Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

In scouting around the internet, I came back to Thad Komorwoski ‘s great piece on Ace In The Hole. It was nice to see these drawings again, and it pushed me back to my own post on the film. I thought I’d bring some attention to that by reposting it, today.

- Like many others, reading the Roger Armstrong reminiscence on Mike Barrier‘s site really got me into the Walter Lantz mood.

I first went back to Mike’s book, The Hollywood Cartoon, and read what info he had about Lantz. After a bit of reading there, I went to look at some of the old Woody Woodpecker shows – I have that collection from Columbia House that came out years ago which includes about three half hour shows per DVD, 10 DVDs, and some beautiful prints.

Then I reread one of my all time favorite animation books, The Walter Lantz Story by Joe Adamson. This isn’t a terribly large book, but it sure is packed with a lot of first-rate information.

As an owner of my own animation company I get a real charge in reading about the ups and downs Lantz had to go through, financially, to keep his company afloat. In one chapter, Universal dropped him, and he rebuilt, financing a couple of films with the help of a few animators. Then he went back to Univeral and sold the films to them with a brand new deal. It took enormous entrepreneurial strength believing in what he did and going forward with everything on the line.

It’s a great book, and Joe Adamson should be proud of the effort. I also encourage you all to read it. (If only there were a similar book about Paul Terry.)

I got to meet Lantz a couple of times in his late years. One was at Grim Natwick’s 100th birthday. Too bad Walter didn’t sit for the group photo; it would’ve added something to the collected group of animation veterans.

The group photo with ID’s alongside this picture.
(Click to enlarge.) .

Another event in LA was the Walter Lantz Conference on Animation in which a number of speakers spoke and films were screened. Lantz was everywhere in those few days. It was great.

However, my most memorable meeting came thanks to John Canemaker. John had interviewed and met with Lantz several times during a group of meetings Walter and Gracie were having in New York in the 70s. There was, if I remember correctly, a special screening of their films at which they would talk. Since I was going there, John asked if I wanted to meet up with him and ride to the event with Walter and Gracie in their limousine. It was a treat to meet them one-on-one and to have a chance to share a few words. I have to say he was one of the most kind people I’ve run across, who gave me plenty of chance to talk. It was one of those standout moments in my life.

_____________________
.
- Back in the day, when I was just a teenager, there was very little in the way of media, as there is today. If you were desperate to become an animator, there weren’t many directions to turn. You had what was on the four or five tv channels that existed and there was the library.
.
TV offered the Walt Disney show, which two out of four Wednesdays (which eventually moved to Sundays) each month, they’d touch on “Fantasyland”, and you could watch some Disney cartoons – usually Donald and Chip &
Dale, or there was the Woody Woodpecker show, during which Walter Lantz would talk for four or five minutes about some aspect of animation.

For all those other hours of the day when you wanted animation you had to make do with what you could create for yourself.

At the age of 11, I took a part time job for a pharmacist delivering drugs to his clientele.
I lived off the tips that were offered, and I saved my money until I had enough to buy a used movie camera.

The trek into downtown Manhattan was a big one for an eleven year old child, but I loved it. I went by myself to Peerless camera store near Grand Central Station. (It later merged with Willoughby to become Peerless-Willoughby; then it went back to just being Willoughby.)

That store, I quickly learned had a large section devoted to films for the 8mm crowd. Lots of Laurel and Hardy, Our Gang and Woody Woodpecker cartoons. Once I had the camera, I saved for a cheap projector and eventually bought some 8mm cartoons.
.

.

Independence. Now, I didn’t have to wait to see them on TV, I could project them myself whenever I wanted. Even better, I jiggered the projector to maneuver the framing device which allowed me to see one frame of the film
at a time, so that I could advance the frames one at a time. I could study animation.

.

.
I know, I know. I’m describing the stone ages. Today all you have to do is get the DVD (which is incredibly cheap compared to the cost of those old 8mm films) and watch it one frame at a time or any other way you want. And every film is available. If you don’t have it just join Netflix and rent it. Your library is always open and growing.

Yes, Peerless had a large 8mm film division, so you could buy the latest Castle film edition of some Woody Woodpecker cartoon, or you could find many of Ub Iwerks’ films. I had a collection of these. Ub Iwerks was my guy. Everything I’d read about him (in the few books available) got me excited about animation. Actually, Jack and the Beanstalk and Sinbad the Sailor were the first films I’d bought and watch endlessly over and over frame by frame.

.

In short time, I knew every frame of Jack and the Beanstalk backwards and forwards. I didn’t realize that it was Grim Natwick who had animated (and directed the animation) on a good part of the film. Meeting Natwick years later, I think I surprised him by saying as much. He just moved on to another subject, appropriately enough.

.

.
In some very real way, I learned animation from that film and several others that I bought in those primitive years of my career. Before I knew principles of drawing, I’d been able to figure out principles of animation. I’d had the Preston Blair book, and I had the Tips on Animation from the Disneyland Corner. I just measured what they said about basic rules and watched – frame by frame – how these rules were executed by the Iwerks’ animators. The rest was up to me to figure out, and I was able to do that.

Eventually I bought a Woody Woodpecker cartoon. I was reluctant because so many of them were the very limited films done in the early 60′s – Ma and Pa Beary etc. It took a while to figure out that Ace in the Hole was a wartime movie and the animation would be a bit better. It was also the Woody that I liked – just a bit crazy. So I sprang for it and swallowed that film’s every frame for years.

I’m not sure who George Dane is, (he seems to have spent years at Lantz before working years at H&B and Filmation) but I studied and analyzed his animation on this film closely and carefully.

The work reminded me of some of the animation done for Columbia in the early 40′s. It had that same mushiness while at the same time not breaking any of the rules. Regardless, he knew what he was doing, and I had a lot to learn from him. And I did.

Things keep changing, media keeps growing. I’m glad I had to fight to get to see any of those old 8mm shorts back in the early years. When I bought my first vhs copy of a Disney feature, it took a while to grasp the fact that I could see every frame of it whenever I wanted. In bygone years, I could only see the rejects that TV didn’t want. I wanted to study Tytla and Thomas and Natwick and Kahl. Instead, I studied George Dane. And you know what, it was pretty damn OK. I learned enough that I knew a lot when I started in the business.

I just jumped in and was animating for John Hubley within days of getting that first job. (It helps that it was an open studio like Hubley’s where the individual artist could do anything, as long as he kept his head above water. In most studios there’s a rigidity that keeps you in your classified job.) In fact by then, I was more interested in Art Direction and Direction than I was in animation, but that’s another post.

If you want to learn from the masters, just pop in a DVD and watch it frame-by-frame. If you don’t get a charge out of it, you might begin to wonder if you’re really in the right business. After all these years, I still get the thrill, and I imagine I always will – even from watching Ace in the Hole AGAIN.

- This past week was a busy week for animation in New York.

It started on Monday with the AMPAS celebration of John Hubley‘s early work. It turned into quite an event with beautiful prints of many of the early UPA films which began with the military film, Flat Hatting and led to the brilliant masterwork, Rooty Toot Toot. Some commercials and a few of the early, brilliant films of the Faith & John collaboration, Adventures of an * and Tender Game. It was a sterling evening well attended by many of the key personae in New York’s animation scene.

On the following night, ASIFA East held a retrospective of the work of the late and great Independent animator, Karen Aqua. I was unable to attend this screening but was certainly down about it. Fortunately, there were two key reports describing the show: Linda Beck, the new President of ASIFA East, described the event on the organization’s blog, and Richard O’Connor of Ace and Son gave a good accounting on his blog.

- Last night, Bill Plympton hosted a show at the Friar’s Club which featured the NY premiere of the new documentary by Alexia Anastasio, “Adventures in Plymptoons”, about him and his work.

Tonight at 7pm, at the Film Society of Lincoln Center Bill will doing a book signing of his “. . . big Rizzoli book, “Independently Animated: Bill Plympton”‘ He’ll be showing artwork from it and signing books and he’ll also be showing some of his new short films, plus a clip from Alexia Anastasio’s doc “Adventures in Plymptoons!”. All for free.

_____________________
.BROOKLYN FILM FESTIVAL‘S kidsfilmfest will be screening films from their archives

WHEN: this Saturday, October 15th, from 10am-4pm.
WHERE: The Big Screen Plaza: 29th St between 6th and 7th Avenues in New York
WHO?: Kids of all ages!
WHAT: A selection of kid-friendly films, with in-plaza activities like face painting, balloon artists, popcorn, & more!

Join them for live action and animated films, food, face painters and more! Films are rated “G” for all ages.

The event is free of charge and open to the public.
_________________

It should also be noted that the films of J.J. Sedelmaier will premiere at Big Screen Plaza on Tuesday, Oct 18th, 7pm. It’s free, outdoors and the atmosphere will be party time.

Some of the works to be screened include:
__ Saturday Night Live’s “Conspiracy Theory Rock”
__ Saturday Night Live’s “Titey”
__ The Daily Show’s “Midterm Elections”
__ Ambiguously Gay Duo: “Safety Tips”
__ Ambiguously Gay Duo: “Ace and Gary’s Fan Club”
__ Ambiguously Gay Duo: “Blow Hot, Blow”
and many others

_____________________
.

- Didier Ghez has been editing a library’s worth of books featuring interviews with animation professionals. For the most part these are the raw materials historians have worked with in writing their histories. Just now in release is volume 11 of his series, Walt’s People. There are interviews included in this edition with:

John Culhane: I. Klein_________________C. Finch & L. Rosenkrantz: Eric Larson
John Culhane: John Hubley____________Robin Allan: Jules Engel
Darrell Van Citters: Ed Love____________Darrell Van Citters: Mike Lah
JB Kaufman: Frank Thomas____________John Culhane: John Hench
John Canemaker: Ward Kimball________Dave Smith: Ward Kimball
David Tietyen: George Bruns___________John Canemaker: Dale Oliver
John Canemaker: Iwao Takamoto______John Canemaker: Richard Williams
John Culhane: Daniel MacManus________John Canemaker: Glen Keane
Didier Ghez: Joe Hale__________________Jérémie Noyer: Mark Henn
Didier Ghez: Ed Catmull

_________and many others.

The introduction to this edition is by John Canemaker.

You’ll find the book Walt’s People – Vol. 11 at Amazon or Xlibris

_____________________.

.

- Sherm Cohen, on his blog, Cartoon Snap has posted a “How To Draw Cartoons” book by Bill Nolan. It originally came from the ASIFA Hollywood Animation Archives, but since all their links are broken, the re-post is welcome.

Bill Nolan, of course, was one of the premiere animators in the early days of animation. He claimed to have invented the cycle in animation. He worked for many studios doing Felix the Cat as well as Krazy Kat. He was one of the forces behind the Oswald the Rabbit series, working for Walter Lantz.

_____________________
.

.

In celebration of Pixar’s 25th Anniversary, The New York Times is now taking questions for John Lasseter. In the next week or so Lasseter will answer questions left for him on the Times’ Artbeat blog. So if you want to ask Mr. Lasseter why there aren’t more 2D animated films coming out of Disney or what effect the death of Steve Jobs will have on Pixar’s work or why Cars 2 was such a dud, check in to the Times and leave your question.

_____________________
.

.
- The National Gallery of Portraiture is featuring a show of art about Gertrude Stein. Called Seeing Gertrude Stein: Five Stories, the show features the work of over 100 artists. Tom Hachtman, whose comic strip, Gertrude and Alice. has been an obsession of mine, is one of those artists who contributed to this show. So if you’re in D.C. look for an original piece of art by Tom. (Tomorrow, I’ll post a video of a short short I did of one of Tom’s strips.)

Go here to see one of Tom’s contributions to the exhibit.

The show just opened on Friday and runs through Jan. 22, 2012.

– The AMPAS program celebrating the early work of John Hubley went off wonderfully on Monday evening. The show started at 7pm, but prior to it there was a cocktail party for about 50 people. I have no idea who was invited to this, but it seemed to be Academy members who might have know the Hubleys as well as friends of the Hubley family. All four of the Hubley children were there including: Emily, her husband, Will Rosenthal, and their son, Max; Georgia and husband, Ira Kaplan (both part of the group Yo Lo Tengo); Ray Hubley, and Mark Hubley.

Also there, were Tissa David, Ed Smith, Candy Kugel, George Griffin, Vinnie Cafarelli, Lee Corey, Ruth Mane, John Canemaker (of course) with Joe Kennedy and others I probably have forgotten. Patrick Harrison and John Fahr ran and hosted the event for the Academy.

At the program I saw: Ray Kosarin, Linda Beck, Stephen MacQuignon, Richard O’Connor, Bill Plympton, and a hundred others that I recognized. The house was full.

As we entered the theater, prior to the start of the show, the soundtrack to Finian’s Rainbow was playing. Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong, Ella Logan and Barry Fitzgerald.

The actual program began as all Academy events do, exactly on time. Patrick Harrison spoke for two minutes promising that next month the event would be a retrospective of the work of Saul Bass done in conjunction with MOMA. He then introduced John Canemaker, and we were off and running.

John started with a PowerPoint presentation that showed the child, John Hubley, his surly uncle who became the model for Mr. Magoo; we saw some childhood drawings as well as a number of strong influences including classmate, Alvin Lustig, who designed the UPA logo. These were followed by some of the artwork Hubley did for Disney, which included a lot of Layouts and preliminary Background sketches. We saw art done during the War as well as preliminary art for many of the UPA films. John Canemaker featured a lot of Hubley in-house cartoon drawings peppered throughout the presentation.

This talk ultimately led to screening the movies.

Unfortunately, it started with the only 16mm print, a soft-focus soft color print of Brotherhood of Man. Somewhere a good print of this film exists, and I don’t know when it’ll be found – hopefully in my lifetime. It’s such an enormously powerful film, designed in a style which was borrowed from Saul Steinberg‘s work at the time.

Flat Hatting followed with a beautiful 35mm print. This is a brilliantly directed film showing how much good can be done with limited animation. It never felt limited, nor does it feel like an educational film for pilots. It’s very entertaining and drew a lot of laughs. Hubley had spent years directing mediocre films under Frank Tashlin at Columbia and a number of films for the military. This film shows how much he had learned as a director in such a short time.

The Magic Fluke is probably the best of the Fox and Crow series. This film has a great sense of design featuring that famous background by Jules Engel of the concert hall. I’m not sure Hubley was best cast as the director of a lightning quick comedy cartoon, but, for the most part, it works well. The print, again, was sterling.

Following this was a beautiful print of Ragtime Bear, the first Magoo cartoon. I hadn’t remembered how fluid the animation was; there was some beautiful distortion on Magoo later in the film. My guess is that it was a Pat Mathews scene. The film offers all of Magoo’s traits, but the character design is far away from what Pete Burness ended up directing.

The cr̬me de la creme of the evening: Rooty Toot Toot followed. What a beautiful, big 35mm print. What a stunner of a scene Рthat great Grim Natwick animation of Nelly Bly Рall blue Рcorkscrewing her hands and arms in the witness chair. Beautiful and funny. This is certainly one of the great films ever created.

An image photographed off the screen .

There were a stash of commercials – both West and East coast – from the original Storyboard Prods. I own prints of all screened except for my favorite: a spot for Mennen aftershave. A rectangle of wrinkles around a pair of eyes. Mennen helps the lines smooth out, and the commercial uses abstraction for a very funny commercial. It was the first time I’d seen this commercial. They certainly were creative back then. Hubley repeated the use of abstraction in a number of other, later spots. I’m thinking particularly of one done in the early 70s for AT&T; Tissa David animated.

Beautiful reconstructed prints from MOMA included Adventures of an * and Tender Game. One was more beautiful than the other. Both are great films.

Voyage to Next was represented with a beautiful print, though I have to say, I never really liked this film. I had a lot to do with the making of it, and it really was a challenge and a great learning experience. About a third of the way through the production money ran out, and we had a film to get out with a small but great staff. There was a lot of stylistic improvisation done to try tokeep on a vbery tight budget, while being artful. It was a tough time for the Hubleys, and they stayed true to the film at hand.

Finally, the evening ended with a beautiful animatic called Facade. These were storyboards filmed (with slates) for a William Walton and Edith Sitwell score. John Canemaker actually located and got the rights to a version with Edith Sitwell, herself, actually doing the narration. Miraculously, it all seemed well in sync. This piece was done in 1964 as a sample for PBS., though the film was never completed. A real find for Canemaker straight from the Hubley collection. A film not seen by the public (and it hasn’t made its way into animation history books, either.)

All in all the show was so invigorating that the Academy had a hard time getting rid of us. People stayed and chatted in the lobby. It was a great event.

John and Joe, Heidi and I went out for dinner so we could chat about the program. I had a blast all night; it was one of the finest animation events I’d attended in many years.

Here are pictures I took during the evening.

The Program
.
1

2 3

The cocktail party

1
LtoR: John Canemaker, Georgia Hubley, Emily Hubley, Will Rosenthal

2
LtoR: unknown, Patrick Harrison, Georgia Hubley, John Canemaker,
unknown in rear, Emily Hubley, Will Rosenthal

3
LtoR: me, John Canemaker, Patrick Harrison

4
LtoR: Emily Hubley, George Griffin, Vinnie Cafarelli,
Candy Kugel, John Canemaker

5
LtoR: Mark Hubley, Candy Kugel, Vinnie Cafarelli

6
LtoR: Ed Smith, Vinnie Cafarelli

7
LtoR: Vinnie Cafarelli, Tissa David, Lee Corey, Ed Smith

8
LtoR: Vinnie Cafarelli, Ruth Mane, Tissa David
Lee Corey (partially hidden), Ed Smith

9
at table LtoR: Ed Smith, Heidi Stallings, Vinnie Cafarelli,
Ruth Manne, Tissa David
in rear, standing with winde glass: George Griffin w/Jeff Scher and wife, Bonnie.

10
The three Hubley Oscars for (LtoR): Moonbird,
The Hole, The Tijuana Brass Double Feature.

11
Audience front row (RtoL):
John Canemaker, Joe Kennedy, my empty seat,
Heidi Stallings, Tissa David, Ruth Mane
2nd Row, over empty seat: Stephen MacQuignon
3rd row (RtoL): Ed Smith, Richard O’Connor

12
LtoR:Tissa David, Heidi Stallings, Joe Kennedy, John Canemaker

13
Patrick Harrison giving thanks and introducing John Canemaker.

14
John Canemaker giving PowerPoint presentation
.
The following images were photograped during the PowerPoint
presentation or during the films. Consequently, they often soft focus.
With apologies.
.
15
A very young John Hubley

16
An early John Hubley painting

17
A gag cartoon from Hubley. Self portrait in straight-jacket.

18
Rooty Toot Toot

Images from Facade follow:

1
The animatic was done in 1964.

2
Stylistically it feels like:
Moonbird, The Hole and The Hat crushed into one.

3
Beautiful B&W oil paintings

4
Very much like Moonbird

5
The Hat for this animated duck-like character

6

Toward the end of the film there was one extremely long vertical pan.
It was an oil painting done by John, beautiful in its simplicity, perfectly
planned to fill a good 45 secs to a minute of screen time and yet it
was so compositionally correct and glosiously layed out.

All I can say is that I am so pleased to have had the opportunity to have
worked with John & Faith Hubley; it was all that it could have been and more.
One of the high spots of my life.

- I enjoy reviewing and assessing the past week on these Saturday blog posts. It gives me a chance to reflect on what had happened in the recent past and spilling my thoughts out here.

In the last week, I purposefully put John Hubley front and foremost on my blog’s mind. With the upcoming AMPAS show on Monday, I found a good excuse to pull together a lot of the past pieces I’d done on Hubley’s work and drawing. He was one of the foremost fine artists of animation’s past, and it seems to me his name, like many others of the period, are falling into the historic dumpster of time. His accomplishments were many that helped shape who and what we and animation are today. Yet, it feels as though we’ve stepped back into the mid-thirties with the computerized-accomplishments of cgi.
Animation HAS taken an enormous step backward, yet it keeps the future-seeking part of the business in the line of vision.

By that I mean that cgi has forced a concentration of life-like looking little puppet characters that appear superficially “real.” It’s nothing more than a cartoon version of 19th century illustration. Gone are
John Hubley all the strides that 2D animation had made

are left to the 2nd rate TV animation or the small-time boutique filmmakers. Any progress that graphic stylization and animation graphic motion has developed over the years has been put out to pasture in the business model of 2011 and sent to the low-budget creators. This, to me, is probably a sure sign that animation will wither, at least for a while, except in the hands of the creative entrepreneurs and feisty animators.

John Kricfalusi has this week shown off a nice graphic piece of animation he did for Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim. He’s successfully experimented with movement and has fallen back on his usual sense of graphic design. The piece is a real contribution to the language of animation (perhaps equal to a new punctuation mark), but we have to take note that this is relegated to a bumper for a lot of terrible TV animation designed for 16 year old boys. It’s wasted there. In a way, more successful was his guest animation for the __________John Kricfalusi
opening titles of The Simpsons. Actually,
this animation in its content and stylization (both graphic and animated) were more daring. It brought back memories of the coarse and graphic animation done by Klasky-Csupo for the first incarnations of The Simpsons. One wonders whether the show would have been as successful if they had continued doing what they’d done in those first pieces and episodes of Matt Groening’s work.

But back to John Hubley. He has to have been the finest artist and the best draw-er I’ve met in animation. His loose scribbles revealed worlds beneath them and his oil paintings burst with imagination and lively colors. Nothing was unintentional although it all worked in an improvisational way. Like the ad-libbed voices, Hubley liked seeing his artists improvise their way out of scenes. He called on the creativity of the lowliest employee to create those wonderful films. For those who didn’t want every 16th frame drawn out and planned for them, Hubley’s method was liberating and challenging and wonderful. Animators like Tissa David and Bill Littlejohn and Barrie Nelson thrived on the way they were handed whole films and pushed to create. Films like Windy Day or Cockaboody or Of Stars and Men glowed off this improvisation, and whole new bits of language sprouted from these works.

Animators: Bill Littlejohn, Tissa David, and Barrie Nelson

Those who worked for Hubley felt as though they were creating something important, films that had something to say and looked beautiful. Needless to say, they (we) loved the experience. Isn’t that all we could hope for in this business?

_______________________
.

- Talking about extreme design, John Schnall has to be one of the most entertaining guys out there. He continually comes up with funny and artful pieces which he puts on his website. His most recent piece is an interactive keyboard called The Interactive Crappy Piano. I suggest you try playing it and see where it gets you.

_______________________

Phillip Burke’s QUICKDRAW

.
- J.J. Sedelmaier has an entertaining piece on the Imprint site about the first elements used to showcase the sale of Hanna-Barbera and the rise of Cartoon Network. You’ll be entertained by the beautiful cards on display. (Especially if you have a fondness for the early HB years.)

- Two shows are about to take place; one in New York (Monday October 10th An Academy Salute to John Hubley), another in Los Angeles (Thursday October 20th, Mary Blair’s World of Color; A Centennial Tribute). I wish I could attend bothh of them; I’m happy to be in NY to attend the John Hubley program (and be a small part of it.)

Interesting that these two shows appear in the same month at two different AMPAS stations. Yet, the two artists couldn’t be more diametrically opposed in their work. One was more of an illustrator, albeit a brilliant illustrator, and the other was more a fine artist.

.
Everything about Blair’s work, from The Little Golden Books to the designs for the Disney features of the early 50′s to the overall design for It’s a Small World in Disneyland, are all glorious testaments to a first rate, gifted illustrator of the highest caliber. She radically changed her style on the trip to South America with the Disney group, and she brought these brilliant color mixes back with her to the work she did at Disney. The colors were almost there for the sake of the colors, alone. The work developed and grew more sophisticated with all that she did, and her color schemes became more radical as she designed for the Disney features.
.

.
The grand statement of the art . . . well, there was no grand statement. It was done to further the films or the projects, and had no message. It was beautiful production art, but it was not really “Art.”
.

.
Hubley’s work sought to create art, and the style and growth continued upward through his years. The work at Disney’s studio started as gifted illustration (Snow White), then turned to a looser feel with oils (Pinocchio) and watercolor (Bambi). As he moved to UPA, the art followed Steinberg and Picasso closer to the world of abstraction. Ultimately, with Adventures of an * and films that followed (done by and for himself and his wife Faith) the Abstract Expressionists ruled, and Hubley’s art went far into that direction and stayed there through most of his films.
.
Tender Game, which followed Adventures of, was a variation that seemed to emulate some of the work of Baziotes. Moonbird was where Hubley came into his own and created a very rich style that was all his own. Variations on it came with The Hat, The Hole and Of Stars and Men. A new direction came with Windy Day. By the time we reached Cockaboody, a softness settled into that very same style and watercolor backgrounds dominated. There was throughout all this work a beautiful development where one phase grew out of another which had grown out of another.
.
And there was a grand statement: all art, abstract or realistic was an abstraction and it touched all of our lives regardless of our thoughts about it. Picasso could be dismissed by those not in the know, but eventually the masses would warm up to him and eventually take it for granted that this, too, was Art. Hubley helped make that world – this world – so. Acceptance and understanding was part of his oeuvre.
.
One wonders if Hubley had remained at Disney’s as long as Blair had whether any of his rich design style would have controlled the films as her work had. Of course, the answer is obvious. He never would have been able to remain at Disney’s studio. His penchant for the further development of the art – out of the 19th century illustration – would not have allowed him to sit still there. By leaving, he not only pushed his own work into a higher realm, but he pulled animation there with him.
.

.
In a sense, without his work, animation would still be stuck in the 19th Century graphics and would not have moved into the 21st Century. We can see evidence of this with all the cgi features being done today. Those little fabricated computerized puppets are wholly stuck in 19th Century art, yet 2D has moved on. We accept “Beavis & Butthead” or “Aqua Teen Hunger Force” (both badly drawn works that are most definitely 21st century graphics) because Hubley changed things. Not that John Hubley was the only one who wanted to do more, graphically, in animation, but others seem content with modernized cartooning. Chuck Jones, for example, who led the way in 1941 settled into a stylized cartooning in the 1950s. Hubley sought art – something different and deeper than was acceptable to others.
Picasso led to acceptance of Andy Warhol and Robert Rauschenberg; Hubley led to acceptance of “South Park” and Yurij Norshtein.
.
Pictures:
1. Mary Blair – personal painting
2. Mary Blair – Alice In Wonderland
3. John Hubley – Bambi
4. John Hubley – Brotherhood of Man
5. John Hubley – Everbody Rides the Carousel
6. John Hubley – Moonbird

I found this tiny piece of information in the current edition of “Kidscreen” (Sept 2011):

The science of animating emotions like elation, anger and
jealousy just got a little more exact. Disney has teamed up
with Carnegie Mellon University to develop a process for
animating the most expressive faces yet.

Using motion-capture footage that pinpoints and subdivides
key facial regions to build a full 3D model, it’s now possible to
alter just one part of an expression—say, a raised eyebrow—
instead of having to manipulate the whole face.

Duh!
Isn’t this something that 2D animation has been doing since “Steamboat Willie”? At least! Now that I think of it, there’s a scene in “Plane Crazy” that does it. It probably goes back to J.R. Bray . . . on second thought, I take that back. Bray’s films were more limited than H&B. But then, you could always raise an eyebrow in limited animation, couldn’t you. What a pathetic conversation. What happened to “animation”?

If you want to see a good example of different parts of the face moving on their own, and done to the point of brilliance, try watching this pencil test of a scene by Milt Kahl of Sher Khan. A great piece of acting, artistry, and technique combining to make something one has to watch several times just to get past the sheer power of the animation. The above illustration comes from a PT posted on Vimeo by Jamaal Bradley.
_______
As a matter of fact, you could watch any Milt Kahl scene, or Frank Thomas scene or Tissa David scene or Ed Smith scene or . . .
just watch any professional scene done in 2D animation.

___________________

- J.J. Sedelmaier has another fine article on the Imprint blog. It’s the start-to-finish breakdown of a spot designed by New Yorker cartoonist, George Booth.
___________________
_______
.

- As I wrote earlier this week, the Motion Picture Academy will present a program of Hubley films on Monday, October 10th. John Canemaker, together with Emily Hubley, has arranged an incredible show with beautiful prints. It’s also not the usual Hubley fare, with its focus on the early John Hubley, and there will be lots of surprises.

The photo, above, was in the invitation sent to me (no doubt from John Canemaker’s collection), and the information below, comes from the AMPAS magazine:

MONDAY NIGHTS WITH OSCAR PRESENTS
AN ACADEMY SALUTE TO JOHN HUBLEY

Hosted by Academy Award-winning animator John Canemaker (“The Moon and the Son: An Imagined Conversation”). Co-curated by filmmaker Emily Hubley.
.The Academy celebrates one of animation’s most innovative and influential designer-directors, John Hubley, with a special evening featuring rarely seen films and an illustrated look at his life and his art.
.
Hubley (1914-1977) is known primarily for two decades of film collaborations with his wife, Faith Elliott Hubley. The couple, who opened their studio in 1955, focused their animated films on such serious subject matter as the death and rebirth of the creative process, children’s awareness of their place in the world, the Cold War, overpopulation and nuclear annihilation. The resulting innovative work garnered many awards, including three Oscars (for “Moonbird,” “The Hole” and “Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass Double Feature”).
.
Their impressive body of work was, however, a second blossoming of the career and life of John Hubley, who had already personified new directions in animation and a rebellion against traditional Disney studio style and content.
.
During this evening celebrating Hubley’s profound and continuing impact on the art and industry of animation, Canemaker will trace Hubley’s early training and contemporary art influences, his art direction on “Pinocchio” and “Fantasia,” his involvement with the infamous 1941 strike at the Disney studio, and his innovative designs and direction in World War II training films and at the great modernist studio UPA. Canemaker will be joined onstage by one of Hubley’s daughters, Emily Hubley, and Michael Sporn, who worked closely with both John and Faith.
.
Films that will be shown have been generously provided by the Hubley family, the Museum of Modern Art, Sony Pictures and the Academy Film Archive.___________________.

Monday, October 10 7 p.m.
Academy Theater at Lighthouse International
111 East 59th Street (between Park and Lexington Avenues), New York City
.
Tickets:
$5 general admission/ $3 Academy members and students with a valid ID.
On sale now at oscars.org, by mail (form available on oscars.org) and at the door (subject to availability).
Box Office opens at 5 p.m. on night of the event. Doors open at 6:30 p.m.
.
For more information, call (212)821-9251 or e-mail ampasny@oscars.org.

________________
.
.
- James Gurney on his blog, painter and author/illustrator of the Dinotopia books, got his start doing backgrounds on Bakshi’s Fire and Ice with Thomas Kinkade. He’s doing a whole series of posts on it on his blog, Gurney Journey. It’s well worth your visiting his site.

Part 4 with links to other parts.

Many thanks to Pat Rock for leading us to the link.

___________________
.

.
- Thanks to Greg Kelly for passing this link onto us. It’s for an issue of China’s Modern Sketch magazine. It’s published by MIT’s Visualizing Cultures, a unique website.

Essentially, this magazine is a Chinese edition of cartoons and cartoon art from 1934-1937.

As written in the post: “Published in Shanghai monthly from January 1934 to June 1937, Modern Sketch conveyed a range of political and social commentary through lively and sophisticated graphics. Topics included eroticized women, foreign aggression —particularly the rise of fascism in Europe and militarized Japan, domestic politics and exploitation, and modernity-at-large as envisioned through both the cosmopolitan “Modern Girl/Modern Boy” and the modernist grotesque.”

Much of this work is beautiful and worth spending some time poring over.

____________________
__
__

- William Benzon, on his site New Savannah, has more to say about Fantasia. The current piece is about Bill Tytla’s Chernobog in the Night On Bald Mountain segment. Beautiful images and a good read. Bill wrote me about it:
“Now I¹ve gone and done it. On the strength of Tytla¹s work I¹ve compared this segment to Milton and Shakespeare. However, since my literary critic¹s license has already been revoked (actully, I tore it up myself), they can¹t take it away from me again.”

___________________
.

The photoshopped ad.

The original ad.

- Finally, here’s an ad that was posted on Boing Boing this week. Who knows when it was published or how Cory Doctorow discovered it, but it sure speaks to the power of language and how whimsically time deals with it.

That’s what my original post read. However, David Gerstein, in the comic section of this post, directed me to the actual ad before the photoshopped version of it appeared on Boing Boing. Nothing’s really what it seems on the internet.

- The Ottawa Animation Festival has been ongoing for the past couple of days. We have a film in the program and would have really enjoyed being part of it. However, funds are tight, and I had to pass on it this year. It’s something I’m a bit sad about, but whatcha gonna do!

Richard O’Connor at his studio blog Ace and Son, is giving a daily diary of the Festival.
Here’s day 1, day 2, you can scroll up from there for the rest.

______________________ .
- Cartoon Brew featured a couple of videos this week that really had me thinking. Using some kind of computer animation, a couple of people replaced their faces (partially) with some celebrity parts. It was especially freaky to see some of the results. Surprisingly two of them went for a couple of the same celebrated faces: Castro, Paris Hilton, Mao, Brad Pitt et. al. The first video is more interesting than the second. The third vid shows moving facial expressions on various cartoon masks.
.
This all makes me glad that I’m in the twilight of my career. I think animation will incorporate all this motion capture stuff and will mutate into some kind of sad computation. I don’t see this stuff as animation but as Effx, and I think the industry has just gone off the tracks and walked away from any kind of real animation.
.
One commenter suggested that the early Disney stuff will someday look like garbage in comparison to what’s being done. Considering how many young people attack Snow White today, I’d have to say I agree with whoever wrote that. It’s inevitable that the people growing up with this computer nonsense will want more of that. No one will have to draw Daffy Duck in the future; just get some second rate actor to rant and put it into Daffy’s 0101010101 algorithm, and no one will ever have to draw animation again.
.
Given all the recent reading I’ve been doing about the silent Disney films, or Shamus Culhane’s bio or early Russian animation, I’ve been even more inspired to draw these days. I can imagine how frustrated I’d be with cgi if that’s what I did for a living. Given what I do work on it takes even more imagination to say I’m doing it for a living.

______________________
.

.
- Bill Benzon is back to his analyzation of Disney’s Fantasia as he comments in depth on the Ave Maria segment of the film. This is on his blog, The New Savannah. If you haven’t read his other pieces on Fantasia, you should check out the past posts. ______________________
.

.
- Sergio Aragones, Jack Davis, Paul Coker Jr., Al Jaffee and other MAD Magazine artists will gather in a weekend long celebraion of their work at MAD. The upcoming event of the National Cartoonist’s Society event in Savannah Georgia will have special rates for members at the Courtyard Savannah Marriott Hotel.

Rooms start at $119 and are available from 11-10-2011 through 11-14-2011.
You must reserve by 10-27-2011 to take advantage of this special rate.

______________________

.

Opening title pan down- Moonbird

- In 1964, John and Faith Hubley‘s film, Of Stars and Men opened at the Beekman Theater in Manhattan. This was their first feature; it was accompanied by a number of their short films. I was in High School, and this is the first time I saw any of the Hubley films, and my life had changed at that screening.

The flat colors of the Disney and Warner Bros cartoons were suddenly replaced with textures. It wasn’t only the backgrounds that had a texture; it was the characters as well. I’d already taught myself quite a bit about animation, but this was something new for me. I sat with saucer eyes watching every element and filmic device John Hubley came up with in creating these flms.

It was so clear that Hubley was using a system of double exposures, doubling the characters in at an exposure of about 60% so that the white paper would be somewhat translucent over the dark backgrounds. The rough pencil lines of the animators clearly delineated the characters in this technique, though they picked up some of color of the Bgs. Obviously, the white paper of the character had been painted black – up to the animator’s lines so that the extraneous parts of the paper was matted out. What a brilliant idea!
I explain this process in depth in this post from the past.
.
This enabled us, the audience, to see the rough lines of the animators and brought the same life the Xerox line had brought to 101 Dalmatians. It was thrilling for me.

The sing-song muttering of a child introduces us to “Hampy”.

The rough lines of animator, Bobe Cannon, are a treat on the screen.

Glorious textures!

Every oil painting background beautiful, alive and modern.

The other amazing thing was that the films used real dialogue.
It didn’t sound like a script. It was obviously, somehow, improvised.

It took me a while to learn how this was done
and what a wonderful way they had of doing it.

Moonbird was different from the other shorts of that period.

Its soundtrack was completely improvised by the
two boys of the Hubleys, Mark and Ray.

. . . but it also used NO music track.
This is very different for the Hubley films that had
such a devotion to the use of jazz on the soundtrack.

The film not only looked different for the time, 1959,
but it sounded different.

This film had clearly been the results of years of experimentation.
After all those brilliant UPA shorts, particularly Rooty Toot Toot.
The original Hubley produced shorts took a new, brilliant turn.

Adventures of an * moved animation forward
in its pursuit of 20th Century Art.

Picasso and Steinberg had been mimicked in the UPA films.
With Adventures of an * the Abstract Expressionists
came under the magnifying glass as John Hubley used
the New York school as his inspiration.

With Tender Game they moved that style into a more emotional
character animation, and by the time they did Moonbird, they
had settled into a very rich style that animation hadn’t noticed.

Two of animation’s finest animators delivered
the brilliant lyricism in this film.

Bobe Cannon, for years, had delivered great animation.
His work with Chuck Jones had produced new and rich
experimental heights particularly in the 1942 short, The Dover Boys.
Hubley had stated that this film was an inspiration
in the move to 20th Century graphics in animation.

Cannon’s work with UPA, both directing and animating,
brought a new sense of poetry to the medium that finally
plays out in this film, Moonbird.

The young Ed Smith rose to great heights
while working for Hubley. His work on Tender Game
showed a natural warmth that spills over in this film.

Animation, double exposures, oil painted Bgs,
improvised voices, no music all pushed this film
to the forefront of animation at the time.

Despite the looseness of the style, it all blends
together as if it had been done by the one artist.

I love the soft airbrushed look Hubley was able
to pull off with much of this double-exposed artwork.

And yet the characters always remain front and center.
A tribute to the two animators and the directoral staging.

This delicate and lyrical film was followed by an anmiated
discussion of nuclear warfare and armament. The Hole
was twice the length and had a political point to make.

The characters’ colors change and fluctuate and sparkle
even as scenes progress, but this all becomes part of
the style which the Hubleys pursued for
the rest of their filmmaking life.

As in Moonbird, the voices in The Hole were improvised
. . . but this time by adults, Dizzy Gillespie and George Mathews.

The Hubleys took their process of improvisation to a new level.

In the end, animation grew up, once upon a time.

The question is whether we’ve squandered that development
and have retrogressed to the 19th Century illustration styles
that Disney pursued. Recently, we seem to have had only
bad drawing or cgi puppets to choose from.

Time to step up, ladies and gentlemen.

- This past week, Yowp, the excellent site devoted to Hanna-Barbera’s early product, offered a fine piece on Arnold Stang. After reading it, I thought it worth telling about my one contact with Mr. Stang.

I was about to do my first half-hour show for HBO. It was a musical version of the Bernard Waber children’s book, LYLE LYLE CROCODILE. Charles Strouse had written some fine songs, and I cast them with auditions. The two people who made it through without auditions were: Charles Strouse, himself, in the bit singing role as a moving man. He had a small part of the chorus in the opening song. _____________Arnold and Charles’ characters sing together.
Arnold Stang was cast as a bird
owned by the family. I couldn’t help myself; I had to bring in the guy who was a key part of 50 & 60s animation history – at least for my own amusement.

Arnold had to squawk a number of times, speak a few scratchy lines, and sing a couple of lines in the opening song as he, the bird, is moved into the House on East 88th Street. When we recorded Arnold singing, it was to a temp track of the music. The engineer, Strouse and I sat in the control booth with Arnold in the large recording booth.

He sang the lines. I was excited and pleased and felt he’d gotten it on the first take.

Charles Strouse said otherwise and asked for them to be redone.

The same results; I knew they were great, Charles was annoyed about them, and he made the mistake of going over me, the director, to punching the button to talk to Arnold in the booth. The two of them got into a shouting match over the ridiculous. Charles wanted Arnold to sound more like a bird. Arnold kept pointing out that he wasn’t a bird and such birds don’t talk, never mind sing. He also pointed out that he played a cat and dog and many other types of animals, but he was always a human, not an animal.

With every jab, Charles Strouse came back with another. The two of them were screaming, and I finally had to stop it. I took the button from Charles’ hand and asked Arnold to excuse us while we discussed it in the control room. From that point on, Arnold couldn’t hear us as I told Charles that he was being ridiculous and Arnold had been doing a good job. He backed off (hopefully realizing what a jerk he’d become.) However, now Charles had gotten the talent upset and he was supposed to perform under such stressful conditions. It was very unprofessional of Charles, and equally so that he thought he could take charge of the recording session. I was the director and would make all decisions from then on, and only I was allowed to speak to the performer, Arnold.

Charles yielded. What else could he do. I asked Arnold if he could step back to the beginning and try to smooth his feathers and do it one more time for me. He agreed, did a great job, and I thanked him for his help.

In fact, it did turn out great. Arnold brought a nice and funny character to the bird. Which was a minor part and not worth an argument.

_____________ .

Years later, for a special Birthday I had coming up, Heidi wanted to throw a surprise party. She invited Arnold, and he left a wonderful message on her machine thanking her but not able to attend. She still has that recording and it’s pretty cute. Arnold speaking in his natural voice sounding so positive and lovely.

__________________________.

- J.J. Sedelmaier has started a new column for Imprint Magazine. Imprint is, basically, the blog for Print Magazine. You’ll remember that John Canemaker had a year’s worth of excellent and diverse columns there, and Steven Heller continues to write some very smart pieces. Just look at the announcement about Pablo Ferro which leads to this great, recent bio of the designer.

But, back to J.J. Sedelmaier’s piece on Gary Baseman. It’s a wonderfully illustrated piece with lots of artwork from Mr. Baseman. A wonderful illustrator, he has been working for years in animation thanks to both R.O.Blechman and J.J.’s studios. He also did a fine series for Disney with “Teacher’s Pet.”

J.J. shows how they achieved his painterly style, in a commercial his studio produced, using the cels. It’s a good article and something to look forward to monthly.

__________________________
.

- Illostribute is a blog devoted to the art of Illustration. They currently have a tribute to Mary Blair, which seems to have pulled many of her gorgeous illustrations from the Canemaker book, The Art and Flair of Mary Blair. (This book is a beauty and should be owned by everyone in animation.)

It’s a curious site in that they seem to post illustrations inspired by the featured artist; this they do on the Mary Blair feature. There are several older posts I found interesting. It was nice, for example, to see some paintings by Jack Levine and be reminded of his great work.

__________________________.

- It’s been a relatively bleak week in New York. The rain won’t stop its gray battering of our skylights, and we hop and skip past the many puddles on the sidewalk. Waiting for a light usually means a splash off the nearest discourteous speeding driver who runs too close to the curb, spattering all those there. After two or three days of it, everything takes on the eerie grey glow.

- On Tuesday morning, Sept. 6th, Jordan Belson died of heart failure at his home in San Francisco. For the uninitiated, Belson was an abstract filmmaker who produced a body of work of over 30 films which sometimes were called, “Cosmic Cinema.” His work was ahead of his time, and he led a number of like-minded non-objective film makers through the 50s and into the 60s. From 1957-1959, Belson was the Visual Director for The Vortex Concerts at San Francisco’s Morrison Planetarium. This series of electronic music concerts accompanied by visual projections allowed him to create visual illusions with multiple projection devices, combining abstract film footage of patterns with planetarium effects. He abandoned traditional animation methods to work with real time projected light in making his Vortex work.

His long shadow remains with us as film still tries to absorb what experimentation and observations he offered us through the medium.

The Center for Visual Music offers a DVD release of Jordan Belson’s Five Essential Films. They also have a biography and filmography of the man’s work.

Earlier this year, Belson signed a statement asking people not to put his films online, as this does not do justice to his work. A sentiment I am fully in agreement with. Regardless, someone has put several of them up on YouTube. Epilogue, a great work, is his last completed film done in 2005.

______________

John Hubley once told me that an effective rain cycle had two different patterns of rain at slightly different angles to each other. One would be inked in black, the second (behind the black) in gray. It works well, of course.

______________

- Kathy Rose is still actively making films. She wrote to say that her latest, “The Metaphysical Paintings”, just went up on Vimeo. She also has her own page on Vimeo, here.

She continued to say in that note that she: “Will also have video installations exhibited October 5 & 6 in Motion Pictures 2011 a dance video venue in Philadelphia.”

.

______________

Lowell Hess is an extraordinary illustrator whose work has just been collected in a book called The Art of Lowell Hess. You should look out for it. Until then, take a look at this blog (Today’s Inspiration) which gives a good overview of Hess’ life and work.

Thanks to Bill Peckmann for the heads up on the site.

.

______________

- There’s an exhibit of Jack Davis’ art running at the University of Georgia’s Hargett Library. “The exhibit features much of Davis’ early work from his days as a student living in Athens. Many of Davis’ subjects from those days provide a rare glimpse into life as an undergrad when campus was dominated by veterans getting their education from the GI Bill.”

The exhibit will continue through November. Anyone living in or passing through Athens, Georgia ought to go see it.

______________

Darrell Van Citters is back. His blog, Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol, has featured many excellent articles about the people who had worked on that Special. Now, after a long hiatus, he has a two part article on Lee Orgel the real man behind the television special. This is an excellent site that offers lots of premium information. Just take a look at this feature on Abe Levitow or this piece on designer Shirley Silvey. There’s a lot to see on this blog.

______________

Skwigly is a British site that has had a relatively long life. Originally, a blog that offered some excellent stories, they eventually closed it down. Just as suddenly, they’ve been reborn. David Smith is the editor and he mixes it up. The current site seems a little less vibrant than the original, but it’s still a must-visit. Sort of a British AWN (not quite as large albeit somewhat more organized) there are some fine posts on this site. An Arthur Christmas image from pencil drawing to finished cg background; An interview with animator, Alex Williams (The Lion King, Roger Rabbit, The Iron Giant); A story about Osamu Tezuka and even an article about the invention of the rotoscope by the Fleischers. My one complaint for the site is that they don’t have an easy “search” button. You have to go through each and every slow-loading page to find out what’s there.

______________

- Tomorrow will be the tenth anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks. Much has been made of it here, in New York, and I don’t know if there’s been as much attention given it outside of this city.

Just prior to the Obama “Jobs” speech, the television networks announced that there was “credible but unconfirmed” reports of another attack on NY on the anniversary. Shades of the Bush administration terror fears that were thrown at the public. In NY, we’d gotten a clue that something was up a few days earlier when police started showing up again at the subway entrances to go through the passenger backpacks. Why did they wait until just prior to the speech to make it public when they had the news two days earlier?

The odd thing about New Yorkers is that it really isn’t on our conscience. They can hurl the words at us as often as they do, but we just go on through our paces – getting through the days.

Sunday there will be some sort of celebration at the site of the World Trade Center. The papers have reported enough bickering between the government plans and the families of the victims. Will they read names? Won’t they read names? I really don’t know anymore, and I won’t be watching. I’ll be in my studio, maybe listening on the radio. More likely, I’ll be listening to the soundtrack of Mike Leigh’s Topsy Turvy.

And, yes, rain is expected on Sunday.