Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

- The recent comments on Michael Barrier‘s post about the Dumbo Roll-a-book prompted Milt Gray to tell of his creating a homemade version of the device, which is well described in Barrier’s article.

Of course, any kid of the ’50s knows this device well. I’d made them hundreds of times, and, in fact, found that by drawing the pictures I could make my own “films” for the homemade Roll-A-Book. Getting an opaque projector meant that these rolls of picture stories could be projected, and that’s just what we, my brothers and sisters, did daily. Every night one or more of us always had some kind of funny home-drawn cartoon story to project – one image at a time. And they went on for hours – large rolls of pictures.

When I went to work for the Hubleys, I became the Letterman guy. After working on a couple of seasons of Letterman animated cartoons, John got a gig to draw comic strips for The Electric Company Magazine. That meant I was doing the strips which were adapted from the shorts as they aired in the series.

I designed these strips as mini-movies advising kids to create home-theaters essentially Roll-A-Book devices. (See sample illustration above.)

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(Click any image to enlarge.)

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Happy Heidi Birthday

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- The NYTimes now covers the Annies, at least in its blog roll if not in print. Brooks Barnes, in writing Intrigue at the Annies talks about the deadly serious competition between the animators at Pixar and those working for Jeff Katzenberg at Dreamworks. Animators get “really cranky when it comes to the public lauding – or not – of their work. ”

The tally of wins gives the overall plus to Dreamworks (5 to Dreamworks, 2 to Pixar.)

It’s good to hear that animators (described as “generally dorky and polite, guys [and overwhelmingly so] who offer an aw-shucks counterbalance to the preening of the rest of Hollywood”) can be as bitchy as actors when collecting the gold – despite our being “dorky.”

Apparently, William Shatner hosted the awards presentation and kept things moving at a good clip. It sounds like the program, itself, was worth attending.

Maybe if the ASIFAEast awards went bigger, we’d become more high strung on the East Coast. At least we don’t have to wear tuxedoes to collect our slip of paper, but then the NYTimes doesn’t cover us.

By the way, I appreciate that Jerry Beck had the list of winners posted by midnight (NY time) on Saturday night. There’s someone who’s dedicated to his blog and his readers at Cartoon Brew. Thanks Jerry.

It’s doubtful that any of this will have an effect on Oscar picks. To start with, the nominees are different. (For one, there are no TV shows running in the Best Animated Short category – unless you count the most recent Wallace & Gromit film.)

Here are a few photos from the Annie’s “red carpet” found on the web:

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1. Tom Sito – Thomas Wilson – Seth Green
2. Antran & Katy Manoogian – Bruno Coulais & Raya Veleva

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3. Ron Clements – Neil Gaiman – Lacey Chabert
4. Jen Cody – Jeff Katzenberg – Deep Roy

- I’ve spent a lot of time the past few Mondays posting models of Mickey Mouse. It’s only fair to move onto Donald Duck. Here are a lot of good models, mostly from the ’30s.

I follow this first group with some really clean models designed for publishing. I think you’ll see how heartfelt the first batch are compared to the second group done in the ’50s.

You can also see an earlier post I did of the Disney lecture on Donald and how to draw him.

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The following are designed for publishing, not animation:

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Next week I’ll follow with a number of models from specific films, all of which are gems.

I have to thank the inestimable courtesy of Bill Peckmann for the loan of these sheets. I am deeply grateful.

- I know! Today’s Superbowl Sunday. All I’ve heard for the past week is football, football, football. Sorry, I’m not a fan. In fact, I’ve been
following the MLB Network on tv regularly to hear of any baseball trades, changes or news.

This week, I received some photos from Tom Hachtman showing the progress of a new mural he assisted in painting in a home in southern New Jersey. You’ll remember that I posted some info about Tom’s wife, Joey, who has a business painting murals locally (go here: 1, 2, 3).

Her business is called Three Designing Women Studios, and you can read about them in this article published, this week, at APP.com. There’s also another recent article here.

The group of artists is composed of: Joey Hachtman, Christine Myshka, Katie Mae Mott and Tom Hachtman.

So they’ve sent their latest creation, completed this past week, a wall full of Yankee Stadium as seen from the far outfield. It helped get me in the mood for Spring Training, about to start in another week.

The overall room with the painting in progress.

Pictured are Christine Myshka, Tom Hachtman and Katie Mae Mott.

One assumes it’s Joey Hachtman behind the camera.

The final painted mural.

A detail of the left side of the painting . . .

. . . and the right side.

Artists Christine Myshka of Plainfield, Katie Mae Mott of Jackson and
Tom Hachtman of Point Pleasant Beach (left, center front and center
back, respectively) are shown with Three Designing Women Studios
owner Joey Hachtman, who is married to Tom.

- – Last week I posted the first part of this Walter T. Foster art book: Animated Cartoons for the Beginner. Here’s the second half of the book done in a very retro style. I’m surprised it survived the 1960s, when I first got a copy of it. The artwork looks like it comes from the 1930s and could hardly have survived the War (never mind been drawn after it.) The book was first published in 1946.

The animation in the book is certainly odd, not least because the pages are out of order and the flip book imagery doesn’t properly flip. I’ve placed the images in the correct order and have made a small QT movie of the piece for your entertainment if not your edification.

Here are the pages of remaining:

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1819

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2627

2829

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Here is the flipbook that rests on the outer edge of every other page.
I’ve maneuvered them a bit to make it work properly. Registration is
impossible given the size shifts and placement of the drawings on the pages.
i’ve done what I could.

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

- Don Marquis‘ book, Archy and Mehitabel, garnered fame quickly and not least because of the extraordinary illustrations of George Herriman, the creator of Krazy Kat.

The first book was published in 1927 and others followed in 1933 and 1935. It wasn’t until the third book that Herriman took over the characters created by Marquis in his book of short stories, developed mostly, in poetry. An on-again off-again love affair, the story had two principal characters: a cat, Mehitabel, and Archy, cockroach. (You can read these poems on line here.)

In 1953, writer Joe Darion along with composer George Kleinsinger (the creator of Tubby the Tuba) created a musical theater piece. Tenor Jonathan Anderson played Archy and soprano Mignon Dunn was Mehitabel. At about the same time a recording of the showtunes was recorded with Carol Channing as Mehitabel and Eddie Bracken as Archy. The record was a success.

With the help of the young writer, Mel Brooks, they were able to get their show to Broadway in 1957, but it was now named Shinbone Alley. After 49 performances, the show closed, but the original cast album was recorded that same year. The songs stayed in the permanent repetoire of Carol Channing and Eartha Kitt.

In 1971, John Wilson directed an animated feature starring the voices of Channing and Brackett and using the songs from the musical. The love affair between Archy and Mehitabel was penned by Archy, the cockroach; his poems tell their story.

The film suffers from its music. The songs are simple and sound as if they’re written for children, but the lyrics pull from the poems which are definitely designed for adults. It gets a bit confusing, as a result, and is a bit picaresque; the poems are short and illustrating them in animation would take more adaptation than seen here.

John Wilson had developed his studio, Fine Arts Films, on the back of the weekly, animated, music videos he did for The Sonny and Cher Show, an enormous hit in the early 70s.

These music videos were loose designs animated quickly and lively around the songs Sonny & Cher would schedule each week. There would always be one or two of these pieces, and they were highlights in the weekly one-hour musical/variety program.

The graphics of Shinbone Alley aren’t too far from these Sonny & Cher videos. Loose design and animation with a design style not too far from the Fred Wolf’s made-for-ABC feature, The Point. This was the first feature made for television and featured the songs and story of Harry Nilsson, although Shinbone Alley featured a wilder color pallette.

Jules Engel, Corny Cole and Sam Cornell all worked in design on the film. The long list of animators included Barrie Nelson, John Sparey, Spencer Peel, Eddie Rehberg and Jim Hiltz. Mark Kausler was an assistant on the show.

The film wasn’t an enormous success, but that was probably explained much by the limited distribution and the poor marketing of the film.

The Jacob Burns Film Center will host Shinbone Alley on Tuesday Feb. 16th. The screening will be at 5:30 & 7:25 pm.

Here are some frame grabs from the first 1/4 of the film:

We’re introduced to Archy right off the bat as he
flies out of the river onto the dock. He realizes that he,
the poet, tried to kill himself and was sent back as a cockroach.

He soon finds a typewriter and goes straight back to work.

Mehitabel is a performer – with Carol Channing’s voice.

The two meet cute.

She has another boyfriend, voiced by Alan Reed,
who is also the voice of Fred Flintstone.

A song video takes us outside.

pan down.

Another music video brings us into Peter Max’s style.

Life in Shinbone Alley.

- The other day I’d written about a pet peeve of mine. This is when animators take the poor layouts they’re given and simply inbetween them. As a result, the feet on two related layouts slide from one position to another. This is not something real people could or would do, yet animators do it out of laziness. It’s a sure sign that the animator isn’t thinking of the character as a living/breathing organism. It’s just a bunch of drawings to that guy.

How to fix the problem; it’s easy.

On an early short film of mine, I worked with an illustrator, Rosemary Wells. It was her first time seeing her characters animated. Consequently, she had a lot of involvement in the process. I ended up having to take drawing lessons from her – how to draw her characters. I travelled upstate at least half a dozen times to watch her at work.

In the end, she gave me a bunch of drawings that she hoped I would follow. In one key scene, she drew her character, Max, with feet facing one direction. Then in the next layout, his feet are facing another direction.

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I could have just inbetweened his feet, or even let them pop from one position to another (as Elmer does in that GEICO spot). It would have looked horrible. Instead, I chose to treat the positions as animation moving from one foot to the other. I added a stop position in the middle for a reaction – pause.

Then I let the scene play out.

The end result gave a bit of character to Morris, and worked within the needs of the scene. A few extra drawings paid off. (This, of course, is not something you’d see in Flash – it’d just pop.) The way I handled the move made Rosemary Wells happy, and it made me happy. It took the monkeywrench she’d thrown at me to make something more alive, and I was happy for it.

Note that I’m not patting myself on the back. I’m just saying that this is something that should be second nature to anyone out there that considers themself an animator. If a layout you have to follow indicates feet moving, either change them or make them work.

- I thought I’d comment on the Oscar nominations.

The list of 10 Best Picture nominees creates some pathetic choices. The Blindside and District Nine should not be nominated for the Best Picture. It diminishes the category and demeans the other nominees. I’m sure Up got in there because of the increase to 10 nominees, but I’d gladly sacrifice that to give a little dignity to the award. The Messenger was better than either of those two films (and better than Avatar as well) yet it was left out in the cold.

They did this once before, in 1939, when every one of those 10 nominees deserved to be there. This year it was tough just picking 5 films to be nominated.

I’m glad Tomm Moore’s The Secret of the Kells got nominated, though I don’t think it was particularly good. However, it would have been a total sham if Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs had been honored. My preference would have been for Ponyo, which may have been the best animated feature of last year’s crop.

(By the way, there’s another chance to see the Secret of the Kells in NY. Tomm Moore will be in attendance for a Q&A. It’s playing Sat Feb 27 at the CANTOR FILM CENTER – 36 East 8th Street – at 1pm. Go here for tickets in advance. )

It’s also sad that Runaway wasn’t nominated for Best Animated Short. It’s better than most of those nominated, even though I’m not a fan of any of the shorts in the running. There were a bad crop of films shown this year, and I would have had a hard time if I had to select any of them.

I have to say, watching Logorama, which ended with a devastating earthquake, so soon after the Haitian disaster was difficult. This wasn’t the fault of the filmmakers, just the circumstances that were happening in the real world. It took something away from the film, for me.

He’ll be in San Franciso this Sunday, Feb. 7h, showing his films and talking at the Balboa Theater (3630 Balboa Street, San Francisco, CA). Tickets are $25. The event will be a fundraiser to support Yuri Norshtein’s animation studio in Moscow.

He’ll be in Olympia, Washington on Wednesday, February 10th at the Evergreen State College (Communications Building, Recital Hall in Olympia Washington.) Ticket prices are $10 regular admission, $8 seniors, $5 students.

He’ll be in LA this Friday at the USC School of Cinematic Arts (the Norris Cinema Theatre/Frank Sinatra Hall.) The admission is free and begins at 7:00pm. Friday, February 5th, 2010. Igor Kovalyev (Milch, The Rugrats, Duckman) will lead the conversation with him.

And, finally, he’ll be in New York on Monday, February 15 at the School of Visual Arts Theater (333 W. 23rd Street, between 8th/9th Ave.) This event is free to ASIFA East members (and anyone else, too.) Interesting enough, none of those who put together the NY edition of this show have any idea whether Norshtein will be screening films or just doing a Q&A. It’s up to him (and I’m pretty confident his films WILL be screened – since he doesn’t speak English, making a lengthy talk impossible.)

This is one of the great world leaders of animation, people. ATTEND ATTEND ATTEND and Stop being so lazy.

- One of my pet peeves in animation – 2D animation (it’s something you rarely see in cgi) – is, what I call, the moving feet syndrome.

In this, layout artists create dynamic poses/drawings for animators to animate. Their drawings don’t always offer the best path to good animation, yet doggedly faithful animators obligingly follow the images at hand without questioning the logical sense of the drawings handed them. The feet positions end up moving without reason, yet the animator chugs ahead giving without noticing the needs of the character being drawn.

I plan to start showcasing a bunch of examples of this in both current and historic animation scenes. I’ve noticed this bad animation in two recent slick spots on television. Both look like decent animation, but both fail the moving feet test.

Here’s a recent GEICO spot which cleverly uses Elmer Fudd in what almost looks like a classic scene. It’s not animation that Ken Harris or Bobe Cannon would have done, because they’re not layouts that would have come from Chuck Jones or Fritz Freleng, and Bobe and Ken would have questioned the layouts.

Here’s the spot, as seen on YouTube.

Let’s look at some frame grabs:

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Every time Elmer comes to a stop his feet move.
As he goes into action, they either pop or
quickly inbtween to the next pos.

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You’ll notice in the spot during the first 1/2 of the
animated segment he keeps repositioning in every hold position.

Here’s a closeup of the feet blown up.
They move imperceptibly, but they move.

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In the last half of the spot he gets into a good postion.

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Two seconds later he moves to another postion.

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1/2 second later they’re in a new postion.

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One second later back to the previous position
before Elmer walks out of the scene.

Here’s a CU of those feet moving like crazy:

From this –

- to this –

- to this before he turns and walks out.

Let’s turn to look at a Flash animated spot, the “Switch and Save” spot for Esurance.

Unlike Elmer, in the GEICO spot, this painter is more active so there is a bit more justification for some of the moves. But there are too many for too short a bit of screen time.

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He starts here and . . .

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. . . throws paint on the wall.
The foot movement is certainly justified.

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But then he goes to this hold position
only 1/2 second later.

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. . . then to this hold postion 5 frames later.
The animator’s trying to make two very different
foot positions work within such a short time.

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Two seconds later we’re into a new position.
More action might justify it, but why did you
go into pos fr 292 in the first place?

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And might as well end his bit with another move.

Here’s a closer look in case you missed it (sorry for the bad copy of the blowups.)

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Go from here . . .

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. . . to here . . .

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. . . to here . . .

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And it’s not even a dance move.

Remember animators, if you’re moving those feet have a reason.

- Last week I posted the model sheet for scene 22 of The Symphony Hour. This week I have scene 48. I’ve also broken down the drawings and made a QT comparison between the final film and these extremes from scene animated by Marvin Woodward. I hope it’s useful to some of you.

The model sheets come from the gracious courtesy of Bill Peckmann. Many thanks to him.

As with last week’s post, first the full model sheet then a breakdown.

(Click any image to enlarge.)

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The following QT movie was timed to match the extremes in the
animation. Until any pose appeared in color, I held the image just
prior for the number of frames to cover the missing inbtws.
It’s a large QT so may take time to load.

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

For further study take a look at Mark Mayerson‘s Mosaic and comments on this film.