Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

- One of my all time favorite pieces of Hubley animation was a station ID for WNDT-TV, New York’s public service station back in the 60′s. I thought of this spot last week when I posted the piece about Stanley Kaufman’s Art of Film for that station. It ultimately became WNET, NY’s PBS channel 13.

This spot was undoubtedly animated by Bill Littlejohn, and I think it’s one of his finest pieces. The timing is excellent. He obviously animated straight ahead; the characters distort and morph to the needs of the animation. It’s a full 2mins: 40 secs, so it would qualify as a short film these days,

The piece ran in B&W. It employed the multiple exposure technique. The characters had black paint filling everything bu the animation drawing. This was double exposed over the BG, hence a see-through quality to the characters. This techniques was used on Moonbird, The Hole, Of Stars and Men and several other Hubley shorts.

Here are some frame grabs of the spot.

The two guys come out on to the stage and take a bow.

They greet each other, light up and sit down.

A little bored, they both turn on TV’s. The little guy gets involved.

He takes out a book and takes notes comparing it with what’s going on his TV.

He goes back to watching. The big guy laughs at something until he gets bored again.

The big guy practices some wrestling moves until that gets dull.

Little guy does some brush painting. Big guy laughs again.

Little guy practices Russian. The big guy gets annoyed.

The big guy takes out a comb and starts combing until . . .

.. he has grease all over his head. The little guy grows a plant.

The little guy takes out a cello and starts to play. This annoys the big guy.

He pulls up the little guys screen. Public Television !

Embarrassed, he bows to the “Arts” station.

He turns to it on his own TV. He’s planning for something great.

They watch intently until the big guy makes sure little guy knows he’s still watching.

“Brain food” They watch intently.

The big guy falls asleep while the little guy goes back to his book. Dissolve to station card.

I love how the shapes of the characters shift and distort and change throughout the piece always coming back to the original models. This is a sure sign of straight ahead animation, and it almost makes the acting feel like an improvisation exercise by two actors. It supercedes animation and becomes acting.

The obviously loose time of the piece shows that the animator was probably given a lot of leeway with his timing, and he took it. As I said, I have no proof that Bill Littlejohn animated it, but I’ve never doubted it for a moment. It’s certainly as much his style as it is Hubley’s.

That is the odd thing about working for a director with a strong personality. I remember the day that I looked at one of my drawings and realized that it looked like one of my drawings, but there was no doubt it was a Hubley. Something happens, and you just end up drawing in their style.

- Forgive me, I’ve been in a Hubley frame of mind these past few days, so I’m into reminiscing.

New York’s local PBS station, WNDT – that’s what it was called in the old days – used to have a talk show hosted by film critic, Stanley Kaufman.
(It turns out that this show was produced by the late Edith Zornow, who I once considered my guardian angel at CTW.)

This talk show was quite interesting to me, a young art student. I remember one show featured Elmer Bernstein talking about music for film. He gave as his example the score for The Magnificent Seven. He demonstrated that the primary purpose of the score, he felt, was to keep the action moving, make the audience feel that things were driving forward relentlessly. I still think of that show whenver I see a rerun of the film on tv.

The surprise and exciting program for me came when John and Faith Hubley turned up on the show to demonstrate how animation was done. They were using as an example a film they had currently in production, The Hat. This film was about the siliness of border lines. One of two guards, protecting their individual borders, loses his hat on the other side of the line. Of course, all he needs do is to step over and pick up the hat, but he can’t. The other guard won’t allow him to cross the border illegally – even to pick up his hat.

The voices were improvised by Dudley Moore and Dizzy Gillespie (much as the earlier Hubley film, The Hole, had been done.) The two actor/musicians also improvised a brilliant jazz score.

John’s design was quite original. The characters were a mass of shapes that were held to-gether by negative space on the white on white backgrounds.

The animation of the two soldiers was beautifully done by Shamus Culhane, Bill Littlejohn, Gary Mooney and “the Tower 12 Group“.
Shamus animated on a number of Hubley films during this period, most notably Eggs and a couple of commercials.
Bill Littlejohn animated on many of the Hubley films from Of Stars and Men up to Faith’s last film.
Gary Mooney animated on The Hole and Of Stars and Men. He was an Asst. Animator at Disney, animated for Hubley then moved on to some of the Jay Ward shows before moving to Canada where he continues to animate.
Tower 12 was the company formed by Les Goldman and Chuck Jones at MGM. Apparently they were between jobs when Hubley was finishing this film, and Chuck offered help.

Of course, the colors of the film as represented by the dvd are pathetically poor. It’s hard
to even imagine what the actual film looks like, and it’d be great to see a new transfer of
all the Hubley films.

Thad Komorowski posts a Popeye cartoon Popeye Meets William Tell which he surmises that Shamus Culhane is the director (he receives top animation billing under Dave Fleischer’s name.) The only other animator listed is Al Eugster. The cartoon is certainly an oddity, and I’m glad Thad highlighted it for me. It looks like an afterthought from the Gulliver’s Travels team. I don’t remember seeing it before, though I must have. It’s not that great a Popeye short; just an odd one.

There’s a curious thing happening in a walk in the opening of that film, and I hoped I had the film somewhere so that I could take a better look at it frame by frame. I don’t have it so will have to wait until I receive vol.2 of the Popeye dvd.

However I started looking a little closer at some Fleischer shorts. There are no end of interesting walks in those films. I found in the last Betty short Rhythm On the Reservation, that Betty walks backwards through about 1/3 of the film. She’s supposed to be conducting a beat for the Native Americans she’s visiting. What comes out is an interesting cycle that was probably animated by Myron Waldman.

I thought I’d share this walk with you.

1 2
(Click any image to enlarge.)

3 4

5 6

7 8

Betty walks backwards keeping time on three’s.

I can’t help but note that the Fleischer walks always seem to include
a complete turn of the head from left to right.

All animation is exaggeration.

- The Gerald McBoing Boing show aired in 1956. This program collected many new shorts hinged with some small bits featuring the title character. Many of the shorts were built around themes such as artists or inventors or even circuses. Some of these shorts were collected onto vhs tapes. To my knowledge, they haven’t been released in dvd.

Many of the shorts were inspired by different artists’ work, even if they had no real relevance to the story. The short, The King & Joe tells the story of the invention of the game of chess. The design style was pulled from some of Paul Klee’s work, and I’ve always found this short curious. It’s a bit long and it feels longer to sit through (as do many of the films in this series), but the artwork sometimes is inspired.
Mind you, this is not a great short; as a matter of fact, I’m not sure it’s really even good. However, it’s stuck with me for years.

Maybe as a way of exorcising it from my brain, I decided to look at it a bit closer. I’ve chosen to pull some frame grabs to show off this short. The color of the print is quite deteriorated; I’ve tried to enhance the images displayed here. Hopefully, my choices are close.

_________________(Click any image to enlarge.)

__They use the device wherein the story starts with current day characters playing chess,
__and we go back in time to reveal the history of the game.

__Basically it’s the story of warring Arabic nations who ultimately play a game to
__conclude the endless battles.

__Elements in the design of this piece remind me of work UPA would do later in
__1001 Arbian Nights with Mr. Magoo.

__This BG pan is more like one of Klee’s paintings than anything else in the short.

- Casino Royale (the 1967 original) was the fourth credit sequence animated by Richard Williams‘ Soho Square studio. Prior to this he’d directed What’s New Pussycat (1965), A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1966), and The Spy Who Came In From the Cold (1966).

Continuing the presentation I’ve done of other title sequences by Williams, here’s Casino Royale. The other Williams credit sequences of the period are generally rambunctious items with almost too much happening on screen. It often gets hard to read the credits – in a theater, never mind trying to do it on TV. (God bless imdb.)

They’re all frame grabs off a TV airing. My apologies for the horrendous quality. It aired on one of those cable channels that adds plenty of promos at the bottom of the screen (which I cleaned out of these images) overlapping many of the cards. They might have taken a bit more care to try to eliminate some distortion on the screen. The image skews, and the type gets distorted. I did my best with what I had. If I ever get my hands on a good dvd of the show, I’ll correct these images.

_
________________________ (Click any image to enlarge.)

_

_

_

_

_

_

_

_

_

_

____Joseph McGrath, Robert Parrish, and Richard Talmadge also directed but I
____eliminated their screen cards as repetitious.

- I watched bits of The Reluctant Dragon dvd yesterday, and was impressed with the title sequence for the “Behind the Scenes” portion of the film. For the animation credits, they’ve caricatured all the artists involved. (I wonder if the live action folk felt left out.)

The drawings are by T.Hee, but one wonders who did the writing of each name. I have to assume that each artist got to sign his* own name.
____*Note: no women got to sign their names

_____(Click any image to enlarge.)

_____________________

After watching these credits I had to take a short look at some of the animation from The Reluctant Dragon, itself. I decided to take this little skip and study the images. I’ve put it together as if it were a cycle, but it really wasn’t as it appears in the film. Hence, it doesn’t quite work as one.
However, I’m sharing the stills via frame grabs.

1 2

3 4

5 6

7 8

9 10

Finally, heres a small QT movie of the piece on two’s.

Skipping Dragon on two’s.

Anyone know the name of the animator of this scene? It’s just after the boy meets the dragon.

- Concluding what I started yesterday, here are the pages of what must be a book that was prepared by Bill Peet. Susie the Little Blue Coupe. I don’t know if it was ever published (there was a Little Golden Book, but this is not it), but, obviously, it became the animated short completed at Disney in 1951.

The plan for this book is excellent, and gives a good indication of the great books Mr. Peet would do after leaving animation. Many thanks to John Canemaker for the loan of this rare material; it makes an unusal post.

11_12
_____________(Click any image you like to enlarge it to a legible size.)

13_14

15_16

17_18

19_20

21
_

Next week I’ll post Bill Peet’s storyboard for the film.

Two excellent videos are posted on Willym Rome‘s site, Willy or Wont He. They’re film pieces by Emanuele Luzzati and Giulio Gianini. Both films are difficult to find available.

The Cat Duet is a work adapted from an operatic piece that uses much of Rossini’s music even though it’s not considered an opera by the composer. The background of the opera is hazy, but the animated film is a beauty.

Brancaleone alle Crociate (Brancaleone at the Crusades) is a title sequence for the film by Mario Monicelli. It stars Vittorio Gassman and is reminiscent of other pieces by Luzzati and Gianini. I’ve made some frame grabs and am posting them below to give a small taste of the work. Go to the site, and view both videos.

_

_

_

See other posts I’ve done on Luzzati and Gianini. They’re all very musical, beautifully designed and cleverly animated films.

_________________________

- Craig Yoe posted a wonderful original Mutt & Jeff comic strip on the Arflovers Blog. The strip features cartoonist, Bud Fisher, trying to draw a politically correct strip in 1919. Take a look; it’s hilarious.

_____________

- Speaking of politically correct strips, there’s a good post about blacks in the current comic strips at The Root. It’s enlightening to read about this stuff in the 21st Century when we’re considering a black man as President. (Go Obama!) Race still matters to some people, unfortunately..

_____________

- And speaking about Obama if you haven’t watched the Will I Am song Yes We Can sung to Obama’s New Hampshire speech take the time to look at it. Over a billion people have watched it already. The last half is good. here
You should see it if only to appreciate the anti McCain parody
_______________-_________posted here.
_

_________________________
_
- For something a little less controversial, check out the new post on the ASIFA Hollywood Animation Archive. It’s a beautiful book illustrated by Gustaf Tenggren. Tenggren, of course, had a big hand in the design of Pinocchio. He was also the creator of The Poky Little Puppy._________________________

_

_
- Yesterday, John Dilworth showed me the cover of the latest copy of ASIFA International’s magazine, Cartoons. He came across the magazine before I’d received my copy. I was surprised to see my work featured so prominently. That was a treat, I can assure you.

Thanks to the editors, Chris Robinson and John Libbey for the fine choice of cover and to Ray Kosarin for writing it in the first place.

It was even more interesting that Dilworth was the one who animated that cover scene from my film, Abel’s Island.

_

_

- This completes my visual breakdown of the Mickey Mouse short, The Whoopee Party. I’ve taken the art off the dvd Mickey Mouse in B&W, and have interspersed matching frame grabs from the film, itself.

Having seen the film many times, it’s certainly interesting to go through the artwork. For some reason, this film, to me, is one of those that somehow supercedes its animation. What I mean by that, is that for some reason I’ve never looked at it as animation – the technical aspect. I’ve always been dragged into it as an audience member loving the anthropo-morphism and the musical dance the animators concocted. It was never about studying the frames or the artwork. Someday, I’ll have to talk more about this aspect of the work.

So it’s entertaining to look at it on this level, now.
THe Animation Art Gallery is selling a number of drawings from this film, and it’s worth taking a look.

8

____________(Click any image to enlarge.)

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

- WHoopee! Congratulations to the BAFTA Awardwinners, Ratatouille and director Brad Bird for Best Animated Feature. Congratulations also to Jo Allen & Luis Cook and Aardman for The Pearce Sisters. Both are well deserving winners. Unfortunately BBC America opted to cut out their awards from the program. We didn’t get to hear the speeches.

__________________

- Before there was video tape (which means before there were dvds), there was only 16mm film that you could project in your own home. I had (and still have) a nice collection of decaying movies and used to show these often. One of the regulars to show and watch and laugh at was the great Mickey short, The Whoopee Party. Everyone loved this short, no matter how many times we watched it. It’s a great film!

This encouraged me to watch it again on the B&W Mickey dvd I have. So I couldn’t help but jump for joy over the story sketches they include in the extras. Why not post them? So here they are – sketches from the limited storyboard they produced. I’ve also interspersed frame grabs from the film so you can compare images.

I could only get through half the work today, so I’ll post the rest of the film art tomorrow.

________________________(Click any image to enlarge.)

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

_______________________________The remainder of this post will finish up tomorrow.