Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

- Last week we saw the first half of Wallace Tripp‘s book, Sir Toby Jingle’s Beastly Journey. Today we conclude our post of the book. Wallace Tripp is certainly an influence on many animator’s work. His fluid drawings look like animation work. Many thanks to Bill Peckmann for scanning the book and sending these pages on to us.

Here, then, is part 2:

Front Cover

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Back Cover

- After posting Wallace Tripp‘s book, Granfa Grigg Had A Pig, it became obvious to me that we had to post more. Bill Peckmann sent this first half of the book, Sir Toby Jingle’s Beastly Journey. It was illustrated AND written by Tripp and is a delight. The drawings are beautiful, and the book has a great flow. I hope you enjoy it.

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to be concluded next week.

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Indiegogo POE

- And now a word from our sponsor. I’d be remiss if I allowed a post to pass without the mention of our fundraising campaign for POE. That is, of course, the feature we are promoting, the feature we are trying to finance and hope to raise enough money to get a trailer completed. To that end, we’ve established a spot on Indiegogo a week ago where we are aiming for the highest. Please visit the site, tell your friends to tell their friends, and perhaps we’ll reach our goal. Many thanks, regardless, for your wonderful support.

- Bill Peckmann sent the following drawings, and I’ll leave them to him to explain them:

In the 1980′s, studio gags were a great way to chase away the daily dose of blues from working on a few of the more tedious TV spots that we did. Nobody had a better time of this, than assistant animator Mike Baez and myself at KCMP Studios. Not quite sure why I saved mine but I did and here they are. The gags of course have a “you had to be there” or an “in” feeling to them, so I’ll drop in a few captions to help.

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“The magic of animation even works when you’re shticking around.”

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“Congratulations on a commercial well done!”

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“Mike Baez was always one of the best… ”

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” …and the fastest… ”

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” …and went through 2 boxes of Blackwings in a day!”

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“Adv. clients always loved to add feature film effects to their commercials.”

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“M&M’s with one of their first shots at shading.”

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“Doing accurate cast shadows always meant twice the amount of work!”

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“Always there to help out in a pinch… ”

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” …and then some.”

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“What was a studio if it didn’t have a cookie jar on the receptionist’s desk.”

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“Or a candy jar on the front desk.”

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“Eating, one of any studios beloved pastime, especially the
annual Christmas party at our favorite Mexican restaurant.”

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“Who didn’t look forward to the client dropping off their
food product when we were working on their commercial.”

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“Those clients dropped off a lot of product, and when they did… ”

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” …we definitely had to look into a diet plan!”

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“Lunch hour reading.”

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“20 years before ‘Cars’”

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“Reflections.”

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“Those halcyon years at K.C.M.P. Studios, you don’t know what you got till it’s gone.”

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“All work and no play . . . ”

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“The day after watching your favorite TV series.”

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“With apologies to Arnold S. and Danny D . .”

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“Dreams of a back up, second career.”

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“To the one and only Mike Baez who made working fun!”

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Indiegogo

LAYOUT FROM SC. B45
Drawing by Tissa David

And now the promotion. The POE Project is up and running at INDIEGOGO, where there is a new page seeking contributions (however small) in support of a feature animated film I’m seeking to produce. The film has seen preproduction grow and the film start to blossom under the many thumbs of those who’ve worked on it. The script, the preparatory drawings, the storyboards and animatics (video story reels) and the great early voice over recordings all show us how promising a film this will be. We’re seeking some money to finalize a couple of minutes of the film to show investors what we’d like to see with the finished film.

Please visit our Indiegogo site.

- With great excitement and anticipation, comic lovers learned this week that Paul Murry and Dick Huemer‘s Buck O’Rue comics compilation would be available in June. Bill Peckmann sent me the following note and material:

Buck O’Rue was a short lived comic strip I didn’t know about; it was done by two Disney greats, Dick Huemer and Paul Murry. The new book is a real labor of love by the author, good friend Germund Von Wowern, and in celebration of the new book due to come out soon, I thought I’d send you a small 21 page, Whitman Sampler box of some of Murry’s comic book work.

Perhaps best known for his wonderful Mickey Mouse comic book adventure stories, he also deftly handled any assignment that Dell Comics threw his way. Here are some outside the adventure story box examples of single page gags, a Donald Duck story and a Disney film adaptation. All of his pages are always bursting with well designed and drawn life!

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This Donald Duck comic contained
the following stories.

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- Last week, we offered some pages from the scrapbook of Rowland B. Wilson. This was graciously loaned to the Splog by Suzanne Wilson, and we have a treat this week. A second installment. these pages were a source of inspiration for Rowland, and the clippings, for us, are also a remarkable view of the animation and illustration product of the time.

Many thanks to Bill Peckmann for initiating this and to Suzanne for sending it.

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- Wallace Tripp has to have been the source of inspiration for many an animator in the last fifty years. His artwork is so rich and round, his characters so full of life, and his watercoloring so masterful. No one can tell me that Ken Anderson‘s style, from “Robin Hood” on, didn’t emanate from Tripp’s illustrations. I know back in the seventies, many in animation talked about him and bought his books. Those calanders were everywhere.

Bill Peckmann reminded me of this by sending me the following illustrations. Here’s Bill:

Two difficult tasks. Task number one, of all of Wally Tripp’s exceptionally wonderful books, pick your favorite one, and then task number two, pick your favorite pages. Hopefully these pages from Wally’s Granfa’ Grig Had a Pig will fill the bill on both counts for your readers new and old to Mr. Tripp’s mastery of pen and paint brush.

(Sorry to leave out the real blockbuster pages of the book, the double page spreads, unfortunately my puny scanner will not do these pages justice.)

Book cover

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And here’s a page of one of popular the calendars that came out annually.

- Last week I posted some pen and ink illlustrations of Don Quixote by Jack Davis. These are not part of the book he has on the market, The Misadventures of Don Quixote. Some of them are brilliant, particularly those that feature Quixote and Sancho Panza. However, other characters sometimes look like TV Guide illustrations of other 70s celebrities. (#15 for exmple) All of these, of course, come from Bill Peckmann, who was kind enough to send them.

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- Suzanne Wilson sent me some pages from the private scrapbook that Rowland B. Wilson kept for inspiration and reference. Seeing these pages, I was a bit surprised at what he collected. When I was a kid, I kept a scrapbook of everything – and I do mean everything – that was printed about animation. Remember, there were few books about animation back in the 60s; I had to hold onto everything available. I found looking at Rowland Wilson’s scrapbook not too different from my own, except that he kept material about the “Golden Years”. It gave me a smile.

Here are some of Suzanne’s comments:

Rowland B. Wilson, ever the contrarian, once said when speaking of deciding one’s future “Why should you expect an eight-year-old boy to decide what a grown man should do?” He may have been a bit older than that (dates of the periodicals suggest age 12 through 15) when he assembled scrapbooks of his favorite subjects and illustrations from Disney, Life, Collier’s and Look magazines and the Dallas newspapers, but one look shows the premonition of a later artistic sensibility. He zeroed in on what exactly appealed to him visually and subjectively and never deviated. The influences were taken to heart and incorporated into a personal recognizable style.

For example, “Speaking of Pictures”, a Disney spoof on the Old Masters (Image 15) clipped from Life Magazine in 1945 can be compared to The Sneezenfitz Gallery, drawn in 2005 for the cartoon novel “Cloak and Pistol”. One only has to look at “Casey at the Bat” (Image 16 to see a gestalt that was to emerge in the definitive baseball players in TV Guide. (See Rowland B. Wilson TV Guide Originals-1, posted February 16th.)

The clippings can also be seen as interesting ephemera. Those from wartime show aircraft insignia designed by Disney, aviation gremlins and advertising of the time.

Here are some comments from Bill Peckmann, who requested Suzanne send me the material:

I have to admit it’s been over 35 years since I last laid eyes on them when Rowland brought them in to PK&A for show and tell. He had just returned from a trip to his hometown of Dallas, Texas and couldn’t wait to show us what he brought back with him. This was just about the time in the 70′s when Disney was starting to come back into the good graces of the art world again. (Think Lincoln Center.) I remembered there was Disney and other great stuff in there, but couldn’t quite remember exactly what. Seeing the collection now after all these years, it feels like I’m looking at a precursor to the SPLOG. One can see now what a terrific eye and good taste Rowland had as a young teenager, and it’s also neat to see that animation was in his blood at such an early age, he just got a little sidetracked with very successful advertising, cartooning and illustrating careers before he went back to the first love of his life, animation. Lucky us!

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Suzanne Wilson is about to have a new book on the market: Rowland B. Wilson’s Trade Secrets: Notes for Cartooning and Animation.

It’s obvious that this book is directly related to this post. Rowland Wilson obviously kept journals in which he wrote about illustration and animation, and the information must certainly be very informative to students; some of these journals are published here. Presumably pages of the scrapbook may have made the book.

The book seems to offer quite a bit of attention to Mr. Wilson’s animation art, just as it does his brilliant illustration and cartooning. I look forward to getting my copy.

- Here’s the conclusion of Tubby and the Lantern, the children’s book illustrated by Rowland B. Wilson and written by Al Perkins. Bill Peckmann has kindly sent scans of the double paged art of the book. We pick up where we left off . . .

The book’s cover

Recently, Bill Peckmann sent me the following B&W illustrations by Jack Davis of Don Quixote. These have no real relationship to the color illustrations that are part of the book currently on the market, The Misadventures of Don Quixote. They exist for themselves, alone, and they’re pretty darn good.

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Here’s a sample color page from the book that was published.