Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

- Let’s take a look at the scene in Hubley’s Everybody Rides the Carousel
wherein the young lovers have had a spat and push on to have a romantic scene despite the fact that neither of them wants to do that.

They’ve argued over the girl having cut her hair without telling the boy. He’s annoyed and she laughs at him. They push on to a frothy conversation. Both put on masks to continue the conversation while the inner characters
are annoyed and have an inner monologue. They get to the point where they can’t take the masks off and end plling away from each other.

I’ve gathered John Hubley’s layouts for this sequence. Tissa David animated them. You’ll note that the pencil numbers are a scene breakdown done in Tissa’s handwriting. The very loose drawings were done with a sharpie or pencil. The pencils would have been done while in handing it to Tissa during the conversation. They’re to delineate some point in greater detail for her.

I’ve also pulled some frame grabs so you can see how it was finally rendered. The coloring was done on vellum and shot bottom light. No more than 3 levels were used (including the background.) Tissa, aside from concerning herself with the dramatics of the scene, had to watch that the characters didn’t overlap. More complication for her.

(Click any image to enlarge.)

By the way, this was Meryl Streep’s first screen performance.
Charles Levin, another NY character actor, played the boy.

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Here’s the park bench.
A quick rough copy by me to Tissa of John’s Bg LO.

John’s model of the boy’s head for Tissa.

John Hubley’s models of the Girl’s heads for Tissa.

a rough drawing of the girl by Tissa.

- In 1959 Delco Remy batteries featured a spokesman of a character who was everywhere, that year. William Steig designed the tough-kid for the campaign, and he did ads for all the magazines – Look, Life, Saturday Evening Post. This was an obvious offshoot of Steig’s very successful book of cartoons, Small Fry, which was originally published in 1944 but had had quite a bit of success for the cartoonist.

This was years before Steig would write and illustrate his first children’s book.

Naturally enough, there were animated ads done as well.

Here’s a model sheet made for a Delco battery spot for the Bill Sturm studio in 1959. Sturm was an ex-Fleischer animator who moved into the Fletcher-Smith studio and advertising animation in 1947. He had his onw studio as early as 1956.

This model sheet was created, as many feature models are made, by taking clippings of some completed animation. The character was by William Steig, and I’m not sure who did the animation, but Jim Logan did the assisting.

(Click any image to enlarge,)

Too large to take in all at once, let’s break the animation down to its parts:

“Freshie” leans on the battery talking.

Then he starts to push the battery (which is on its own level.)

The skip is broken into levels with the upper half on one . . .

. . . and the lower half on another.

Here’s a scene of dialogue using heads only.

Finally here’s “Freshie”‘s tag line for the spot.

I’m not sure what this chart was used for, unless this was a series of spots, and the art from the first was what they were shooting for in subsequent spots.

Regardless, a lot of work went into this one minute spot. I’m not sure how much Steig gave them to match his models, but I would assume it was substantial (based on other spots he’d done.)

- In the past, I’ve posted some of John Hubley and Tissa David‘s preliminary drawings for the picture, Eggs. I’ve got plenty of this artwork and I love it, so here’s some more.

Eggs was a short film which was rushed out at a low budget for a PBS show called The Great American Dream Machine, which was produced by designer, Elinor Bunin.

The film follows the political thoughts of John and Faith; they were concerned about overpopulation (there are at least four shorts they made about the subject) and were able to blatantly make a political short for this TV series.

Past posts of my can be seen here, and here.

There’s currently a copy of this short on YouTube.

These three drawings are character Layouts by John Hubley.

(Click any image to enlarge to animation-sized artwork.

This is a BG Layout John gave Tissa.

This drawing and all the remaining are Tissa David’s drawings.

She would block out her own rough Layout
before jumping in in to animate.

It gave her the chance to thoroughly think out what
little information John had given her. Usually just a
conversation with some very rough sketches.

This is Tissa’s Bg Layout for this scene.

A short while back I found a couple of Van Buren animation drawings for sale on Ebay. I bought them and have been waiting for the new DVD from Steve Stanchfield and Thunderbean Animation. Toddle Tales is a gem of a dvd, and I was able to locate my drawings in the cartoons available.

I already have several copies of The Sunshine Makers, which is probably the most famous of the Rainbow Parade cartoons. This was a film that was apparently done for Borden’s milk, and features one of the screwiest animation stories ever.

A bunch of little guys (named “Joy” on the model sheets) deliver bottled sunshine (which looks a lot like milk) somewhere. We never see who’s receiving the sunshine, but carts of these elves are delivering it.
Other little guys (named “Gloom”) don’t want the sunshine delivered. We see one of these top-hatted characters shoot an arrow at a Joy guy, and gloomy gus ends up getting bathed in sunshine.

My drawing reveals him taking off his outer clothes to bury them.

(Click any image to enlarge.)

Labelled by animator(?) Joy and Gloom Aug 3 1934

The other two drawings I bought were a mystery to me. However, I was easily able to find them in the cartoon A Little Bird Told Me.

Burt Gilette & JIM TYER directed the film, and the music is by Winston Sharples,
who scored most of the Paramount cartoons later in life.

This is an equally odd short. A live action (it looks like second-rate Our Gang of the early 30s) child gets caught eating jam. His sister wipes him clean. However the bird in the tree tells all about it.

Apparently, there’s a bird newspaper just out the kitchen window. Walter Finchell is assigned the story by his owl editor. Here’s where my drawings come in. The owl editor comes out to hand over the story.
One of the drawings is an exact match. The other is close.

Thunderbean also includes a few model sheets on the dvd. Here’s one of my editor owl.

- Wifle Piffle was a character that the Fleischer studio tried to develop out of the Betty Boop series. The first appearance was in a Screen Song: I Feel Like A Feather In The Breeze released in 1936. He appears as a waiter in the opening. The animation of the character was by Tom Johnson (as was this model sheet.)

Two follow-up films were made with this side character in Betty Boop shorts.
The first, released in February 1937, was Whoops! I’m A Cowboy, and the second, in March 1937, The Hot Air Salesman. The opening scene features an expensive multiplane shot behind him.

He seems to have been an Egghead type character whose sole character trait was a silly walk. Needless to say, they couldn’t find a joh for him.

The model sheet for the character was an 18 drawing walk cycle with a bit of a turnaround. Crosshairs keep the character in registration; only a couple of the pages were punched.

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Wiffle Piffle walk cycle
On ones at 24FPS
Click left side of black bar to play.
Right side to watch single frame.

- For Halloween, we’re all posting relevant material to the “holiday.” I have a lot of artwork from the Hubley short, EGGS, which was wholly animated by Tissa David.

One of the two characters starring in the short is a skeleton, symbolic of death and destruction. The other is a nymph, who represents fertility. The show is basically about the complications overpopulation has presented to the world.

I thought it appropriate for today to post some of the drawings and models for the death character. The images displayed are cropped from the full animation sheets; when you click these displayed it’ll enlarge to the full page. Here they are.

The first model of the character came close to the final.
This is a drawing by John Hubley.

He soon solidified in this model by Hubley.

Tissa David finally worked out some of the problems for herself
and created this working model sheet.

Here’s a beautiful working drawing by Tissa as
she started to pose out the scenes.

Tissa’s roughs are deceptively simple but convey so much. These drawings
are for her eyes only, usually, she’ll clean it up somewhat for animation.

Unfortunately the dvd is a bit soft partially because of the nature of the
underlit final artwork. Perhaps someday there’ll be a better digital transfer.

Fertility is oozing sexuality in every drawing. This is part of the
same scene as she converses with death about the human race.

Here’s a YouTube interview with John & Faith Hubley done in 1973. They discuss Eggs and Voyage to Next.

Here’s EGGS on YouTube in a contrasty but sharp copy.

- I have some of the model sheets that Gary Trudeau drew for the Hubley film, Doonesbury (which was done for CBS in 1977.)

As I wrote once before, I had some problems with this production. It was the job I took immediately after completing Raggedy Ann & Andy. I was glad to be working with John Hubley again, and I helped on some of the prep for this show.

I was not a fan of the strip or Trudeau, and I know he wasn’t a fan of mine. Regardless, I would have walked through walls for John. Unfortunately, the walls which were covered with stunning artwork and paintings from past Hubley films, now displayed comic strips ripped from the newspaper and taped on top of the Hubley pictures. This annoyed me, of course.

But I continued layout of the show until one day when I was called into John’s office. He told me that he was about to go into hospital for a heart operation and expected to be back in about 3 weeks. I’d face a short lay off/break in work.

John didn’t come back. He died in the operation and ultimately Faith and Gary Trudeau went on to complete the film. I chose not to return.

I worked with R.O.Blechman in putting together the PBS special, Simple Gifts. Tissa David also worked on that film. She went to work for Faith after she finished her segment. She told me that she couldn’t finish animating 100 ft. (abot a minute) a week without a fast assistant. I offered to help.

At night, after working all day for Bob Blechman, I assisted Tissa’s sequence and then did a couple of Ruth Kissane’s sequences that were too complicated for some of the novice people at Hubley’s. I wasn’t very connected to the studio and felt the distance.

The show aired on CBS and was nominated for the Oscar.

(Of course, all images enlarge when clicked.)

- I’m trying to coordinate with Hans Perk‘s posting of the drafts to Sleeping Beauty by offering as much material as I can locate on the film. It’s leading to some odd discoveries. (Just today, Hans offers the drafts to the cake baking sequence.)

Here’s one of those galleys given me many years ago by John Canemaker. It was a way of showing off material available. Perhaps some of it has been published in some book or other. I don’t think it all has gone out, though.

This is the development of the three fairies, Fauna, Flora and Merryweather. You’ll see they took some wacky turns on the way to the end. I believe these were drawn by Tom Oreb, Bill Peet, Ward kimball, Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston.

This is the full photo which comes in at 24×40 inches.

(Click any image to enlarge.)

I believe this is by Kimball.

Probably Bill Peet’s storyboard characters.

No idea who did this.

This looks a bit like Frank Thomas’ line, though the characters don’t look like his.

An Ollie Johnston self-portrait?

Now they’re coming together.

Almost complete.

Frank Thomas animation.

More Thomas animation.

Some beautiful poses.

I have a couple of animation drawings from this film from the “Skumps” sequence. I’ll post those when Hans hits that part of the film with his drafts. This movie is a great one.

If you’re in LA, go see it in Technirama on July 16th. Academy Screening.

- Rico LeBrun, an established Italian artist, was employed at the Disney studio in the late ’30s to help teach the studio’s artists to learn how to draw animals. Bambi was in process, and Disney knew that he had to train his artists to reach to a new level.

In his preparation for the job, LeBrun created a book of some 50 or so pages of the skeletal system of deer for the artists to use as reference in learning to manipulate the animal characters. His art was copied onto animation paper with typed notes added.

Sky-David had contacted me after a recent item I had posted about the drawings on Bambi. Sky told me that he had a copy of all of the pages of LeBrun’s study. He shared it with me and I posted the first 18 pages several weeks back. (Here’s part 1.) This is a second installment, thanks to Sky’s generosity, for those who’d like to see them.

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I’ll post the remaining 16 drawings soon.

- Let’s imagine.

Mary Blair is the most brilliant of all the color stylists to have worked at the Disney studio during its heyday. Among the photographed storyboards loaned me by John Canemaker was this board of Mary Blair images. The only problem is that it’s B&W. So, we have to imagine the array of greens and blues and yellows the designer would have used for this very colorful sequence.

This is the board in it’s entirety. Now, to split it up so you can look at the images a bit more closely.

1a
_____To enlarge any of the images, click on them.

Here’s an image from Canemaker’s book, The Art and Flair of Mary Blair. I just wanted to remind you of how these other images probably look in color.