Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

- Continuing with yesterday’s post on the end of Sleeping Beauty. I’ve decided to get the frame grabs for the sequence and post them as well. I thought the comparison of board to actual film interesting.
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These images come from the “Special Edition” of the dvd, not the “Platinum Edition” now on the market. Using Hans Perk‘s posts of the drafts for these scenes, I was able to identify the animators’ names. (Trust me, I’m nopt trying to compete with Mark Mayerson‘s brilliant “Mosaics”. This is too hard; I have no intention of keeping it up.)

sc 82 (L) Milt Kahl – sc 82.1 (R) Frank Thomas

sc 82.2 (L) Kahl & Thomas – sc 82.3 (R) George Nicholas & Jerry Hathcock

sc 82.4 (L) Nicholas – sc 82.5 (R) Nicholas & Hathcock

Nicholas & Hathcock (L) sc 82.6

Nicholas & Hathcock (L) sc 83

sc 84 (L) Ken Hultgren – sc 85 (R) Nicholas & Hathcock

sc 87 (L) Nicholas & Sibley – sc 88 (R) Nicholas & Hathcock

(L) Nicholas & Hathcock – sc 89.1 (R) Hultgren

sc 89 (L) Nicholas & Hathcock – sc 91 (R) Hathcock

sc 91 (L) Hathcock – sc 92 (R) SA sc 49 seq 8

sc 95 (L) Hathcock – sc 93 (R) Hathcock

sc 96 (L) Hathcock – sc 97 (R) Dan MacManus

(L) MacManus – sc 97.2 (R) Hathcock

sc 98 (L) Hathcock – sc 99 (R) Sibley

sc 100 MacManus

sc 100.1 (L) Hathcock – sc 101 (R) Les Clark & Fred Kopietz

sc 102 (L) Hultgren & Kopietz – sc 104 (R) Hathcock

sc 107 (L) Hathcock – sc 108 (R) Hultgren

(L) Hutlgren – sc 109 (R) Hathcock

sc 110 (L) Ollie Johnston & Blaine Gibson – sc 110.1 (R) Gibson

sc 110.2 (L) Johnston – sc 110.3 (R) Johnston & Gibson

sc 110.4 (L) Johnston – sc 111 (R) Johnston & Gibson

sc 112 Johnston & Gibson

sc 112 (cont) Johnston & Gibson

Happy Fourth o’ July

- An interesting aspect of Disney’s Alice In Wonderland, deserves some attention, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone write about it.

Once Alice is in Wonderland, she immediately comes upon the woods, and from there she steps in and out of the woods to meet up with new crazies and her peculiar adventures. The effects department was used to signal this move in and out of the dark world of wonderland. She constantly steps in and out of shadows.

This, as anyone who did animation in the pre-computer age, knows that it was a complication to add shadows. Not only the shadows under the characters but the shadows over and around the characters. It meant filming the scenes twice, just for the shadows. Since the camera, during the filming of Alice, was not computerized this double shooting had to be done by hand VERY CAREFULLY. Every frame had to exactly match.

Hence, this was an important part of the design. The directors and Disney took these shadows seriously; after all they cost twice as much – just to photograph. Never mind animating them, coloring them or planning them.

I’ve put together a number of frame grabs which illustrate the move into or out of shadows, and I’d like to share them.

Here, Alice steps out of a shadow for the first time, and meets up with
Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum. They’re partially covered, themselves, by shadow.
This variant of the shadow is a hard line of darkness that moves over her.

(Click any image to enlarge.)

Soon, Alice moves toward the Duchess’ house. We cut from her
standing dark in shadow, to her walking in a brighter light.

As she moves toward the Caterpillar, Alice is covered with shrubbery and shadow.
She is next seen struggling through the foliage to talk to the Caterpillar, in full light.

This variant of the shadow is a total shift in color as her entire body moves into darkness.
It was done by dissolving one Alice into another – meaning the cels were painted twice.

In the woods, Alice walks into and out of and into shadows.

She slowly moves toward the Cheshire Cat who directs her to the tea party.
As she does she moves from shadow and cuts into light as she appears at the gate.

This is a particularly nice effect wherein the entire area gets spotlighted -
led by the character. The area outside of the spot darkens slowly and beautifully.

Once leaving the tea party, she wanders around the Tulgey Wood trying to find any direction. Shadows aplenty as she moves endlessly through the woods.

Alice moves into and out of shadow via dissolves.

Alice passes by many crazy characters, going in and out of darkness.

Just prior to meeting up with the Cheshire Cat, and has an extended conversation
which just about ends her stay in the woods.

Finally, Alice steps into the Cheshire Cat’s tree and
into the light of the maze of cards to meet the Red Queen.

- Among the brilliant scenes in Dumbo is one that usually is overlooked in all the animation books. Yet, to me it separates this film from other Disney films, except, perhaps, Pinocchio. The tent building scenes are a brilliant mix of solid animation, excellent (and quietly hidden) effects, strong music and perfect screen direction. The sequence works extremely well on its own, but it works even better as a significant part of the film as a whole.

I sincerely doubt that Walt could have been in the studio when the sequence was built. Certainly, this espouses the Socialist politiical views of many of the strikers and one wonders what Walt thought of it. Presumably, because it has been developed as such an integral part of the film, the underlying political current of the sequence could hardly be lost, but it’s hard to miss the overall feel of it. Perhaps I’m completely wrong, and the feel of the piece can just be chalked up to a product of the period.

I would love to hear what other, more informed historians have to say about it.

Here, are frame grabs detailing the sequence.

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- Dumbo is certainly one of my favorite Disney features if not THE favorite. Naturally, the “Baby Mine” sequence is a highlight. The sequence is so tender and fine-tuned to appear straightforward and simple. This, of course, is the heart of excellence. It seems simple and doesn’t call attention to itself.

This is a storyboard composed of LO drawings from the opening of that sequence. They appear to be BG layouts with drawings of the characters cut out and pasted in place.

It’s not really a storyboard, and I’ve always wondered what purpose such boards served to the Disney machine back in the Golden Age.

Below is the board as it stands in the photograph.

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Here is the same photographed board, split up so that I can post it in larger size. I’ve also interspersed frame grabs from the actual sequence for comparison.

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- Mike Lynch has a great post about Bobby London‘s short stint writing and drawing the Popeye comic strip. There was a controversy in the last weeks of Londond’s tenure in doing the strip. Mike Lynch posts these strips and makes you long to see more of London’s work. There is a collection of his strips, Mondo Popeye, from St. Martin’s Press; it’s out of print and a bit pricey on the market.

Take a look at Mike Lynch‘s post.

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- Tonight Ralph Bakshi will be at the Anthology Film Archives where two of his features will be screened. Heavy Traffic, which made it to many of the year’s top ten lists will show at 7pm and Coonskin,
which you can’t even find on NetFlix, will follow at 9pm.

Bakshi will be there to sign copies of his book, Unfiltered: The Complete Ralph Bakshi.

7:00pm – Heavy Traffic
9:00pm – Coonskin

Tickets are $8, good for one or both features

Anthology Film Archives
32 Second Ave. (corner of 2nd Ave.& 2nd St.)
NYC

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Here’s the NYTimes review from Heavy Traffic‘s opening. ________________________

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Here are some frame grabs from the “Hey, Maybelline” segment of Heavy Traffic by Mark Kausler. Sorry the quality stinks, but the dvd is a dreadful transfer.

- Continuing with my exploration and breakdown of the walk cycles which appear at the start of Disney’s 101 Dalmatians, I have scene 21 “French girl walks French poodle” animated by Blaine Gibson. It employs the same BG as scene 14, the art student (posted Apr 3), but it extends, beyond what we’ve seen before, to include a telephone booth.

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This is a slightly faster walk than others, and I’ve been able to grab all of the drawings. It’s animated on “ones.”

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The “French girl” walks her French poodle on “ones.”

This walk is an absolute gem !

Once again, check out Hans Perk‘s excellent site A Film LA to get the drafts for this film to be able to identify who was behind what. Then go to see Mark Mayerson‘s arduously constructed and informative mosaics as well as his detailed commentary about the film and its animators.

Check out Floyd Norman‘s story about Blaine Gibson on Jim Hill Media.

- Let’s talk a little about the problems of trying to study animation from a dvd. You can get a screen grab easily from the free media that comes with your computer. If you move ahead “1″ frame at a time and grab each image, you can study the animation. The only problem is it doesn’t really work.

I’ve made a few posts where I’ve pulled every frame and separated the character (via photoshop) from the background, then put it through Aftereffects to create a walk cycle. You can see this with Betty Boop or Popeye or, now, from 101 Dalmatians a walk cycle of the Art Student.

The only problem is it’s a fake.

I’ve captured EVERY FRAME of those cycles, and I’ve meticulously assembled them up to Aftereffects. Hypothetically, the images should be posted on “ones” to make it work, but it doesn’t The timing is different – too fast. With each one of those three cycles, I’ve had to put the images I’ve captured on “threes” to get close to the timing of the original.

This would certainly have not made sense with a walk cycle from 101 Dalmatians. It most certainly is on “ones” in the actual film, yet the timing as captured is off. This can only mean that the compression on dvds is not allowing the images captured on a “frame by frame” basis to be all the images on the disk. I have to compensate. So far this compensation has worked.

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But now I’ll show you one that doesn’t work. It has to be viewed on “ones”, and you have to see all the images to get it to work. This is the second walk cycle from 101 Dalmatians. The “Buxom girl and bulldog” walk comes close, but no cigar. There are only two positions for the little dog – expanded legs and crossing position. On “ones” this might look ok for a rapid walk, but to get the timing for this walk cycle – as it appears in the film – you actually have to put these frame grabs on something between “threes” and “fours”. It absolutely does not work.

So I give you a failed attept at showcasing another brilliant walk cycle from this excellent film. Here’s the “Buxom girl and bulldog” seq. 001, scene 21 from 101 Dalmatians. Blaine Gibson animated it.

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The “Buxom Girl and Bulldog” walk on threes.

Again, note that Hans Perk is posting the studio Drafts for this film on his site, and Mark Mayerson is posting Mosaics and comments on his site.

- When I was young, as I’ve pointed out many times, there were few books available about animation and as few illustrations and photos which ellicited the art of animation. Hence, it was always a treat when a Disney feature was released. The adjoining publicity would provide a trove of publicity material, some worth saving. An encyclopedia my parents bought at about the time of release of 101 Dalmations included several key images of Pongo running. One of those photos of many cels overlayed to detail the cycle. I loved that picture and frequently looked at that encyclopedia under “Cartoons, Animated” to study the photo of the cels.

At the very beginning of 101 Dalmatians, Pongo looks out onto the street to search for a good mate for both himself and Roger, his owner. At this point we’re treated to a number of walk cycles that I think are brilliant. A number of women are perfectly matched to the dogs that they walk.

Now with DVDs available to us, we can see that the characters originated in the storyboard drawings, and we can study these walk cycles. I’m determined to take these animated bits apart to watch them a bit closer.

The first of these is the “girl art student” as described in the drafts (which can be found on Hans Perks’ excellent site A Film LA.) Oddly, from my very first viewing of this film back in 1961, I identified her as a “beatnick,” which was the fashionable joke back then. Now I find out she was an “art student.” I guess that makes sense.

Here’s the pan BG that this scene employs.

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And here is the walk cycle animated by Frank Thomas and Blaine Gibson.
Gibson handled the following scene which pans across the bodies of the pair as they walk.

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The “Art student” walks her dog on threes.

Animation note: The two separate feet are divided by a short space. The left foot is on one plane, and the right foot is on another. This is a BASIC precept for animators to follow, and it’s something that is not appearing in a lot of the recent walk cycles I’ve been seeing. It’s annoying.

- Excellent news. Now that Hans Perk has been posting the animator drafts of 101 Dalmatians and, as a result of that, Mark Mayerson is putting together one of his fine Mosaics for the film, I’m able to contribute a small bit toward the study of this film. It all coincides nicely with the relatively new dvd package that Disney has released.

Starting Monday, thanks again to the generosity of John Canemaker, I’ll be posting a nice chunk of the storyboard for this film. It starts just after the wedding at the film’s opening and continues on. It’s Bill Peet’s original board, and I’m excited to put it up.

To celebrate, I’ve taken a few frame grabs off the dvd which showcases some of the opening storyboard drawings. Unfortunately, the images aren’t as large as I’d like on the dvd, but they’ll have to do. This is one of my favorite Disney features, and it really pleases me to see all this material come out. Thanks to Hans Perk for starting it all.

(Click any image to enlarge a bit.)________________