Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

– 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.
(Click on any image to enlarge.)

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).

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1. Here I am in amazement at the fabulous drawing.
2. (L to R) Jason McDonald, Liz Seidman, colorist – Xiaogang (Jack) He, Sue Perrotto, and Stephen MacQuignon (partially cut off)
3. Ray Kosarin

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4. Jason McDonald, Xiaogang (Jack) He
5. Marilyn Rosado, Stephen MacQuignon

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6. Liz Seidman, Denise Gonzalez, Ray Kosarin
7. me close up

The whole staff and party:
(Back row L to R) colorist – Christine O’Neill, Masako Kanayama, Sue Perrotto, Steve MacQuignon, Ray Kosarin, Liz Seidman, Marilyn Rosado
(Fron row L to R) Ed Askinazi, Jason McDonald, Xiaogang He, Denise Gonzalez, Rodolfo Damaggio. I’m probably off camera still looking at the picture, or else I’m taking the picture.

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.

As I was taking this picture, someone on the street behind me said, “Baby Jesus is born with a full head of hair.” This is the manger scene at St Anthony of Padua church in Greenwich Village. I posted the rest of this scene last week and said the crib wouldn’t get the very old looking baby until Christmas. Actually, it arrived last night when I took these pictures.

– All around New York, Christmas is starting to show up. Streets and parks are glowing at night with lights and stars and declarations of Welcome.

I assume the same is true of the rest of the world as everyone triumphs their celebrations of the holiday. So I thought I’d post a couple of decorations in my sightlines as I start to get in the “Christmas mood.”

Decorations were absent for quite a few years when governments decided they couldn’t foot the cost of them, and there was a large pull back. I’m not talking about restaurants and stores or private establishments. The windows have continued to animate and the garland covered Macy’s and shoe stores and diners. I’m talking about public displays of decoration. What eventually changed on the streets was that individual groups started covering the cost.

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(Click on any image to enlarge.)

1. A week before Thanksgiving, visiting my mother, I noticed that Woodlawn, her neighborhood in the Bronx, already had some decorations on display.
2. The decorations got a bit more elaborate by Thanksgiving Day. These costs are covered by the “Woodlawn Taxpayer Assn. This is the same group that concerns itself with the local fire department and sewage systems.

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3. The first time I noticed the trees in Madison Square Park, four of the six little trees were knocked on their sides. It was early morning, and the very windy night had done its damage. Unfortunately, I didn’t have my camera that day, but I did by the next.
4. The same tree at night. No lights on lit, except for a star at the top (a yellow extension cord leading to it – seen on the ground in #3). The balls look like styrofoam. A week later these balls were also lit up.

In the park at Union Square, where a Farmer’s Market usually dominates, they’ve set up a small city of temporary kiosks to house all the craft vendors who sell their wares there.
It’s become so regular a site in the Christmas of the City that it actually feels more like a holiday when these structures are set up. However, if you’re in a rush, it’s hard to navigate the four blocks of window shoppers, buyers, tourists and those just soaking up the holiday atmosphere.
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5. In Greewich Village, 8th Street got its decorations the week after Thanksgiving. It took a couple of days before they were all up as . . .
6. . . . brilliant at night

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7. Christmas isn’t very brilliant during the day on Bleecker Street, though tourists dominate.
8. At night the street in Greenwich Village sparkles (though I could have used a steadicam when I shot this.) The sign reads,”Welcome to Greenwich Village.” What more cheerful Christmas greeting can you find.

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9. Of course, no Christmas display would be appropriate without the obligatory Nativity scene. St Anthony of Padua church, three blocks from my studio, has an enormous display. Life sized statues grace the manger which takes up half a city block. On weekends it’s hard to see it with all the street sellers blocking the view (a couple can be seen here.)
10. Last year I noticed that the creche was empty and wondered if some prankster had stolen the infant Jesus. Heidi informed me that they never put the child into the crib until he is born on Christmas day. Interesting that as a lapsed Catholic I had never learned this; a flaw in my religious education.

- In the past two weeks I highlighted the Gertrude’s Follies work and the artist behind it, Tom Hachtman. He and his wife, Joey Epstein, have been doing Trompe L’oeil murals in the area of the (New) Jersey Shore, where they live.

Since I’ve recently been showing Tom’s artwork, I thought it might be fun to show off some photos of the work he, Joey and two other women – Katie Mae and Christine Myshka. Tom’s caricature (Anime style) of the three women appears to the left. Joey on the left, Katie Mott center and Christine on the right.
(Click on any image to enlarge.)

As you can see, they put these murals up in the homes of local people who are looking to decorate their rooms.

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Imagine the surprise of people who try to read one of the books in this library in Colt’s Neck N.J. – “the children’s office.”

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3. One for the Mets fan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4. One for the Yankees fan.

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5. This is the mural for a kitchen.
6. Painting for a Bagel Shop.

Times Square at a specific point in the memory of the client.

- Before getting into my Photo Sunday posting, a bit of info about NYTimes stories.
. The NYTimes today has an article by Charles Solomon on Disney’s new plan to release newly-made animated shorts before their features. They’ve got four in development with one in production – Goofy in “How to Install Your Home Theater.”
. Yesterday, the NYTimes had a story in their Business section about Disney’s lay-off of 160 people. I guess none of them will be used to make short films.
. Finally, today’s NYTimes Book Review has an interesting review of Neal Gabler’s biography of Walt Disney.

- Shirley Walker died on Friday. She was the composer of a number of animation scores (most notably the Batman series). You can read an obituary for her at Music For The Movies. An interview with her at Soundtrack.net is here.

- This photo was posted with a lot of others on Oct. 22.

John Schnall wrote to say that he had “design notes on one of the posted characters; the ‘schnall’ character is quite a bit off model. I’ve attached some notes that might be useful in truing up the model to the character; hope they’re helpful.”

In addition to this revised model, I thought today I’d post some photos of a recording session done for the music of The Amazing Bone back in 1984.

The score was composed by Jeremy Steig, the son of William Steig and a famous jazz flutist.

It was performed completely by Jeremy and the noted bass player Eddie Gomez. As a fan of jazz, it was glorious for me to be working with Eddie Gomez, who had once been a member of the Bill Evans Trio. I breathed Bill Evans‘ music for a long time.

(click on any image to enlarge.)
Above:Eddie Gomez confers with Jeremy Steig about the score they’re composing & performing.

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1. Eddie Gomez plays his bass.
2. Jeremy Steig plays pan pipes.
3. Jeremy Steig plays assorted bottles.

The score took about 7 hours to record and mix.
There were many breaks for Eddie and Jeremy to confer in the bathroom. It got to the point where the engineer/mixer asked them to please stay in the recording session because the breaks were taking longer than the session.

I didn’t care what it took. I was in heaven experiencing the music. The two performers did a great job, and I loved every moment.

During a break Jeremy and I sit to discuss the music so far. It was great.

All photos were taken by the producer, Paul Gagne. He’s become a long-time friend. I thought I remembered a photo of him with Jeremy, but I don’t have it.

– Generally I like to keep Sundays specifically for posting photo memorabilia, but before going onto that, I wanted to point to an article in today’s NY Times about a documentary about the Chicago 8 that is using animation (well, not animation – mocap). The artwork is being done by NY’s Curious Pictures.

Now, onto the photographic past.

- As we approached the end of Abel’s Island, Robert Marianetti was set to leave to return to Los Angeles. We had a small toast and took this photo of the group in the studio. This was our 38th Street studio, in 1988, just prior to our moving to the larger Broadway location in Greenwich Village.

Cast of characters – Back row (L to R): Betsy Bauer (colorist), Ray Kosarin (asst animator/colorist), Laura Bryson (behind Ray) (colorist), Robert Marianetti (Prod Mgr), Theresa Smythe (colorist), Mike Wisniewski (asst animator/colorist)
Center row (L to R): Steve MacQuignon (colorist), George McClements (asst animator/ colorist), Greg Perler (editor)
Bot Row (L to R): me, Bridget Thorne (Bg’s)
Not pictured in the photos is Kit Hawkins, my assistant, who took them.

The categories listed are those for Abel’s Island only. All of these people rose into other postitions along the way. Ray Kosarin, for example, went on to animate and supervise animation. Theresa Smythe animated; Laura Bryson did the bulk of the backgrounds for The Red Shoes. Except for Betsy Bauer (who went on to become a successful fine artist), everyone eventually moved into some greater role in the studio.

There were others who worked outside the studio that didn’t make it into the photograph and others who just weren’t there that day: Tissa David, John Dilworth, Doug Compton, Christine O’Neill, Steve Dovas, and Lisa Crafts.

too few are the photos I have of the recording sessions done for the films. On Abel, I have just two. Both are of Lionel Jeffries who played Gower, the frog.

Mr. Jeffries is a very big name in England and deservedly so. Americans probably remember him best for his performance as “Grandpa Potts” in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang or as Pellinore in Camelot. In England, his reputation as a director was sealed with The Railway Children, an overwhelming success in that country. In this film, he directed Jenny Agutter in her first role. (I worked with her on my short, Max’s Christmas.)

Mr. Jeffries, like all of the Brits I have worked with was extraordinarily professional. The session was relatively brief, and the performance was more than I ever imagined.
(All images enlarge by clicking on them.)

My biggest regret, on this film, was that I didn’t take a camera to London to snap shots of Tim Curry. His performance as Abel was the rock on which the rest of the film was built. Lionel Jeffries‘ voice worked well with Tim Curry‘s. The only other voice heard in that 1/2 hour show, was Heidi Stallings‘. She also gave a solidly first rate performance as Abel’s wife, Amanda. (No photos of that session either!)

Sterling vocal performances from all three actors really pushed the film off on a good journey.

- Believe it or not, I’ve just received my first invitation to a Christmas Party.

Since the season has obviously just kicked in, I thought I’d post these pictures from a great party we had in my old studio (at 632 Broadway in the Village – NoHo to be exact). I think it was back in 1996 or ’97.

We gave a lot of parties at that studio, but this was definitely one of the best.

Most of the photos here were taken later in the party; a lot of the guests had gone home. Just as things started rocking. Literally.
(Click any image to enlarge.)

We generally moved back the animation desks and gave plenty of room for people to move about. For this party, a friend, Larry White, brought his band and they played in the center of the studio. We’d really moved the desks out so that there was lots of room to dance.

This is the crew just after the Secret Santa and just before the party.
Back L to R: Ed Askinazi – editor, Liz Seidman – prod coord, Matthew Sheridan – asst, Stephen MacQuignon (hidden) – colorist, Denise Gonzalez (in yellow) – publicity/asst, Sue Perotto (in red) – animator, Jason McDonald’s head – colorist, Masako Kanayama – production supervisor, Rodolfo Damaggio – animator, Marilyn Rosado – office manager.

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3. Jennifer Oxley and Mo Willems
4. John Dilworth and Heidi Stallings

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5. me and John Dilworth, goofing around
6. Masako Kanayama thinks it’s funny
7. Russ Adams conducts the band

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8. A conga line has formed to the . . .
9. . . . rock stylings of Larry White.

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10.Larry White (R) sings to Jason McDonald
11. Wuh !?!

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a. Denise Gonzalez lets her freak flag fly. Masako Kanayamo, left, tries to ignore her.
b. Ed Askinazi

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c. Heidi and I dancin’
Ray Kosarin is in the bg left. Rodolfo Damaggio & Marilyn Rosado are to the Right.

- Yesterday, the NY chapter of the Motion Picture Academy screened 32 films to vote on a short-list in preparation for the nominations. It took seven hours of animation viewing, and there were about 20 of us – I didn’t actually take count – in the small Dolby screening room. I was going to comment today, but find I need more time to sort out my thoughts. I’ll do a short commentary tomorrow.

- Anyway, today is photo Sunday.
Having recently pored over some of the artwork from Raggedy Ann & Andy (the NY contingent of the 1977 feature film), I wondered if I had any photos that I could post. There weren’t many that I could find quickly, but the few I did find are here.

The first two stills were taken for the John Canemaker book, “The Animated Raggedy Ann & Andy.” I think only one of the two appears in the book.

(Click any image to enlarge.)
Obviously, that’s Dick Williams with me looking over his shoulder. Oddly I remember being in this position often during the film. It’s probably the first image I have of the production when I look back on it. Dick and I had a lot of conversations (about the film) with him “going” and me listening.

When I did actually grab time to do some drawing, this is my desk. It sat in a corner of a room – across from Jim Logan and Judy Levitow. There were about ten other assistants in my room, and there were about seven rooms filled with assistants on the floor. I had to spend time going through all of them making sure everybody was happy.

This slightly out of focus picture shows Dick Williams (R) talking with Kevin Petrilak (L) and Tom Sito. That’s Lester Pegues Jr. in the background. Boy were we young then!
These guys were in the “taffy pit,” meaning they spent most of their time assisting Emery Hawkins who animated the bulk of the sequence. Toward the end of the film, lots of other animators got thrown into the nightmarish sequence to try to help finish it. Once Emery’s art finished, I think the heart swoops out of that section of the film.

This photo isn’t from Raggedy Ann & Andy, but it just might have been. That’s the brilliant checker, Judy Price showing me the mechanics that don’t work on a scene on R.O.Blechman‘s Simple Gifts. This is the one-hour PBS special that I supervised after my Raggedy years. However, Judy was a principal on Raggedy Ann, and we spent a lot of time together.
Ida Greenberg was the Supervisor of all of Raggedy Ann’s Ink & Paint and Checking. She and I worked together on quite a few productions. I pulled her onto any films I worked on after Raggedy Ann. She was a dynamo and a good person to have backing you up.
I’m sorry I don’t have a photo of her from that period.

This is one of my favorite photos. Me (L), Jim Logan, Tom Sito (R). Jim was the first assistant hired after me – I’m not sure I was an assistant animator when they hired me, but I was being geared for something. The two of us built the studio up from scratch. We figured out how to get the desks, build the dividers, set up the rooms and order the equipment.
To top it all, Jim kept me laughing for the entire time I was there. I can’t think of too many others I clicked with on an animation production as I did with him. He made me look forward to going into work every day.
We frequently had lunch out, he and I, and I think this is at one of those lunches when Tom joined us. It looks to me like the chinese restaurant next door to the building on 45th Street. Often enough, Jim and I would just go there for a happy hour cocktail before leaving for the night.

I should have realized how important that period was for me and have taken more pictures. Oh well.

- These photos come from 1989 just after my studio moved downtown from 34 West 38th Street to 632 Broadway. It was a dynamic new area of NY in the Village that was popping with people. We remained in this space until 2002.

At the time these photos were taken, the studio wasn’t crowded. Those pictured here were among the mainstays for awhile and were with me for a number of years.

The studio, itself, was a big, wide open space. An ex-Art Gallery, it was separated by dividers that contained paints, cels, paper, et al. At one point or another, these dividers housed people preparing the art for camera.

Back row L to R: Theresa Smythe, Mike Winiewski, Ray Kosarin, George McClements.
Sitting L to R: me, Jason McDonald, Steve MacQuignon, Mary Thorne, Masako Kanayama

Above: The wall, just behind us in this group photo, led to an editing room where the editor worked. (At the time it was Greg Perler, who soon moved to Hollywood, and was replaced by Ed Askinazi.) The green room to the back left of the editing area was used for storage. We’d obviously just moved in because the walls here were covered with steel shelving not too long after this photo was taken.

Against the wall R to L: Ray Kosarin, Mike Wisniewski, George McClements, a divider, Steve MacQuignon, Masako Kanayama. Theresa Smythe sat all the way in the back during this photo shoot. Normally, she sat up front.
To the left is Mary Thorne (who most often worked across from me outside of the picture frame.) Out of picture is Jason McDonald just behind Mary.

(Above) This is the studio from my space. In the foreground is a divider and a shelving unit (in which my tape machines & video equipt were housed) which were part of my space.

L to R: Masako, Steve (partially hidden), George, Ray (standing), Mary.
(Jason isn’t at his desk. At the time he was a p/t runner/artist; so he may have been on a delivery. He eventually rose in the studio to Art Directing/Bg Artist.)

(Above) And here we are from the back of the studio looking forward. You can get a glimpse of my area all the way at the end, behind the shelving units in back of Ray.

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4. Jason MacDonald, rendering
5. George McClements & Mike Wisniewski, both animating

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6. Mary Thorne, rendering on cels
7. Masako Kanayama, production coordinating

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8. Theresa Smythe, animating
9. Stephen MacQuignon, coloring art

I’m not quite sure what we were working on at the time. I believe we were in the middle of a video called Baby’s Storytime which had Arlo Guthrie narrating favorite tales – mostly Aesop.
We were about to start The Red Shoes and a series of six other half-hour shows. We had just completed Abel’s Island and The Hunting of the Snark a couple of months prior.

Things were good at the time.

10. Ray Kosarin, animating

- Continuing with the photo display I put up last Sunday, I wanted to show off two more corners of the room in my 38th Street studio, back in 1988.

Greg Perler had a particularly crowded corner of the studio where he edited all of the films we were producing. You’ll note that he was using an upright movieola. (I prized those two uprights and have kept them to this day, though they’re used predominantly for holding things upright.)

Greg, at the time of these photos, was editing Abel’s Island. There was a hurried rush for the mix which was fast approaching, and I was encroaching on his day to take these snaps.

Greg left NY to go to LA. He started as the Asst. Editor on Beauty & The Beast and became top dog on Tarzan. Currently, he’s editing Enchanted for Disney.
(Click any image to enlarge.)

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1. Greg’s corner from another angle
2. Greg and Ray Kosarin, an assistant in the studio. who worked with Greg in assisting him in the rush to the mix.

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3. Ray Kosarin drawing on Abel’s Island.
4. Bridget Thorne‘s corner – diagonally across the studio from Greg’s – where she did backgrounds. Bridget, Greg and Ray.

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5. HBO threw a party to screen Lyle Lyle Crocodile. Pictured here L to R: me, Liz Callaway (the singing voice of Mrs. Primm), Bernard Waber (the author, illustrator of the book), and Arnold Stang (the voice of a parrot – he was also the voice of Top Cat among hundreds of voices he’s done over the years.)
6. Pictured L to R: Rick Parks (multiple voices), me, Arnold Stang, Bernard Waber, Carole Rosen (an Exec from HBO with whom I did many films), and someone dressed as Lyle.
We’re about to cut a cake shaped to look like Lyle, the crocodile. The knife was given to Bernard Waber who said he couldn’t cut into his own creation. We had the costumed Lyle cut himself – the cake, I mean. (The head went first!)