Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

- On Tuesday, I’d posted a review of Timothy Susanin‘s excellent book, Walt Before Mickey: Disney’s Early Years 1919-1928. I loved the book and, in fact, worried that I was being too critical. I did tend to go on quite a bit about the details on details within the book.

To my surprise I’d received an email response from Mr. Susanin, and I asked him if he would mind my posting his letter. He immediately gave me permission and here’s his response to my review:

Dear Mr. Sporn,

Many thanks for reading my book; for writing a review; and for your kind words.

I can’t tell you how much fun I had learning the story of Walt’s first decade. It was a most enjoyable and unexpected hobby, and I am sorry it’s over!

I am biased about Walt, of course, so I found the subject matter thrilling and a page turner, like you.

Your review is dead on in a number of respects. I am a Disney fan, not an animation expert, thus I was not equipped to search for the art, as were J.B. and Russell. Being a lawyer who has done many investigations, and written many detailed factual reports based on investigations, I was simply all about finding out what happened during Walt’s “missing decade.”

There was a reference in the Laugh-O-gram bankruptcy file to a studio “minute book,” and I would have been thrilled had a daily diary of any or all of that decade still existed! For me, following Walt day by day was the way to learn the real Walt and to see how he really got started.

So for me, a novice author and biographer — and maybe this notion would not be acceptable to other, experienced authors and biographers — there was real worth in learning all of the detail you mention in your review. Because no daily account existed, trying to find out at least what he was doing on a monthly basis helped bring this period alive for me.

The overload of detail — again, for me — allowed the physical spaces he occupied, the friends and colleagues, the look and feel of the period, the films produced to all come together and create a real portrait of that missing decade.

I agree that the question is: is this a viable biography for others outside this “niche market?” I didn’t set out to write a book, and once a book resulted, it was the book I would have wanted, because of the level of detail I wanted to know in order to really learn that period of Walt’s life. So, it worked for me!

And, as you point out, there were limitations. I had no budget. I had no publisher until the book was finished. I was not sure until near the end of the process that the Disney Company would provide photos.

So….this was very much a project where I was limited to take what others had done
and try to build on it, add facts to it, string things together, on my own and in my
spare time —- evenings and weekend.

I pulled all this together to learn about Walt in the 1920s. The info turned into a timeline that turned into a more detailed chronology that turned into a book. Along the way, I tried to find answers to whatever questions I had so that the blanks could be filled in.

I think what resulted is a work that I would have loved to come across in a book store or in a library, along with the realization that others would feel the same way, but maybe not a lot of others!

In the end, I got a real sense of who Walt was; what the first ten years of his career were like; how they set the stage for the rest of his career; and how a lot of his original collaborators fit into the big picture. It really sets the table nicely for me to now go on and read and learn about Walt in the 30s, 40s, etc.

Unlike you, I did not want the book to go on. After six years and many rewrites and endless proofreading, I wanted it out the door and almost got sick of it! Maybe you can predict what happened after that: I now find myself wondering with increasing frequency about the spring of 1928, and what happened —- in a detailed way, on a daily or monthly basis! —- as Mickey appeared on the scene.

I thought that I would have nothing further to contribute to the Disney canon because, from Mickey’s appearance in 1928 til today, enormous amounts have been written about Walt’s story. Unlike the “missing decade” of the 1920s, the record is complete as far as the other decades of Walt career are concerned.

And yet….I find myself getting the urge to dig into the spring of 1928 and see where that takes me.

I don’t really know if I have another book in me, but my mind is starting to wander in that direction. I’ll keep you posted!

Many thanks again for your interest and your review.

Boy, do I hope he comes up with something about those several months between the start of Plane Crazy and the premiere of Steamboat Willie. Can you imagine the pressure on Walt and Roy? They’d just been robbed of their staff and had lost a semi-lucrative job doing Oswald cartoons. They create a mouse character, and no one wants the first short. So they do a second film starring Mickey, and still they can’t sell it. They do a third one trying to capitalize on the incoming sound transition. They show the film at one theater – for free – just to get it in front of an audience. Success! That short period is a tale in its own, and it’s never really been covered by writers.

In the photo, above: LtoR – Irene Hamilton (Inker), Rudy Ising, Dorothy Manson (Inker), Ubbe Iwerks, Rollin Hamilton, Thurston Harper, Walker Harman (Inker), Hugh Harman, Roy Disney. Walt took the photo.

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On to something else that’s related. Mark Sonntag on his extraordinary blog, Tagtoonz, has posted some rarely seen photos of the first days of Disney’s filming in Kansas City. After posting the one photo of Walt directing and Red Lyon filming the Cowles children in 1922, he was contacted by a member of the Cowles family, and they offered additional photos. Take a look.

Continuing with my recap of all things Tytla, here’s a post I did on Tytla’s work on The Brave Little Tailor.

- When I was a kid, I was never a big fan of the “Willie” character, the giant in Mickey & the Beanstalk. It seemed that every fourth or fifth Disneyland tv show would have this character in it (or else Donald and Chip & Dale). As I got older and grew a more educated eye for animation, I came to realize how well the character was drawn and animated.

Willie first appeared in the classic Mickey short, The Brave Little Tailor, and he appeared fully formed. Bill Tytla was the animator, and he appeared to have fun doing it.

In John Canemaker‘s excellent book, Treasury of Disney Animation Art, there are some beautiful drawings worth looking at. Here they are:

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(Click any image to enlarge.)

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So let’s take a closer look at some of these drawings.

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Drawing #3 features this weight shift. As the right foot hits the ground it pronates – twists ever so slightly inward. The hands do just the opposite. The left hand reaches in while the right hand holds back, completely at rest.

It’s a great drawing.
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Drawing #4 shows Willie landing on that right foot, and his entire body tilts to the right. The hands twist completely to the left trying to maintain balance. The left foot up in the air is also twisting to the left before it lands twisting to the right.
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I love how drawing #5 features the two hands flattened out to
make his final stand before sitting down. It’s all about gaining balance.

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Just take a look at this beautiful head in drawing #6. He’s seated, his head has come forward and tilted forward. The distortion is so beautiful it almost doesn’t look distorted.
What a fabulous artist! This guy just did this naturally.
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This scene begins with the seated giant eyeing the tiny Mickey Mouse in his hand. The characters are drawn beautifully almost at a rest waiting to get into the scene. The intensity of Willie’s glare is strong, and it’s obvous Mickey is in trouble.

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Here’s the drawing of the sequence.

The major problem with drawing a giant is his proportion to all the other characters. The screen is more oblong and horizontalal than it is square. (Fortunately, when this film was done it was closer to a square but still not one.) Throughout the film, Tytla had to deal with a BIG Giant and little Mickey. The landscape is also small.

An obvious way of handling it – and one that would be done today, no doubt – would be to force perspective showing it from the ground up – most of the time. In the 30′s and 40′s they stuck to the traditional rule of film and editing, and they would NOT have done this.

Tytla plays with scale as the giant steps over a house and ultimately sits on it.

In this drawing, he does a brilliant drawing forcing the perspective with Mickey in the foreground and Willie’s left hand in the distance. The giant draws into this forceful perspective without calling attention to itself. Today it would be more exaggerated, but Tytla doesn’t want it to be noticed – just felt.

A real bit of art!

Here, Willie moves through that perspective of the last extreme, and he gets larger as he slams his hands to flatten Mickey. To exaggerate that flattening, Willie’s hands flatten for this key drawing. His head flattens as well in grimace.

The giant’s head will move in toward the hands to see the results, and the audience has a front row seat seeing Mickey escape up the giant’s sleeve. There’s a lot going on in this drawing.
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Finally, Willie tries to figure out what’s happened.
The drawing loses most of its distortion and comes to rest.
(Note that there’s still perspective distancing between the two hands.)

Mark Mayerson has done a mosaic breakdown of this cartoon and adds his excellent commentary.

Hans Perk on his site, A Film LA, has just posted the drafts to the earlier Disney short, Giantland. The draft for The Brave Little Tailor was posted a while back on this great site.

- Before I write about the book, let me say that I am truly sad to hear of the death of Corny Cole, one of those great people you meet in the world of animation who seriously changes things for you. I thank Richard Williams for introducing me to him. I’ll try to post a number of his drawings later this week.

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- I’ve spent a lot of time in the past two weeks reading a thoroughly enjoyable and inspiring animation book, and I wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone interested in Walt Disney or animation. Walt Before Mickey: Disney’s Early Years 1919-1928 is by Timothy Susanin, and it’s such a real treat that I had a hard time putting down. Yet I wanted to keep it alive, so I brought a bunch of other books in for the ride. I took my time reading it even though taking my time was hard to do.

The book tells in elaborate detail (and I do mean elaborate) all of the steps that Disney had taken to get started in this business. The boy who learned how animation could become much more than it was and fought with all the “jack” he had to put it all on the screen. He and Roy, partners in those early days, staked everything on their belief in what they were doing. It’s a great story and makes for something of a page turner.

In J.B. Kaufman and Russell Merritt‘s book, they open with an evaluation of the early period of Disney animation: ” . . . the first striking fact about Disney’s 1920′s films is that they take no particular direction: they don’t evolve, they accumulate.” How accurate an assessment of these films. They don’t get better, they get worse almost as though Disney soon tired of doing them. The gags become repetitive; the characters lose all sense of characterization; even the live-action “Alice” goes from having a large part in the films to flailing her arms so that we can cut back to the drawn animation. This is not the Disney we know from the Thirties & Forties – the one who pushed his people to create the Art form. Essentially, Kaufman and Merritt are looking for the “Art” and give a sharp report on their findings.

This isn’t true of Susanin. His book searches only for the facts and records. But then, let’s look at how the two books were constructed. Susanin’s interviews were limited in comparison to someone like Mike Barrier who did several hundred interviews to write Hollywood Cartoons. He helped Mr. Susanin with many an interview; he also got some help from Kaufman and numerous others in gathering the details and data for the book. Mr. Susanin said, “. . .the Library of Congress, the New York Public Library, MOMA, and the like. I visited the studio when work took me to Burbank, and the Walt Disney Family Museum construction site when work took me to San Francisco. Otherwise, it was lots of virtual work and lots of phone calls with librarians around the country! ”

A lot of the source information came from authors who’d done their own books. Susanin gathered the material – and gathered A LOT OF MATERIAL.

The accumulation of the facts is collected in an almost overwhelming fashion by Susanin. Every sentence in the book seems to have some source information backing it up. An almost minute-to-minute account of these early days is gathered and written about. Prior to this book, I found myself guessing at some of the material. I hadn’t really seen all the details until I had them laid out in this book. Add to that details upon details, and you’re breathless from the material presented. (Every person Disney meets seems to have their history displayed. And just read about the Laugh-O-Grams bankruptcy suit in the epilogue.)

Make no mistake about it, this is a period I am wholly and completely intrigued with. I’ve read every book and interview about it that I could find. Kaufman & Merritt’s Walt In Wonderland, Mike Barrier’s The Animated Man, Donald Crafton’s Before Mickey, even Canemaker’s Winsor McCay. I’ve read and read and read again through the material. Yet the way it’s ultimately presnted in this book is so involving. Perhaps it’s all those details I love reading.

In the three week period Walt and Lillian spent in New York looking to sign a second contract to produce the Oswald animation for Universal, you see all the meetings he has taken. All the visits to Universal and Charlie Mintz (who actually contracts the job to Disney and ultimately steals a large part of his staff so that he can dump Disney) and to MGM (Fred Quimby – of all people) and Fox. He spends a lot of time with Jack Alicote the editor of Film Daily who counsels Walt on the business side of the business. You see all the connections; you understand the seriousness of Walt’s situation and you ride with him trying to grasp what straws he has left. It’s hypnotic in all its detail, and it serves as a tight climax in a well written book.

This segment takes Mr. Susanin 12 pages, full of details, yet it took Mr. Barrier fewer than 2 pages in The Animated Man and fewer in Hollywood Cartoons. It took Kaufman & Merritt in Walt In Wonderland just a bit more than 2 pages to get the information across. It’s not that I needed that additional information to grasp the dire situation Disney was in, it’s that I wanted it. Yet any strong quote in Barrier’s books or Kaufman & Merritt’s has ended up in Susanin’s. It seems that ANY detail that could be found was used to tell the story.

For a geek like me who can’t get enough of this, it’s great. But I wonder about the average reader.

My only real problem with the book is that I wanted the story to go on. At least through Steamboat Willie. Susanin gives a quick sketch of the rest of Disney’s career, but I wanted to get more about that two month period when Plane Crazy was in production. After all, the staff that would leave him – Hugh Harman, Max Maxwell, Mike Marcus, Ham Hamilton and Ray Abrams – stayed on to finish the Oswald pictures while Ubbe Iwerks worked with Les Clark and Johnny Cannon to draw the first Mickey film. A real disappointment set in for me when I came to that epilogue as Disney boarded the train home to start over again.

Yet even in that epilogue there are those delicious details. All of the books personae are laid out with short bios of where they went and when they died. Everyone from Hazel Sewell to Johnny Cannon to Les Clark to Rudy Ising. What a sense of detail. I can tell you I’ll use this book for information for a long time, and there’s not doubt I’ll read it a few more times. This is a wonderful book, and I encourage you to pick it up.

There are some fine interviews with Mr. Susanin on several sites:
- Didier Ghez talks with him on his Disney History site.
- On Imaginerding there’s a nice informal interview.
- Moving Image Archive News also has a review mixed with interview.

- Last week we looked at the Fleischer multiplane camera. It’s a horizontal device that shot flat animation art (cels) standing in front of 3D background constructions. Little sets that were able to add a unique look to their cartoons.

In the two Fleischer animated features, there’s only one scene that uses this multiplane camera, and that’s in the opening titles of Hoppity Goes To Town. I felt we couldn’t leave the Fleischers without a focus on that scene. So that will be the subject of today’s post.

Dave Fleischer in front of the multiplane 3D camera on Hoppity Goes to Town
Picture borrowed from: Ryan & Stephanie’s Fleischer Gallery

The entire multiplane pan is blocked out, in part, by the film’s credits.
I’ve taken frame grabs trying to indicate the move
while trying to accomodate the credits.

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The opening starts over flat art coming from a star
in outer space, down to earth to this LS cityscape.

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The multiplane scene dissolves in here . . .

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. . . and pans down toward the street level as
it moves toward screen right.

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That’s the Brill Building in the screen’s center
nopt far from the studio of the Fleischers.

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As we go down, the color mix gets less golden . . .

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. . . and sits more in shadow.

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Here is a transition point.

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The background darkens to accomodate the
dissolve to a flat-art pan during a credit dissolve.

The pan of the 3D setup dissolves to this flat art
which pans down to the start of the film.

There are so many good examples of the Fleischer multiplane. I just chose two in the past couple two weeks, and I hope you’ll review some that you like. There are many on YouTube.

Remember when. Here are some baby pictures I first posted back in January 2007. I love this post so much, I ejoy showing again.

- Here are some of the grouped staff-shots we used to do a lot. For some reason we haven’t done any in the past ten years; 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.

I love these.

The Lyle crew, back in 1987:

These are, Back row L to R : Lisa Crafts – animator, Tom Repasky – coloring, Susan Tremblay – coloring, Madeline Fan (full pic w/T-shirt) coloring, Caroline Skaife (leaning on Madeline) – coloring, Mark Baldo (w/puppet Lyle) coloring, Doug Vitarelli (leaning on Caroline) runner, Theresa Smythe – asst. animator.

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:

Back row L to R: Theresa Smythe, Mike Winiewski, Ray Kosarin, George McClements.
Sitting L to R: me, Jason McDonald, Steve MacQuignon, Mary Thorne, Masako Kanayama

Here’s a birthday party in 1992:

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.

A Christmas party back in 1996:

This is the crew just after the Secret Santa and just before the party.
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.

Back row standing L to R: Miho Moyer (I&Pt), Robert Marianetti (Prod Coord), Christine O’Neill (I&Pt), me, Jason McDonald (design, I&Pt), Tara Dolgopol (I&Pt)(in front of Jason), John “Quack” Leard (Asst Anim), Adrian Urquidez(I&Pt), Laura Kurucz(I&Pt), Francisco “Cisco” Sanchez(runner), David Levy (Asst Anim).
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.

By the way, you can enlarge all images by clicking them.

Tissa David study for The Marzipan Pig

- During the summer months, it seems that HBO is airing one of the Sporn films every day and screening each film twice. Once at 7:30am and again at 10:00am (EST). You can locate the complete schedule on our main website. Just click the “August” button.

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- In case you haven’t seen this yet, here’s a photo of the original desk Walt Disney built in his Uncle Robert’s garage when he began work on his Alice in Cartoonland series. This was just after his move to California. Having finished the first of the Alice films, he was able to sell Margaret Winkler on this new series. Fortuitous timing. She was distributing the very successful Felix series, and Pat Sullivan was pulling out from her distribution after his contract expired. She needed a new series to take its place, and hoped that the Alice series would do just that.

The camera, itself, was bought used for $200. Walt built the stand, himself, and used the camera for both the live action and the animation. Presumably this was the stand on which Steamboat Willie was shot. The photo was taken in the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles where Disney donated the stand.

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- From the “Hard to keep a good man down” department, Robert Zemeckis is signing with Universal Features to bring his Imagemovers company to their lot. This is the group that was just pushed out of Disney after the losing track record of Mars Needs Moms and Beowulf. The Universal deal would be an overall production pact. Terms and length are still being finalized, but the arrangement would call on Zemeckis to develop and produce both live-action and motion capture projects.

It’s not yet known whether the film he just contracted to do for SONY, How to Survive a Garden Gnome Attack, would be done on this deal. The good news is that we can still see a motion capture version of the Beatles’ Yellow Submarine.

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– Lee Corey writes that he recently completed 30 sec PSA with the music group he designed, “Walleye and the Fish Band”. The PSA is playing in 360 theaters in the Great Lakes area. The spot confronts the problem of about VHS disease, (viral hemorrhagic septicemia), a disease which has decimated 17 species of fish in the Great Lakes, and while it is not contagious to humans, it is severely affecting the aquaculture of the region.

On completion of the PSA, Corey was hired to do a two minute music video featuring the band singing its “hit” song “Help Save Our Waters” with lyrics suggesting tips anglers and boaters can take to help stop VHS disease.

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- Bill Plympton and Pat Smith have put together a program of new 2D films to be screened in Williamsburg, Brooklyn next Sunday night. They call it the Scribble Junkies Festival of Drawn Animation. Hallelujah! Someone is still giving drawn animation some respect. We need more of this. Tony White’s 2D or Not 2D Festival is another incarnation of this on the West Coast, and we hope lots more start showing up.

Drinks start at 7pm, screening at 8:30. It includes recent work by animators Ryan Woodward, Bill Plympton, Patrick Smith, David Chai, Colleen Cox, Rebecca Sugar and more! Hope to see you! For more info go to the blog.

Sunday, August 14 at 7:00pm
Location: Nite Hawk Cinema, 136 Metropolitan Ave.

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- The Rauch Brothers, again, this year will have short films accompanying the POV show on PBS. No More Questions and Miss Divine are scheduled to air on Aug 23rd.

- Last week I posted a bunch of beautiful covers to Walt Disney Comics from the 40′w. For the most part they were done by Walt Kelly, and they were stunning. Here, thanks to another beautiful lode sent me by the inestimable Bill Peckmann, are some more of these wonderful covers by Kelly (except where noted). They are all gems. You can see the hint of Pogo starting to peek through in the non-Disney, secondary characters. Such clear composition and such clean design.

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This is Carl Barks’ second cover that he did for “Comics and Stories”.

Many thanks, again, to Bill Peckmann for sharing his immense and invaluable collection.

I’m reading Walt Before Mickey: Disney’s Early Years. 1919-1928 by Timothy Susanin, and I’m really enjoying it. I’ll give a review when I’m done with it. Interesting that Karl Cohen sent an article my way about silent animation. I did a short skip and a hop and found a couple of others (though none about Disney). So, today’s post will be some of those articles.

Karl Cohen of ASIFA San Francisco sent this article by Wallace Carlson about his “Dreamy Dud” series from the Movie Pictorial magazine.

cover of issue

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But then I found this article to pair with it.

And as long as we’ve posted that one, we may as well offer this Photoplay Magazine article by J. R. Bray from the January, 1917 issue.

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Finally, here’s an article Bud Fisher wrote for the Motion Picture Herald July 1920.
(This one took a lot of cleaning up to get it to be legible.)

Continuing with my recaps of Bill Tytla’s Disney animation, I’ve put together a couple of past posts to show you some of the beautiful drawing Tytla did on Fantasia‘s Night On Bald Mountain sequence.

- Here’s what for me was a real treat to scan and post. I had some limited access to actual drawings by Bill Tytla of the Devil from Fantasia. The drawings are mostly roughs by Tytla, and they give a good sample of what his actual work looked like.

I don’t need to write about it; let me just give you these mages.

A good example of a Tytla drawing.

Here’s the clean up of the same drawing.

Later in the same scene.

Some Tytla sketches.

Animation roughs don’t get any more beautiful than this.

A side-peg pan.

Rough heads.

Art. What else need be said?
The individual drawings are stunning, and they’re
in service to a brilliantly acted sequence.
It will never get better.

- Going under the assumption that there never are enough of Tytla’s Devils on the internet, I’ve got a few drawings to show here.

These were photographs of drawings taken (rather dark exposure that I lightened a bit) of what appears to be some cleanups. Most of them are from one scene; one drawing is from another. They’re all treasures.

How do you go from delicate Dumbo’s bath to this? That’s acting!

(Click any image to enlarge.)

- We return to the Disney Action Analysis notes for the classes held at the studio in after hours in early 1937. (You’ll remember that we left off with the April 5 notes that were posted out of order. Thanks to Mike Barrier contributing those notes that I didn’t have.)

Here we have the notes for April 19, 1937. Screened is a loop of a Charlie Chase action. Chase was a Vaudevillian who slipped into silent movies, became a star in the Hal Roach studios. When sound came in his star fell a bit. He performed minor roles in many films including Three Stooges comedies. He died in 1940 at the age of 46.

Taking part in this session are the following: Bill Shull, Ken Peterson, Bernie Wolfe, Roy Williams, Robert Leffingwell, Milt Neil, Joe Magro, Paul Satterfield, Jimmie Cullhane, Stan Quackenbush, Izzie Klein, Jacques Roberts, and Bill Tytla. They are definitely looking at him with the dwarfs in mind.

Here are the notes:

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Acts as the cover page

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A small note on these documents. Some of you may have noticed that infrequent peg holes show up on some of the scans on the left side. This is because the originals were printed on 5 hole animation punched paper. A couple of the documents I’ve posted came from originals, but many of these are copies of copies and the image of the holes has vanished into the old Xerox ether.