Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

March 1947 (Walt Kelly?) cover with “Barks” on the box.

- Imagine you’re a kid and while reading your comic book you hit on a page offering some freebees that you have to mail away for.

Back cover

(Click any image to enlarge.)

So you mail for your subscription to get the goodies, and eventually the envelope shows up at your door.

You slowly and excitedly remove the contents. Your great and brilliant gifts unfold:

And here’s a post script from Joakim Gunnarsson:

Bill, what a nice set of subscription posters ya got!
Have seen some of them before but not all I think.
You are right about Kelly doing some of these, but I’m not 100% sure wich he did and which Dan Noonan did.
I’d say the ones with Dopey are Kelly for sure!

The original art to the one where they are playing instruments has survived, BTW.

Joakim.

- Probably my favorite comic strip artist, when I was a kid, was Dick Moores. He was the guy who’d taken over Gasoline Alley from Frank King in 1959. I didn’t know much about the man, but I cut out and saved almost every strip he did. I thought the guy drew comics like an artist – not a cartoonist.

Bill Peckmann recently wrote to me about his collection of Moores’ work – which included four original strips of Gasoline Alley as well as scans of some of his Disney comic work. I was a bit surprised to find out that he’d done so many Disney strips – including ones I enjoyed when I was younger, such as “Scamp”.

Bill Peckmann, in writing me, had a lot to say about Moores’ artwork: “Moores’ panel compositions are some of the best ever done in comic strips, they’re so good that when you make a page of dailies, that also turns into a beautiful design. I don’t think anyone can spot blacks better than the way DM did them. He probably got that from assisting Chester Gould.”

Here’s a first post of some of Dick Moores’ Gasoline Alley strips. We’ll follow soon with some of the Disney strips.

- Bill Peckmann sent me his copy of Gustaf Tenggren’s Story Book. This is an oversized book which adapts bits of well known children’s stories – a chapter of Heidi, another from Gulliver’s Travels, a story from the Uncle Remus Tales, etc.

Tenggren, of course, illustrated them – sometimes with large color illustrations sometimes with spot drawings.

Lest you’ve forgotten, Tenggren was the illustrator brought by Disney to the studio to design Snow White’s forests and Pinocchio’s landscapes. After Disney, he went to work illustrating and writing Little Golden Books – all the famous ones including The Poky Little Puppy.

Here is the first post of some of the Tenggren illustrations to the book:

The book’s cover

Inner covers.

The full Title Page.

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Chapter heading for Rip Van Winkle.

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Doctor Doolittle Title.

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Only two illustrations for Doctor Doolittle, but
they’re beautifully abstract.

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The layout is so nice for The Tar Baby,
that I’m posting the full double page spread.

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Heidi Title page

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Many thanks to Bill Peckmann. I’ll post more of these upcoming.

- With this post, I’m concluding the material loaned to me by Bill Peckmann of Rowland Wilson‘s sterling artwork for Hercules. I started this post last week, and you can go back there to see other character designs.

These watercolors are less character designs than they are inspirational pieces. They are inspirational. How stunning this art. I would have loved seeing something like this on the screen rather than Gerald Scarfe‘s. But that’s just me.

As with some of the last posts, I’m showing the larger piece (and they are large) and then going in for some tighter blowups.

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(Click any image to enlarge.)

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Typed beneath this image:
HERC AND PHIL ADDRESS ZEUS ON MT. OLYMPUS
The realm of the gods is in the sky. The landscape is made of sky imagery –
the classic buildings, the trees, the hills are the colors of rainbows, thunderheads,
lightning, rain, hail and stars. Trees have tops made of clouds and trunks of rain
or lightning. Buildings evolve out of mist as do the gods themselves.
The gods can be large or human scale as needed.

In mythology, Zeus changed himself into a swan, a bull, a cloud,
and even a shower of gold.

Everything is as changeable and colorful as a sunset.

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Hercules and the Hydra.

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Typed below this image:

THE HOME OF THE GODS.

A skyscape. Trees, mountains and waterfalls appear and dissolve away.
We can see shapes in the clouds – temples and statues.
Lightning flashes and stars gleam in unexpected places.
The whole skyscape is slowly drifting.

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This ain’t heaven.

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This one looks almost as though it were painted
on black velvet – appropriately enough.

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- Here are some WW 2 posters by Lawson Wood (1878-1957) which were sent me by Bill Peckmann. Wood was a stunning illustrator, and I’m glad to show these.

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(Click any image to enlarge.)

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The following two pages were taken from a 1990 book: “Illustrator’s Sorcebook”.

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The ASIFA Hollywood Animation Archive (AHAA) has a nice post featuring monkeys as painted by Lawson.

Thanks, yet again, to Bill Peckmann for sharing.

- Here’s Hercules. The last two weeks I posted some wonderful watercolor sketches, preliminary art for The Hunchback of Notre Dame from the great cartoonist, Rowland B. Wilson. (see: Part 1, Part 2)

Here for the first of two parts are some drawings by Rowland for Hercules. This entry includes character sketches for characters that developed into something completely different, or didn’t end up in the film at all.

Once again, I must express my debt of gratitude to the generosity of Bill Peckmann for lending me the art to post here. Thank you, Bill.

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Megara

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Hades – version 1

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Hades – version 2

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Hades – version 3

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Death

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Pegasus

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Centaurs 1

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Centaurs 2

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Titans 1

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Titans 2

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Titans 3

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Titans 4

Next week, the last of these beautiful watercolor sketches.

- I’ve recently featured a number of illustration pieces by Wallace Tripp and have frequently expressed my feeling that he should have been desigining for animation. His style seems so ideal for the medium. Well, thank heavens, I’m apparently not the only one who thought so.

Bill Peckmann sends me a copy of a letter he received from Mr. Tripp which states that the accompanying artwork was designed for Richard Purdum’s British studio. The dragons are a delight.

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(Click any image to enlarge.)

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The following sketch and the character closeups are obviously
for something completely different:

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- Here are more of the stunning pre-production watercolors Rowland B. Wilson did for The Hunchback of Notre Dame while working at Disney. (Last week’s post can be found here.)

This group of images is labelled, “The Siege” and concerns itself with the climax of the film where the people storm Notre Dame Cathedral and Quasimodo pours oil on them. These pictures are so beautiful (and large) that I can’t help but split them up so you can see some of the closeup detail.

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(Click any image to enlarge.

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Now this is a Hunchback I could love.

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These two character designs look like they were influenced
by Richard Williams’ “Cobbler & the Thief.” Since Rowland worked
with Dick in London, it’s possible.

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Errol Le Cain by way of Rowland B. Wilson. Beautiful.

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At first I wasn’t sure which end was up on this image.
It might be correctly viewed counter-clockwise.
However, the label in the lower left should be the lower left.

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Many thanks to Bill Peckmann for the generous loan of this material.

Next week Hercules.

Marc Davis illustrated a “Pirates of the Caribbean” souvenir paperback book for Disneyland. Bill Peckmann, naturally, saved his copy of the book and has forwarded these illustrations from the book. I’m a fan of Davis’ work, so love sharing them with you.

Davis did quite a few illustrations for this ride and others of them can be found here and here.

More thanks to Bill Peckmann.

The wrap-around book cover.

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I still have another whole post of these drawings and will put the m up tomorrow.

- Recently, I posted a calendar by Wallace Tripp, and the response was strong. So, Bill Peckmann sent me his collection of greeting cards by Tripp, the earliest of which goes back to 1973, and I’m posting those here. (I’ll also have another calendar of his to post later in the week.)

Each and every card is a gem. I still say it’s a wonder that he didn’t work for an animation company designing characters. The guy was a brilliant draftsman, watercolorist and illustrator.

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(Click any image to enlarge.)

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This is the oldest of the cards.

By the way, take a look at the Tripp Family Archives site.