Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

- A second model sheet of Minnie shows the animation breakdown for scene 57 from the film, The Little Whirlwind. The scene was animated by Ward Kimball and Reuben Timmins (effx).

Here’s the full model sheet. Note that some of the drawings are out of order (row 2 should be row 3.)

(Click any image to enlarge.)

Here’s a breakdown of those same drawings enlarged for viewing.

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The Following QT movie is exposed on
twos since I have nothing to go by, I just let it play itself.

Click left side of the black bar to play.
Right side to watch single frame.

Thanks to Bill Peckmann for the generous loan of this model sheet.

- Like all would-be child animators of the 50/60′s, I was obsessed with cartoons and cartooning. Naturally, enough one of the great heroes for all of us, during this period, was Walt Kelly.

Here was an artist of sublime dimensions. He’d animated for the best of the Disney films and then moved onto his own comic strip, Pogo, for generations of us kid (and adults). Let me tell you, Pogo was the be-all and end-all of comic strips. I clipped a lot of these strips out of the newspaper and saved them, until I realized I could buy the bound volumes of Pogo comics. I got rid of the clipped-strips and started collecting those collections of his strips – organized by him into subject matter. There were lots of them, so I went back to find some of those on the market that I had missed. Then there was the collected hard-cover volume of the books – Ten Ever-Lovin’ Blue-Eyed Years with Pogo. I bought that, too.

Funny, that they did a couple of animated programs adapting Pogo – a couple with the help of Kelly – but all these shows didn’t cut it. Not even the Chuck Jones show, The Pogo Special Birthday Special. It, naturally, was more Chuck Jones than Walt Kelly. It didn’t work.

Between animation and strip, Walt Kelly had had a foray drawing comic book art. These comics are rare today and pretty hard to find. One person who seems to have all of these is comic collector, John Benson. Years ago, he’d sent color copies of all the covers – front & backs – to Bill Peckmann. Bill sent me these copies, and I’m sharing them here. (Michael Barrier wrote about and posted one of these stories.) These comic pages date from June, 1942 onward.

If you’re a Walt Kelly fan, this should be a treat. Thanks, of course, to Bill Peckmann and John Benson for the viewing.

I repeat my thanks to John Henson and Bill Peckmann
for the chance to see these gems.

- Thanks to the generous loan from Bill Peckmann, I have this animation model chart of Minnie in Sc. 10 from The Little Whirlwind. The animation is by Ken Muse, Les Clark and George deBeeson (Effx). I suspect that Les Clark had the greatest hand in animating Minnie.

Here’s the model chart as copied:

I’ve broken the images down and enlarged them a bit for viewing purposes:

- Bill Peckmann has generously loaned me another very large stash of character model sheets, primarily Disney. There’s a wealth of Mickeys, alone.

I’ve posted some of them before, many in much poorer condition. Consequently, I’m about to spend some time with Mickey and Minnie, and post some new, some old and some out of this world models of the pair.

Here’s a large number of them. I’m holding back some animation charts from L’il Whirlwind and The Symphony Hour which will come at a later date.

Let’s start with a nice early Mickey.

Then a Minnie and Mickey together.

Here’s a beautiful Minnie model.

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These are the models from the Disney lecture posted here.

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These next four are the model sheets drawn by Ward Kimball.

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The earlier versions of these Kimball models that I published were
in horrible condition. It’s nice to post such clean versions of them.

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Here’s a fine copy of the Sorcerer’s Apprentice model sheet.

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These two model sheets from Mickey and the Beanstalk are new to me.

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And, finally, these two charts from Mickey’s last
hand-drawn short, Mickey’s Christmas Carol.

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Now Mickey’s a cgi character and completely off-model (and unwatchable.)

Thankyou, yet again, to Bill Peckmann for sharing these with us.
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There are three interesting model sheets at David Lesjak’s excellent site Vintage Disney Collectibles.

- You’ll remember that I did a couple of pieces on the illustrator Vernon Grant. He was the original designer of Snap, Crackle and Pop for the Kelloggs Corp. back in the late ’30s, and I featured a post on the history of those characters.

I followed that with one on his Mother Goose book. There, I posted some of his uniquely styled illustrations for that book of Mother Goose rhymes.

Both those posts were heavily dependent on some great material loaned me by Bill Peckmann from his remarkable collection.

Vernon Grant was also drew Santa Claus. He seemed to love drawing St. Nick in many different incarnations. This is something we share. Whereas I confine myself to many varied Christmas cards, he has a perennial best selling picture book, Vernon Grant’s Santa Claus, that’s been on the market for many years. Bill Peckman recently sent me a copy of the book to scan and post, but I’d already had my own copy. I’ve decided, here, to post about half of the book. I’m particularly interested in Grant’s illustrations prior to the ’50s. Conseqeuntly, I’ve chosen to select only those illustrations that were done in 1953 or earlier, and I’ve placed them in chronological order.

Not all of the images are of Santa Claus. Hence in organizing them by date, we have to start off with a beauty but one that doesn’t feature Santa.

Hi-Ho! For a Merry Christmas – 1932

I got your letter – 1934

Empty pockets – 1936

How sad! The Depression hit Santa, too.

Merrie Minstrels – 1937

Santa’s Special Delivery – 1940

Season’s Greetings – 1942

Untitled – 1946

This one is untitled, but it’s far and away my favorite.

Is It My Turn Yet? – 1946

These last two are too Norman Rockwell for my taste.
But it shows the direction Vernon Grant and America were taking.

Mommy Kissing Santa Claus – 1953

The song “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus” written by Tommy Connor
was a smash hit in 1952. The smash singer was Jimmy Boyd (who later
grew into the role of “Jimmy” on the original Mickey Mouse Club.

Vernon Grant obviously built on the song title.
It looks like a Coca Cola ad of the period.

- 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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(Click any image to enlarge.)

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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”

Bill Peckmann recently sent me another stash of model sheets, especially of Mickey, Donald and Goofy. Among them were four pages of Mickey from The Brave Little Tailor. This film, of course, is a gem, and I can’t help but admire the drawing on these model sheets.

Two of them are clippings from animation by Fred Moore. There are some clues as to the exposing of the scene, so I took the drawings apart and ran them through AfterEffects just for my own entertainment. Here are the results, below. First all four model sheets; then the QT movie I made of the actions.

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(Click any image to enlarge.)

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Mickey the Tailor

Click left side of the black bar to play.
Right side to watch single frame.

- 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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(Click any image to enlarge.)

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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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(Click any image to enlarge.)

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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.