Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

- I have a few models by Rowland Wilson that I haven’t yet posted. I’m ganging them up, even though they come from several different projects. All of these come courtesy the collection of Bill Peckmann. Many thanks to Bill.

This first series comes from a spot Rowland designed for Phil Kimmelman & Associates. It featured a mountie and his trusty sidekick.

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The following two layouts came from the 2nd TV spot Rowland did for ‘Utica Club Beer’, featuring a Knight and a fiery Dragon.

This is a rough that RBW did for a dog food animatic. It was a take off of Bogart’s ‘Casablanca’, hence the ‘play it again Sam’ scene with Bogie Basset.

This is a LO rough for what’s probably a TV Guide illustration:

This is a painting by Rowland Wilson for
The Hunchback of Notre Dame “All Fools Day”.

Here is the same thing broken in two for better viewing.

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Here’s a group of Christmas Cards Rowland did. This is the note that Bill Peckmann included with the cards: “Years ago Rowland had an old school friend (‘Pete the Greek’, I’ve forgotten his last name) in Dallas (their home town) who owned the ‘Drawing Board’ greeting card company. Rowland did these professional (dentists, doctors, cpa’s etc.) Christmas cards for Pete. He loved doing them because Pete let him run with the ball, none of the usual looking over your shoulder advertising art direction.”

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And here are two cards that were sent out by Rowland and Suzanne.

Here’s a caricature Rowland did of Grim Natwick and himself:

Finally, here’s a cartoon Bill Peckmann did of the staff at Focus, a company in NY just prior to Phil Kimmelman’s forming PK&A. Here’s a note Bill included with the drawing: “This was done by me when we were working on RBW’s second animated spot which was Vote Toothpaste’s “Combs & Plotzen.” His first was a Flying “A” gasoline spot animated by Lu Guarnier. Both circa ’68-’70. Of cours this pre-dated the Utica Club “Mountie”strong> caricatures.”

- I’ve dedicated a number of posts to the artwork and cartoons of Rowland B. Wilson.
I have been a fan of his work for a very long time. Years before I had the opportunity of inbetweening on his Scholastic Rock designs at Phil Kimmelman & Associates which was back in the early ’70s.

Bill Peckmann and I seem to share a lot in appreciating a number of artists and their artwork. Rowland is high on the list. Bill has loaned many works for posting, and I’m certainly indebted to him for contributing all of these RBWilson pieces.

Here are more of the cartoons of Rowland B. Wilson, starting with a news article written about him for the Westport News.

(Click any image to enlarge.)

Let’s start with the New England Life advertisements. RBW did quite a few of them:

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We finish this post with some more Playboy cartoons:

It must have been a treat for Bill to see his name in this cartoon.

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Personalized, no less.

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- Here, courtesy of Bill Peckmann, and his great collection of work, are more of Rowland B. Wilson‘s great cartoons for various sources.
for TV Guide:

A cover and a spot ad.

A rough sketch for this spot ad.

A couple of ads he illustrated:

(Click any image to enlarge.)

Rowland did many ads for Equitable Life.

And of course more playboy cartoons:

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This is a multipage piece he did.

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Bill Peckmann sent these additional comments
after seeing these images on the site:

Here are some personal notes/sidebars if you’re interested:

#17, Rowland & Suzanne gave us the original as a wedding gift 10 years ago, of course it’s one of our prized possessions and I have tell to you that the printed version just does not do the original justice, too bad it’s so hard to get out of the frame otherwise I’d let you post it.

- Back in the innocent years, the joke was that one read Playboy for the articles, not the pictures. In my case (and I’m sure it was true for many others), that wasn’t much of a joke. I did thumb through Playboy and it was for the pictures – the pictures by Rowland B. Wilson, Gahan Wilson and a couple of other of the great cartoonists of that magazine.

Bill Peckmann has saved a number of Rowland Wilson’s cartoons, and I’m eager to post them. It’s my pleasure that Bill has a small archive of Rowland’s material. He was an enormous source of inspiration for me, and it’s my joy to see a lot of these again. It’s amazing how many I still remember after all these years.

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- The brilliantly talented Rowland B Wilson, certainly paid his dues at a number of animation studios. We’ve seen his work with Richard Williams’ Soho Square studio and with Don Bluth’s Ireland studio.

Today, I have some sketches and designs he did for Walt Disney studio while working on The Little Mermaid. Not all of this material made it to the film, but the incredible wealth it brought the directors had to have affected the overall production. This invaluable material comes courtesy of Bill Peckmann.

The first group to view are Production Designs that he did for various sequences throughout the film.

The following are character designs Wilson did for The Little Mermaid for a character that never made it into the movie. Though, I think “Ink the Squid” may have developed into “Sebastian the Crab”.

Then there are some of the creatures seen above land at the Glaciar Tray which apparently was designed to be part of the film.

The migrating Caribou

There are pelicans and geese as well as mountain goats.

Then there is this short seqeunce of interaction between two fish:

All art displayed © Walt Disney Prods.

This material is a treasure. I want to thank Bill Peckmann for sharing it with us.
Rowland B. Wilson was an artist of the highest standard, and I can’t get enough of his work. True inspiration.

- For the past two weeks I’ve been posting the dummy of a book written and prepared by Bill Peckmann and Rowland B. Wilson. It didn’t find a publisher back in the 1980s when they were seeking one, but the book survives. And it’s a gem.

The first couple of pages were done in a color, as a sample, and the remaining were left as line drawings. The beautiful artwork of Rowland Wilson reads as clean and sharp as ever. This wordless book rips at a breakneck speed and tells a real animated story that would have made for a wonderful children’s book. Imagine a child sitting on a parent’s lap and the dialogue they could have had in developing this graphic story. (It also would have made a great animated short!)

I’ve really enjoyed posting this, and I thank Bill Peckmann for allowing me the opportunity of doing so. You can see Part 1 here.
You can see Part 2 here.

As with the past post, we start with the last drawing of Part 2.

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And just to put everything in proper perspective, here’s a letter they received from Houghton Mifflin rejecting the book. He was Rowland B. Wilson, for god’s sake!

Bill Peckmann added this background info: “The rejection slip from
Houghton Mifflen really hurt the most because our thinking at the time
was that since they were publishing Bill Peet’s books (my all time
favorites), we thought they would understand the concept of “Robert”
better than anyone else. Go figure”

- Today we continue with this magnificent, yet unpublished, book that was written by Bill Peckmann and illustrated by the late, great Rowland B. Wilson. The book almost reads like a dialogue-less storyboard.

Posted the way it is, the piece moves with all the speed of fast paced cartoon of the forties, and is drawn and composed with as much grace.
This is a treat to post, and I thank Bill Peckmann for the chance to do so. You can see Part 1 here.

I begin this entry with the last image from the last post.

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One more part to come, next week.

- Bill Peckmann collaborated with Rowland Wilson, back in the early ’80s, on a charming little book for children that never found a publisher and, consequently, never was completed. Bill had a bound copy of the book – in a mockup form – and sent it to me. I, naturally, would like to share it.

So here’s the first part. There are about 90 pages, so it’ll probably take three posts to complete them all.

First, here’s the note on the inner sleeve of the cover:

ABOUT BEDTIME FOR ROBERT, A WORDLESS BOOK
Bedtime for Robert is intended to bring to small children an early experience of the special personal relationship one has to a book; the availability and flexibility that a book enjoys over a fixed-time medium such as television.

Being wordless, the book needs no translation. The child has access to it at any time without relying on adults. This early exposure to the physical reality of books will, we believe, enhance the experience of reading later on.

The story combines the pull of a narrative with information that appeals to a child’s curiosity: in this case what goes on at night in the adult world. Although the child must go to bed (reluctantly), Robert the cat’s curiosity leads him into this forbidden adult world. Robert is all cat with cat qualities, not a little person in a cat suit as most cartoon cats are. The child can project his own emotions into the character.

The authors are booklovers with extensive experience in both print and film. We have both won Emrnys and other awards for our animation designs for educational TV.

We believe this is the first book to utilize the principles of film continuity in a printed form. This continuity is vital to the understanding of a narrative without the aid of words.

The use of film pacing supports the unfolding of adventure and humor in a wordless story.

The book is planned to be in color. The pages up to 17 are in finished linework and the rest is in rough layout form.

Robert is conceived as a series. The character and structure would remain constant. The variables would be in the cat’s adventures in various places, seasons, times of the day, and occupations.

Please contact either of us at the addresses below. This is a simultaneous submission.

Yours truly,
Rowland Wilson
Willi Peckmann

Here, then, are the first 20 or so pages. You’ll see immediately how original this book is:

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Rowland was so brilliant with color; it would have been wonderful if he’d been able to complete the book. At least we have this much.

Many thanks to Bill Peckmann, again, for sharing this gem.

- The Rowland Wilson storyboard sequence from Don Bluth’s A Troll in Central Park, which I posted yesterday, had lots of interesting bits. This is made more evident by the number of great models Rowland did for the sequence. Thanks to Bill Peckmann‘s collection, there are many of these to post, and I think you’ll find them interesting. They’re what you want in a model; they excite interest in animating those characters. At least, that would be the case for me.

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A slight adjustment gives a new variant.

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Here, additionally, are more anmial and plant character models for the film.

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Once again, many thanks to the gracious Bill Peckmann for the loan of Rowland Wilson‘s work. I’m a big fan, and it’s a pleasure to even veiw these models never mind post them.

- As promised last week, I’m here to offer another part of the storyboard for Don Bluth‘s film, A Troll in Central Park. As with the initial post, this board was drawn by the extraordinary artist, Rowland B. WIlson. Also as with part one, the material was graciously loaned to me by designer, Bill Peckmann.

I don’t have a copy of the film or I’d offer some frame grabs for comparison. Though perhaps we’re better off just accepting Rowland’s work for itself. This film was one of the last of the Sullivan-Bluth films out of the Irish studio. They subsequently moved to Arizona to do Anastasia for Fox.

Looking at these boards I began to wonder what Rowland would have done had he directed a film, himself. Perhaps the closest is the Trans-Siberian Express, Pushkin/Vodka commercial done at Richard Williams’ studio in the 1975. I wouldn’t mind owning a copy of that first spot they did.

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Next up, we’ll post a stash of Rowland’s models for this film.

Here are a couple of short clips from this film on the Bluth site: #1, #2
Sections of the film are also currently on YouTube. Here’s Part 1.