Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

- Continuing with the epic autobiographical story of Santiago Cohen, this is part 3 of a 1000 picture project. The piece is, to me, a pure work of art. A strong, tightly knit story with images which are almost incandescent in their glowing color. I encourage you to look carefully by enlarging the frames and reading what Santiago has written.

To see prior parts of this post:
Part 1
Part 2

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- Bill Peckmann sent me the following strips from a rare book he has of Animated Features and Silly Symphony Comics. The copyright date is 1950. CinderellaSunday strips feature artwork by Manuel Gonzales, penciler and Dick Moores, inker. Moores, of course, took over the Gasoline Alley strip from Frank King. (These Gasoline Alley strips are so beautiful, I’ve posted some of them. I have a book somewhere, if I can find it I will put up more of them.)

Thanks to Bill Peckmann, for the Cinderella strips. Here are the first half of these strips. More will follow soon to conclude the story.

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- At a recent event, I was sitting with a couple of other artists and we bagan talking about Santiago Cohen. Here’s one of the greats on the New York scene, and it seems as though he went from super success to silence. We all were hoping something would happen, if only so that we could see more art.

When I returned from my short vacation, I was surprised to find an email from Santiago. He offered to send me part of a piece he was working on to get my thoughts. It’s an illustrated biographical notebook. And, as expected it’s stunning. I received the first couple hundred pages, and I asked Santiago if I could post it. He said yes, so here we go.

It’s appropriate that this piece should start today, Columbus Day. It’ll continue for a while. I’ll break it into parts, all about 40 pages, where it seems unobtrusive. This is “Art” with a capital “A” in the making, from Santiago. It’d make an incredible film.

Let us know what you think.

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More next Monday.

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- Here, from Walt Disney Comics, April 1945 edition is a wacky story mixing the Seven Dwarfs with Dumbo to fight the Wicked Prince.
I couldn’t help but post it. These comic books often seem to mix up the characters from different films to create unbelievable stories.

This comic comes from Bill Peckmann‘s enormous collection, and I thank him for sharing, yet again.

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- Here, from Walt Disney Comics, March 1945 edition is an ad for The Three Caballeros, about to be released.

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This ad is placed on the magazine’s rear cover. Interesting that I called it a magazine rather than a comic book. That’s what it is. There’s written material, stories, within the publication as well as the illustrated comics.

The following was in the very next issue, for April 1945. It has nothing to do with the Caballeros ad, but I thought the horse was somewhat inspired from the models of that feature film.

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Many thanks to Bill Peckmann for the loan of these comic book magazines. The originals are his which were bound by the year.

- As I’ve mentioned in the past, I’m a long-time lover of Cliff Sterrett‘s Polly & Her Pals comic strip. I particularly love when it goes into a graphic surrealism. I’ve chosen a few strips that I’d like to post; they’re not only beautiful, but they’re still funny.

These all come from the 2nd volume of The Complete Color Polly & Her Pals (1927-1929), edited by Rick Marschall and printed by Kitchen Sink Press.

I post the strip followed by a couple panels viewed larger, for your entertainment.

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- The 1945 December issue of Walt Disney Comics included an ad for the Christmas release of Pinocchio. One has to assume this was the first reissue of the movie. The ad appeared in the inner page of the front cover.

To tie in with this ad and the reissue, there’s a comic story included in this issue of the comic book. Here’s the ad and the story from that magazine.

This material comes from Bill Peckmann‘s great collection. The entire year’s worth of comics are bound. It took a while to scan and clean up a bit because of the tight binding and the thickness of the collected volume.

Many thanks to Bill for the loan.

(Click any image to enlarge.)

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- I’ve always had a lot of respect for Gordo, the comic strip by Gus Arriola. The artwork was always crisp and well drawn, and the strip had its own strong audience. However, I never quite sought it out;no doubt my loss.

It was with interest that I received this note from Bill Peckmann:

In keeping with the original comic strip theme I am sending this original Gordo Sunday page. This is from the days when you could send a fan letter to one of your favorite cartoonists and they were kind enough to send you an original in return. It has some nice “animated” panels in it. I have RC Harvey’s Gus Arriola book somewhere, but it’s hiding on me right now. To me his style always had a nice California/Disney/Kelly feel about it.

I can’t argue with that, and I’m always excited to post original strip art. This is a large one, so I post it as is and offer a couple of tighter shots for more clarification.

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- I’ve been posting some great comic strip and comic book strips here in the last two weeks. By far, my favorite strip is Polly and Her Pals by Cliff Sterrett. I haven’ yet posted the original I own. It’s a Sunday page from March 1943.

The art is large sized and comes in two halves. I’ll post it actual size and add a couple of cut ins so that the art can be seen a little better.

I’ve had to do some photoshop touchup since the original got a bit of water damage during a flood in my studio.

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White paper covers more trees on the left of this panel.
You can see the shapes coming through.

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This panel is composed of a lot of pasted on bits of paper.
All the glue is trying to fall off, and the papers are delicate,
especially on the roof of the building, left.

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On the post about Give-aways, I had a little story I was going to add, and at the last moment, I decided not to include it,=. So, why not now?

Back in 1957, when the original Mickey Mouse Club was in full swing, in conjunction with Ipana toothpaste, there was a TV offer of a mail-in of a book which included puppets of Jiminy Cricket and Pinocchio. As a puppet fan, I raced through the tube of Ipana to get to the new packaging to send away for it. $.50 for postage and handling.

It took about a month to receive the book of cardboard pages. There, inside, were punch-out pieces of Jiminy and Pinocchio. By following the instructions, you could put together puppets of the two characters. It was rather complex, but I did it, and boy was I pleased with the end result. By manipulating tabs in the back you could operate the mouth (similar to a ventriloquists puppet) of Jiminy – he always was the talker.

Pinocchio was the marionette and was operated by string. I still remember this give-away gift as if it were yesterday, and I’ve searched the internet for pictures of the book, but haven’t found it. I’m sure I eventually will.

Mind you, I’d made my own marionettes and hand-puppets by the time I came upon this book. I was 10-12 at the time and, through a book I’d borrowed from the library, I found that I could cut and sew muslin, stuffed with more muslin, to make some fine puppets. They all looked a bit like Mr. Potato Head when they were finished, but I was proud of them just the same.

Likewise, there was a book once put out by Dover publishing. Called Motion Picture Toys. The cardboard pages included punch-out objects that, when assembled, produced early animation machines: Praxinoscope, anascope and especially an excellent Zoetrope with animated strips. I remember using this book as a guide and followed it closely to make my own zoetropes that I gave to my siblings one Christmas. Of course, I did my own animated strips that they could interchange.

I’ve searched for that booklet, too, but have had no luck. I’ve even written to the company hoping they’d have some back copies they’d sell me, but they’re not to be found. Of course, that book wasn’t free, but it was pretty cheap and reminded me of the Jiminy/Pinocchio giveaway.

- Michael Barrier left a comment on my Giveaways post, yesterday, and referenced a comic giveaway which was drawn by Walt Kelly featuring a circus milieu. Here’s that part of his comment reprinted:

Kelly definitely did draw what I think is the most wonderful WDC&S subscription premium, a 10 x 14 (I think, without taking my framed copy down from the wall to measure it) sheet called “The Disney Gang at the Circus,” which shows about 30 Disney characters under the big top, doing all sorts of funny Kelly stuff.

Mike couldn’t illustrate that cover, but here is the ad for that giveaway, courtesy of Bill Peckmann.

To the right is the magazine cover of the issue that the ad appeared in.

Speaking of Mike, he has a brilliant post for all those interested in the history of Mickey Mouse. The old saw of Walt dreaming up Mickey Mouse on his train ride back from New York isn’t even considered when you read about the origins of the Mouse on Mike’s site. Stories about Ub hiding in closets aren’t even pulled out of the hat.

As a fan of silent animated films, I’ve seen my share of Mickey Mouse wannabes that raced after Farmer Alfalfa in all those Terry-Moser Aesop Fables. Likewise just about any other cartoon maker in the pre-Mickey world; you’d see more than your share of mice that could easily be stunt doubles for Mickey. I always assumed it was natural that Mickey just came out of these mice that all animators seemed to be drawing. But no.

Mike goes into the true origins of the mouse, and the evidence seems certain.

Of course, anyone seriously interested in animation history or writing looks into Mike’s site regularly enough that I’m not reporting anything new. But for those of you who haven’t come across this essay by Mike, go there.

- John Canemaker has a new, fine piece about acting in animation on his Print Magazine blog page. Take a look.