Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

- Back to Mary Blair’s great work. We move from the film work she did for Disney to the art work she did in designing It’s A Small World for the Pepsi pavilion at the 1964 NY World’s Fair. There’s so much artwork for this that I’m going to have to break it into two posts.

Here’s my selection for the first group:

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The artist at work.

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An architectural drawing of the site.

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- I’ve always loved this sequence of layout poses Chuck Jones did for his short, Feed the Kitty. This, to me, was when Jones was at his greatest. All those Claude Cat shorts were just spectacular animation/layout/design. Here, Marc Antony falls in love with a kitty.

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This is how it looked in the final film as animated by the great Ken Harris. They broke it into a couple of scenes.

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- Jack Sidebotham passed away on Sunday. Bill Peckmann received the following message from George Newall, the co-creator of Schoolhouse Rock:

Sad news. Jack died last night. Evidently he and Dick Lord were having lunch when Jack complained that he thought he was having a heart attack. As it turned out, it was an aneurism. The good news is that he was in no pain and conversing with the doctor when suddenly he just wasn’t “there” anymore.

Yesterday, Jack’s niece, Kimberly Sidebotham Lennert, left this comment on my blog: “My uncle was a terrific cartoonist and had a great wit about him. I kept a box of all the little notes and drawings he sent to me. He could say a lot with a few lines and a few words. ”

In his memory, I’ve chosen to repeat his book on Cartooning done in the 70s. Jack worked at a number of advertising agencies and had a lot to do with the Piels Brothers campaign and Scholastic Rock. He also was the agency producer for the famous Jello Chinese Baby ad done by Ray Patin Prods.

For this “Art of” book, he brings back the Piels Brothers without their great voices, comedians Bob and Ray, to escort the reader through a few lessons in cartooning and a sample of a number of different jobs in the field.

I think the book was originally published by Grumbacher, along with several others on art and painting techniques, to compete with the cheap and successful books published Walter T. Foster. They were all sold in art stores for very little money, and if you hit on a Preston Blair book, you’d found gold.

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(Click any image to enlarge.)

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The book’s back cover

- The last of the full length animated features that Mary Blair helped to design was Peter Pan. Her artwork for this film is stunning, and fortunately it’s been published in many places.

Of course, there’s John Canemaker‘s excellent book, The Art and Flair of Mary Blair.
Then there’s the Little Golden Book of Peter Pan, .
These scans were all taken from the featured book, The Colors of Mary Blair

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- Alice. More pictures from the Japanese book, The Colors of Mary Blair. There are lots of pictures from this book that I’m not posting; I’d urge you all to buy it.

The three key feature films that were influenced by Mary Blair are Cinderella, Alice In Wonderland and Peter Pan. There’s a wealth of model drawings from each of these three available in various books. John Canemaker‘s brilliant work, The Art and Flair of Mary Blair, pulls all three together into one chapter and handles them beautifully.
Each of the films has a companion storybook that is illustrated with Mary Blair’s models. Peter Pan, Alice In Wonderland, Cinderella.

These Alice drawings are overexposed, but I picked a bunch I like.

(Click any image to enlarge.)

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- Here are some bits and pieces left over from the week.

Bill Peckmann sent me some beautiful art this week, and though the pieces have nothing in common, I still thought it’s worth showing the quality of the great art done in the 60s & 70s whether for spot cartoons or animated spots.

These are Bill’s comments from his email:

“I thought you’d get a kick out of this, here’s RBW’s gag in the Dec. ’61 issue of Esguire and the next will be the same gag as it appeared in 2 colors in his book. You can see how much was lost.”

(Click any image to enlarge.)

Then on another post Bill sent me these treasures from Phil Kimmelman & Associates (PK&A).

Again, Bill’s words:

“Thought you might have an interest in seeing these. They are 3 cel set ups from the days at PK&A in the ’70′s. Two I designed for Honeycomb Cereal, the third a Mexican spot for Eveready Batteries. The BG’s were also done with Cel Paint. Sadly the color reproduction never looked so good as it does now with scanning, remember those 16mm Answer Prints of yore, made for TV viewing, the original colors never came close to what we had in mind.
These set ups were made for “Studio” ads.”

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Greg Kelly and I have been exchanging emails for quite some time now. He’s done many short films and sends them for comment. His latest film is now posted on Vimeo, and I thought I’d like to commend you to take a look. He’s working hard at his animation, and I can only encourage him wholeheartedly. It isn’t easy to make a film, and he keeps doing it.

He wrote of this piece:

“It is frame-by-frame, hand drawn in Flash and on twos with a lot of hand adjustments. It isn’t typical for what I do though it is another cartoon in an 8 year long series of shorts featuring one or both of these characters.”

- John Canemaker has another post up at the Print Magazine site. This month it’s a good piece about Chuck Jones at the MacDowell Colony. It tells of Jones winning the MacDowell Medal in 1997.

Canemaker, who led the advisory panel in selecting Jones, prints his introductory speech to Jones and includes links to several WB shorts by the Master. It’s worth checking out if you have any allegiance to Jones’ work.

I’m sure anyone who is interested has already read this, but Michael Barrier has his review of Toy Story 3 up at his site. Since I’m in total agreement with what he has to say, I can only direct you to the link.

This continues my series of color stills from some of the beautiful work in the exquisite Japanese book on Mary Blair, The Colors of Mary Blair. If you have the resources to buy this book, you should.

- The big three for Mary Blair, as a designer of Disney animation, were Cinderella, Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan. We’ll spend all of this post on Cinderella. Many of these illustrations made it into John Canemaker‘s invaluable book, The Art and Flair of Mary Blair. Others have made it into a Cinderella storybook with text by Cynthia Ryant. Still others appear only in this Japanese edition.

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A couple of Marc Davis models.

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- Continuing gwith some selected stills from the Japanese book, The Colors of Mary Blair, I’ve chosen concept art for three films; one animated: Two Silhouettes, two live action: Song of the South and So Dear To My Heart.

- I’d like to continue showing some of the Mary Blair work pictured in the Japanese book, The Colors of Mary Blair.

The work is sensational, of course, but they aren’t very well identified (in English). Hence I’ve chosen images almost at random without really knowing what projects they’re designed to illustrate. When I do have information, I’m passing it along. I suspect others of you may be able to identify it better that I. (I certainly don’t consider myself an authority on Mary Blair.) If so, please feel free to leave comments.

Mary Blair at Disney.

These first 5 images are from Penelope, a feature about a
time-travelling girl that was never produced.

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The following group come from various sources.
Some are from Penelope, although others look like they were
done on the South American trip, with the bold colors.

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The following group of six are labelled: “Upsidedownia.”

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Here are some watercolors Lee Blair did for Fantasia:

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And a couple for what looks like Pinocchio.

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(Click any image to enlarge.)

- I received a magnificent gift, recently, from John Canemaker. It’s a book that was published in Japan that intensely focusses on the work of Mary Blair, the brilliant artist who
designed and stylized many Disney’s golden films.

The book is chock-a-block with images, and even though most of the writing is in Japanese, the book is a glorious item to read through – just for the pictures. Fortunately, there is identification in English under all of the images. John Canemaker also has a wonderfully written Foreward in the book.

I’m going to make a couple of posts selecting some images that I found exciting and relevant to Ms. Blair’s career. Included, of course, will be some paintings and designs by her husband, Lee Blair, and her brother-in-law, Preston Blair.

I’m sure a lot of the paintings were chosen to act as a comparison to some of the animated segments done by the trio. Take, for example, “Woman with Red Flowers in Hair” by Preston Blair.

This post will attend to the pre-Disney paintings of all three artists.

Wedding Photo – March 3, 1934
Mary and Lee Blair

Lee Blair – The twins

Mary Blair – Couple in Snow Sled

Mary Blair – Ice Skaters

Lee Blair – Mary by the Sea

Mary Blair – The Revelation

Mary Blair – The Expectation

Mary Blair – The Invitation

Mary Blair – San Francisco Nights

Mary Blair – Landscape of Trees

Mary Blair – Landscape

Lee Blair – Old Mansion

Lee Blair – Redwood Slashings

Preston Blair – Night Street Scene with Cable Car

Preston Blair – Female Nude Preening

Preston Blair – Couple Kissing

Preston Blair – Woman with Red Flowers in Hair

May I also remind you that John Canemaker has a wonderful book available in the US. The Art and Flair of Mary Blair is still for sale on Amazon.