designer. I was never one for fantasy art – all that Lord of the RIngs and The Hobbit stuff never touched me. I saw most of the films based on the material and didn’t like much of it. I looked at all the fantasy art and wasn’t captured.

Except for Ian Miller. This guy’s work is just extraordinary.

I’m watching this campaign pretty closely. Very interesting

- I realized, having written this piece, that I haven’t really written about Ralph Bakshi and his films over all the years I’ve done this blog. It’s not an oversight on my part. I have written about Fritz the Cat (here too) several times and I did write about Heavy Traffic once. Many times I’ve thought of writing in depth about this man’s amazing body of work. However, this is not going to be the right time, either, so don’t expect an elaborate Bakshi post now. I would have to spend much more time on it to properly get it right. However, I do see his work as intimately related to my history in animation.

Fritz the Cat was released n 1972 just as I escaped the Navy and became a citizen – meaning a potential animation worker. By the time it hit screens, I had already grown out of my love for Disneyana. I was a Hubley convert and a big fan of UPA. Bakshi came from the grit of animation – those lst days at Terrytoons under the aegis of Bill Weiss. The shoddiest of films had emanated from them in those last few years, but there were also hidden great ones. I was always a fan of Deputy Dawg and earlier on, Clint Clobber. Hashimoto Sam and those Astronaut cartoons, not so much.

A hop skip and a jump away, and we find Bakshi directing Fritz the Cat for Steve Krantz. He’d made a nice living writing cheesy books that were very successful, and now he’d taken one of the best know underground comics and gave Bakshi the chance to turn it into a feature.

Needless to say it created some waves, and that was good for animation, though I have to say most animators protested the material. It was a pretty good film with plenty of solid moments – some not so solid, too.

Bakshi could have followed it up with The Nine Lives of Fritz the Cat, but he went personal, instead. Heavy Traffic was the result, and it ended up a selection by Vincent Canby of the NYTimes as one of the top ten films of the year.

Bakshi played his career much the way Quentin Tarantino ha. A couple of films came out that caught the racist accusations. The films couldn’t fight the press, and it took Bakshi’s switch to Sci Fi with Wizards and Lord of the Rings to gain some modest success.

All of his movies got attention and all deserved more attention. There was usualy excellent material there and a chance for animation to start growing up. By this time, Bluth and Spielberg were challenging Disney for the family audience, and they got all the attention.

I miss the sore paw of Ralph Bakshi and I’m glad to see he’s pushing the Kickstarter campaign and hoping he has some success with The Last Days of Coney Island.

He’s Alive!

- I thought I’d make the small announcement to say that POE‘s alive. Having completed my presentation for HBO, I’ve put all energies back into completing the opening and trailer for my li’l feature. The brilliantly talented, Matt Clinton is back with us working on the sequence, and we hope to be able to go directly into production once that trailer is done.

We still have a couple of storyboards to work and another couple to rework. With that we’ll complete an animatic of the whole. It’s going to be a fun ride, and I’m glad to be back with Matt on board.

By the way, the artwork at top is sort of a new logo for the film.

- For the past couple of days, I was playing with/fighting with/working with the enormously helpful Matt Clinton to get my Splog back. And then at 1am on Saturday, Hostgator became more of a host and less of a gator and they told me they made a mistake. The problem that was created was THEIR fault, not mine. They put things back together again, but I feel like Humpty Dumpty, sitting on the wall but knowing that my shell is cracked. I gotta get outta this place and find a new webhost.

Since lights were out most of yesterday, this post is going to sit tight through Sunday (though I’ll probably add some stuff to it). So because it hasn’t changed on Sunday doesn’t mean we’re down again. It feels good to be back.

- As was noted on Cartoon Brew, this past week, there will be several programs at the downtown YTribeca celebrating some of the more famous work of Richard Williams.

On Wed, Feb 27th, at 7:30 pm there will be a screening of Who Framed Roger Rabbit. This marks the 25th anniversary of the ground breaking feature which took the combination of live action and animation to a new level. Tarring character actor, Bob Hoskins, the film features almost every character ever created for motion pictures, from Bugs Bunny to Mickey Mouse to Betty Boop.

On Thurs, Feb 28th, celebrating the upcoming 80th Birthday of Richard Williams (March 19th), there will be a retrospective of some of Dick’s best short animated films, commercials and sequences. This program is called The Little Island and More. This will conclude with his first theatrical short, The Little Island (1958), which gained immediate success for the young animator. I was asked to host this program, and I couldn’t be prouder than to do so. I’ll also be excited to see some of the commercials on the big screen again. here are many beauties among thee, and, not yet knowing the list of films, I’m hoping some of my favorite gems are among them.

On Friday, Feb 29th, at 7:30 pm there will be a program featuring Persistence of Vision, Kevin Schreck’s documentary about the making of Williams’ long-in-production feature, The Cobbler and the Thief. This film will be followed by a Q&A between director, Schreck and Amid Amidi. I’m really looking forward to seeng this. Having not yet see the doc, I’m hoping some information will be revealed for me.

I felt very torn when Dick’s feature was ripped from him by the insurance bond company. I remember going to the reworked film they patched together to complete the movie. Tissa David and I sat side-by-side sinking into our seats as some of the most glorious animation ever done skipped by alongside some of the worst animation we’d seen. (The princess’ opening song is one of the most dreadful sequences ever done.) I will definitely be present for that showing.

I’ll, of course, write more about this before the event. For now, I would order tickets if I were you; it’ll probably sell out soon.
Go to 92y.org

Dates: Wed, Feb 27th, 7:30 pm, Thu, Feb 28, 7:30 pm, and Fri, Feb 28th, 7:30 pm

Venue: 92YTribeca Screening Room
Location: 92YTribeca, 200 Hudson St

Price: from $12.00

- “Rocks In My Pockets” is Signe Baumane’s feature in-production.
She’s mid-way through a Kickstarter campaign, raising money to finish the film. She needs help.

This week she sent out a mass email saying:
“We have only a limited time left, and we would love for you to join our efforts.”

If you would like to be the first to see the film when it is done, please pledge $10
and get a password protected link to the film.

If you would like to have a hand made animation drawing from “Rocks”,
you can pledge $75 and the drawing along with the password protected link is yours!

A rare treat – animation cells from “Dentist” – is on the rewards list, too.
Who is making films on cells anymore? This is an historic gift.

You could also be part of our small team in other ways:
- ‘LIKE’ “Rocks In My Pockets” Facebook page?

- Promote the link to our Kickstarter campaign to your Facebook friends

We are excited to welcome you to our small “Rocks” family!

THANK YOU!
Signe

PS if you are curious how other people feel about this project, please check out
the video testimonials of 15 test audience members we compiled into 3 minute video.

As I wrote in the past, I’ve seen a rough cut of the film, and I love what I’ve seen so far. The combination of 3D backgrounds with textured 2D animation works excellently well and is an inspired decision. The best part about this film is that it’s about something. It’s not just funny for the sake of being funny. I wholeheartedly support what she’s doing and recommend strongly that you look into it and support it in any way that you can.

To prove how much I like Signe’s work so far, I’m in one of her videos. Me and Bill Plympton. We were born just days apart, Bill and I, and now were just minutes apart in this video telling you how great we both think Signe is. Actually, I was prepared for the worst, and I don’t think I did too badly. Shifty eyes, but otherwise OK. This week, I’ll give you the link. Next week I’ll put the video on my blog.
Here’s the link.
the link.
the link.

- The Perfect American is a Phillip Glass opera of the book by Peter Stephan Jungk which opened in Madrid this past week. It found its way to a review in the NYTimes by Zachary Woolfe. Many of Glass’ operas have been biographical sketches of some well known personality. This production doesn’t make it seem like there a Glass gem buried here. ‘s review includes many lines such as “a pleasure to listen to but dull as drama” which make one inclined to isten to the recording and skip the production which was, “Archetypal and specific, good and bad, Disney is, in other words, an ideal operatic character. But Mr. Jungk’s tight, strange novel has been transformed into a slack, mild pageant with an alluring soundtrack.”

“The opera is a score in search of a story. Dantine has gone from narrator to bit player; the tension between him and Disney, Old World and New, has vanished without being replaced by another drama. The book’s most ___ Time is running out for Walt Disney.
“striking set pieces . . . (Sounds like
some of the later animated features.)

“Dantine has sought out Disney’s family, friends, colleagues and acquaintances, from Salvador Dalí to Peter Ustinov, reconstructing a bizarre narrative of Disney’s illness and death.”

Let’s just say that even though I’m a fan of Phillip Glass’ work, I’m not going to rush to Europe to see this production (which is headed for London to open there.)

Mike Barrier has brought a lot of attention to the piece protecting the memory of Walt. Apparently the book includes a connection between Disney and Hitler just prior to WWII. It certainly never happened, but neither did a conversation between Disney and the audio-animatronic Lincoln that Disney built for the World’s Fair. There’s a lot of other fantasy in there, apparently, and I’ve come to expect such things of Mr. Glass in his operas.

By the way, no mention is made of Hitler in this review.

- In case you haven’t noticed it, John Kahrs, the director of Paperman – the Disney animated short which is among the five Oscar nominees this year – has a little piece published in today’s NYTimes.

They ask him for some of his likes and dislikes, (actually, it may only be his likes) and he shares them with us. This is one of those cute little pieces that money buys. Disney advertises so many dollars in the Times, and the Times pays off with so many pure puff pieces. It was my fortune to get some big time space back when Woman of the Year was on Broadway.The producer bought some ads, and my animation was as puff as they could go for the cover of the Weekend Section of the Times.

I somehow doubt that some of the poorer animators nominated this year, might get their likes or dislikes printed in the NY Times. Minkyu Lee and Timothy Reckart what favorite books are you reading these days?

- The lincoln Center Gallery is hosting an exhibit of drawings by Spanish animator, Diego Agudo Pinilla. His short animated film, , premiered last Friday and will be shown again on Monday Feb. 04 at 8:30pm. His film is part of a program called Dance on Camera, program 1.

The gallery is on 25 Central Park West at 62nd Street
Gallery Hours
Friday February 1- Monday February 4
1:00pm – 8:00pm
Tuesday February 5
1:00pm -6:00pm

Take a look; it’s rare for animation art to go on display at Lincoln Center and usually worth catching when it does.

- I admit it; I am getting older, and I have completely different thoughts on what animation is than most people half my age. I have no intention of apologizing for that, because that’s what I believe and cherish and enjoy.

This past week there was a program of animated work by George Griffin. He ran the show in achronological order starting with the most recent material and ending with the oldest. That show was animation. Everything in every frame (though there are no more frames) or bit of particle of George’s work and being is animation. He not only loves animation, but he is animation. It was a wonderful show to attend.

George enjoys showing the hardware and the techniques, the guts of the animated creature and the sprockets of the projector, if in fact there is a projector. His first “films” were bits and pieces live and animated. His very first piece was a filmic trick that Méliès and Blackton probably did in their first movies. George took the crumpled piece of paper in his hands and unfolded it to a crisp, new sheet of clean paper – he played the film backwards, of course, and with that, he started the show.

All of the films shown utilized such tricks and bits, punching and stabbing with animated games, study and punctuation. Even taking his film, Flying Fur, in which he originally took a great Scott Bradley score for an MGM cartoon and put his own visual accompaniment. Not leaving well enough alone he remade his own film with Flying Fur Fragments. This has George, himself, go into his basement and rummage through odds and ends and artwork from the original short and we see these pieces come to life in his hand with a reconstructed, rehashed version of the great Bradley score. Skips and hops, walks and chases are pulled from the original to accent the accents in the music . It’s just pure joy in early 21st Century seeing what feels like be bop animation to a wildly modern musical score written in 1944.

Speaking of be bop, George did just that when he animated a short homage to Charlie Parker in the film, Ko Ko. Taking a piece of music performed by ther great Parker in 1945, George visualizes every note and muscle of that great piece of music. The animator has found the heart of the music and given us all the fun in it with his very singular view of that score. This film’s a treat that can be watched over and over.

George shared a commercial he did in the style of Keith Haring, and though the animator apologized for the “bad animation” in the film, I didn’t see a bad bit in it. As a matter of fact I’ve seen about a half dozen Harings animated, and I can’t think of a better match for that graffiti artist than George and his own style.

The one film that was very representational was a film he did with his daughter, Nora. It’s a very sweet movie called A Little Routine. It’s a wonderful little piece that illustrates the daily routine with the father putting the daughter to bed. George uses lots of imagery in a semi-abstract way as something so simple as escorting his daughter from the bathroom to the bedroom involves trekking over countryside terrain bringing the little girl to the safe part of the woods where she will have no worries or fears. When she wakes in the night desperate for a glass of water, we hear daad shouting miles away that he’ll bring the water and we see him making that routine trip to the bedroom to protect his little girl. It all happens in a flash, of course, something that can be done so easily in animation. The film seemed to touch many in the audience that wanted the more representational world for the break of it, and they didn’t seem in any way disappointed when we were back to sterner stuff.

George Griffin understands animation; it’s in his lifeblood and he offers it to us an any way he can: flipbooks, mutoscope, dgital refilming of 16mm, movie files or purly digital sections. He feels that there is no need for the apparatus as long as we want to get out the animated bits.

The evening was an inspiration. Thank you, George.

- Some friends and past employee/friends have been busy writing and illustrating children’s books. I thought I’d show off three of them and write a few words about them. (If you can’t promote your friends’ work, who can you promote?)

Three long-time very close friends have joined together to do a children’s book. Maxine Fisher has written most of my scripts (including POE) and she and Tom Hachtman put together a book about a dachshund. Max loves her pet, of course, and has now immortalized her in this book. Tom did the illustrations and Max’s brother, Steve (who does all those brilliant Sunday photos for me) put the book together and they self published on Lulu. That means you can buy it directly from Lulu, and I think it’s worth it. They’re still looking into Amazon, so maybe soon.

But I thought I’d post a few of the pics from the book and let you see how great it turned out. Tom wrote that he was finishing the last illustration as his yard (and eentually house) was being flooded by Hurricane Sandy.

Go to Lulu to find out more about the book.

- Laura Bryson worked with me for years doing backgrounds for a number of the half hour shows (like The Red Shoes and The Marzipan Pig). Now she’s out freelancing and painting and has recently turned out her second children’s book which she co-authored and illustrated.

The book uses the Chinese Zodiac within the theme of the book offering Laura plenty of opportunity to paint nature and animals. The color palette is quite controlled as is the quiet story. The book can be found on Bestboypublishing.com.

Here are a few other samples from the book:

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Illustrations on every other page give plenty of opportunity
of using flat colors to set up the next page.

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And, of course, Laura who loves her horses
makes sure to include one to illustrate.

___________________________

- Finally, we have Stephen Maquignon. Steve’s illustrated many books since he left animation, and each one gets more sophisticated than the last. I asked him to send me some art from a couple of books he wanted to highlight, and he did. I’ve chosen the following pieces from both books.

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This second book, Why Am I Me? seems very clever. Steve wrote the following about the book:
When I read this one I could not see one main character in it, a big question, and
I thought it deserved many voices so each time the question why am i me pops up
I put in a different kid in a different situation.
Kind like the ride at Disney world “It’s a small world after all”

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Stephen has a number of sites on which you can see more of his artwork and order copies of his books if you’d like to:

This is a link to his bio page on amazon it shows all the books he illustrated.

likewise Barnes & Noble

This is his primary personal site as a Children’s Book Illustrator

- A stash of Disney animated features were on television this Sunday. Hercules, Lady and the Tramp, Alice in Wonderland, Aladdin, Cinderella, and The Lion King all followed each other immediately, one on top of the other. Actually some of them even overlapped each other. The credits for Hercules (miniscule and too tiny to read) played on the left half of the screen while the opening credits for Lady and the Tramp played on the right half of the screen. They were going to milk every ounce of Disney Family viewing they could for the money.

I was pretty sick on Sunday, the flu has struck our little home hard, and I’m not yet down for the count but feel pretty close. So I could see how much of this 2D mania I could stomach – flu and all. I didn’t come in to it until the very end of Hercules, which is probably the one film I would have liked seeing again, but virtually missed.

Some quick notes: It was nice to see Lady and the Tramp letterboxed for Cinemascope. The opening is still as tender as ever, and the Siamese cats are beautifully layed out for scope. The layout, backgrounds and animation – particularly the effects animation of the chase for Tramp in the dog pound wagon is exceptional. I think it’s probably one of the best sequences in the film. “Bella Notte,” of course, works well, but except for the sentimental emotion the sequence was never one of my favorites. There isn’t much for the dogs to do while the singing continues. They do pull a lot out of the spaghetti, but for much of it, the dogs just sit there, or in closer shots chew their food.

Alice seemed loud and aggressive though some of the coloring seemed inspired, and it’s amazing to see how much of Mary Blair is still in there in some parts – particularly the end of the caterpillar sequence. I found the Cheshire Cat a blessing in the wilderness. A lot is done with little subject matter, and it’s all in the excellent animation, of course. It’s obvious that Alice is a tough character to animate, but she’s done brilliantly. Essentially, she’s the “straight man” for everyone else in the film. She just sits there while the other characters bounce their schtick off of her. As I noted in a past post I am intrigued by the use of shadows in the transitional parts of the film. It works stunningly well , and this device virtually holds a lot of the film together in some odd quiet little way. I’d be curious to see more of this done with other films. You need a director with a big vision watching out for the film as a whole. I’m not crazy about a lot of the wild animation of the many zany characters that seem more cartoon to me than do they feel like Lewis Carrol creatures. There’s an interesting little scene where Alice sits down to cry in the woods. At first, she’s alone, then like Snow White in a similar situation feels sorry for herself and lets go. Little woodland creatures, deer and squirrels and rabbits and birds surround Snow White. Alice greets the odd little cartoon characters which feel as though they’d escaped from Clampett’s Porky in Wackyland. The woodland characters in Snow White serve the purpose of moving the heroine forward in the story to the dwarfs’ cottage. The zanies in Alice just disappear before she stops crying. Essentially, they’re pointless little creatures that offer nothing to the film. Fortunately the Cheshire Cat returns at this point. He fades in just as all the others have faded off.

Aladdin has always bothered me. It feels more like a Warner Bros film than a Disney feature. The wild animation and even the style of the animation gives me good reason to feel this way. However, I think I came to terms with that in watching it again (maybe my 12th time?) mixed in with these other movies. The film is what it is and does it well. Eric Goldberg’s genie is a classic combination with the Robin Williams voice over, and Eric gets full use of that voice and the business happening on screen. The material presented has dated some, though not as bad as I expected. How lone before kids don’t know who people like Ed Sullivan are? Though I suppose this is similar to the personalities left over from the celebrity cartoons of the 30′s & 40′s. Mother Goose Goes Hollywood needs a program of its own to tell us who half of those caricatures represent. And they are great pieces of art that Joe Grant did for them. The villain in Aladdin tries hard but he’s not menacing just threatening. There was never anything that I worried about with him, and this feeling goes back to my very first viewing of the film. I do like the tiger in the film, Jasminda’s pet. That cat makes up for the ineffectual father. His character is not anything I can really associate with.

Cinderella is a very interesting film. I go into it thinking I hate it and get completely tied up with the extraordinary pacing of the film. Every scene is so exact and tight. They really knew what they were doing. I’m not the biggest fan of the human animation, but at the same time I’m in awe of it. It isn’t really rotoscoping, but it’s so beautifully pulled off the live action they shot, that it feels completely fresh. The cartoon animals play off the humans as the dwarfs did in Snow White. They look as they they come from different films and the style of animation is so different. The set pieces are exquisite. That entire piece with Cinderella locked in her room, the animals fighting to release her all those stairs away and the final reveal of her own glass slipper. It’s so beautifully melodramatic and so perfectly executed. Yes, this is an odd film for me to watch.

I didn’t make it to The Lion King. I’ve seen that about half a dozen times in the last few months so preferred watching my soap opera – Downton Abbey.

Watching these films back to back to back like this sort of lessens them but at the same time one is overwhelmed by the amazing craftsmanship held so high for so long. For years I felt the modern films, Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast, Hercules were lesser efforts compared to what the “masters” did. But now I’m sure they’re every bit as good as some of the later classics. No, I don’t think Snow White, Pinocchio, Fantasia, Dumbo and Bambi can be beaten today, but the new films are definitely equal to Lady and the Tramp, Cinderella, Alice In Wonderland and anything later than that. (I actually think Sleeping Beauty is in a class of its own and haven’t seen the equal to that from the more recent people. Actually, I take that back. I think Prince of Egypt is right up there. That’s a magnificent film, and it’s one I’d like to discuss more in depth sometime soon.)

Oh, of course, this is all my own opinionated nonsense. Someone else would have a completely different list. I’m, obviously, leaving cg films out of this discussion. To be honest, I can’t even find a story there that I think measures up to most of the Disney classics. I’m also not thinking much about non-Disney works, but there’s an obvious reason for that. However, some of those Dreamworks 2D films are exceptional and deserve a lot of attention. Attention they haven’t received. Spirit has stunning animation, as do a number of others. They really need a bit of time.

I had some bigger thoughts brought on by watching them all, but I’ve gone on too long already. So I’ll let this rambling post fizzle out. Hope you don’t mind, but I’m getting to enjoy writing these diatribes.

Signe Baumane has started a Kickstarter campaign to try to complete her animated feature. Rocks in my Pockets. I saw this film at a small preview, and I can honestly say this is one of the best of the Independent films I’ve seen in production. The story is just great. It works on the surface and it works in several levels of depth. Visually it’s stunning using three dimensional backgrounds that are sculpted by Signe. She has a number of talented people working with her on the film, but this truly feels like a one person show, it’s so defined and original.

I heartily recommend that you not only look for the film when it’s finished but help it get there now by donating anything you can. This is one that deserves to be completed.

Take a look at the Kickstarter site.

I’ve always considered George Griffin the leader of the Independent movement in animation in New York. For good reason, his work dominated the local scene back in the seventies, and he gave us a clear vision of an original auteur at work with a very specific statement to make in all of his films. Since then, that vision has remained true through all of his films, although, of course, it has grown enormously, expanded to something even richer.

It isn’t often that we get to see a fuller presentation of George’s work, so I’m pleased to announce that there will be a program shown at the Anthlogy Film Archives on Thursday, Jan. 24 at 7:30 pm. The program will represent a mixed bag culled from his body of work. It will include recent films like “The Bather,” cartoons like “Flying Fur,” “Viewmaster,” and “Ko-Ko,” and the 1975 anti-cartoon “Head”. All of these films have been transferred to HD and will be shown in pristine condition.

The full program:
HEAD (1975, 10.5 min, 16mm)
VIEWMASTER (1976, 3.5 min, 16mm)
FLYING FUR (1981, 7 min, 16mm)
KO-KO (1988, 3 min, video)
NEW FANGLED (1990, 2 min, video)
A LITTLE ROUTINE (1994, 7 min, video)
IT PAINS ME TO SAY THIS (2006, 10 min, video)
MACDOWELL: A USER’S MANUAL (2007, 14 min, video)
THE BATHER (2008, 3 min, video)
YOU’RE OUTA HERE (2009, 3 min, video)
FLYING FUR FRAGMENTS (2012, 6.5 min, video)

Total running time: ca. 80 min.

Anthology Film Archives
32 Second Avenue
212-505-5181

I recently receoved a note from someone at the Simpals Animation Studio in the Republic of Moldova. the studio produces 3D animation and proudy wanted to show off their character, “Dji,” the figure of death. They’ve done a few shorts featuring this character and, after wrote a bit about the series they’ve done completely in-house. “Dji. Death fails” is their fourth short built around this character, and you can see the development on the screen. I found some warmth around the principal, though I must say it feels similar to some other films out of Europe . They have a fascination with “Death” and making fun of it appeals to them. I have to say, they’ve made the most of it.

Others of their films can be found at their YouTube page. I’d like to see some more of their 2D work. It looks interesting.

Here’s the most recent work finished in November, 2012.

Direct from Tom Hachtman to you.

Portrait of Jorz Strooly by Traci (age 6)
Color by Jorz Strooly

Due in April:
Oskar Fischinger (1900-1967): Experiments in Cinematic Abstraction.
Edited by Cindy Keefer and Jaap Guldemond.

Available April via Thames & Hudson.

This new Oskar Fischinger monograph explores the position of his work within the international avant-garde. It examines his animation and painting, his use of music, his experiences in Hollywood, and his influence on today’s filmmakers, artists and animators. The book also contains previously unpublished documents including texts by Fischinger himself.
The essays include:

Jean-Michel Bouhours, Oskar Fischinger and the European Artistic Context
Ilene Susan Fort, Oskar Fischinger, The Modernist Painter
Jeanpaul Goergen’s Timeline: Oskar Fischinger in Germany, 1900-1936
Paul Hertz, Fischinger Misconstrued: Visual Music does not equal Synesthesia
Joseph Hyde, Fischinger’s Scores: New Perspectives on his Approach to Music
Richard Brown, The Spirit Inside Each Object: John Cage and Oskar Fischinger
Cindy Keefer, Interview with Barbara Fischinger. The Lumigraph: Dancing with your Hands.
Cindy Keefer, Optical Expression: Oskar Fischinger, William Moritz and Visual Music.
James Tobias, Essay Without Words: Motion Painting no. 1, Insight, and The Ornament
Joerg Jewanski, The Visions of Oskar Fischinger and Alexander Laszlo in 1935/36
and more

plus texts by Fischinger, a new bibliography and filmography by CVM,
and testimonials by international artists, scholars, historians and authors
including David James, Giannalberto Bendazzi, John Canemaker, Suzanne Buchan,
yann beauvais, Joost Rekveld, Arthur & Corinne Cantrill, Scott Snibbe, and others.

240 pages, paperback. Extensive color illustrations.
Co-published by EYE Filmmuseum and Center for Visual Music.
ISBN 978-9071338007. Available April via Thames & Hudson.
Limited supply available earlier at Center for Visual Music.

- Over the years I’ve found that a number of animation personnel saved their copies of Top Cel, the u-nion newspaper. However, we’re not talking every copy of Top Cel, we’re focused on the Ed Smith years. Ed was the editor for a number of years, and his issues were filled with great graphics done by local members.

I have a complete collection from the late forties up to the final years. That collection has been in storage for the entire run of this Splog, or I would have been posting these sooner. However, there among the Vince Cafarelli collection was a couple of the Ed Smith years’ papers. Starting with July 1960 and running through May 1968, there are a lot of papers. I hope to post the graphics from these and wil pick out particular stories or images within to give an idea of what was happening in the business. I don’t want to post the entire thing, since many of the articles pertain specifically to u-nion business, and it seems pointless in its outdated nature.

We’ll start with the first 10 issues:

1
July 1960
Artwork by Mordi Gerstein

1a 1b
(Click any of these frames to enlarge to a more legible size.)

2
August 1960
This issue, like many others, has to be turned clockwise to properly read.
For the sake of these covers, I am turning the image 90° c/w
for you to read and will do this for all subsequent covers.
Artwork by Ed Friedman

2a 2b

2c

3
Sept 1960
This cover was also turned 90° c/w.
Artwork by Spipol (? I have difficulty reading the name ?)

3a 3b

3b CU
This cartoon, by Ed Smith, makes fun of the fact that the fashionably popular
HuckleberrynHound and Yogi Bear were being advertised as “Adult” cartoons.

3c

Within this larger issue, there were two pages of photos taken at
the Annecy Animation Festival to which a number of members went.
The left page is posted above, the right page is posted below.

3d 3e
Reports about the Festival by two members, Dick Rauh and Hal Silvermintz.

4
October 1960
The front cover of this issue.
Artwork by Karl Fischer

4a 4b

The back cover

5
Nov 1960
Artwork by Mordi Gerstein

5a 5b

6
Jan 1961
Artwork by Len Glasser

6a 6b

6c
This back page had the contacts of all contracted studios in NY.
I love that P.Kim & L.Gifford have
different contact info from Gifford-Kim.

7
February 1961
Turned 90° c/w.
Art by Edwin R. Smith J.R. (Ed’s son?)

7a 7b

7c

8
March 1961
Turned 90° c/w.
Art by Hal Silvermintz

8a 8b

8c

9
April 1961

9a 9b

9c

10
May 1961
I think the artwork is by Arnie Levin
Front cover

Back cover is an extension of the front.

Attached they look like this.

Inside is a 2-page promotion for the Hubley show at the
Beekman Theater. This was the premiere of their feature, Of Stars & Men.

This was the 2nd page of the promo.

There also must have been a middle page of text which is lost from this copy of the issue.

Attached the program looked like this.

This was my first viewing of the Hubley works. I had never seen a Hubley short
prior to this program. I was a Sophomore High School student at the time.
I went back a couple more times, and my world was changed forever.

To see some copies of Top Cel which were issued in 1945 and 1946, Richard O’Connor and his company’s blog Ace and Son has ostd quite a few of these issues. By going here, you’ll find 8 or 10 documents.

- I’m not sure if this is a complaint. It’s been tossing on my mind all week, and it’s good to get it out.

The Oscars!
I know, what now? you’re saying.

Well, there’s been a big change in the Oscar voting and it affects the animated short and who will become the winner. To understand the whole thing, let me give you a little history.

Back in the fifties – up to the very late fifties – the animated short (and, as it turns out, the live action short) were voted on by members who never saw the film. Say you work for WB in the costume department. The nominees for animated short are listed, and one is for Disney (naturally), one is for Terrytoons (20th Fox) and one is for WB. You haven’t seen the films, who do you vote for.

Naturally, you work for WB and WB has told you to vote for our own company.

So you vote for Knighty Knight Bugs.
Paul Bunyan and Sidney’s Family Tree lose your vote. Guess which one won?

Knighty Knight Bugs

The same thing happened the year before – 1957 when a WB, Tweety cartoon won over a Droopy, a UPA and a Disney.
1956 they were all UPA cartoons, so a UPA cartoon won (Mr. Magoo, naturally.)
1955 a WB Speedy Gonzalez short beat out Disney, MGM and a Walter Lantz (Tex Avery) short.

So in 1959 a bunch of animation Oscar members sought to change things. All they asked was that the people who voted on the short subjects have to SEE the short subject. And what do you know, they changed the rule. If you wanted to vote for animated and live action short subjects, you had to see and prove you saw the short films.

Suddenly, things changed.
The nominees included a WB short, Mexicali Shmoes (Speedy Gonzales), a Disney short, Noah’s Ark and
2 Independent shorts were nominated:
John & Faith Hubley, Moonbird and
Ernie Pintoff, The Violinist

Moonbird

This time the WB short did not win, the Independent film did. Moonbird won the Oscar for the 1959 animated short.

Let’s get back to NOW.

This year, they are showing the shorts – all of them – in a screening. We can go, see 5 animated and 5 live action shorts and vote for them.

Or there’s another choice.

They’re sending out DVDs to ALL OF THE MEMBERS. The person working in the costume department will get a DVD with your short on it. (S)he might watch that DVD and vote for the film (s)he thinks deserves it. OR she might not put the DVD in the machine and vote for the film she heard of.

What! There’s a Maggie Simpson short in there. Aha. I like the Simpsons. Give it to them.
Oh wait! There’s a Pixar short in there. They do good work. And I think I saw an ad they took out in Variety. I’ll give it to the “Arty” Pixar film.

Paperman

Hmmm.

So I expect the “Arty” Pixar film to win or else the TV cartoon – the Simpsons. They’ll win.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

- Jim Tyer never won an Oscar. Actually he was never nominated for one. Too bad. He was a man before his time. His art was in distortion of the character trying to get to the emotional center of that character. At the same time, his drawings made you smile. It’s unfortunate that most people didn’t get it. The people of the period within which he worked. Younger generations today stop frame Jim Tyer‘s work and study it. They want to do it, themselves. But it’s a vain attempt if they do try. His guy was a one-of-a-kind, and no one else could really do the same thing.

You can find in LA, at Bob Clampett‘s unit at WB, someone who tried for something similar. Rod Scribner was deeply affected by the comic strip work of George Lichty in his daily panel, “Grin and Bear It.” The distortion was too exciting for Scribner not to try pulling into his animation. He got permission from Clampett, and they did this wild style. It didn’t quite turn into the
abstractions of Tyer, but it did its own thing. Scribner followed the animation rules too closely to be able to get what Tyer did. Scribner knew that if you distort a character you have to keep the same mass in the body of the character, and he did just that. If the eyes got wildly large, the rest of the body diminished to make up for it. If an arm withered, something in the body took on that mass. It kept the 3D masses to remain true.

Tyer’s work was completely graphic. The body became an abstraction and the timing was wildly geared to Tyer’s own version of a “take” or “anticipation.” Even something like a “sneak” became a graphic excuse for his his own abstract movements.

Tyer gave up 3-dimensional drawing and allowed the line to take control. He gave the forces in the animation full strength, but allowed the rules of animation to stay in place. Essentially it’s not a new language just a new
dialect. A very thick one, but new – just the same. It’s to animation what Creole is to English. Of course, the saving grace is that it couldn’t be funnier. The other animators weren’t crazy about the work Tyer was doing, but they didn’t know how to stop him. They just assumed he had permission to speak Creole.

Many thanks to Kevin Langley who posted these images back in 2008.
He has the best frame grabs on the web, at least the most enjoyable.

There are many more frame grabs of the Jim Tyer material at Kevin’s site. Check out here, or here or keep browsing. It’s a treat of a site.

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