Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

- I am a lunatic for the work of Lewis Carroll.
As such, naturally his Alice In Wonderland has always intrigued me. The book, itself, has inspired so many artists since it was written that we have to recognize it as a great work of art.

I think I’ve seen a dozen film versions and have seen at least four theatrical versions. I must say that some incredibly inspirational moments have come for me out of the best of these. Off the top of my head I think immediately of Alice by Robert Wilson. This was a theatrical version which dealt with the relationship between Alice and Charles Dodgson. I think of Haddock’s Eyes by David Del Tredici as performed by Tom Hulce. This was a small show that somehow touched me; I’ve thought of it often since I saw it in 1987. Or I think of David Del Tredici‘s Final Alice, a stunning piece of music. There’s the beautiful film Dreamchild, which includes some stunning puppetry by the Henson group. I think of moments from the Lou Bunin film, or even Disney’s version. I think of some of my favorite illustrated versions, led by Ralph Steadman‘s book. When I see a version on line, any version, I’m conditioned to stop.

__________________________________
- Nonsenselit.org features the entire comic book 1951 Unbirthday Party with Alice in Wonderland. The art is quite interesting and the layout of the comic book is certainly creative. Once they get to Wonderland, the boxed format of the traditional comic book is out the window, and the strip is more chaotic. The inking for the strip is beautifully done, and the magazine is worth viewing for that alone.

__
(Click any image to enlarge.)

__________________________________
- A favorite site, the Blog of Bosh led me to the site of the Bavarian State Opera. There I found a lot of information about an operatic version of Alice which they produced in June of this year. It was written by David Henry Hwang and composed by Unsik Chin. This is obviously a creatively produced theatrical version of the story. There are many stills on the site and a stunning little video with clips from what is obviously an imaginative production. I urge you to look at the video if you have any interest in Alice or creative theatrical productions.

Despite the imagination and creativity on display in the video, there seems to have been some in-fighting between the composer and the designer. Some reviews have called the staging static. You can read a positive review from the LA Times which gives a full history of the show. There’s a negative review in the International Herald Tribune. I’d like to see a production for myself.

__________________________________
New Yorkers and puppet theater fanciers might take note of the Alice In Wonderland Puppet Festival underway at the Here Arts Center.

Drama of Works presents this festival of puppetry now performing through Oct. 7th. As the program states: “…this production takes a look at (Dodgson’s) diary as well as Alice’s memoirs. It weaves together these texts and also real snapshots taken by Carroll of Alice, poems of his turned into songs, and fragments of Wonderland.”

It includes free film showings of Svankmajer’s Alice and Lou Bunin’s Alice In Wonderland.
The Here Arts Center, 145 6th Avenue (Spring St.) New York, NY 10013

Curiouser and curiouser.

__________________________________
Talking about another Alice, my friend Tom Hachtman has sent me a nice drawing featuring his Gertrude and Alice characters. I always like sharing these since they usually cheer me up.
__

– Sources report that a suspected plotter of the recent U.K. terror threat, Kafeel Ahmed, owned a hard disk which included an animated video showing how a syringe can be used in a bomb. The technology was used to trigger the bombs found in London but British investigators said they failed because the syringes malfunctioned.

The disk also contained a speech by Ahmed.

I can only suspect that the animation was done in Flash.

_____________________________________

This information brings me to Political cartoons, and to that end I thought it’d be a good idea to look at this form.

– Let’s look at a couple of sites that feature Political Cartoons. For the moment I’m not talking about animated cartoons, just the printed kind. You can view a lot of this material on line, and I thought I’d point to a couple of sites that feature this form.

Today they call it Editorial cartoons, but until recently the monicker Political Cartoon was more appropriate. So pardon me if I switch back and forth using the two terms.

- Jim Zwick has a good site called History Illustrated which puts up a lot of political cartoons and has some fine articles about the cartoons and cartoonists. There’s a wealth of information here about the likes of Hogarth and Tenniel as well as many cartoonists I should know. A Daumier I own & love. (Click to enlarge.)
.
There’s an alphabetical listing of cartoonists
and a lot of cartoons to view. I recommend you
take a quick look at the pages featuring Daumier and Tenniel cartoons.

If you want to read about it, there’s a “brief” History of Political Cartoons featuring a longish article about it with smallish illustrations.

A Dr. Seuss political cartoon.

- Dr. Seuss (Ted Geisel) was a political cartoonist during WWII, and a number of these cartoons can be viewed on the Mandeville Library Site, Dr. Seuss Went To War.
You can view them by year (1941-1943) or by categories.

– Then there’s the Political Cartoon Society, a British site that gives a lot of information about featured cartoonists. The site displays examples of cartoons that are currently on exhibit.

If you want to find out some information about Ronald Searle’s bio, it’s there. You just don’t see any of his cartoons. For that you’d have to go to Ronald Searle‘s own site.
(Searle’s Icarus is pictured to the left.)

As a matter of fact most cartoonists these days have their own sites.
There’s a good Herblock site which displays the Library of Congress exhibition on his work.
Tom Toles has his cartoons on display at the Washington Post. As a matter of fact, they post all of their cartoons daily. (More than can be found in the print version of the newspaper.)

Most papers have a link to their daily cartoons, and it’s a feature you should check out and support if you read your newspapers on-line.

- A lot of syndicates and news media also post their contingent of cartoonists on line. However there are others that put together a nice sampler of work out there.

Daryl Cagle has a site on MSNBC which indexes a number of current editorial cartoonists and allows you to click on their daily cartoons. It’s a good way to get an overview of what a lot of these cartoonists have on their minds.

Another similar site is the Comics.com editorial section. There they have a list of cartoonists, and you can just click from cartoonist to cartoonist.

- As for animated political cartoons, that’s a whole ‘nother research project. I’ll write about it when I’ve put enough material together. For the moment, I have to say that most of the animated pieces I’ve seen have been rather lame. They try too hard to cover all sides of the political spectrum. The JibJab effect, I guess. They want to sell rather than make a political point.

- I returned from London late last night after a very successful recording with actor, Hugh Dancy. His performance, as expected, was a fine one. I’m pleased, after all these years, to have finally recorded Edgar for my film, which moves foward in leaps and bounds.

On my production blog for this film, I’ll detail the recording in detail later today. Perhaps as soon as we get one of the poems edited down, I’ll put an MP.3 up on that site.

__________________________________

– The NYTimes Magazine, this coming Sunday will interview Matt Groening for his PR push on the Simpsons. (He’ll be on Conan O’Brien tonight, Thursday. It’ll be curious to see how O’Brien acts with his former boss.) The short Times interview by Deborah Solomon (the art critic not the animator) is, as I said, for the most part PR. However there are one or two questions I’d like to post. The responses have to do with animation.

“The Simpsons Movie,” opening on Friday, reminds us of your substantial role in giving masterpiece status to cartoons and animation. Do you see yourself as an A-level artist?
No. Cartooning is for people who can’t quite draw and can’t quite write. You combine the two half-talents and come up with a career.

How much of the movie is hand-drawn?
We used a combination of cheap labor and computers.

What does that mean? You outsourced the film to animators in China?
No. When I say cheap, I mean there’s no amount of money that an animator can be paid — they deserve our eternal gratitude. I would give them back massages if they would take them.

There are also a couple of questions about politics I found cute:

In your film, a character named President Arnold Schwarzenegger occupies the Oval Office. How did that happen?
We needed a president that would make people laugh. And Schwarzenegger was the obvious choice.

You’re known to be a fairly active Democrat.
I’ve rarely voted for a winner in my political life, with the exception of Al Gore.

Note that he didn’t find George Bush funny. Now that we’re a few weeks into the run, is Comedy Central going to wake up to the fact that Li’L Bush isn’t funny? Or maybe the 18-35 year old males are still coming back for more?

Hopefully, they’re watching for the same reason I used to read the Ernie Bushmiller Nancy comic strip in the daily papers. I knew SOMEDAY it was going to be funny, and I didn’t want to miss it.

Ultimately, looking at all those Nancy strips, I kinda became a fan. I have a book which collects Ernie Bushmiller’s strips, and I like Guy Gilchrist‘s take on the strip. There are a couple of good articles on the site, Interesting Ideas, about the strip and its history. I also found a crazy article on How to Read Nancy. Huh?

__________________________________

- The excellent site, Blather from Brooklyn has a wonderful post about Piet Mondrian and the influence NY had on him (and perhaps his influcence on the City.)

__________________________________

- Speaking of art, if anyone out there is interested in who was nominated for prime time animation emmies, here are the nominees:

Outstanding Animated Program (for Programming Less Than One Hour)
Avatar: The Last Airbender • City Of Walls And Secrets
Nickelodeon • Nickelodeon Animation Studio
Robot Chicken • Lust For Puppets
Cartoon Network • ShadowMachine Films
South Park • Make Love, Not Warcraft
Comedy Central • Central Productions
SpongeBob SquarePants • Bummer Vacation / Wig Struck
Nickelodeon • Nickelodeon Animation Studio in ass’n with United Plankton Pictures, Inc.
The Simpsons • The Haw-Hawed Couple
Fox • Gracie Films in association with 20th Century Fox

Outstanding Animated Program (for Programming One Hour Or More)
Good Wilt Hunting (Foster’s Home For Imaginary Friends)
Cartoon Network • Cartoon Network Studios
Hellboy Animated: Sword Of Storms • Starz
Starz Media in ass’n with Revolution Studios
Secrets Of The Deep • Discovery Channel
Impossible Pictures in ass’n with Discovery Channel
Where’s Lazlo? (Camp Lazlo)
Cartoon Network • Cartoon Network Studios

– I’ll be in London through Wednesday recording the actor, Hugh Dancy, for my POE feature.
He’ll be the voice of Edgar A, and I’m looking forward to the session.

Consequently, I will not be able to post until Thursday, when I return.

For now, enjoy these Polly & Her Pals strips:

(Click any image to enlarge.)

There are a number of interesting posts I’d like to call to your attention:

- First and foremost, Joe Campana on his site, Who and Where, has a post about Fleischer animator Willard Bowsky who died in battle during World War II.

Bowsky was a big guy at the Fleischer studio, and he’s rarely reaped the praise deserved for his work there. He was one of those at Fleischer’s who moved into the position of animator when there was a virtual exodus for the West Coast by many of Fleischer’s animators. Losing Dick Huemer, Sid Marcus, George Stallings and George Ruffle left only Ted Sears and Grim Natwick as animators. Suddenly Al Eugster, Shamus Culhane, George Cannata, Seymour Kneitel, Bill Henning and Willard Bowsky all received promotions.

Over the years I’d asked quite a few of the Fleischer veterans, who I’d met, for some information about Bowsky, but rarely did I get more than an anecdote about him.

This is the sort of comment I heard. It comes from Shamus Culhane‘s book Talking Animals and Other People. (I’m not one to take Culhane’s usually biased comments verbatim, though undoubtedly there’s some truth in the statement.

Within a very short time some of the neophyte animators began to exhibit real talent as filmmakers. One was Willard Bowsky. He was about twenty-one at the time, a loudmouthed, opinionated fellow, who had a ready answer for every problem, political, artistic, or ethnic. He was probably the only person in the studio who was openly anti-Semitic. It didn’t seem to bother Max or Dave, even when people complained. While they admitted that it was probably true, they had none of the fierce defensiveness about Jewishness that developed later as a result of the rise of the Nazis.

According to the standards of the studio, Willard drew very well and had a great appreciation for contemporary music, so he was given sound tracks like “Minnie the Moodier” and “Stick Out Your Can Here Comes the Garbage Man.” He would even go into ecstasies over Cab Calloway records.

With my background of classical music, I thought Calloway sounded like jibberish and avoided those assignments like a plague. While Bowsky really couldn’t draw well enough to compete with West Coast films, he did make some of the better jazz cartoons in the studio because he loved the music.

Willard lived at home with his parents and took no part in the usual Saturday night saturnalias. He was what one might call a pre-McCarthy, gung ho, ail-American Babbitt, an avid reader of the New York Mirror, with social convictions to match. He believed that all the unemployed were just being lazy, and intimated that anybody with ambition could succeed in this country, freely offering himself as a shining example.

Joe Campana really fills in a lot of gaps with his extraordinary post that details a lot of Bowsky’s life and final efforts during the war. Who and Where is becoming one of the better sites out there.

_________________________________

- I’m pleased to see that Will Finn has entered the Blog-writing fray. I love a good, new articulate voice to attend to. Check out his site. I’ve attached his link to my regulars. Thanks to Cartoon Brew for alerting us.

_________________________________

- Here’s an article from a 1936 issue of Popular Science showing how the 3D backgrounds were created for the Fleischer cartoons. The image to the left, obviously, comes from this article.

- Hans Perk posts on his blog A Film LA a 1936 Disney document about a “Gag File.” There’s always something new to dig up about the Golden Disney years. It’s a very interesting and provocative document.

Blue Sky reports that the Tinkerbell film is finally shaping up having been wholly reworked by John Lasseter. This means that the trio of “Fairy” films can move forward. A cgi Tink, voiced by Brittany Murphy, will be coming our way. Can’t wait.

_________________________________

– Finally, I received an email from Howard Beckerman after meeting him at Amid Amidi‘s award ceremony. He said that he’d noticed my post which included the board by Gryphon Productions for Baldwin Pianos. (See the original post here.) Howard’s note reads:
. . . I checked out your informative Splog and noticed Gryphon’s
. . . storyboard for the Baldwin Piano spot. It was directed by
. . . Ed Seeman and animated by Dante Barbetta and…me.

You never know what bit of info is going to turn up. It’s a great world.

– After posting some of the Gertrude Follies strips and storyboard sections from our old feature board, I’d decided to go ahead and make a short short out of one of the funnier strips. So we’ve had that in production for the last couple of weeks.

Knowing I needed more writing, I asked Tom Hachtman, the strip’s creator, to get involved, and he’s been sending new material to us. Most of it seems to have gone off on a tangent – a funny one, so I thought I’d post a couple of these new pieces.
(Obviously, with his permission.)

It starts with Gertrude, Alice and Pabs in a restaurant about to order some fast food.

(Click any image to enlarge.)

______________________________________

A.O. Scott has an article in today’s NYTimes which talks about retrofitting movies from old television shows. Specifically, he talks about Underdog, but then talks about animated features such as The Simpsons and other cgi product. It’s a good read.

– I used to love comic books when I was a kid. I read them incessantly. It grew to become an enormous thing between me an my father when he absolutely banned them in the house. Comic books back in the 50s, everyone knew, rotted out the minds of little children. I couldn’t resist and continued to sneak them into my room. I couldn’t get enough of Donald Duck or Unca Scrooge or, even, Little Lulu.

One of my earliest memories comes from myself at the age of 8 trying to imagine what this genius, Walt Disney, looked like. This is before the Disneyland television show, before the media and PR hounds poured into the mind of an 8 year old child. I mean Walt Disney signed those comics – his script name appeared just above the Donald Duck masthead on the cover – he was the one responsible.

(Click any image to enlarge.)

Well, I’ll tell you what I imagined:
An oddball version of Farmer Alfalfa (that must be what Disney looked like) stood at a large, Rube Goldberg-like machine, right out of the Industrial Revolution, and he turned out these books on a conveyor belt. That’s all I remember about it, but I do remember it. Obviously, my father was right. My mind was rotting away.

I was finally caught. It was a large, Special issue comic book. “Dennis The Menace Goes To Hawaii.” That was it, and I was punished. Two weeks to bed early without television didn’t stop me, and somehow it seemed alright a few weeks later to read comics again. My comic book craving continued. I didn’t collect them; I just read them and appreciated the drawing. (They were well drawn back then.)

The back cover

So now, every once in a while, I come upon a rarity
on ebay and can’t help myself. A few months ago I found
this Three Little Pigs comic book and had to have it. I didn’t even know there were Three Little Pigs comics! It was published in 1949.

I’m amazed at how successful The Pigs were. The short was released in 1933. Before television how did the legacy live on long enough to keep them popular?

There were only a couple of other shorts with the same characters:
The Big Bad Wolf 1934,
The Three Little Wolves 1936, and
The Practical Pig 1939.

The last, prior to 1949, was a WWII educational short, The Thrifty Pig in 1941.
Eight years later this comic book appeared.
55 years later, I bought a copy. Still rotting my brain.

There were no ads in the magazine back then. These are the
inside covers, front and back.

123
The comic book incorporates other characters from the Disney fold. The witch from Snow White appears when it’s convenient, and Br’er Bear appears.

456
The above are the first six pages of the story. It’s the first of three stories in the 32 page comic book.

14 15
These are the last three pages of the story. I just wanted to give a taste of the comic.

– The Museum of Modern Art has a big schedule of films and artwork upcoming:

On Tuesday, Apr 17, 2007 at 6:30 PM, they will host an “Artists Speak” session:

Conversations on Contemporary Art with Laurie Anderson and William Kentridge as host by MOMA’s Glenn D. Lowry.
Performance artist Laurie Anderson and William Kentridge – director and scene designer for BAM’s spring production of Mozart’s The Magic Flute – discuss how they bring their creative process to performance.

To reserve tickets go here.

Kentridge‘s The Magic Flute will play at the Brooklyn Academy of Music for four performances beginning April 9th. Kentridge directed and designed it and has animated pieces in his signature style throughout the program.

To see a video trailer for the opera go here.

To buy tickets to the Opera go here.

_______________________________

The Museum also has what it calls Projects 85. You can see Romanian artist Dan Perjovschi draw his “spontaneous” art on the walls of MOMA.

“For two weeks prior to the official opening, April 19, Perjovschi will draw on the wall during public hours, allowing visitors to observe the creation of the work.” This work will then be exhibited from May 2 thru August 27, 2007.

Of course, one of the earliest 20th Century quick-draw artists was Winsor McCay. He performed on Vaudeville stages with a large pad telling his stories which he illustrated live. Eventually, he added the animated backdrops of his cartoon characters.

_______________________________

Finally, regarding MOMA, I wanted to point out that they’re just starting a complete retrospective of the films of Rainier Werner Fassbinder. If you don’t know his films, you should. If you do know his films, you get to see them again in excellent projected format. Check the museum schedule for times.

_______________________________

– Enough about art. Let’s talk Popeye. Warner Home Video has announced a July 31st date for the Popeye dvd: Popeye the Sailor – Volume 1: 1933-1938.

The package will include 60 cartoons plus 5 hours of bonus material: retrospectives such as “The Story of Popeye the Sailor Man” and “The History of the Fleischer Studios”. There are also “behind-the-toons” featurettes, bonus shorts, and commentary tracks by animation historians and other experts. Greg Ford directed one of the documentaries. He spoke on camera with every notable animator in New York. As one of those interviewed, I have particular reason to be interested in seeing the docs.

The Popeye shorts, themselves, will be uncut, unedited cartoons that are authorized and come from the original masters. The fact that it’s labeled volume 1, gives us good hope that other volumes will follow.

Of course, real Popeye aficionados will go back to E.C. Segar’s original strip. There’s another Popeye there that is beyond even the Fleischer shorts.

_______________________________

- While we wait for Satoshi Kon‘s most recent feature Paprika to open in theaters, (opens in NY May 25th/in LA June 1st) his last film Tokyo Godfathers was just released on dvd. His other features, Millenium Actress and Perfect Blue.

Tokyo Godfathers is another version of that John Ford classic, Three Godfathers. This same story was reworked to make Three Men and a Baby (both American and French versions) and Ice Age.

The John Ford version was a remake of the Richard Boleslawski film of the same title done in 1936. That original film, Three Godfathers, got a lot of reworking.

If you haven’t seen the trailer for Paprika watch it here.

(This is the box for the Japanese dvd.
I like it more than I do the US version.)

– Having finished a bunch of work for Between The Lions, the PBS show out of WGBH (a greater client can’t be found), we’ve met with a quiet period.
To keep busy we’ve started production on a short segment of the Gertrude’s Follies storyboard feature done years ago.

To see the history of this project go here and here.

What this has done is forced me to push cartoonist Tom Hachtman back to work on the strip. I need some new dialogue written between Gertrude and Alice, and I’d like him to do the backgrounds (only a couple are needed.) He’s a great watercolorist and airbrush artist – the real thing, not computer.
Of course, I prefer the watercolor painting, but I’ll take whatever he’d like to do. It’s his strip and his characters; that’s his decision.
Anyway, I got this card (to the left) from Tom. It thanks me for getting him back to Gertrude. (It’s my treat; the characters are so much fun drawing.)

Matthew Clinton has finished his first draft of animating the piece that’s about 2 minutes in length. Paul Carrillo has already edited up a hilarious first cut soundtrack of effects and music. All we need is the finishing parts.

It’s funny. That’s what counts.

I’m reluctant to post the strip it’s based on
(I don’t want to give up the joke, though it really doesn’t matter). It’s about Pabs eating his first hamburger – just in case any of you have seen it. (I just had a flash thinking how horrible this would have looked if we’d done it in Flash. Sends a chill through me.)
(Click images to enlarge.)

______________________________

I just received in the mail a copy of the program from the Seattle Children’s Film Festival that was held in January of this year. They’d done a two program retrospective of some of our films. It was a kick having someone ask for the program; it was fun knowing that our films stay alive.

The program was enough of a success that the curator of that festival has just sent an email sayng that she is curating . . .

“. . . the second annual REDCAT International Children’s Film Festival at REDCAT (Roy and Edna Disney Calarts Theatre) in Los Angeles. The festival will be comprised of a selection of the best of Cinema K: Children’s Film Festival Seattle and additional new programs.

I would like to include one of the retrospective programs we showed at Northwest Film Forum: Dr. DeSoto, The Red Shoes, Abel’s Island, and The Man Who Walked Between the Towers.”

Of course, this will be an honor, so our program will be presented at that festival in June. When I have the dates, I’ll pass them along.

All these retrospectives popping up! (There was one in Philadelphia recently, another in North Carolina, and a very big one which will be in NYC this Fall – we’ll talk about it when it gets closer.) I’m starting to feel old, but I’m loving it. (The Seattle program
from last January.)

- Back in the late ’70s, there was a local newspaper that competed with the Village Voice for the alternative audience. The Soho News was smaller and thinner, but had its own treasures. Some good writing and listings, and many excellent alternative comic strips. (Bill Plympton had a weekly strip in this paper before he started animating.)

I fell in love with one comic strip called Gertrude’s Follies to the point where I waited each week for the new issue and the new strip to hit to market. It was about Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas and all the crazies that came into their lives – particularly Picasso, Hemingway and other iconic art types. It didn’t matter that Matisse and Capote didn’t meet; they were both available for the strip – as was everyone else.

Finally, after enjoying it for so long, I decided to locate the cartoonist behind it, and see whether he was interested in developing a storyboard and script for a feature. Maybe we could get some low-budget financing.

Tom Hachtman was the cartoonist, and he was a brilliant artist. His wife, Joey Epstein, was another fine artist. The two entered my life at this point, and some interesting things developed.

Gertrude’s Follies was an ongoing project. Tom worked with Maxine Fisher, who has been my writing partner through all the years of my studio. The two of them developed a couple of themes from the mass of strips that had been done and started to weave a storyboard. Tom left 4 or 5 panels of each 6 panel page empty, and I constructed and reconstructed story around them. Sometimes I would draw more material, sometimes I would take some away. It was real fun.

The Soho News folded, and no one really picked up the strip. It ran for a short time in The Advocate. Tom was able to publish a collected book (see the cover above.) You can still locate a rare copy on line.

Some newer, color copies of the strip can be found on line here.
Tom also does some political cartoons for the site here.

The movie never went into production. I couldn’t raise the funds – my inexperience. We did make one short segment – a two minute piece that was the most hilarious strip. Sheldon Cohen, an animator I met at the Ottawa 76 festival, came to NY when I offered him a job on Raggedy Ann. Sheldon, ultimately, did a number of films for the National Film Board which you can watch on-line if you click on his name.

Sheldon animated this particularly funny strip. It took a while for him to animate it, and by the time he was finished, the feature had died and I had lost some interest. Years later I inked and painted it and had it shot. The short piece was never finished, though I still think about doing that.

Tom also recently gave me a funny strip about Pablo Picasso sculpture for which I’ve finished a storyboard and animatic. Hopefully, I’ll get the energy to animate it.

Aside from Gertrude, both Tom & Joey worked on a number of my films and still infrequently do. The two have painted many murals on the Jersey Coast, where they currently live. Tom has been a political cartoonist for the NY Daily News, has done lots of airbrush work for Bob Blechman when the Ink Tank was in operation. He also has done quite a few cartoons for The New Yorker magazine.

Here are a few of the strips to give you the flavor. Perhaps next week I’ll give a sample of our storyboard, comparing it with some of the actual strips. Enjoy.

1 2
(Click on any image to enlarge so that you can read the strips.)

3 4

5 6