Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

Here are some for Ralph Steadman’s rose painters. from his unique Alice in Wonderland illustrated.

- As you know, I am an enormous fan of Errol Le Cain’s work. I’ve been posting quite a few of his illustrations for children’s books. (You can see the past posts, if you’re interested, here.)

Today, I’m showcasing a book written by Naomi Lewis from a story by E. Nesbit.
The book was adapted to a film on the BBC, narrated by Nigel Havers. She also adapted The Snow Queen which Le Cain illustrated.

The book contains 30 pages, and every page includes an illustration. I’ve decided to break this into two parts since I don’t want to post tiny thumbnails of the pictures.

I’m not highlighting the text; you’ll have to buy the book for that. I am posting all the great illustrations and hope you enjoy them as much as I do.

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A School Bewitched is a small picture book with a full page illustration on every other page. The remainder have spots which decorate around the type.

We started showing off the illustrations yesterdayl here are more. I’m not concerned with telling the story. I’d urge you to buy the book if you’re interested in that.

______(Click any image to enlarge.)

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Back Cover

- In at least a half dozen posts I’ve written about Paul Julian‘s magnificent work. Of all of it, The Telltale Heart is probably the richest and most sophisticated of all of this artwork. Such a magnificent artist he was, bordering the realist with the surrealist. I love the man’s work and will continue to feature many of the pleasures he’s given me.

When the Jolly Frolics UPA DVDs were released, there were several films by Mr. Julian that I took great pleasure in analyzing, taking apart and studying anew. How appropriate that John Hubley, my all time favorite, brought the sophisticated Paul Julian into the studio to get him to paint with such elan.

This week, a surrealist one for me if ever there were one, between Verizon’s ample attacks on my phone and blog and the amazingly disturbing hernia operations thrown at me – just for the heck of it – by a brilliant surgeon from India who has worked well in New York City.

It was added b a delightful letter from Borge Ring, by way of his wife, Joanika. The letter prompts a good reason for my posting again the magnificent Julian artwork. I hope you enjoy it, but it’s posted more for my own amusement than yours. Don’t get me wrong, I really hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

Here, then, is the great anecdote b way of Borg:

hi MICHAEL
Paul Julian’s “Telltale Heart” was shown at Annecy in the sixties. Some0ne asked
producer Les Goldman:

“How long did it take to make the film”?
“It took a year. A year for Paul to paint the film and a year for me to beg the
money together”

cheers
Borge

- Of all the pleasures I’ve gotten from the recently released UPA dvd Jolly Frolics the Backgrounds of Paul Julian are a particular enjoyment. His most famous and greatest achievement is, of course, the work he did on The Tell Tale Heart. This is his film. Ted Parmelee directed it, but I’m certain that he pretty much set the camera moves and timing, leaving all the design work for Julian.

The Tell Tale Heart is a tour de force of production design. It is probably one of the first non-war/propaganda animated films, since Baby Weems, to so feature this element of production over everything else – except story. Paul Julian‘s brilliant artwork oozes from the pores of every frame of this film. Together with James Mason‘s narration and Boris Kremenliev‘s strong musical score, the film evocatively tells the strong Edgar Allan Poe story. This tale has not been told on film any better since it was made in 1953. Ted Parmalee directed the film with authority.

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I enjoyed posting Sasek’s illustrated book to Rome last week, and Bill Peckmann followed the cue of his sending me scans of “This is D.C.“, the artist’s follow-up to the U.S. Capital. I hope you enjoy, because I have “This is NY” developing sitting in the wings. look forward to it.

The book’s cover

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The book’s cover

As I’ve pointed out in this series, Alice in Wonderland is my favorite children’s book. and Ralph Steadman one of my favorite illustrators. His work is so intelligent; his art so British and sophisticated, these two were the perfect pair. I think Charles Dodgson would have selected Steadman, himself, had his art been discovered back then.

Here then is part 2 of some illustrations taken from Steadman’s book:

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Ken Hultgren was an animator who worked for Disney during the height of the animal artistry that went on in the studio through the making of Bambi. Ken was a brilliant draftsman whose work was turned into a couple of beautiful drawing books after the finish of Bambi. It’s certaily worth pursuing the couple of books he produced. They all vary enormously and show off his flagrant abilities as an anmal artist.

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After posting the book, Piccoli, a week or so ago, I’ve grown more interest in Paul Julian‘s work. He’s known predominantly for the Bgs he did at Warner Bros and the art direction he did on The Tell Tale Heart. However, there’s more film work he did independently.

The Hangman was a short film he did with co-director Les Goldman. Maurice Ogden’s poem is read by Herschel Bernardi in a very earnest tone. The artwork by Julian absolutely saves this film which was nominated for the Oscar.

Roger Corman also used Paul Julian for a number of opening title sequences for the low budget films he did in the 60s. I’m going to try pulling some frame grabs from a number of these title sequences so that I can place some focus on Julian’s work in these forgotten films.

I start here with The Terror a film Starring Boris Karloff and Jack Nicholson. Julian uses a couple of pieces of artwork that he works over the course of the sequence with lots of lateral camera moves. Quite expressive work, though certainly not on a par with Tell Tale Heart.

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Starts at the bottom and pans up.

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Monte Hellman directed Two Lane Blacktop.

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You can watch a grayed-out version of this video on YouTube. The credits come on about a minute into it.

Swamp Women’s title sequence will follow soon.

Bill Peckmann sent scans of this glorious and beautiful children’s book by Martin Provenson. There really, as far as I’m concerned, is no reason necessary. The illustrations are just beautiful, and I find myself staring at them for long periods of time. It’s a great book.

Bill writes the accompanying note:

The reason I have this book is because when George Cannata Jr. was our Animation Design teacher at Visual Arts in 1960, he recommended that his students buy it because it was known as the “animation designers bible” in those days.

The oversized book cover

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I am one of those insane people who is in love with Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. I also am devoted to Ralph Steadman as probably my favorite illustrator. Steadman has published a glorious version of Alice, and I need no more than show some of the illustrations. Here’s the first in a series of posts of Alice by way of this original artist. Truly different from anyone else’s version.

The rumor was that Steadman had seen Meryl Streep performing as the lead on stage in New York, as part of the Joe Papp’s NY Shakespeare Festival, and he’d never been able to get that image out of his head.

I can quite understand since I also saw that very odd and interesting production and still remember it well.
I hope you enjoy this art as much I enjoyed working these images. There’s a lot more, and it will come in parts.

The book’s cover

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