Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

- In 1980 Portfolio Magazine gave us this article about Edward Hopper. Bill Peckmann sent it to me, and I thought it interesting to post here, especially in that today is Memorial Day, and what better day to celebrate America.

So, I hope you enjoy it.

(Click any image to enlarge.)

The magazine’s cover

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- You’ll remember that last week I posted a bit of Arnold Roth‘s brilliant book, A Comick Book of Pets.

Arnold Roth was born in 1929 in Philadelphia, Pa. He attended public schools and was awarded a scholarship to art school. He started free lancing in 1951 and continues to do so. Mr. Roth has had cartoons published in The New Yorker, Time Magazine, Sports Illustrated, Playboy, Punch and the NY Times. He’s worked briefly in animation for John Hubley and Phil Kimmelman. He currently lives in Manhattan with his wife and two sons.

Blessed Bill Peckmann has been feeding me some great scans of this book, and I’m ecstatic to be able to post them. This week, with the second part of the posting, we go out to all cat lovers (that includes me, I must say), and we present the chapter on “Cats”. The material’s pretty funny, and the drawings couldn’t be finer. I hope you enjoy.

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And as an additional bonus,
Bill Peckmann had this original ad which
Arnold Roth did for Phil Kimmelman & Ass.

- Bill Peckmann sent some fresh Alex Toth material and with it came some notes. So, I’ll turn the blog over to him today:

In keeping with the celebration of Dean Mullaney‘s book, Genius Isolated, I thought I’d scan some of Alex’s early 1950′s and early 1960′s comic book art.

The first three are DC Comics’ “All American Western” covers from 1949 to 1951. (Wonderful house/publisher coloring.) The character he was doing for the book was called “Johnny Thunder”, a western hero with a Clark Kent duel personality. Alex was only 21 years old at the time of the first cover.

(#121 has been reprinted in “Genius”)

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The following is the back cover of issue #121, it’s an ad, non Toth, I just thought you’d get a kick out of it. . . .

. . . As an 8 year old I remember this premium/give away very well, Donald and Mickey were the prized ones of course. To all us little cookie snappers at that time, anything Disney was few and far between, unlike today!

The following complete story is from EC Comics’ “Two-Fisted Tales”, issue #22, 1951. (This scan is of the cover done by book editor Harvey Kurtzman.)

The story “Dying City” was written, layed out and outstandingly inked by Harvey Kurtzman. The beautiful tight pencils were Alex’s. Both gents were in their best Milton Caniff mode, wonderful job of a very grim story.

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In 1963 Alex was doing “Mad Magazine” type pages for “cartoon car” type magazines coming out of the west coast. It looks like he had an easy time slipping into the skins of Jack Davis and Mort Drucker and seemed to enjoy doing it for a while. These 2 stories are from “DRAG CARtoons” #2. They are take offs of the then popular TV series, “Dr. Kildare” and “The Defenders.

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Both these stories plus all of the rest of this type that Alex did for the “cartoon car” magazines were lovingly and handsomely collected by Manuel Auad (publisher of the new, excellent Robert Fawcett book) in his/this Alex Toth, One for the Road, published in 2000.

Cover – “One for the Road”

Many thanks to Bill Peckmann for all the great material in this post.

- More images collected from Cinderella. But first, let me start with this email my sister, Pat, sent me. She’s always sending
me funny email jokes, and this one seemed to come at just the right time – in time for this post. It just reads:

A Coincidence? I think not!”

The Prince and Cinderella is one thing but the two sisters’ dresses. That’s where this comparison takes the cake.
Anyway, I thought you might enjoy it if you haven’t already seen this.

Now, onto more Cinderella art. This all started with Hans Perk‘s wonderful blog, A Film LA and the Cinderella drafts he’s posting. Take a look. They’re a treasure (as is everything Hans posts.)

We start with a couple of finished BGs and move onto to models and designs for Cinderella’s room, house, and castle.

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The Stepmother

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The Stepsisters

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- I continue, here, with more images from Cinderella.

I think of this series of posts as an outgrowth of the Cinderella drafts Hans Perk is posting on his excellent blog, A Film LA. Check them out if you haven’t already.

Many of the following drawings are better drawn than some of those in the first post. Others almost look as though they’re frame grabs rather than the preliminary sketches (See #9 & 10) they are. I hope you enjoy them. If you know who did any of the art, don’t hesitate to let us all know.

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I just read a great little quote by Wilfred Jackson in Didier Ghez‘ book Walt’s People Vol. 6. I thought I’d share it. It comes from an interview with Jackson by Steve Hulett:

Pinocchio was the last picture I worked on that was done so strictly under Walt’s guidance. All during the thirties it was that way. Then he backed off and began throwing more responsibility to the rest of us. He figured we should know our business well enough to help him make pictures instead of being extra fingers on his hand.

And it’s my personal opinion that this accounts a great deal for some of the difference that you see in the spirit and the heart that you see in the pictures during the thirties. That gradually, it got a little less evident until it got to the point, in my estimation, where the Disney pictures became superb technically, but a little lacking in a joyous creative spirit you’ll find in those early pictures. As time went on, it was more and more diluted by the influence of others . . .

- Here are some pages from Arnold Roth‘s Comick Book of Pets. These pages were sent to me by Bill Peckmann. It’s a beautifully layed-out book.

The front cover

The back cover

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Title Page

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Dedication Page | Contents

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Many thanks to Bill Peckmann for sending the scans. Roth’s art and sense of humor have always been a favorite of mine.

- Cinderella art. I’ve taken a lot of drawings that I could find from an old DVD and from some books and have put them all together in a jamboree of images making up a couple of posts. The occasion for this, to me, is to celebrate the drafts recently posted by Hans Perk on his resourceful site, A Film LA. This is all leading up to something. I don’t want to do: a mosaic of the film. I am not that in love with the movie to do all that work, but perhaps I’ll do a variation of the form, created by Mark Mayerson.

The artists of these sketches are nameless. None of the art was identified, so I send it out that way. The Mary Blair images are obvous, and though there’s a preponderance of Blair artwork for this film, I”ve tried to limit her a bit. I did devote a lot of space to her artwork in past posts. You can find more of her Cinderella images here.

For now here are some images of the character, Cinderella.

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- Leif Peng on his site, Today’s Inspiration, has been posting art of Rowland B. Wilson all this past week. Bill Peckmann has suggested we post a complementary piece today to work with Leif’s site. Consequently, here are a number of pieces. As we go through each, I’ll give you Bill to tell you in his own words what’s coming.

I’m starting off with a CARTOONIST’S PROFILE of RBW. You’ve posted some of the art in color already, but it’s nice to see how it breaks down in B & W.
Rowland was always totally aware of how his color art would translate into the gray scale.

The cover of Cartoonist Profiles.

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The next two gags were taken from a reprint book titled “Esquire’s World of Humor”, 1964(?). Fortunately they hadn’t been reprinted in the Whites of Their Eyes, so they are somewhat “new”. Sadly, they were reprinted in B & W, the color art must have been beautiful.

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Here are examples of how Rowland figured out the shading of his full color TV GUIDE illustrations. He would take a Xeroxed line drawing and then “fool” with it with colored pencils.

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The next 3 pieces are roughs for PLAYBOY gags. Even his roughs look “finished”. Suzanne Wilson was kind enough to send me these.

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Here are some photos from June, 1973 when Rowland started working at Richard William’s studio in London. Fortunately for Rowland, that was just the time that Grim Natwick was teaching over there and as they say… that was the start of a beautiful friendship!

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One Soho Square

Rowland at his desk

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Animator, Jeff Short with Rowland.

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Rowland with Grim Natwick

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Bill Peckmann with Grim Natwick outside Dick’s studio

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Rowland with Grim

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Rowland with Suzanne

Finally, here’s a note from Suzanne Wilson about the Rowland B. Wilson book which is currently in the works:

A compendium (?) of Rowland’s personal notes, techniques, sketches, etc. is in the works. It is largely based on Rowland’s collected “how-to” pages that he developed in order to create a system that could be applied to illustration, animation, cartooning and graphic novels.

The publisher is Focal Press. I don’t expect it will come out until 2012…

They haven’t said I can’t announce the book, but the title is not finalized (plus I am having conniptions about ever completing it on time…

I happened to scroll down on Michael’s website and see Laurel and Hardy. I didn’t know if you knew Rowland painted them on the cabinet doors of a workbench he built…

The workbench

Oliver

Stan

- Here’s a precious item scanned and sent to me by Bill Peckmann. It’s a song book that Tomi Ungerer illustrated. Back in the 70s, Ungerer‘s work was everywhere. As a matter of fact, I always seemed to take it for granted. Yet, everytime I came upon one of his brilliant children’s books, I would find him anew. Always the work was excellent with a depth that you rarely found except in the best of Sendak or Glaser.

This song book, published in 1975, is filled with fine illustrations by Mr. Ungerer. This is a style whose depths he plumbed in ths period with books like Strega Nonna or The Three Robbers. Unlike much of his earliest work, it seemed less cartoon and more Bruegel.

The book’s cover

The Title Page

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Many thanks to Bill Peckmann for contributing this artwork, scans and inspiration.

- The following piece was sent to me by Bill Peckmann. Here’s his introduction to it:

Here’s something that might not be accessible to some of your readers.
It’s the program booklet of the 1972 EC Comics Convention that was held in NYC.

I’ve scanned the pages pertaining to cartoonists of the early MAD comic book. The caricatures were done in the early ’50′s (EC at it’s peak) by a very young Marie Severin. (EC colorist then, went on to fame at MARVEL comics later.). The comments of the cartoonists are made by their compatriots for the Convention. Twenty years had passed but the good memories were still there.

So here we have editor/artist Harvey Kurtzman. Artists – Jack Davis, Bill Elder, Wally Wood, John Severin, colorist Marie Severin (sister of John) and last but not least, publisher of EC Comics, Bill Gaines.

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Many thanks to Bill Peckmann for sharing the material,