Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

Back in 2007, Eddie Fitzgerald had an excellent piece on his site about the Yiddish Theater. This encouraged me, at the time, to write a post built on the back of some of the set designs of Boris Aronson, one of the greatest of all set designers for Broadway. I’ve added to it and recap it here.

Most people have forgotten the theatrical heritage that came out of the Yiddish Theater. The immigrants to America brought a theatrical treasure with them. In New York, Second Avenue housed dozens of theaters that entertained a very large audience with hundreds of plays. The shows, of course, were all performed in Yiddish. These shows were not only in Manhattan but in the outer boroughs as well.

Many performers stepped out of Yiddish Theater into stardom, but there were also many directors, writers, composers and designers that emerged as well to create the history of the mainstream theater.

Boris Aronson, a Russian immigrant, designed for the Yiddish Unser Theater in the Bronx. He took his position as an opportunity to introduce Constructivist designs to audiences. New art was entering America at the popular level, and it was accepted.

Aronson did quite a number of set pieces and costume designs before moving over to the mainstream, English-speaking theater. He became the foremost designer on Broadway designing the original productions of many shows such as Cabin In The Sky, Bus Stop, The Crucible, and Awake and Sing. His later work included Cabaret, Fiddler On The Roof, Company, Follies and Zorba.

Here are a few examples of the work he did for the Yiddish Theater.

- More images collected from Cinderella. But first, let me start with this email my sister, Pat, sent me. She’s always sending
me funny email jokes, and this one seemed to come at just the right time – in time for this post. It just reads:

The Prince and Cinderella is one thing but the two sisters’ dresses. That’s where this comparison takes the cake.
Anyway, I thought you might enjoy it if you haven’t already seen this.

Now, onto more Cinderella art. This all started with Hans Perk‘s wonderful blog, A Film LA and the Cinderella drafts he’s posting. Take a look. They’re a treasure (as is everything Hans posts.)

We start with a couple of finished BGs and move onto to models and designs for Cinderella’s room, house, and castle.

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The Stepmother

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The Stepsisters

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- I continue, here, with more images from Cinderella.

I think of this series of posts as an outgrowth of the Cinderella drafts Hans Perk is posting on his excellent blog, A Film LA. Check them out if you haven’t already.

Many of the following drawings are better drawn than some of those in the first post. Others almost look as though they’re frame grabs rather than the preliminary sketches (See #9 & 10) they are. I hope you enjoy them. If you know who did any of the art, don’t hesitate to let us all know.

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I just read a great little quote by Wilfred Jackson in Didier Ghez‘ book Walt’s People Vol. 6. I thought I’d share it. It comes from an interview with Jackson by Steve Hulett:

Pinocchio was the last picture I worked on that was done so strictly under Walt’s guidance. All during the thirties it was that way. Then he backed off and began throwing more responsibility to the rest of us. He figured we should know our business well enough to help him make pictures instead of being extra fingers on his hand.

And it’s my personal opinion that this accounts a great deal for some of the difference that you see in the spirit and the heart that you see in the pictures during the thirties. That gradually, it got a little less evident until it got to the point, in my estimation, where the Disney pictures became superb technically, but a little lacking in a joyous creative spirit you’ll find in those early pictures. As time went on, it was more and more diluted by the influence of others . . .

- Cinderella art. I’ve taken a lot of drawings that I could find from an old DVD and from some books and have put them all together in a jamboree of images making up a couple of posts. The occasion for this, to me, is to celebrate the drafts recently posted by Hans Perk on his resourceful site, A Film LA. This is all leading up to something. I don’t want to do: a mosaic of the film. I am not that in love with the movie to do all that work, but perhaps I’ll do a variation of the form, created by Mark Mayerson.

The artists of these sketches are nameless. None of the art was identified, so I send it out that way. The Mary Blair images are obvous, and though there’s a preponderance of Blair artwork for this film, I”ve tried to limit her a bit. I did devote a lot of space to her artwork in past posts. You can find more of her Cinderella images here.

For now here are some images of the character, Cinderella.

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- A lot of pre-production artwork from Bambi has been released in numerous forms. One of the groups of images I find particularly interesting is a host of thumbnail paintings that an art director had done trying to get quick sketches of the backgrounds for a sequence. These seem to all come from the forest fire sequence. They could be Maurice Noble or John Hubley or Tom Codrick or Al Zinnen. Or others. There were great artists backing up this film.

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A Harold Miles sketch.

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A still from the film.

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Tyrus Wong
Loaned from the Cowan collection.

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Loaned from the Cowan collection.

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Marc Davis
Loaned from the Cowan collection.

- It all starts with a drawing. Bambi is, to me, one of the most beautiful of animated features. Collectively, the artists at the Disney studio pulled together to create some wonderful artwork which produced a wonderful film.

The initial work went through many phases, as would be a natural state for animation. However, all of the artists seem to be trying for a higher plane, and oftentime they reached it.

To celebrate the latest release of this film, the Blu-Ray/DVD version, I’ve pulled a lot of the drawings from the film and post them here. It’s amazing how much nifluence Marc Davis had early on. I can only ID the artists of some of the sketches. If you know, let me know.

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David Hall

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(above and below) Marc Davis

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David Hall

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(above and below) Ken Peterson

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David Hall

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Marc Davis

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Murray McClelland

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Fred Madison

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(Probably) Gustaf Tenggren

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Frank Thomas

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Marc Davis

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Lynn Karp

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Ken Peterson

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Ken Hultgren

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(above and below) David Hall

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A Tyrus Wong pastel sketch.

- Here are the LayOuts by John Hubley for the Electric Company piece, Cool Pool Fool. Tissa David animated from these layouts and the verbal instructions from John.

A couple of drawings are missing #7 and #18

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Here are some frame grabs from the spot. They’ve been severely touched up in photoshop since the video has lost all color and is almost unwatchable except as a silhouette film. I’ve reconstructed the colors as near as I can remember them. At any rate, the purpose of these grabs is for you to see what Tissa has done with John’s layouts.

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- I received a request to post the drafts to Raggedy Ann & Andy. I’ll post all that I have. These come from a second and more complete group. The format changed from the traditional Disney formula (8½ x 14 vertical) to this (8½ x 14 horizontal). There’s much more info here.

However, let’s start with a great Corny Cole drawing of the Greedy, a breathing, living taffy pit. Done on 16×17 drawing paper, punched, with a BIC pen.

The Drafts – seq. 2.1 The dolls come to life

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seq. 2.2 – Big news

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- Here are copies I have of four random Fantasia layouts. Make of them what you will.
It’s worth clicking the images to enlarge them.

Now visit Hans Perk’s wonderful site, AFILMLA, to see the drafts of Fantasia.

Steven Hartley has begun making a mosaic on his blog. To see that, go here.

- Here’s a piece I posted in December 2007. Since the crèches are popping up all about town, and since I’m such a fan of Eyvind Earle’s work, I love repeating it. The video would make a good Christmas purchase and can be bought here.

- Here’s a celebration of the animated segments Eyvind Earle did for The Tennessee Ernie Ford Show.

“The Story of Christmas” is a piece which is about ten minutes long set within this half hour special. (Remember when they called them “Specials”?)

The entire show is a Christian sing-along featuring the Roger Wagner Chorale singing around Tennessee Ernie’s gospel read.

The whole is a very reverent piece with no attempt at lightness and comes off as very religious. This would certainly not work on television today, never mind ABC TV which is where it premiered as one episode of the Tennessee Ernie Ford series. Some of you may remember the animated Hubley titles for the show which can be found in John Halas‘ Technique of Film Animation.

Three segments feature the animated graphics with the group singing. The only real narrative tells the birth of Christ in animation. Otherwise the Roger Wagner Chorale, dressed in Dickensian outfits, gather around varied sets looking like the early 19th Century England.

(Click any image to enlarge.)

Earle’s animation was done immediately after Sleeping Beauty was completed. He’d left the studio (or was more probably left by the studio during their massive layoff at the time) and formed his own small independent studio to do work like this. I think this was probably his largest job, and it seems perfectly suited to his style.

Lots of pans and flare effects are built around sliding cells trying to imitate the look of the multiplane camera. There really is no animation here, just the sliding cels of the characters over the pans. It’s still quite attractive for what it is and holds the attention. The piece is well planned and shows off everything Earle had learned at Disney’s studio.

The following are frame grabs from many of the scenes:

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