Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

- Herman Schultheis was an effects animator who worked on Fantasia. He kept a tight record of the effects they were creating from 1938-1941 and a photo display of how they were done. Schultheis disappeared in 1954 while trekking through Central America, and the notebook was forgotten until his wife’s death in the early 1990s, after which it was discovered by Howard Lowery behind the couple’s bedroom wall.

The book will be on display at the The Walt Disney Family Museum when it opens in October. It’s also been digitized so that visitors will be able to go through the book, enlarge photos and view it page by page.

Prior to the discovery of the book we were able to figure out a few of the effects. One Disneyland show, in fact, recreated the bubbling lava scene from the Rite of Spring sequence.

(Click any image to enlarge.)

Josh Meador recreated the slow motion shoot of the
boiling concoction used to develop the bubbling lava.

However, the book revealed so much more than we’d understood
about how the superb effects had been crafted.

Herman Schultheis created the book of charts and photos
which gives us a link to the many creative effects in the film.

Using a vat of water, they were able to
drop ink into the liquid and film it in slow motion.

A photo of the ink spilling into the water behind built-in mattes.

Taking the shot of the ink, they then turned it upside-down.

They then superimpose the “smoke” (or ink) over the volcanoes.
This same effect was used in Close Encounters of the Third Kind
to create clouds when the alien ships were moving in on the
farmhouse where the boy and mother lived.

The orchestra was shot on a set with strong, planned shadows.

All these shots were orchestrated and planned for color effects.

They were also catalogued by Schultheis who kept close
track of the music, as well, in his book. You can see a
page by page breakdown of the score at the top of the page.

You can see the highly polished sheet of metal (middle left) which reflected
and distorted the animation drawings. This is what the camera photographed
in some of the scenes during the Night on Bald Mountain sequence.
It was also used for the fire in Bambi.

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This scene’s ghosts were shot using that distorted metal reflection.

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The ghosts also used a form of cross dissolve.
John Hubley explained to me how that was done.

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They shot the entire scene at 50% exposure. Then they went back
to the beginning and reshot the entire scene again at 50% exposure.

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However on the second shoot, they started by shooting a black frame.
This made #1 fall where #2 should have been, #2 for #3 etc.
This creates a ghostly dissolve effect.

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All of the drawings labelled with an “a” are the double exposures:
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A make-shift circular multiplane camera was built.

Created out of wooden sheets with holes cut out,
placed so they could shift angles, they were designed to
allow revolving artwork in the circular cut outs.

This allowed shooting scenes such as this shot of
a spider web as the camera turned around it while
dew glistened off it.

The spinning snowflakes are well explained in Schultheis’ book.

The snowflakes had a detailed construction.

The path of action was intricately defined.

The snowflakes were shot against a sheet of black velvet
hiding the wire guides.

They were shot in tight closeup. From below you can
see the turning gears they were constructed on.

Each snowflake was built on a turning gear
so that they could revolve in their path of action.

Burn these snowflakes over the multiplane background
and add matching 2D animated fairies within each snowflake,
and you have the finished scene.

– John McGrew is certainly one of my favorite LO and Background designers in animation. His Dover Boys work in 1942 set new goals for the remainder of 20th Century animation. He followed it with the daring work of Conrad the Sailor, Inki and the Minah Bird, The Case of the Missing Hare and others all for Chuck Jones, who was no slouch, himself, in encouraging exciting innovation in design and film cutting.

The Aristo-cat was probably the first of McGrew’s works that I saw when I was a kid. It made my eyes pop, even though I watched it originally in B&W. The dynamic design of wallpaper decoration combined with outrageous pans and camera work took me by force. The violently repeating patterns reach to the forefront of this short. All of this exuberant design completely acted to support the character’s state of mind. Anxiety, fear and terror jumped from the backgrounds to the fine character animation of Ken Harris, Rudy Larriva and Bobe Cannon.

Working with Jones and painter Gene Fleury, he surefootedly set the way for UPA and all the others that followed. Toot Whistle Plunk & Boom and Ward Kimball’s other Disney TV work, Maurice Noble and other thinking designers of the Fifties couldn’t have broken through if McGrew hadn’t been there first supporting and pushing Chuck Jones.

Go here for Mike Barrier‘s excellent interview with him.

I’ve done some Bg recreations from the film, which meant assembling some exceptionally long pans that twist and turn. Unfortunately, I don’t think there’s a good quality copy of the film available. All of the grain in the DVD leads me to believe they copied a 16mm print.

As stills, they don’t come across as quite so daring, but they are within the moving short. It took some courage to do such work and enormous talent to be able to pull it off so successfully.

The butler walks upstairs.

He carries a breakfast tray into the bedroom.

Taking a bath

Releasing a bar of soap to trip the butler.

Downstairs to find the butler.

A note on the door.

Alone in the house.

Fear.

Danger.

Panic in the library.

A book hits him on the head.

Running away from a mouse.

The dog in the doghouse. Repeated diamonds outside.

Back indoors. Still more diamonds.

Safe in bed with diamonds and a checkered floor.

- 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!

Hans Perk recently posted the drafts for this gem of a film on his amazing resource of a site, A Film LA. (Interesting that they spell the title “Whoopie” in the drafts, but use “Whoopee” on the title card.) Having produced a couple of posts full of frame grabs from this short, I decided to go back and add the animators’ names as sort of a mosaic, similar to what Mark Mayerson has invented in the blogosphere.

- I haven’t posted a Betty Boop walk cycle in some time, so I thought I’d pick on this one. Betty’s walking with a new fur stole, caressing it as she walks. Sweetly animated by Myron Waldman for the film Pudgy Picks a Fight in 1937.

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(Click any image to enlarge.)

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Betty wears her new fur.
on ones
Click left side of the black bar to play.
Right side to watch single frame.

- Ravel’s “Bolero” continues in Allegro Non Troppo, and Bruno Bozzetto‘s extraordinary musical sequence moves on. Prior to seeing this film for the first time, I knew Bozzetto’s work well. I had seen many of his shorts and was a big fan. He never failed to have a big comment on society while making incredibly funny films. They were extraordinarily rich gems.

This film, however, was a surprise. The writing, as usual, was brilliant. The animation was more fluid, the styles were more varied and the calibre of each piece was very high. Of course, I should have expected masterful work from a master. It still holds up well on the little TV screen – and I’m sure it’s as strong in a theater (having seen it projected no too long ago.)

Here are the remainder of the frame grabs for that sequence.

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(Click any image to enlarge.)

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return to live action

- Every once in a while, there’s a screening that you happen to attend that turns out to be monumental and stays in your memory the rest of your life. The Ottawa Animation Festival in 1978 had such a screening. It was a midnight premiere of Bruno Bozzetto’s new feature, Allegro Non Troppo. Everyone who was anyone attending the particular festival had to attend that screening.

The film screened to lots of laughs, rapt attention, and spontaneous bursts of applause. It ended with an overwhelming ovation that told Bruno he had created a gem.

The movie was a parody of Disney’s Fantasia. There was some innocuous live action holding animated segments together. The animation was closely tied to classical music pieces. The highlight of that film was the Bolero sequence.

Here is the first of a couple of posts that give you frame grabs from Bolero. It all starts with a discarded Coke bottle in outer space.

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(Click any image to enlarge.)

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The first time I met Bruno was in New York, about six months after that showing. We had lunch, and he gave me a souvenir cel. One from this sequence.

- Ali Baba is another beautiful film from the Luzzati-Gianini team. The film is adapted from the book by Luzzati done for Pantheon books in 1973. I’ve made some frame grabs:

(Click any image to enlarge.)

The film includes a lot of pans. Some of them quite long.
Doing cut-out animation, under the camera, with arduous pan movements
was a very tricky operation. You never knew if you were going to have a bump.
Today, in Flash or AfterEffects, you can see it immediately and repair any problem.

- All the anti-Don Bluth vitriol that came out in the comments on my relatively harmless piece on the recently released DVD of Banjo the Woodpile Cat has stuck in my craw. (here and here)

Don Bluth is a veteran animator who busted his butt to make a number of animated features. Some of these were really good; some were not so bad, and others were downright clunkers. Regardless of the quality, they all took a hell of a lot of effort and struggle to get to the screen, and for that alone,
I have a lot of respect for Bluth and those who were part of his close-knit animation family.

A personality did come through all of those features. You may or may not like that personality, but there is an imprint there that can’t be denied. I give the man and his team a lot of credit.

Yet from the comments that have been generated, one would think he had done a piece of trash like Hoodwinked or Barnyard.

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The major difference is that Bluth desperately tried to make a good film and change the world of animation with his product, the other two producers were just producing product. Make it funny and get as much booty as possible. I guess the latter two were successful. One got a good deal with Miramax (and is now directing a live-action feature). The other, a live-action director, got a deal with Nickelodeon and made a slew of other Barnyard attractions.

Don Bluth? I’m not sure what he’s up to now, but I do wish he’d get back to business and try another animated feature. Perhaps this time he’ll work with a first rate scriptwriter.

I’ve decided to post some screengrabs of a random scene from the PT of Bluth’s All Dogs Go To Heaven. I didn’t like this film when I first saw it in a theater, but I’ve warmed to it over the years. The folksy charm of Burt Reynolds still bothers me, as does that googly-eyed child typical of many Bluth films. (The children in Troll in Central Park is the crème de la crème of this character type.)

Anyway, here’s a scene. It’s chosen completely at random. I don’t know who animated it (please leave a comment if you know), but it took a lot of work, and I’d like to honor it.

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(Click any image to enlarge.)

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- I’ve been posting frame grabs from the recent DVD of Disney’s Lady and the Tramp. Unfortunately, they give these in such a small form that it’s hard to view them on the tv screen. Hopefully, this will give a better opportunity of seeing some of this artwork.

I have a couple of other small comments about these DVD’s in release today. Aside from the annoyance of these gallery drawings being offered at such a diminished size so that you can’t really study any of them, there’s also the problem that the artwork is not labelled in any way. God forbid they should promote the name of anyone who painted these images.

There’s also no commentary track anymore. If you go back to the not-very-special version of Dumbo, there’s one of the all-time-great commentary tracks. John Canemaker did it by himself, and by the time you get well into the film, you realize the depth of information you’re getting from John even though his relaxed and natural voice charms you. I have to say I’ve listened to this commentary four or five times.

There are plenty of other problems I have with these new “Special” productions that I won’t get into; regardless, here are the images I could get.

I’d say that you could enlarge the images if you clicked on them,
but unfortunately I’m even enlarging some of them with these thumbnails.

They’re such beautiful drawings/paintings to produce at so small a size.

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-Continuing with some of the sketches done for Lady and the Tramp and found on the DVD extras gallery (in a somewhat tiny screen size), here are some more pieces by a number of different artists over a number of different years. They all exhibit a life of their own that’s pleasant to visit. Very cartoon compared to the film they made.

(Click any image to enlarge.)