Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

– I’ve posted a couple of pictures from Woman of the Year in the past but thought I go a touch deeper now.

To recap: Woman of the Year was a project that came to me in the very beginning of my studio’s life – 1981. Tony Walton, the enormously talented and fine designer, had gone to Richard Williams in search of a potential animator for WOTY (as we got to call the name of the show.) Dick recommended me. But before doing WOTY, there were some title segments needed for Prince of the City, a Sidney Lumet film. (I’ll discuss that film work some other day.)

Tony Walton designed the character, Katz, which would be the alter-ego of the show’s cartoonist hero, played by Harry Guardino. Through Katz, we’d learn about the problems of a relationship with a media star, played by Lauren Bacall. (All images enlarge by clicking.)
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It turned out to be a very intense production. Three minutes of animation turned into twelve as each segment was more successful than the last. There was no time for pencil tests. I had to run to Boston, where the show was in try-outs, to project different segments weekly; these went into the show that night – usually Wednesdays. I’d rush to the lab to get the dailies, speed to the editor, Sy Fried, to synch them up to a click track that was pre-recorded, then race to the airport to fly to the show for my first screening. Any animation blips would have to be corrected on Thursdays.

There was a small crew working out of a tiny east 32nd Street apartment. This was Dick Williams’ apartment in NY. He was rarely here, and when he did stay in NY, he didn’t stay at the apartment. He asked me to use it as my studio and to make sure the rent was paid on time and the mail was collected. Since we had to work crazy hours, it was a surprise one Saturday morning to find that I’d awakened elderly Jazz great, Max Kaminsky, who Dick had also loaned the apartment. Embarrassed, I ultimately moved to a larger studio – my own – shortly thereafter.

Here are a couple of photos of some of us working:

Tony Charmoli was the show’s choreographer. He worked with me in plotting out the big dance number – a duet between Harry Guardino and our cartoon character. I think this is the only time on Broadway that a cartoon character spoke and sang with a live actor on stage. John Canemaker is taking this photograph and Phillip Schopper is setting up the 16mm camera.

Here Tony Charmoli shows us how to do a dance step. Phillip Schopper, who is filming Tony, figures out how to set up his camera. We used Tony’s dancing as reference, but our animation moves were too broad for anyone to have thought they might have been rotoscoped.

John Canemaker is working with Sy Fried, our editor. John did principal animation with me on the big number. Here they’re working with the click track and the live footage of Tony Charmoli to plot out the moves.

Steve Parton supervised the ink and paint. To get the sharpest lines, we inked on cels and didn’t color the drawings. It was B&W with a bright red bowtie. A spotlight matte over the character, bottom-lit on camera by Gary Becker.

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5. Steve Parton works with painter Barbara Samuels
6. Joey Epstein paints with fire in her eyes.

Joey Epstein paints “Katz.”

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8. Harry Guardino on stage with the creation of “Tessie Kat” developing on screen behind him. This was Harry’s first big solo.
9. John Canemaker gets to see some of his animation with Sy Fried, editor.

One of my quick stops from the lab on the way to Boston? No, I think this is a posed photo.

In the Sunday NYTimes, there is an article about the French animated feature, Persepolis. This is an animated adaptation of a graphic novel by Marjane Satrapi about the difficulties of being Iranian. She is codirecting the film with Vincent Paronnaud, a fellow comic book author who has also made a few short films. The English language version will feature the voices of Catherine Deneuve and Gena Rowlands. Kathleen Kennedy acted as the angel in chief getting the films into the hands of Sony Classics which will release it later this year.

“I realized I had a talent I didn’t know,” she said. “In France people will tell you everything is impossible. I have the enthusiasm of an American. I tell people: ‘Rah, yes! We’re going to make a great movie.’ And it pays; you can see their reaction. And suddenly you realize they have ideas that you didn’t have. It is hard for me, for my ego, to say this: For me, the movie is better than the book.”

The film is done in B&W. Perhaps it’s another Triplettes of Belleville? We can hope.

To hear an NPR interview with Marjane go here.
Buy the book here.

The Sunday NYTimes also includes an article about the marriage of Robert & Aline Crumb and how they work together as cartoonists. The pair do a strip regularly for the New Yorker magazine.

They moved to France 16 years ago . . . sickened, they said, by the infiltration of their once sleepy California town, Winters, by newcomers who bulldozed hilltops for McMansions. The Crumbs also wanted to shield their daughter, Sophie, from a growing conservative and fundamentalist Christian influence while continuing to educate her in what they consider the classics. They reared her on “Little Lulu” comics from the 1940s and ’50s and Three Stooges videos.

It is a good, extensive article which gives an account of their present lives in the South of France.

There is also an audio slideshow on the Times site.

– The Museum of Modern Art has a new exhibition of a film that is projected in a very big way on three walls of the Museum’s exterior. The film includes three different projections from 8 projectors of an overlapping story featuring Donald Sutherland and Tilda Swinton.

There’s a wonderful presentation of this film-art-piece on a website called the Gothamist. I urge you to take a look.

This morning, I heard an interview with the artist talking about “Accidental Art,” by which he meant coming upon art without any such plans. The cab driver driving past the museum is taken with the odd film projecting off the building. The guy walking his dog sees something out of the corner of his eye and turns to find out what it is – Doug Aitken‘s projection.

This idea – “Accidental Art – has fascinated me for years. I remember, a while ago, projecting an old 30′s cartoon out the window of my 6th floor apartment. The image projected across the wide street onto a building across and, as a result, was probably 40 ft. wide or more. It was fun, but I’m not sure I considered that “Art.” Admittedly, it was a make-shift production, in that the film wasn’t planned for such a projection, and there was no point. I was merely entertaining myself and the rest of the party with me in the apartment.

I wonder if the projection happens specifically in the late-afternoon/evening? Or does it go on all day. Is it film or digital? From what I’ve read it seems to be all day. What story can be told? Is there a soundtrack and how is the sound broadcast? I’ll have to go up to the MOMA to find out the answers, and I will.

For some reason this brings to my mind Douglas Trumbull‘s Showscan invention. I remember when Trumbull (the man behind the Effx in 2001 and Close Encounters) made films for Chucky Cheese using his Showscan method. Showscan‘s process was a 65mm film shot and projected at 60 frames per second (fps). Presumably, this allowed the brain to eliminate the flicker in films, and would result in a sort of 3D effect. Most movies are 24 fps.

I found this quote by someone who’d seen the process, Bob Wood:

I can’t remember the specs but it was scarily real, 3-D, multi channel and way ahead of multi channel… or HDTV. I do remember it ran film through the gate much faster than normal projection speeds.

I had the brief opportunity of interviewing Trumbull on the process, and I asked, of course, if animation would have the same result. His response was that it should be the same as long as the animation was done at 60fps and projected that way. I never got to see the projection (there are no Chucky Cheese restaurants in Manhattan – thank god,) and he never did animation in the process.

Now Chucky Cheese is closed, Showscan is bankrupt, and Trumbull is involved with IMAX. I guess we won’t find out how his system would’ve worked with animation.

- John Canemaker wrote to tell me that he has a cover story in the new issue of CARTOONS, the International Journal of Animation (Vol. 2, Winter 2006), which is now available.

The story is about Disney storyman and beloved children’s book illustrator, J.P. Miller (1913-2004). “In Search of John Parr Miller,” which contains all new research by Canemaker and biographical material never before published on Miller, is the first of a two-part series (with 13 profusely illustrated pages).

This is the link to a “Remembrance” of Miller by his brother, George, on Cartoon Brew.

Other samples of Miller’s work are Part I and Part 2 and Part 3 and here and here.

Humorist Art Buchwald died on Wednesday and was reported in yesterday’s late editions of the newspapers. The NY Times has their traditional obituary on the front page of the paper as does the Washington Post.

However, the Times gave Buchwald the opportunity of doing a digital streaming obituary, and he did. It begins with the lines:

“Hi I’m Art Buchwald, and I just died.”

I loved Buchwald’s column in the Washington Post; I’ve linked to a number of past articles by him if you’re in the mood for reading.

I used to spend a couple of weeks in the summers vacationing on Martha’s Vineyard. The island has three small movie theaters, and they bicycle movie prints that rotate all three theaters within a week. My favorite of the three was the “Vineyard” theater downtown Vineyard Haven. One year we went to see In The Line of Fire, Clint Eastwood’s fabulous film of intrigue about a Washington security guard protecting the President.
I found myself sitting near Art Buchwald and Mike Wallis. Both lived on the island.

It was amusing that the two of them chatted almost constantly. Throughout the film, whenever D.C. exteriors were shown, the two of them pointed to this hotel or that, what streets they were filming now, what places are no longer there. That type of thing. It was great fun for me to listen in on the two celebrities, D.C. diehards, talk about their city.

A new and beautiful site has just been launced by Tania Covo in the UK. It’s dedicated to the illustration art of Errol Le Cain.

It includes a complete listing of Errol’s books with sample illustrations. It also has a page of animation illustrations, including a couple for Dick Williams‘ Cobbler and the Thief.

This is something that’s been long overdue, and I have to congratulate Ms. Covo for having done such a beautiful job of it. I’ve added the link to my splog.

In the past, I’ve posted several pages each dedicated to a different one of Mr. LeCain’s books, and I hope to put up another soon. These are links to past such posts:

Thorn Rose
Pied Piper of Hamelin
12 Dancing Princesses
Have You Seen My Sister
Hiawatha’s Childhood

Tuesday, FPS put up a connection to the animated shorts that would be screened at Sundance. Likewise, the Slamdance Film Festival has announced their schedule of animated shorts for this year’s festival. There seems to be a preponderance of puppet films. The festival usually has a more experimental bent in their choices, and it looks to be the same this year.
Many of these films will grace the next year’s animation festivals, so it’s nice to get a head’s up on the list.

To read more about these films go to: Animated Shorts. The list of titles and directors includes:

Africa Parting Directed by Robyn Yannoukos and Brian LoSchiavo (7 minutes)
The Ballad of Mary Slade Directed by Robin Fuller (3 minutes)
Close Your Eyes and Do Not Breathe Directed by Vuk Jevremovic (7 minutes)
Cranium Theater Directed by Jason Sandri (7 minutes)
Eva Directed by Martin Quaden (9 minutes)
Infinite Justice Directed by Karl Tebbe (2 minutes)
Kuro Kumo Directed by Norton (5 minutes)
Latent Sorrow Directed by Shon Kim (4 minutes)
Loom Directed by Scott Kravitz (5 minutes)
Matière / Material Directed by Boran Richard (6 minutes)
Oneheadword Protection Directed by Igor et Ivan Buharov (6 minutes)
Printed Rainbow Directed by Gitanjali Rao (15 minutes)
Tinnitus Directed by Mark Zero Lastimosa (7 minutes)
Ujbaz Izbeneki Has Lost His Soul Directed by Neil Jack (5 minutes)

You can see a short clip of Kuro Kumo (pictured above) by Jesse Norton on his site, Humoring the Fates.

The Animation Guild Blog has begun their Remembrance of those from the animation community who died last year. It’s become an important part of our year – to look back on the lives of those we’ve been connected to.

Floyd Norman continues his Toy Story story on Jim Hill Media. Part one was here.

- On the FPS site Mark Mayerson has an excellent review of Tom Sito‘s book, Drawing the Line.

I think this is something of an important book in that it covers material which is just not the focus of most histories. As Mark rightly says, “… histories have concentrated on studios, cartoon characters and individual artists.” The book rightly points to the important contribution unions have made to animation’s history. The information on the McCarthy hearings and the animation studios was worth the book on its own.

The review (and the book) are worth a read. Here.

Another book just published is Didier Ghez‘ fourth volume of his series, Walt’s People. This series has collected interviews with many of the masters of animation. The interviews are usually important and inciteful reading. I’d certainly encourage any of you to buy the series. They can be found on Xlibris or Amazon.

Walt’s People Volume 4, just about to hit the stalls, includes interviews with Grim Natwick, Dick Huemer, Joe Grant, Peter Ellenshaw, John Hench, Marc Davis, Roy Williams, Floyd Norman and many more. It looks to be as great an edition as all of the ohter three.

For more information, and to see a great site, go to Didier’s Disney History.

– If you want to have a little fun go to Pictaps, click on paint and draw a character. Then you can watch it start moving in a herky-jerky dance. It’s an entertaining site constructed by Masayuki Kido in Japan.

The example to the left was one I did in a couple of minutes.
If you have the time, it’s a kick.

I found this link on Drawn which is a fine site that should be a regular stop for anyone who draws or is interested in illustration. They feature articles and links to illustrators and artists.

It came to Drawn via Dave Roman.

- Just to get myself in the spirit sometimes takes a bit of energy. I can sit down and start working, but I prefer to have the right frame of mind before I do anything to do with animation. This is especially and most importantly necessary when I’m doing a job for hire. I have the impetus and the motive, but the emotional framework has to be geared up and ready to go.

The animated shorts that make me smile most inside are the old B&W Mickey cartoons. I had a 16mm print of The Whoopee Party (1932), and I think I ran that thing a couple of hundred times for myself. I loved it. (Someday, now that I have the dvd, I’ll make a lot of frame grabs for my own amusement.)

Jungle Rhythm (1929) was another film I had that wasn’t quite as charming, but I ran it often enough. (This somehow reminded me of an early Tom and Jerry short I owned in 8mm. No, not the cat and mouse, but the short and tall guys from Van Buren cartoons.)

Now, if I want to get in the proper spirit, I can pull out a dvd and watch it on my tv or computer. But that somehow has a distance to it that 16mm didn’t. I like to feel the textures of the cartoons, and the dvds are too clean.

However, I do have these flash cards. They seem inspired by the spirit of Jungle Rhythms, though feel closer to the Mickey comic books I used to read. I put up a couple of these last March, and I thought I’d post some more. I’m in the mood for memorabilia. (You can thank Hans Perk for that – see below.)

(Click any image to enlarge.)

In response to my post yesterday, Hans Perk posted the postcard locked in my memory from about forty-odd years back. The card with all the framed portraits of Disney characters didn’t have “fifty” as I remembered but quite a bit fewer. It’s hilarious for me to see that piece of memorabilia again. What a thing this Internet is! Check it out.

- Back in the mid-Fifties, a young boy, I was a fan of several people in the Disney studio. Like any kid who was a fan 3000 miles from a movie studio, I sent fan letters to my stars. Eyvind Earle, Joshua Meador, Marc Davis and others received my kid fan mail. Maybe once every four or five months I’d send off another letter.

I started getting postcards back from what I presume was the mailroom at the studio. Just as Lana Turner would have sent back an 8×10 glossy with a signature by someone, the Disney studio sent out postcards.

Somehow, none of these were saved. I recently found one such card on ebay and sucked it for memorabilia’s sake. This card, to the left, is smaller than the ones originally sent out, but the picture’s the same. I remember one which was very different. It must have had fifty characters in it – a lot of the feature characters (somehow I remember Brer Rabbit) – were set within drawn frames and gathered on this card. That’s right, about fifty frames on a little card – maybe 5×7 – so all the characters were small. Just right for a kid’s small hands.
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(Click on images to enlarge.)

There was always some innocuous writing on the back of the card. “Best wishes from Walt Disney,” or some such phrase. After the first card, I lost interest in the printed signature. Anyway, I had sent my letter to Ward Kimball; why did Disney sign it!

My favorite return was something I’d gotten from a letter sent to Joshua Meador.

Aside from the postcard there was a xerox copy of an article written in 1933. “The History of the Animated Cartoon” by Earl Thieson was written for the journal of the Society of Motion Picture Engineers. A nicely printed copy of the article was sent to me anonymously. It took a while to see that the document was written so early and excluded 2/3 of the history of animation that I knew. It made me feel that my one fan letter had hit home and was read by someone other than the studio gate guard.

(Click on image to enlarge.)

- Yesterday, the New York Times featured an article about comic strip collectors and shows how some individuals are helping to save a medium that is in danger of dying. Gasoline Alley serves as the example of strips that are kept alive by these fans. You can purchase volumes of Gasoline Alley from Drawn and Quarterly or Amazon.

– 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.

Talking of art, the Film Forum has begun screening two films about important female artists. The two documentaries are:
Kiki Smith: Squatting The Palace, and Agnes Martin: With My Back To The World.

You can watch a trailer for the Kiki Smith film here. For further information or to buy tickets in advance, go here.

Kiki Smith sculpting in clay.

Coming next week, for one week only Jan 19-25, the theater will screen an exclusive program:

The Tales of The Brothers Quay.
The program will include the following films:

The Cabinet of Jan Svankmajer (1984)
The Epic of Gilgamesh (1985)
Street of Crocodiles (1986)
Rehearsals for Extinct Anatomies (1986)
Dramolet (Stille Nacht I) (1988)
Anamorphosis (1991)
The Comb (From the Museums of Sleep) (1991)
Are We Still Married? (Stille Nacht II) (1991)
Tales from the Vienna Woods (Stille Nacht III) (1992)
Can’t Go Wrong Without You (Stille Nacht IV) (1993)
In Absentia (2000)

The Fablevision site gives a number of children’s books – for on-line consumption – by Fablevision owner, Peter Reynolds. These are nicely done mini-books worth taking a look. They’re certainly fun to give to children who have a computer handy. You can also print out the pages of these picture books. It’s a nice idea. Peter Reynolds has also done a number of short films.

I found this site by way of another excellent site about animation and illustration – Children’s Illustration. This is a relatively recent site started by Julie last September. Lots of interestings bits culled together in an attractive format. Pictured above, Julie.

- May I direct you to Hans Perk‘s site, A Film LA, in case you haven’t been there in the past two days. He’s posted lecture notes from the Disney Studio’s LO department, delivered by Phil Dike, about the cooperation between the LO department and the animator. Another deals with the basics of the Technicolor IB system and what goes into preparing for it. An fine bit of information.

This site has become enormously imortant to anyone really deeply involved in animation and its history.

Floyd Norman writes another entertaining and informative piece on Jim Hill Media. He talks about the details in the development and making of Toy Story 2. I look forward to Floyd’s articles and watch Jim Hill Media for it. (Although there are always many good articles on that site.

- Darkhorse Comics announces Will Vinton‘s first graphic novel in a recent press release.

Jack Hightower is an action adventure story created by Vinton and his writing partner, Andrew Weise and features the art of Fabio Laguna. It sells for $10.17 on Amazon.

My hope is that this book will be able to jumpstart some life into Vinton’s animation career. I don’t miss the California Raisins, but I do miss the strong, Independent vision of Vinton. He formed Freewill Entertainment after being ousted at his own company, Will Vinton Productions and they bacame Laika.

I encourage you to check out the link above to Freewill to see what animation work Vinton has been up to. There’s also Will Vinton‘s personal site, worth a visit.

- The screening of the animated shorts on Tuesday at Kodak was fun. Three of those shortlisted for the animated short Oscar were there, and they were all on pins and needles.

Chris Wedge and a couple of others from Blue Sky were there representing Bunny which was screened in 35mm. He’d, of course, won the Oscar for that short, but Blue Sky is up for No Time for Nuts which was directed by Chris Renaud and Mike Thurmeier. Chris is an Executive Producer of the short. We had a nice conversation about the Oscars and Motion Capture.

Alex Weil from Charlex was the most buzzed about his chances at a nomination for One Rat Short. This is the cgi film he wrote and directed.

It’s a very sensitive film with a quiet persistence. The photo-realistic style took me a while to accept, but Alex did it well with a floating wrapper that the lead rat follows into adventure and love.

Bill Plympton has gotten to be an old hand at it, and he was more concerned with how his new short went. He’d previewed the new film, Shut Eye Hotel, and he was trying to read the reaction of the crowd and get some feedback. I won’t say much more than that it’s different, slicker than past films and includes some use of 3D animated Bg’s.

It was a good turnout for a NY screening; kudos to Kodak’s Anne Hubbell and Signe Bauman who did the work.

– Today’s NYTimes review by Neil Ganzlinger of Arthur and the Invincibles includes the following paragraph:

The press packet for “Arthur,” a children’s film directed by Luc Besson, includes lots of tidbits on the magic that enabled the merging of live actors and a computer-generated world, but who can really keep track of this technogoo anymore, or get excited about it? The real question isn’t how these hybrid movies are made, but why. In this case, it’s a tad unclear.

Jack Matthews in the NYDaily News‘ ** in a review headlined Fairy Confusing said about Luc Besson:

Luc Besson, a sort of French version of Steven Spielberg without the intuition, has tried a lot of genres in his young career and has had his greatest success with slick action films like “The Fifth Element” and “La Femme Nikita.”

Animated movies for kids he should stay away from.

In an NPR interview Besson talked about doing a sequel.
Read the Times if you’re looking for a bit more of a laugh.

Clean your palate after thinking about that film. Journey to Part II of the the program from the Bill Tytla show that John Canemaker organized. This is on the ASIFA Hollywood Animation Archive. Go here for Part I.