Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

Here’s a package I received from Bill Peckmann:

In the parlance of the old MAD editors: “Hey gang, here’s some very unnecessary nostalgia for ya!”

In their heyday, EC Comics’ hardcore readership always kept the letter columns of EC Comics packed with enjoyable, knowledgeable comments. (I’d always go to the letter columns before I would read the stories in the comic.) With those kind of responses coming in, someone at EC, fortunately came up with the idea of starting an official EC fan club in the best EC tradition. (Looking back on all this, EC always seemed to be ahead of the curve in the industry and would adapt thru all of their trials and tribulations, the proof in the pudding is the incredible run of MAD.)

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The first in-house ad is by Jack Davis
the second one by Wally Wood.

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Unfortunately the only things that remain from the original
EC Fan-Addict package is the envelope everything was sent in,
the certificate and the 5 bulletins that were published.

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The certificate by Jack Davis.

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The first two page bulletin.

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Note that in the “Gossip” column Jack Davis’ wife Deena
gave birth to their son Jack Jr., who then later made his
way in the world as an architect. It was Jack Jr. who
designed the house and porch that Jack Sr. is sitting in,
in the photo in the last JD posting. (It’s the porch that the
Gee thought was pretty cool.)

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All good things must come to an end,
the fifth and final issue of the Bulletin.

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We started the blog with inhouse ads, so we might as well end it with a few more.

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This is Wally Wood’s promo for MAD no. 3.

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Ad for MAD No. 4 by John Severin.

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Wally for MAD No. 5.

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By the one and only Jack Davis.

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Jack Davis flogging EC’s own MAD comic book imitation PANIC.

(That’s All Folks!)

Many thanks to Bill Peckmann for sharing this great and unusual memorabilia.

- Here we have the conclusion to the comic book version of Ben & Me. Part 1 here.
Al Hubbard was the artist behnid the work; beautiful brush inking and great compositions. The material came from Bill Peckmann‘s collection for which I’m enormously grateful. Any notes from here on come from Bill:

Whenever Al Hubbard adapted Disney feature film characters to comic books he always gave them the authenticity they deserved. His style is deceptively loose and simple but he was always on model and his drawings are full of life.

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The back cover

Here’s a neat way to show off Hubard’s formidable lay out ability, it’s by showing the pages in the gray scale mode so the coloring doesn’t get in the way. (Luckily the colors transform well into gray values. Let your imagination do the coloring and it also takes on the somewhat wonderful look of a production storyboard.)

His page and panel layouts are terrific. They are well designed, move the story and hold your interest. All wrapped up solid acting poses.

(Here are 3 gray scale pages.)

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Seeing my post of Bill Peet‘s storyboard for Ben & Me, Bill Peckmann followed up with this note and artwork:

I remember as a kid when “Ben and Me” came out it was “big doin’s”, those were the years where you had to wait 5 years between Disney features, a long time for a youngster. The short was great, it had feature length quality and it seemed that Amos the mouse just stepped off of the back lot of Cinderella.

Needless to say when the comic book adaptation came out it was added very quickly to the stack of Disney comics at home. It was done by Al Hubbard, one of my favorite Disney comic book artists (like Carl Barks and other Disney comic book gents at the time, we did not know his name then). With his wonderful brush line, Hubbard was the next best thing to Walt Kelly. (He had successfully taken over Kelly’s “Peter Wheat” bakery character.) He also did the “Mary Jane and Sniffles” feature in the Looney Tunes Merrie Melodies comic books.

The comic book coloring was done in the simplistic style/way of it’s day, so unfortunately, the color richness of the film is totally missing.

Cover

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This is the first half of the magazine. There are another 16 pages to go. Tomorrow.
Many thanks to Bill Peckmann for scanning and sending the images to post and for sharing his collection with us.

- This past Thursday night, Paul and Sandra Fierlinger presented an hour’s worth of their latest project at Parson’s School. The film, Slocum at Sea with Himself, tells the story of the first person to have sailed SOLO around the world.

The film was a work in progress in every sense of the phrase. It started in full color, included scenes over final Bgs that weren’t colored and had other scenes that were pure pencil test. The sound was predominantly music composed and performed by the brilliant Shay Lynch. (You may know his music from the many films he did for Jeff Scher.) Yet, it all stood with a great dignity as a strong piece.

The film was full of potential to be even greater than their last feature, My Dog Tulip. Imagery was stunning and beautifully designed and animated (as usual from this team). It was a real treat seeing the work in progress, and it was easy to fill in the gaps. The movie takes place almost completely on water, and it’s amazing the effects they’ve achieved in animating such a difficult project. I was wholly taken by it.

As monumental as the screening was – truly inspirational, the talk Paul gave in advance was thought provoking. They are making the film with their own money and planning to release it online in short segments. All told the feed would take about six months to receive the entire feature. To buy these feeds, which will be built into a website that would constantly change for each segment, will cost about $30 in total. They’re hoping for a built-in audience of boaters and leisure craft enthusiasts around the world. Slocum is a well-known story to these folk, and the likelihood that they’d have interest in the subject is great.

Theirs is a provocative idea for distributing the film, and the business model Paul presented seemed original and probably a successful one. It will take some time before the feature is finished, but I’ll be watching closely to see how successful they’ll be. I’d bet on them, too.

There is no doubt of the love they’re pouring into this project. Take a look at these stills:

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- The Moon and the Son: An Imagined Conversation, John Canemaker’s animated short, is now available in a special edition DVD. This powerful and moving film, which has won both the Academy Award and the Emmy Award, explores the difficult emotional terrain of father/son relationships as seen through Canemaker’s own turbulent relationship with his father.

The Moon and the Son combines many different elements from John’s remembered versions of the facts, to the actual evidence of the life on screen: the trial transcripts, audio recordings, home movies, and photos. The original and stylized animation tells the true story of an Italian immigrant’s troubled life and the consequences of his actions on his family. The film features the voices of noted actors Eli Wallach and John Turturro in the roles of father and son.

The DVD includes the complete 28-minute film and the following bonus materials:
- A new documentary detailing the film’s creative evolution, influences and reception, with animation director/designer John Canemaker and producer Peggy Stern.
- The first rough cut (working title: “Confessions of my Father”) with original soundtrack
- A Photo gallery of production sketches, preliminary artwork and storyboards

I enjoyed thumbing through all the extras on this DVD. When the film was being made, John shared its progress with me at several stages. I’m intrigued with how much material was there in the development. As a long time friend with John, I felt I’d known some of the story over the years. But the film, and now the new material, give me larger insight to the full story. Spending time reading the storyboard (one of the extras) again – having seen the film several times – allowed me to see some of the background which shaped John’s quest to tell this story.

The DVD is available now on Amazon.

Some samples of the art work on the new disc.


A somewhat Feiffer-like page within the storyboard.

Smart sketches grow in color.

A very “Canemaker” sketch that reminds me a bit of a Picasso sketch.

There’s lots more on the DVD.

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- Tom Hachtman has seen an unusual turn with his Gertrude and Alice characters. You’ll remember that he’d developed a comic strip, Gertrude’s Follies, built around Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas. A friend and admirer of the strip, Hans Gallas, has written a children’s book around Tom’s characters, and Tom illustrated the book. Now that book’s been published, and can be purchased from their site. Gertrude and Alice and Fritz and Tom is a charming account of what happens when Gertrude and Alice have to take care of a couple of young boys during their stay in Paris.

Here are some of the book’s exuberant illustrations.

The book’s cover

And here are some of Tom’s original sketches for the book.

Original sketch for the cover.
Très different from the final.

A preliminary sketch for a lot of pages

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- Bill Benzon, on his blog New Savannah, has finally completed his treatise on Fantasia and has published it in a PDF form. You can download this here for a great read. 96 pages of intelligent discourse on the feature. This document contains his original, and shorter commentary on the Pastoral sequence. For his longer take on that sequence download this document.

- There were a number of other early Jack Davis pictures that I didn’t post last week (here). These were all sent courtesy of Bill Peckmann. Note that a couple seem to have reflection coming off them; presumably they were in frames.

As Bill wrote in the first post:

These are images from the discs that Jack sent me. They are untitled and
undated, ranging from the beginning of when he first put pen and brush
to paper, up to recent endeavors. So, we’ll just have to sit back and enjoy
what’s going to served up in front of us without rhyme or reason.
I don’t think anyone will have a problem with that. 99% of the art was
new to me, as I hope it will be for the rest of his fans.

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Animals

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Pole

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putting Judges

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Barrons

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Golf report

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Under the Rainbow

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Ladder and Hat

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Fine wine

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4 Bucks

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Hunting Dogs

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Hunting Hog

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All Stars

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Cowboy

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Jack Fishing

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Jack in Rocker

Jack at Work

- It was a treat to open Bill Peckmann‘s email scans of the following Carl Barks material. It’s always fun to read a Donald story, and here we have two. I’ve posted Bill’s comments just under the images.

As kids, a Carl Barks Donald Duck comic book story or comic book
cover never, ever disappointed. (True, we didn’t even know Barks’
name at the time, but even friends not into art could tell the
difference between a Barks Duck story and a non Barks piece.)
Disappointment came when there was a Barks comic book cover
and no Barks story inside the comic.
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Such was the case with the first two issues of Dell’s “Duck Album”,
but the covers are still a treat because here are the eight Ducks
that Carl gave life to for about half a century.
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The first cover was published in 1951,
this second issue cover came out in 1952.
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It was wonderful in a Barks Duck story when the story’s location
was one of the key parts of the tale. Carl would pull out all of the
stops and give that locale all the tender, loving care it deserved.
This 10 page Duck story “Donald of the Coast Patrol” is from 1948.
(The story shown here is a Gladstone reprint.)
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The story takes place at the seashore and the background scenes
are so beautifully done, (you can smell the salt air) especially this
second page. It’s the introduction to the beach and IMHO one of
the best realized comic book pages ever done.
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Barks always delighted himself and us annually with his seasonal
winter Donald Duck stories and their beautiful snowy landscapes.
Originally printed in 1950 and reprinted here by Gladstone, in the
“Mission to Codfish Cove” story he masterfully plumbed the
snowy depths and heights to new levels.
(The story also has a madcap Al Capp or Harvey Kurtzman feel to it.)
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- Bill Peckmann sent the following collection of art by the incomparable Jack Davis. Many of these pieces are from the very early career of Mr. Davis. At this point, I’ll let Bill take on the writing in his own words:

I came across the program guide for Jack’s exhibition of work at the Society of Illustrators in 2002. It’ll be 2 pages: The cover, a B&W illustration from Field and Stream magazine titled “The Hunters” and the second page which is a heartfelt intro by fellow MAD staffer Nick Meglin.

Program cover

Here is a pencil drawing of the Society of Illustrators cover illustration,
“The Hunters,” printed on the cover of the program, above.

Intro by Ned Meglin

The rest of the Davis dinner will be images from the discs that Jack sent me. They are untitled and undated, ranging from the beginning of when he first put pen and brush to paper, up to recent endeavors. So, we’ll just have to sit back and enjoy what’s going to served up in front of us without rhyme or reason. I don’t think anyone will have a problem with that. 99% of the art was new to me, as I hope it will be for the rest of his fans.

A very, very early piece, either an art school exercise
or a portfolio sample.

Another fishing theme but quite a few years later.

Another early piece.

Another early fascinating piece.

Here’s another drawing done by very young, budding cartoonist
Jack Davis. I recently found out that Jack was and has always been
a big fan of illustrator, Albert Dorne. Interesting, because I believe
you can see Dorne’s influence in these early pieces by Jack.

Abe

Abe with newspaper

Bar

Caveman

Carter and money

- A note from Bill Peckmann on Tuesday, and we have a pleasant way to say “Happy Thanksgiving” today. Here are a couple of Donald Duck stories from Carl Barks. A nice way to get into the day’s adventures, by seeing what another fowl is up to.

Here’s Bill:

Happy Thanksgiving!


The cover is the Dec. 1951 issue of
Dell’s “Walt Disney’s Comics and Stories”.

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The 10 page story “The Terrible Turkey” is a Gladstone Pub. reprint.
It was originally printed in Dec. 1947.

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This Nov. 1952 cover is more Halloween than Thanksgiving
but there is that pumpkin pie!

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This Gladstone reprint “The Charitable Chore” is originally Dec. 1952.

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Many thanks to Bill Peckmann.

Happy Thanksgiving

- We seem to have run out of pieces that Kurtzman and Davis have worked together in creating. So this week, Bill Peckmann has supplied me with two pieces. Today we have one on Harvey and tomorrow we have a special one from Jack.

- Here’s a story by Harvey Kurtzman that Bill Peckmann recently contributed. Bill writes:

Here’s a Kurtzman collection that could be called, “10 years, what a difference time makes”. The first piece of work was done in 1949 and the second piece was done in 1959.

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In 1949 Harvey did a comic book story titled “Lucky Fights It Through”.
It was the first piece of work he did for EC. It was a 16 page educational
comic done for the public by EC Comics when they were in the process of
transitioning from “Educational” to “Entertaining” comics.

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Even though it wasn’t done for one of EC’s main titles, it did get Harvey
through the door, he was able to show his prowess, the editors noticed
and the rest is history.

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The scans are from a reprinted version that appeared in
John Benson’s fanzine “Squa Tront”, issue No. 7.

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The End

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The year is 1959. MAD magazine, TRUMP magazine and HUMBUG
are all history for Harvey Kurtzman. He had to turn to free lance work.
Fortunately at that time, Harold Hayes editor of Esquire magazine was
a big Kurtzman fan and gave Harvey this story,
“Assignment: James Cagney In Ireland”, to do.

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Hayes sent Harvey to cover the shooting of Cagney’s “Shake Hands With The Devil” movie. The film set was in Dublin and this is Harvey’s take on the whole experience. It’s one of the best things he ever did.

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Here’s Harvey’s rough for the last page of the Esquire story.
It’s taken from “The Art of Harvey Kurtzman, The Mad Genius
Of Comics” by Denis Kitchen and Paul Buhle.
The book contains the whole Esquire Cagney story plus all of
Harvey’s roughs for the story. This alone is worth the cover price
of this excellent/outstanding book on Harvey and his work.

Many thanks to Bill Peckmann for assembling this post.

Academy voting time

- This past week was a relatively quiet one. I’ve been spending more and more of my time going to screenings for the Academy. Not only are there normal screenings at the AMPAS NY center (usually, at this time of the year, on Tuesdays and Thursdays), but there are also invited screenings. The Academy screenings have started to increase in that there are two films a night, and it gets to feel a bit like overload. I try to spread it out somewhat so that I avoid two films in one night by going to see some of the films at the invited screenings. Often present at these screenings are some of the celebrities from the films.

On Tuesday I saw the Lars Van Triers film, Melancholia – which droned on for four hours (or maybe it was just really 2’15″), and Thursday there was J. Edgar, the Clint Eastwood film with Leonardo DiCaprio. (2 hours 17 mins.) Definitely acting Oscar nominations in both films; both films had problems.

Starting next week the Animated Features begin screening. I have the DVD for Winnie the Pooh, but I’ve been trying to hold off seeing it until it’s on a big screen. As a matter of fact, that’s what I try to do with all the films, no matter how small. I try to see them all properly projected to be able to vote for them fairly. As for the feature animation, this is the first year the NY members are able to vote for the nominees in this category, so it’s something I’ll take seriously. That means I’ll have to sit through Hoodwinked 2 and The Smurfs in a theatrical setting (god help me). I do look forward to Winnie the Pooh, as I’ve said, as well as Cat In Paris on the big screen. (What can I say; I’m a 2D kinda guy.) After the theatrical screening, I’ll probably look at the DVD of W the Pooh a bit more closely.

Nest week, Between Sunday and Wednesday, there’s My Week with Marilyn, The Descendants as well as Rampart. There’s Puss In Boots and Tin Tin. To top it off, on Monday there’s a special screening dedicated to the work of Saul Bass – not Oscar related. It all starts to add up. But I’m not complaining; I actually love it and feel privileged to be able to take part in the process.

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- I was saddened to learn of the death of Bill Keane, the cartoonist who created Family Circus in 1960. He was also the father of Disney animation director, Glen Keane.

I was not the biggest fan of this comic strip when I was young. However, there was the Family Circus Christmas that aired one year. I thought it had one of the best stories ever done for a Christmas Special, and it gave me a new outlook on the strip. That show was directed by Al Kouzel in 1979 (Glen was one of the animators on the show). The animation isn’t very good, but the show reached out to me back then.

As a tiny tribute to Bill Keane, I’m posting this four page piece from Cartoonist Profiles, Dec. 1980 issue. It’s an edited transcript of an interview done with Bill on the Larry King Show.

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Click any image to enlarge.

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- I received this note a few days ago:

My name is John Kassab, and I was the sound designer on the Oscar winning short animated film, ‘The Lost Thing‘.

I am currently producing a wonderful animated short called ‘Cabbit‘ by emerging artist Soogie.

We are in the process of raising awareness about our Kickstarter fundraiser and wondering if you would like to check it out: here.

This is a little interview i did this week about the sound design: here.

… but we would love to get more attention for Soogie, our illustrator / writer / director / animator.

I don’t like to post Kickstarter events on this blog, so please don’t tell me about yours up and coming. There are too many films trying to raise money for me to be promoting any of them. I have my own films wanting funds and rarely mention them here. This film seems to want the funds primarily for post production.

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- Bill Benzon has been writing in depth about Fantasia. On his blog, New Savannah, he’s been detailing the artistic and intellectual struggles visible in the film. Finally, he’s reached the last of the segments, the Pastoral, and he’s uncovered the sexuality just below the film’s surface. Bill writes:

I saw the sexual undertones way back when. But it wasn¹t until I started taking frame grabs‹the last thing before I actually start writing‹that I noticed that all the thunderbolts are directed at Bacchus. And once I saw that, well, the fact that the last one exploded the vat full of grape juice . . . well, you¹ll have to read the post to see what I make of that.

He also posts that he’s going to put all of the eight segments together as a PDF. When he does that, I’ll let you know.

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- Stephen Worth has started the Animation Resources blog. It’s a new place to check daily on your blog rounds. This is a way for Stephen to rekindle all the great posts from the old ASIFA Hollywood Animation Archive blog and for him to add some great new material. There was just too much good material there to let it pass on. You’ll notice it’s part of my blogroll to the right.