Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

Wee Willie Winkie runs through the town,
Up stairs and down stairs in his night-gown,
Tapping at the window, crying at the lock,
Are the children in their bed, for it’s past ten o’clock?
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- I don’t suspect that Lyonel Feininger took anything more than the title from this famous, old Scottish poem. Nor do I suspect that the Shirley Temple/John Ford feature, Wee Willie Winkie, owes anything to Feininger.

However, it stands that this is the second comic strip the cartoonist/artist inaugurated in 1906. That was also the last year he worked on a strip, choosing to remain an artist/painter for the remainder of his life. I’ve already posted a piece on Feininger’s first strip, The Kin-Der-Kids, in the past month. I’ve also posted three pieces on Feininger’s artwork (1, 2, 3).
These have all been loaned to me courtesy of Bill Peckmann‘s gracious kindness and his amazing archive of artwork. Many thanks to him.

Here are strips of Wee Willie Winkie’s World straight from this book edited and introduced by Bill Blackbeard.

The original book cover.

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We’ve already seen Feininger’s love of trains in some of his watercolors.

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I think a trolley also doubles as a train.

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Suddenly a format change.

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Another format change.

- Thanks to Bill Peckmann, we can look at a few more of the great cartoons by Peter Arno. These were all done for The New Yorker magazine. All three posts done on Arno represent about ½ the book on the cartoonist.

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- Continuing on with the Raggedy Ann & Andy: A Musical Adventure drafts, we move onto seqeunces 7, 8 and 9. This involves the Loony King, the Loony Knight and Babette at sea.

Animators for these sequences include: George Bakes, Gerry Chiniquy, Doug Crane, Dick Williams, Chrystal (Russell) Kablunde, Hal Ambro, Charlie Downs, Art Vitello, Jack Schnerk, Corny Cole, Tom Roth, Irv Spence, Bob Bemiller, and Warren Batchelder.

A lot of talent in one place; too bad the film doesn’t hint at it.

To dress up the post I’ve added five of Tissa’s key drawings from an early scene.

Sequence 7

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Sequence 8

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For some reason this bad drawing of the “Greedy” was attached
to the drafts. So I just iuncluded it here, as well.

Sequence 9

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- Bill Peckmann sent me the pieces so that we can see how Harvey Kurtzman built to the final “Little Annie Fannie” cartoons in Playboy.

Here is the pencil rough of one such cartoons. You’ll note that he signed this for Bill Peckmann in 1972. Bill included this short note: “Red pencil is Hefner’s ‘blue pencil’”.

The cover Harvey Kurtzman made for the piece.

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Pages 3 & 4

We follow that with Kurtzman’s color roughs of the piece. I didn’t reassemble it so that you could see it in a slightly larger size.

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Finally, we have the finished result as printed in Playboy.

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Many thanks, again, to Bill Peckmann for sharing these priceless materials.

Happy Valentine’s Day

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- As I wrote last week, The Laughing Gauchito was to be a stand alone short for Disney in 1942. It wa one of the first products of the group that had just returned from the South American trip. The film was to be part of a series that featured the “Little Gauchito”. They’d already completed one film. That film was originally The Flying Donkey, but they turned it over to the boy, and retitled it The Flying Gauchito, and it was added to The Three Caballeros.

To read more about this series, I suggest you go to J.B. Kaufman’s excellent book, South of the Border with Disney.

The story concerned itself with a boy who could not laugh. We see in this scene the boy trying to laugh in the mirror.

Ultimately, Disney, himself, put a stop to The Laughing Gauchito. Under the direction of Jack Kinney, some animation had already been done by Ollie Johnston, Bill Tytla and, particularly, Frank Thomas, to be well into the film. It took years to find some of the animation scenes in the morgue.

This dramatic scene is by Frank Thomas.

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Here’s a QT of the scene with all the drawings from both posts to date.

Since I’m currently posting the Raggedy Ann & Andy drafts (on Mondays) I’ve been thinking about the film. One of my favorite stories happened early on in the production. I wrote about it here, September 2009, and I’m recapping it now.

- Steam is the secret energy that runs my city. There’s an article in a local paper called The Gotham Gazette which describes the system in full detail. It’s a good read, so I urge you to go there if you’re interested in further understanding the system.

Atop ground we get to see steam leaking out of sewers, see giant pipes spewing steam into the air, and read about exploding steam pipes that cause damage. (There was a recent explosion at 42nd Street near Grand Central Station. Another in Murray Hill, a couple of years back, destroyed a building and closed a city block for several weeks.)

We pass by these steampipes and stewing manhole covers without thinking about it. It’s like some primeval force out of the Rite of Spring hiding underground.
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(Click any image to enlarge.)

For the times Con Edison is working on the system at specific locations, they construct barber-pole colored pipes which emit large bursts of steam into the air. That wonderful scent you get when walking into a dry cleaners often surounds these pipes.

Back when Raggedy Ann started, there was a very large construction and similar pipe steaming up the entire front of the Brill Building in which we were located. I seem to remember we were originally on the fourth floor, so any offices that faced the front of the building saw nothing more than steam flowing all day long.

Dick Williams had one such office; the conference room was another.

The steam would make a very loud SHUSSSHHH-ing sound as it flowed out. This was often accompanied by workers jackhammering their way underground.

There was a Saturday rush to complete the art for the rough animatic. Dick and Gerry Potterton and I were in the conference room for at least 8 hours madly coloring storyboard drawings with colored pencils. We had a great time laughing and joking and gossipping about everyone under the sun. I was a lowly Asst. Animator, but they treated me like an equal. It was fun, needless to say.

All day long that incessant SHUSSSHHH; all day long that steam flowing up and pass our large bank of windows. It was crazy-making.

Dick finally broke from a conversation we were having to scream out at the steam and the workers. He was sure that New York was ready to burst out and blow up underneath us. Gerry and I had a good laugh at the rant.
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Obviously, not all of these pipes are striped in the Con Edison orange and white. I found
this black, short pipe.

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You can see it coming out the sewer caps. Sometimes heavy, as in the left; sometimes
light, as in the right.

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Often close to invisible. I had to go closer to see the steam coming out of this cap.

This truck trailer has been parked on Fifth Avenue and 8th Street for a while. Apparently Con Edison isn’t supplying all the steam needs for the city.

I found this guide to where things are underground. It gives a good, informative view of what’s flowing underneath us in this town. Maybe it will blow up someday.

- William Benzon is probably the only writer – on the internet or off – who has connected Hosni Mubarek with an animated character. Wile E. Coyote. It makes for a good read, and you should check it out on his site, New Savannah.

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Dustin Grella is out to make a film a day for the month of April. He’s basing these films on inforation contributed to him. Let me allow him to speak for himself; here’s what he wrote me:

I’m working on new project called the Animation Hotline. I’m going to do this for the month of February, maybe longer if the response is good. I’ve set up a voicemail service where people can leave messages. Then I am going to select a few of these to animate. I’m going to try to do one every day. I’ll try. They should definitely be under thirty seconds, but preferably around ten or fifteen seconds. Just a few sentences, an idea, a word that you think sounds cool, a line from a book that you like, something you heard in the hall that afternoon, a secret that you don’t want anyone to know, or maybe you do, something that bothers you, something that… you get the idea, right? Basically anything. You can do more than one, you can do as many as you want. You can do it a few times a day. If it
runs long term, I might have regulars that I do often. I don’t know. Of course, the idea is in its infancy and will change ten times by the end of this email. Everything will be anonymous, unless the person leaves his name and wants to be recognized.

Dustin’s set up a VIMEO site for the films (which can be viewed there.) Go here.
He’s also set up an an animation hotline number is: 212-683-2490.

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- For me, the animation quote of the week came in a puff piece about Pixar in yesterday’s NYTimes.

Melena Ryzik, the author of the piece, was told: “A character in the film is kind of like a puppet,” Bobby Podesta, a supervising animator at Pixar, explained. “Imagine having Pinocchio in the computer that you move around frame by frame, but instead of having a dozen strings, you’ve got hundreds and hundreds and hundreds. It gets very nuanced.” No kidding . . . ”

(The “no kidding” was part of the article, but I’ve been repeating it every time I look at the piece.) A new kind of animation Pixar does, puppet animation. I doubt Sylvain Chomet would have ever said the same about any of his work.

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Lionsgate and Hulu have gotten together to give us more Flash films. Here’s their press release:

Lionsgate Digital, hud:sun media and creative genius Todd Goldman have partnered to bring you an outrageous new animated Web series titled, “Trailer Trash,” airing exclusively on Hulu.com beginning March 7.

Every generation has its iconic animated characters and for its foray onto the Web Lionsgate enlisted the writer of classics such as “Beavis and Butthead” and “SpongeBob SquarePants” to ensure the quirky series resonates with Web audiences.

Inspired by Goldman’s cheeky David and Goliath clothing line and following “Blah Girls,” an animated Web series he co-produced with Ashton Kutcher, “Trailer Trash” depicts beer-bellied character Billy Bob and his family as they dim-wittingly pass time at the trailer park.

You know it’s good; Ashon Kutcher co-produced it.
Go here to check it out.

- Here’s a little flipbook gem. It’s part of the dance from The Three Caballeros, Animated by Ward Kimball there’s still a wild freshness about this long scene that’s been rarely duplicated. It’s obviosly one of the highlihts of the film.

I beleive these were published in one of the many Disney coffee table books, but I don’t have them at hand to try finding it. At least, if you do have whatever book it’s in, you can see these better, sincde I’m posting them in a larger size. A chance to admire the verve of these drawings.

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Here’s a QT of the scene with drawings exposed to what I think are
their appropriate frames.

Watch the number here, on YouTube.

- Rowland Wilson gave this Dover art book to Bill Peckmann way back in 1977. Many thanks to Bill for sharing it.

AB Frost was a turn-of-the-century cartoonist who had a agreat wit and a sharp pen.
Here are two series of cartoons from that book that were originally published in Life Magazine 1921-1922.

Because the scans are a bit small, I’ve rewritten the captions under the images.

The Front Book Cover

The Back Book Cover

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“Look at that hill, Maria. When we was children hoiw we did roll down hills like that!
Wouldn’t it be fun now!”
“Lor’, Toby. We’re too fat and old for the likes of that!”
“Fat nothin’ come on let’s do it?”
“Well you go ahead, I’ll foller.”

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“Hi, Maria. Aint this glorious? – like we was children again.”
“I don’t know, Toby. I think I’ll stop!”

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“Hold on Maria; Stop me !!!”
“Hold onto what? You ole fool, stop yourself!”

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“Them – was – briars -Maria !!”
“Think – I’m – ‘s – big – fool – as – you?

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“Hol’ – on, – Maria, – hol’ on!”
“I – won’t – ol’ – fool!”

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“Are you there, Maria?”
“What’s eft of me’s here.”
“Hol’ on tight, Maria. We may start agin any minit”.
“I wish you would, and never stop!”

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“Well, you’re a nice lookin’ objeck, Maria.”
“If I look half as bad as you, I want to die right here.”

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Voices of the night: “You ole fool. I wish I’d never seen you!”
“Fool who? You proposed it, Maria!” etc, etc

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Happy Birthday to my love, Heidi.

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- Thanks to John Canemaker, I have the following scene by Frank Thomas to post. It’s from “The Laughing Gauchito” Sc 71 of Prod # (U290) 2719.

This was to be part of a series of shorts built around the “Little Gaucho.” “The Flying Donkey” was retitled “The Flying Gauchito” to be the first release in this series. “The Laughing Gauchito” was second up to be directed by Jack Kinney with a story by Norm Ferguson and Ernie Terrazas. Animation was by Bill Tytla, Ollie Johnston and Frank Thomas. It was about a boy whose laugh shattered glass. The climactic scene is this one where the boy tries to break a mirror in front of an audience.

The film was stopped by Disney who got tired of the breaking glass motif. Fortunately, some of the artwork was rediscovered, and happily it included this scene.

There are 197 frames expposed, so I’ll have to divide it up into a couple of parts. This is part 1.

The Background LO

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Here’s a QT of the scene with drawings exposed to what I think are
their appropriate frames.