Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

– We all know that Albert Hurter was the brilliant artist behind a lot of Snow White’s gingerbread architecture. Hurter was a Swiss illustrator that Disney brought into the studio and let him go. He could draw whatever he wanted to help inspire the studio to pull Snow White together.

After leaving the studio, Hurter had a book published called, “He Drew As He Pleased.” It’s a beauty of a book and a rare item. Bill Peckmann sent me scans from the book, and I’ll post them here. It’ll take a few installments. The pages are in delicate condition, but photoshop is allowing me to clean them up a bit – but not too much.

Some of the pages are devoted to characters in the Silly Symphonies. I had hoped to pull some frame grabs from the films, but I didn’t have time. It’s a project for the future.

This book will interplay with the post I started last week on Frederick Horvath‘s designs for the studio – at the same time. That booklet will continue soon.

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“For Albert There Were No Inanimate Objects”

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“Even Melons Came To Life”

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“More Melons”

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“Eyeball Folk”

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“Atmosphere: Mickey In Arabia”

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“Men of Parts”

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“Hansel and Gretel”

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“Players of a Musical Fantasy”

- I got to know Patti Stren well when we worked together making the short film, MONA MON AMOUR. This was something that Patti had developed as a print piece, and we jointly came up with the idea of making a short. We financed it jointly and love the end product. It’s the film that probably got the most laughs when I saw it projected at the Museum of Modern Art. I was quite proud of it then.

I’m going to turn this post over to Patti to showcase some of her past work including a couple of the many books she’s written and illustrated, some of the print ads she’s done, the post Mona artwork she’s done with the characters, and other material.

I hope you enjoy it.

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Often my Canadian friends and here, many of my colleagues; but especially my Mama’s mahjong buddies in their 90′s who watch MONA MON AMOUR every day, as if it were a new film -ask me how did this Michael Sporn and I meet? Then collaborate and then become good friends. Well, for sure I immensely respected Michael’s work. And Michael said some lovely things about mine. Coincidentally, my best friend in Paris, Tana Hoban was the sister of one of Michael’s most beloved Children’s Book Writer Russell Hoban. Of which he animated. The Marzipan Pig exquisitely.

Tana Hoban’s photo of Patti for a flyer.

Actually Michael and I were introduced by the Executive Producer of Babar and Father Christmas to work on a project, that sadly fell through. And then one day Michael invited me into his studio after some wonderfully funny phone calls about work and stuff. I remember telling him,” I’ll bring in my portfolio,” and he said, “don’t.” And I did.

I remember the visit exactly. Michael opened the door to his 632 Broadway studio. He was very tall and I was very small. I was very nervous and said: “I am nervous, and I’m probably going to talk and talk and talk a lot.” And he said: “‘That’s okay. Everything you’ll say will be IMPORTANT.” IT wasn’t that a Large Capital Letter bubble came out of Michael’s head. But when Michael spoke I could tell what he meant in Capital letters! Then Michael led me straight back to the long table at the end of the studio. Where I proceeded talking and talking and talking while showing Michael my Portfolio.

An article from Maclean’s Magazine about Patti.

And, the coincidences in our careers were astounding to me.

I had abruptly come to New York City on a quest to study with R. O. Blechman in a night class at The School of Visual Arts; taking a leap of faith from my first year at The Toronto College of Art. I don’t remember if I showed Michael or told him about my submission for R.O. Blechman’s class book contest: “DRAW the UNEXPECTED.” But I’m Including the illustration now. I had faxed home roughs to my Mom’s mahjong buddies and they had responded to: “not to forget to draw ‘the dangling participles!’”

(Click any image to enlarge.)

Suddenly Michael was telling me that when I was studying with Bob Blechman at SVA, he was either working with Bob or had just opened up his studio around the same time. I was so elated, since I had shyly, after the class had ended, shown HUG ME (the moment it came off the presses), to R. O. Blechman, one evening when he was lecturing. And, later, Bob had redesigned the cover for my second book since the publishers design was hideous. And . . .

I was so nervous we knew the same person I kept turning pages of my portfolio and forgetting to breathe as I was talking. Michael offered me a glass of water. Since Michael had seen all my children’s books he was very patient with the work I was showing. I turned the pages to my favorite MS Magazine illustration I did for them. The Subject: MEN – The Case for Remarriage. . . Among Friends by John Leonard.

The John Leonard article with illustration.
Then In one of the side pockets in my portfolio I pulled out MS MAGAZINE, Sept/1978/, that had the Prestigious Selection for STORIES FOR FREE CHILDREN. And HUG ME was in that section.
HUG ME book cover and two page spread (below).

Michael and I had already talked about HUG ME, my book published by Harper & Row at the time. And . . .

Producer Nick Bosustow animated HUG ME as part of the CBS LIBRARY SPECIAL called 4 WISHES. Winning 1st Prize at Zagreb Film Festival in Children’s Film Category in 1984.

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a. The back cover of the video cassette.
b. The front cover of the audio cassette.

Michael seemed to know everyone I talked about in the business of film. HE had this way of making me feel comfortable, and I kept talking and talking and I confided to Michael that when writing for children I never really try to just write for children but for myself. And I never really planned things out. And Michael described how he created spontaneously in his films. Especially describing the broom closet scene in Lyle Lyle crocodile. . The more he spoke the more Michael reminded me of another gentle genius writer I knew. The wonderful and understanding and exceedingly exciting Writer John Gardner. Who always used to tell me to ignore intellectuals snobs that would act superior and to promise to be myself. Then Michael told me, that not only did he know John Gardner but that he illustrated for John Gardner too. And then we both discovered that John had sent us to the same Random House art director to be published by them. And how we’d both been sent away The coincidences kept adding up.

Blythe Danner and Patti Stren

Then Next in my portfolio were the most wonderful photos of Blythe Danner and myself. Always to remind me how happy I am that Blythe Danner Narrated the recordings of HUG ME and Other stories of Patti Stren.

Michael seemed pleased to see Blythe, since he had been really wanting to work with her, but the times had never coincided. Now I have all the rights back for the recording, and I am hoping to get Hug Me animated with the pages turning with Blythe’s narrating. Hopefully with Michael animating. And hopefully with a grant again as with many of my projects.

(above) The two page book cover for another of Patti’s books, SLOAN & PHILAMENA
(below) and two sample pages.

Finally I showed Michael my Secret Book Jacket Cover to my next Book in The Works! Therapy. Sex and Shopping. What Else is There in New York City. ( Except Alternate Side Parking!)

Sample covers.

Little did I know showing my main character MONA MON AMOUR with the caption underneath her saying: Mona was convinced that she’d lost the meaning to life. Her therapist told her she’d just misplaced it –Would lead to our collaboration.

Patti’s creativity with Mona is endless.

And when I stopped talking to Michael Sporn about all these ideas I had; I thought I was going to faint. . . . I’d forgotten to breath. And when Rich my husband picked me and my portfolio up in our car; I had no idea Michael would want to make a film with me. But I knew if he did – I’d say yes!

And Now heaps of years in the business, 1′m still having fun designing animated shorts, (the latest animation for Michael again), working on books (both adaptations from the two short animations, MONA MON AMOUR and the little genius Mozart).

A scene from the Mozart film.

And I’m back to my Commercial Art Career. I’m available 24 hours a day, now designing for Eppes Essen Deli, in N.J. in hopes that Eppes will Fed Ex me Heaps of Chopped liver!

The Eppes ads.

Vanity Fair illustration

- John Hubley‘s feature film, Everybody Rides the Carousel, was adapted from Erik Erikson‘s Eight Stages of Man, a Psychosocial Theory of Human Development.

There was a carousel with 8 horses representing different stages of life. The narrator, a mime, was animated by Art Babbitt, with Dave Palmer as his personal assistant. After animating a couple of early scenes, Babbitt left annoyed. Barrie Nelson completed the character in the show.

For the full story behind the rift between Hubley and Babbitt go to this past post.

The scene is about 200 drawings long. Here’s the fourth part. It’s a very slow moving character with short quick spurts of movement.
We begin with the last drawing from last week.

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The following QT movie represents the drawings above
exposed as Babbitt wanted them, on twos.

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

- This will be the last of my Mary Blair posts. Today, I’m going to concentrate on her more personal and private work. Some of these are paintings, some greeting cards, others theatrical designs.

I’ve taken artwork exclusively from the Japanese book, The Colors of Mary Blair. John Canemaker writes an introduction to the Japanese book and that’s also a fine piece of writing.

However, I’ve consistently gone back to Canemaker’s excellent US book, The Art and Flair of Mary Blair.

The Blair Family

Set design for Cole Black and the Seven Dwarfs

Costume designs for the same show.

This was a musical that featured the music of Duke Ellington.

The show never opened on Broadway, and it’s too bad that
Mary Blair never had a theatrical show that she designed.

An oil painting that’s reminiscent of the work
of the brilliant black artist, Archibald Motley.

Some greeting cards.

Some paintings of her children.

- Hans Perk reminded me that yesterday was the birthday of the late Frank Thomas. To celebrate: Rather than post my usual Mary Blair piece (which I’ll post tomorrow), I thought I’d recap this last part of Thomas’ Brave Little Tailor scene. You can link to earlier parts if you like. The scene is a masterpiece and possibly my favorite Thomas scene of all time.

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- So, finally, we’ve reached the end of this magnificent Frank Thomas scene from The Brave Little Tailor. The other three parts can be found here: Part 1, Part 2, & Part 3.

Many thanks to friend, Lou Scarborough for the loan of the xerox copies so I could post the scene.

We start with the last drawing from Part 3.

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The following QT movie represents all 246 drawings of the scene.

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

- Here’s a fun recap from January 2007. Nostalgia for me.

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- I thought it’d be great to put together some of the grouped staff shots we used to do a lot. For some reason we haven’t done any recently; maybe it’s because the numbers of people working here are quite a bit fewer. I guess it’s still worth while for posterity’s sake. We’ll do it soon.

All images enlarge by clicking them.

The Lyle crew, back in 1987:

Front row, sitting, L to R: Caroline Zegart - coloring, Steven Dovas - animator, John Schnall - Prod. Coordinator/Animator, Ray Kosarin - Asst. Animator/coloring, Michael Zodorozny - Layout, Bridget Thorne - Art Director/Bgs.

The Abel’s Island group, 1988:

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.

After the move to 632 Broadway a small group working on Baby’s Storytime:

Sitting L to R: me, Jason McDonald, Steve MacQuignon, Mary Thorne, Masako Kanayama

Here’s a birthday party in 1992:

(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.

A Christmas party back in 1996:

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.

This is the staff during the making of a pilot for Blackside Entertainment, The Land of the Four Winds. It’s another birthday picture. Lots of color deterioration in the photo. The exposure isn’t great – you can barely make out Champagne’s face.

Sitting around the table L to R: Farid Zacariah (runner), Greg Duva (Asst Anim), Adrian Urquidez(I&Pt), David Levy (Asst Anim), John "Quack" Leard (Asst Anim), Jason McDonald (design, I&Pt), Ed Askinazi (Editor), Robert Marianetti (Prod Coord), Heidi Stallings (casting), me.

Here’s one a couple of months later (a better photo by Kit Hawkins – who was also on staff then.) It celebrated Farid’s last day – our all around guy.

Front row kneeling L to R: Farid Zacariah (runner), Laura Bryson (Bg's), Madeline Fan (Asst Coord), Greg Duva (Asst Anim), Ed Askinazi (Editor)

I’m sure this is boring for a lot of you, but I had fun.

- There was a documentary about Richard Williams that I saw many years ago on PBS. It made me an ardent enthusiast of Williams’ work, and I followed his trajectory over many years. Eventually, I worked with him.

The show was called The Creative Person: Richard Williams and was made in 1966. Within the show was a very small section about one of Williams’ artists, Errol LeCain. He was given the task of making a film by himself. As Williams explains, this would teach him all the aspects of animation filmmaking and the studio would gain a short film in the end.

The film was called The Sailor and the Devil. This is probably the only film done by the Williams Studio that I haven’t seen. It’s still not on YouTube. Hans Bacher gave some color images on his site, one1more2time3, a year ago. Wanting more, I went back to the special and made frame grabs of some of the film, and I’m posting them here.

Dick was so young, as was Errol LeCain. He went on, of course, to become a world-class children’s book illustrator and the original designer of the backgrounds for the ill-fated Cobbler and the Thief.

Errol LeCain

A glimpse at the storyboard on the wall.

(Click any image to enlarge.)

Another shot of LeCain.

- If I had to select one book, today, that I would reccomend people read to learn about about the art of animation, I’d probably pick Nancy Beiman‘s latest tome. It’s a bona fide gem. It’s not like the Preston Blair/Eric Goldberg model where poses for walk cycles and skips and generic movements are blocked out for you. This book does as its title suggests, it shows you how to get a performance out of your characters. Naturally, it would probably help if you already knew the basics (see the Preston Blair/Eric Goldberg model for that.)

There are numerous conversations with the likes of Art Babbitt, Jamaal Bradley and Ellen Woodbury to give you some info on how they got performances out of their characters. Babbitt, naturally, talks about Goofy and his original animation of that character. Bradley discusses animating the “House” in Monster House. Ellen Woodbury talks about Zazu in The Lion King. There’s quite a lot of material there, and Nancy uses it all to extrapolate her lessons.

The book is filled with lots of sketches and examples of material being discussed. The drawings are Nancy’s when she has something specific to detail; if she can find an example from an existing film, she uses that. It’s a solid book with strong material that is rarely discussed in How-To animation books.

Here Nancy gives the example of a male and
a female saying the same line.

My complaint might be that some of the thumbnails are printed relatively small so it’s hard to see some of the material. (Of course that also has to do with my aging eyesight.) But there’s so much packed into this book that I can’t imagine them having the room to print it much larger.

Animals are given equal space.

The book concerns itself with the differences between the sexes, four legs vs. two and how to portray animated animal motion, moving inanimate objects, weight and weightlesssness, animating multiple characters and crowd scenes. That’s quite a lot to tackle, and the book seems to get it right in Nancy’s hands.

Nancy Beiman desrves strong kudos for this book, and any animation student – 2D or 3D – should own a copy.

- John Hubley‘s feature film, Everybody Rides the Carousel, was adapted from Erik Erikson’s Eight Stages of Man, a Psychosocial Theory of Human Development.

The feature was built around a carousel. 8 horses represented different stages of life. The narrator, a mime, was animated by Art Babbitt, with Dave Palmer as his personal assistant. He left after animating a couple of early scenes. Barrie Nelson completed the character in the show.

For the full story behind the rift between Hubley and Babbitt go to this past post.

The scene is about 200 drawings long. Here’s the third part. It’s a very slow moving character with short quick spurts of movement.
We begin with the last drawing from last week.

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______________________

The following QT movie represents the drawings above
exposed as Babbitt wanted them, on twos.

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

Ferdinand Horvath was a Hungarian book illustrator, who was born in 1891 and died of a stroke in 1973. From 1934-1937, he worked at the Disney Studios in multifarious positions doing everything from painting backgrounds and doing layouts to constructing three dimensional models to designing characters and gags for over fifty Silly Symphonies and Mickey Mouse shorts.

Prior to working at Disney, he labored at Paul Terry’s studio on the “Aesop’s Fables” series. Once he left Disney, he designed models and layouts for “Scrappy,” “Krazy Kat” on shorts for Columbia/Screen Gems. In 1940, he sculpted puppets for George Pal’s Puppetoons.

He was a versatile artist whose work was an inspiration for many Disney artists. The following booklet was published by Graphis Gallery and put together by Bruce Hamilton. The opening material explains itself.

Bill Peckmann sent me scans of these pages, and I thank him for keeping Horvath alive.

Front cover of the catalogue.

The back cover.

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John Canemaker writes in depth about Horvath in his book, Before the Animation Begins: The Art and Lives of Disney’s Inspirational Sketch Artists.