Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

- 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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Here’s a piece that appeared on this site in February, 2006. Every day, I see Rodolfo’s caricature of the Studio-past hanging in my studio-present. It’s worth repeating this post.

– Lots of birthdays have been celebrated in my studio over the years. Photos are often taken.

Here’s one from the past in which the gang gave me a caricature that was done by Rodolfo Damaggio. Rodolfo was an animator in the studio who drew like gangbusters but wanted to draw comics. He left to become a star in that field and also does boards for live action Effx films.

I posted the image once before and put it up again for reference to compare with the photos.
Pictured:
(back row standing) Sue Perotto (animator), Elizabeth Seidman (production coordinator), Ray Kosarin (animator), Stephen Gambello (colorist/runner), Masako Kanayama (designer/Production Manager), Marilyn Rosado (studio manager), Rodolfo Damaggio (animator), Jason McDonald (colorist/storyboards/designer).

Two people never made it into the caricature: Christine O’Neill and Xiaogang He. When Rodolfo went to draw he had no photo reference of either, and they weren’t around that day to offer one. Or so I’m told. Christine is the only person from that period still working in the studio.

- I thought it’d be great to put together some of the grouped staff shots we used to do a lot. For some reason we haven’t done any recently; maybe it’s because the numbers of people working here are quite a bit fewer. I guess it’s still worth while for posterity’s sake. We’ll do it soon.

- Here’s a recap of photos from Summer 2007 when Heidi and I visited Coney Island, just prior to the close of Lunar Park. (Something similar has been built in its place.)

– Last week, Heidi and I went out to Keystone Park to watch the Mets’ AAA ball team, the Cyclones. This ball park is right next door to Coney Island. We went because Heidi’s group at the New Victory Theater planned the outing, and we had a great time with them. Since the amusement park is about to undergo reconstruction, it seemed like a good time to visit that as well.

I found some difficulty watching the game – we ended up in right field in the bleachers.
It was impossible to figure out who the players were for the Cyclones, never mind the opposing team, the Renegades. It’s hard to care who wins unless you’re a diehard Met fan, and I’m not. I don’t even like the Mets. As a matter of fact I kept checking into the Yankee loss on the radio during this AAA game.

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The field was attractive, and the park seemed small, despite the regulation sized field.
The team played well, winning the game after having to come back from a deficit.

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4. The scoreboard was impossible to read during daylight hours, but it was fun with the drawn, cut-out “Cyclone” (a roller coaster in coney island park) at the top.
5. It’s hard to avoid the real “Cyclone” behind the scoreboard toward left field. The siren call of the Wonder Wheel sang to us throughout the game.

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6 & 7. Nathans, of course, is the gateway to the Coney Island theme park. The place is always crowded, and I assume the food is great.

A little trip down a boardwalk, passing the gaming areas, brings you to Astroland.
This is the part of the park that’s undergoing reconstruction and closings..

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9. Walking down that boardwalk, the Wonder Wheel keeps beckoning. This ride is sort of a Ferris Wheel mixed with a Roller Coaster. It’s frightening. As you revolve, the carriages race forward or back as gravity dictates. It looks calm and takes you by surprise.
10. Finally you enter Astroland. It looks like a kiddie park; the ones that Walt Disney was trying to make obsolete. He wanted parents to be able to participate.

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12. The carousel gets more and more attractive to me as I get older.
13. The goofy looking haunted house was called Ghost Hole. We were starting to get into their versions of characters.

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14 & 15. The famous bumble bee is the first of the characters you come upon. I kept looking for someone walking around dressed like a bee.

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16 & 17. You know that’s not Mickey or Donald. They’d have to pay a licensing fee.

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18 & 19. And that flying elephant is no relation to Dumbo.

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20. As the sign says, it was also the day of the Mermaid Parade. Lots of people dress as mermaids and parade down the boardwalk. I usually watch a public access TV show in Manhattan that annually broadcasts the entire parade. They play musak in the background and you just watch the crazies flaunting their homemade costumes and eccentric makeup.
21. So all day long we were seeing the fallover from this parade.

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22. There were a couple of other mermaid dressed people I photographed but seem to have deleted the pictures. Sorry.
23. Finally, I grabbed my own mermaid, and we went home. I was tired; I’m getting too old for this.

Here’s a recap of a post I did back in November 2006.

- Back in the late ’70s, there was a local newspaper that competed with the Village Voice for the alternative audience. The Soho News was smaller and thinner, but had its own treasures. Some good writing and listings, and many excellent alternative comic strips. (Bill Plympton had a weekly strip in this paper before he started animating.)

I fell in love with one comic strip called Gertrude’s Follies to the point where I waited each week for the new issue and the new strip to hit to market. It was about Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas and all the crazies that came into their lives – particularly Picasso, Hemingway and other iconic art types. It didn’t matter that Matisse and Capote didn’t meet; they were both available for the strip – as was everyone else.

Finally, after enjoying it for so long, I decided to locate the cartoonist behind it, and see whether he was interested in developing a storyboard and script for a feature. Maybe we could get some low-budget financing.

Tom Hachtman was the cartoonist, and he was a brilliant artist. His wife, Joey Epstein, was another fine artist. The two entered my life at this point, and some interesting things developed.

Gertrude’s Follies was an ongoing project. Tom worked with Maxine Fisher, who has been my writing partner through all the years of my studio. The two of them developed a couple of themes from the mass of strips that had been done and started to weave a storyboard. Tom left 4 or 5 panels of each 6 panel page empty, and I constructed and reconstructed story around them. Sometimes I would draw more material, sometimes I would take some away. It was real fun.

The Soho News folded, and no one really picked up the strip. It ran for a short time in The Advocate. Tom was able to publish a collected book (see the cover above.) You can still locate a rare copy on line.

Some newer, color copies of the strip can be found on line here.
Tom also does some political cartoons for the site here.

The movie never went into production. I couldn’t raise the funds – my inexperience. We did make one short segment – a two minute piece that was the most hilarious strip. Sheldon Cohen, an animator I met at the Ottawa 76 festival, came to NY when I offered him a job on Raggedy Ann. Sheldon, ultimately, did a number of films for the National Film Board which you can watch on-line if you click on his name.

Sheldon animated this particularly funny strip. It took a while for him to animate it, and by the time he was finished, the feature had died and I had lost some interest. Years later I inked and painted it and had it shot. The short piece was never finished, though I still think about doing that.

Tom also recently gave me a funny strip about Pablo Picasso sculpture for which I’ve finished a storyboard and animatic. Hopefully, I’ll get the energy to animate it.

Aside from Gertrude, both Tom & Joey worked on a number of my films and still infrequently do. The two have painted many murals on the Jersey Coast, where they currently live. Tom has been a political cartoonist for the NY Daily News, has done lots of airbrush work for Bob Blechman when the Ink Tank was in operation. He also has done quite a few cartoons for The New Yorker magazine.

Here are a few of the strips to give you the flavor. Perhaps next week I’ll give a sample of our storyboard, comparing it with some of the actual strips. Enjoy.

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(Click on any image to enlarge so that you can read the strips.)

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This piece was originally posted on April 1st, 2008:

- Here’s an interesting short cycle that Tissa David animated for Letterman. Letterman, himself, plays with a football.

Tissa often animated on more limited shows this way. The drawings B1-B6 can work as a short cycle; drawings B1-D25 work as another cycle. She’ll move out of this and come back to it again later. It hides the cycles yet allows you to reuse drawings cleverly. It’s not just a constantly repeating 1-25 as appears here.

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____________(Cick any image to enlarge to see full frame drawing.)

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Letterman flips the ball on threes.

- Given the crazy weather lately, this post seems appropriate for repeating just now.

- The other day, to escape the rain, I found myself in the 8th Street subway station heading downtown. It was a BMT station which features a number of artist images done in tiles. Called Broadway Diary some 40 mosaics are featured on this subway platform’s walls. The art was created by Tim Snell who specializes in mosaics and murals.

(Click any image to enlarge.)

A number of themes appear in the grouped images. NYU is part of the
neighborhood, so it’s prominantly featured in many of the pictures.

A lot of the animal life of the area also appears prominently.

Some of the animals appear on a leash.

The busy shopping area of 8th Street is prominent.

The free flying hat makes me think of the 23rd St. station
and its murals by Keith Godard of free flying hats.

Many of the local shops are also featured.
This one was on the other side of the station.

Rain seems to play a part in a number of the pictures.

It’s a delight to be able to see this work while waiting for a train. (I was able to snap all these pictures before the next train arrived.) It’s a bit like the 20th century’s answer to WPA art. (These were all done before 2000.)
Let’s hope Obama initiates art projects to keep some artists alive while giving us some positive artwork.

- I was just reminiscing about the steam rising in front of the Raggedy Ann studio and how irritated it seemed to make Dick Williams. Remembering that I’d written about this already, I searched out the piece and think it worth recapping. Here it is.

- Steam is the secret energy that runs my city. There’s an article in a local paper called The Gotham Gazette which describes the system in full detail. It’s a good read, so I urge you to go there if you’re interested in further understanding the system.

Atop ground we get to see steam leaking out of sewers, see giant pipes spewing steam into the air, and read about exploding steam pipes that cause damage. (There was a recent explosion at 42nd Street near Grand Central Station. Another in Murray Hill, a couple of years back, destroyed a building and closed a city block for several weeks.)

We pass by these steampipes and stewing manhole covers without thinking about it. It’s like some primeval force out of the Rite of Spring hiding underground.
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(Click any image to enlarge.)

For the times Con Edison is working on the system at specific locations, they construct barber-pole colored pipes which emit large bursts of steam into the air. That wonderful scent you get when walking into a dry cleaners often surounds these pipes.

Back when Raggedy Ann started, there was a very large construction and similar pipe steaming up the entire front of the Brill Building in which we were located. I seem to remember we were originally on the fourth floor, so any offices that faced the front of the building saw nothing more than steam flowing all day long.

Dick Williams had one such office; the conference room was another.

The steam would make a very loud SHUSSSHHH-ing sound as it flowed out. This was often accompanied by workers jackhammering their way underground.

There was a Saturday rush to complete the art for the rough animatic. Dick and Gerry Potterton and I were in the conference room for at least 8 hours madly coloring storyboard drawings with colored pencils. We had a great time laughing and joking and gossipping about everyone under the sun. I was a lowly Asst. Animator, but they treated me like an equal. It was fun, needless to say.

All day long that incessant SHUSSSHHH; all day long that steam flowing up and pass our large bank of windows. It was crazy-making.

Dick finally broke from a conversation we were having to scream out at the steam and the workers. He was sure that New York was ready to burst out and blow up underneath us. Gerry and I had a good laugh at the rant.
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Obviously, not all of these pipes are striped in the Con Edison orange and white. I found
this black, short pipe.

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You can see it coming out the sewer caps. Sometimes heavy, as in the left; sometimes
light, as in the right.

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Often close to invisible. I had to go closer to see the steam coming out of this cap.

This truck trailer has been parked on Fifth Avenue and 8th Street for a while. Apparently Con Edison isn’t supplying all the steam needs for the city.

I found this guide to where things are underground. It gives a good, informative view of what’s flowing underneath us in this town. Maybe it will blow up someday.

Back in August, 2007 I offered this post of the subway art at the Prince Street station on the BMT. It’s still there and still just as interesting. So here’s a reminder.

- As I stepped into the BMT subway station at Prince and Broadway, I was taken by the tile work that had been introduced to this station since I’d last entered it.

In the old days, the elaborate tiles would decoratively detail the name of the station. As a matter of fact, it’s quite extraordinary that there’s such beautiful work throughout the subway system, and even more extraordinary that they still keep it up.

Anyway, throughout this station, the tiles depicted silhouettes of different riders and working personnel. Everything from the student to the station cleaners. I did a little bit of research and found that Janet Zweig, who designed it, says that the frieze, “…celebrates the significance and individuality of the citizens of New York. … It depicts 194 silhouetted people … taken from photographs of New Yorkers in all their variety… arranged as a 1200 foot narrative that contains smaller dramatic narratives within it.” The artwork was installed in 2004. I guess it’s been a while since I’ve been in this station.

While waiting for the N train to arrive, I had to snap some stills.

The brushes this guy carries either makes him a chimney sweep
or a subway cleaner.

Here’s a student off to school. He looks like he’s out of the 1920′s.

This guy’s either going to clean the station or
about to mug this woman searching for her wallet.

Oh, wait. Is that the same guy about to empty the trash can?
The other two 1920′s Yuppies are trying to keep their distance.

Here’s a closeup. They look exhausted and as though they’re arguing.

A closeup of the guy with the trash.

Here are two more shoppers. Looks like they bought a rug.

My train comes into the station, and I can’t photograph them all.

From the window of the train I shot some more of these silhouette people.
Eventually I’ll come back to see who else is there.

Here’s a piece originally posted in June 2006. I thought of it when I recently came upon my book of Toonerville Trolley comic strips. I thought I’d like ot post some more, but think it might be worth reposting the following first

- I’ve been a big fan of the “Toonerville Folks” for a long time. I didn’t find the strip for a while. When I was young, a local TV channel, an ABC subsidiary, ran a lot of old silent Aesop’s Fables. They had classical music backing them up; usually Bizet filled the bill.

One year they upgraded by throwing a number of the Van Buren shorts in betwen the Terry silent films. These Van Buren films, many of them directed by Burt Gillette or Tom Palmer, were odd. There were a number of films with Greek gods as their stars. Then came the shorts with Molly Moo Cow and those with the Toonerville Trolley characters.

I liked these and learned from the credits that they were adapted from a comic strip by Fontaine Fox. So, I sought out the comic. Of course, in those days, prior to computers, all you had was the library to research things. My local branch had only one or two examples of the comic strip which ran from 1915 through 1955.

(Click on any image to enlarge.)

The animated shorts were made in the mid-thirties when Van Buren tried a run to improve their films. Neither sound and color nor the acquisition of the rights to this strip didn’t help; even the “terrible tempered Mr. Bang couldn’t help.” The studio closed before the decade had ended.

In 1978 I worked with R.O. Blechman as his Assistant Director to put together the PBS show, Simple Gifts. This was a package of six segments woven around Christmas themes with a number of different illustrators designing the segments. One of them, the one I was most attracted to, was The Toonerville Trolley. Blechman bought the rights from King Features (at an enormous price) for a four minute film in the middle of the program. I’d worked hard to get to animate the piece. I did a one minute sample of the film in my off time at night, and I thought it was pretty good. However, Blechman was afraid of losing me in the day-to-day operation of his studio. (We were doing more commercials than show, and I hated it.) Bill Littlejohn did a nice job of animating the entire Toonerville Trolley which was completely subcontracted out to him. That was probably appropriate since Bill worked at Van Buren when they originally produced these shorts.