Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

- It’s been a relatively bleak week in New York. The rain won’t stop its gray battering of our skylights, and we hop and skip past the many puddles on the sidewalk. Waiting for a light usually means a splash off the nearest discourteous speeding driver who runs too close to the curb, spattering all those there. After two or three days of it, everything takes on the eerie grey glow.

- On Tuesday morning, Sept. 6th, Jordan Belson died of heart failure at his home in San Francisco. For the uninitiated, Belson was an abstract filmmaker who produced a body of work of over 30 films which sometimes were called, “Cosmic Cinema.” His work was ahead of his time, and he led a number of like-minded non-objective film makers through the 50s and into the 60s. From 1957-1959, Belson was the Visual Director for The Vortex Concerts at San Francisco’s Morrison Planetarium. This series of electronic music concerts accompanied by visual projections allowed him to create visual illusions with multiple projection devices, combining abstract film footage of patterns with planetarium effects. He abandoned traditional animation methods to work with real time projected light in making his Vortex work.

His long shadow remains with us as film still tries to absorb what experimentation and observations he offered us through the medium.

The Center for Visual Music offers a DVD release of Jordan Belson’s Five Essential Films. They also have a biography and filmography of the man’s work.

Earlier this year, Belson signed a statement asking people not to put his films online, as this does not do justice to his work. A sentiment I am fully in agreement with. Regardless, someone has put several of them up on YouTube. Epilogue, a great work, is his last completed film done in 2005.

John Hubley once told me that an effective rain cycle had two different patterns of rain at slightly different angles to each other. One would be inked in black, the second (behind the black) in gray. It works well, of course.

- Kathy Rose is still actively making films. She wrote to say that her latest, “The Metaphysical Paintings”, just went up on Vimeo. She also has her own page on Vimeo, here.

She continued to say in that note that she: “Will also have video installations exhibited October 5 & 6 in Motion Pictures 2011 a dance video venue in Philadelphia.”

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Lowell Hess is an extraordinary illustrator whose work has just been collected in a book called The Art of Lowell Hess. You should look out for it. Until then, take a look at this blog (Today’s Inspiration) which gives a good overview of Hess’ life and work.

Thanks to Bill Peckmann for the heads up on the site.

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- There’s an exhibit of Jack Davis’ art running at the University of Georgia’s Hargett Library. “The exhibit features much of Davis’ early work from his days as a student living in Athens. Many of Davis’ subjects from those days provide a rare glimpse into life as an undergrad when campus was dominated by veterans getting their education from the GI Bill.”

The exhibit will continue through November. Anyone living in or passing through Athens, Georgia ought to go see it.

Darrell Van Citters is back. His blog, Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol, has featured many excellent articles about the people who had worked on that Special. Now, after a long hiatus, he has a two part article on Lee Orgel the real man behind the television special. This is an excellent site that offers lots of premium information. Just take a look at this feature on Abe Levitow or this piece on designer Shirley Silvey. There’s a lot to see on this blog.

Skwigly is a British site that has had a relatively long life. Originally, a blog that offered some excellent stories, they eventually closed it down. Just as suddenly, they’ve been reborn. David Smith is the editor and he mixes it up. The current site seems a little less vibrant than the original, but it’s still a must-visit. Sort of a British AWN (not quite as large albeit somewhat more organized) there are some fine posts on this site. An Arthur Christmas image from pencil drawing to finished cg background; An interview with animator, Alex Williams (The Lion King, Roger Rabbit, The Iron Giant); A story about Osamu Tezuka and even an article about the invention of the rotoscope by the Fleischers. My one complaint for the site is that they don’t have an easy “search” button. You have to go through each and every slow-loading page to find out what’s there.

- Tomorrow will be the tenth anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks. Much has been made of it here, in New York, and I don’t know if there’s been as much attention given it outside of this city.

Just prior to the Obama “Jobs” speech, the television networks announced that there was “credible but unconfirmed” reports of another attack on NY on the anniversary. Shades of the Bush administration terror fears that were thrown at the public. In NY, we’d gotten a clue that something was up a few days earlier when police started showing up again at the subway entrances to go through the passenger backpacks. Why did they wait until just prior to the speech to make it public when they had the news two days earlier?

The odd thing about New Yorkers is that it really isn’t on our conscience. They can hurl the words at us as often as they do, but we just go on through our paces – getting through the days.

Sunday there will be some sort of celebration at the site of the World Trade Center. The papers have reported enough bickering between the government plans and the families of the victims. Will they read names? Won’t they read names? I really don’t know anymore, and I won’t be watching. I’ll be in my studio, maybe listening on the radio. More likely, I’ll be listening to the soundtrack of Mike Leigh’s Topsy Turvy.

And, yes, rain is expected on Sunday.

- Bill Peckman continues to delight with some of the brilliant artwork he scans for my site. It’s a pleasure to post it and study it. Here, we have the comic book version of The John Ford/John Wayne film, “Wings of Eagles.” Here’s what Bill wrote:

Alex Toth‘s passion for aviation was only second to his love for art, so he must have welcomed and relished this assignment when it came in from Dell/Western Publishing. It was the comic book adaptation of the biopic movie “Wings Of Eagles” (1957). It also didn’t hurt that Alex was a big fan of the movie’s director, John Ford. Here’s hoping that the backlit computer screen will offset some of the printing press problems of those days of yore (It Does!) and make the pages look closer to what Toth had envisioned. The originals would have been an eyeful to see! Go to the Bruce Canwell and Dean Mullaney book, “Alex Toth, Genius Isolated” to see what Alex’s original Dell art work looked like before quite a bit of it was lost in the primitive pulp printing process.

So here without further ado, is John Ford, John Wayne and Alex Toth’s “Wings Of Eagles”!

The Front Cover

Inner Front Cover

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One of the best pages in the book, too bad the colorist
miscolored the big double panel. The bg. color should have
been the deep blue sea, not the light blue sky.

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- Here we have the continuation of the great Carl Barks story, Luck of the North. Pt. 1 was featured here. We pick up where we left off.

But first here’s a painting Barks did inspired by the original comic cover:

Art appears in “The Art of Walt Disney’s Donald Duck by Carl Barks”.

Luck of the North
Bigmouth Donald tricks his cousin Gladstone into a wild-goose chase
after a fake treasure map. and then, conscience-stricken,
chases him down through the polar bear-infested Arctic.

(Dell’s Donald Duck Four Color #256, December, 1949; see page 48).
Barks turned the cover concept into a nightscape, studded with
stars and haloed by the northern lights.
“That’s where I had my trouble,” he comments,”
in that northern lights effect at the top.
I found pictures of northern lights in some
Geographics and I kind of stole some.”

An afterthought, and Barks adds,
“I find water very difficult to paint.
It’s hard work, but I worked at this until
I got it to look halfway authentic.”

Has he ever compromised on a story idea because
of its difficulty? “It may be that I had the sense
to do that once in a while, but I doubt it. I generally just
plunged right in on an idea whether I was going to have
trouble or not. I’d start out with a simple idea,
and keep on elaborating on it until I had a
real complex thing going.”

Though one of Barks’ most famous stories,
this is the only painting of it he did.

The original comic cover.

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- This is the brilliant scene by Frank Thomas from the excellent Mickey short, The Brave Little Tailor. This scene is one of the highlights of that film. This scene made me realize how great an animator was Frank Thomas. For too many years I took his work for granted; this scene changed it all for me. I had to reevaluate everything he’d done.

In its entirety the scene’s about 250 drawings long, a long one. Many thanks to my friend, Lou Scarborough, for the generous loan of his xeroxed copies.

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(Click any drawing to enlarge.)

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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.

- Time to move on from the Mondays at the Multiplane Camera by putting up an enormously large number of frame grabs from this Mickey/Donald short film, The Dognapper. It’s only the third Donald Duck cartoon, (following The Wise Little Hen and Orphan’s Benefit) and already he’s co-starring with Mickey. (Although he doesn’t get billing, yet.) The short was done in 1934, and the Disney animation was just starting to get a bit more sophisticated than the rubber hose characters they’d done in the silent era. I find this a very attractive short; the Backgrounds really help. This is the Disney period that I love. I can’t get enough of the animation of Johnny Cannon and Hardie Gramatky. I’m not so keen on the non-stop action of the short, but I like the look and the imagination within the format. The film was directed by David Hand.

I’ve added animator credits to each frame. This comes from the film’s drafts as posted by Hans Perk on his site, A Film LA, a treasure of a site. (IMDB has Ham Luske and Les Clark as animators on it. I’m not sure where they got their information.)

Here are a bunch of frame grabs:

Title Card

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Marvin Woodward

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Marvin Woodward – Hardie Gramatky

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Hardie Gramatky

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Hardie Gramatky – Dick Lundy

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Dick Lundy

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Dick Lundy – Hardie Gramatky

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Hardie Gramatky

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Hardie Gramatky

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Hardie Gramatky

Johnny Cannon

Johnny Cannon

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Gerry Geronomi – Bill Roberts

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Hardie Gramatky – Bob Wickersham

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Here’s the movie.

- It seems like it was longer than a week ago that Hurricane Irene hit the East Coast. After 24 hours of non-stop talk on all the local channels about Hurricane Irene’s impending attack, it was something of a happy let-down to only have some heavy rain in NYC. By mid-afternoon, Sunday, things had turned sunny and Heidi and I took a walk down to the studio to see what was up, there. The two mile walk gave us a good view of lower Manhattan after the storm.

I took only a couple of photos and I mix those up with others by Steve Fisher.

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Trees and bushes went crazy in the winds.

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There’s something about a world that’s shaking so much
and the camera is perfectly still.

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It left a lot of fallen trees and branches.

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Madison Square Park was closed for all the fallen and falling branches.

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In Washington Square Park you could see the damage.

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Branches and tree limbs were everywhere.

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Signs had fallen.

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Before Irene.

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After Irene – not too bad.

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Life goes on.

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1,2,3,4,9,10,11 by Steven Fisher.
The other four by me.

- Mike Barrier posted a letter on his site. Kevin Hogan questions Mike’s ability to enjoy an animated film now that his taste has been formed by a lot of information learned over a lifetime of study. Mr. Hogan gives as an example the Chip n’ Dale cartoon Two Chips and a Miss. He loved this short as a child and found himself not enjoying it quite as much seeing it as an adult. He suggests that Mike’s knowledge might get in the way of the “innocence” he had as a child in enjoying some of these films. It’s an honest question, and it opened into a full discussion with Thad Komorowski and Milt Gray among others discussing the theory. Mike talks about enjoying the Three Stooges in his younger days but not quite enjoying them as much in recent days. His knowledge of film and this thoughts on the filmmaking process inform his judgment (thank god).

I probably would have gone to Alfred Hitchcock. Here’s someone who made films that can and should be appreciated on so many levels. They’re done for the public, and the manipulation Hitchcock maneuvers to create his films gets that audience by the throat, and Hitchcock enjoys doing so. Yet that same manipulation becomes obvious to the informed film student. However, for that same knowledgeable filmgoer, it doesn’t lessen the value of the film knowing how and what is coming. It makes it more fun because Hitchcock was a Master.

- As a 14 year old child, I was blown away by 101 Dalmatians. Those first ten minutes were heaven to me. I loved the design and the animation of Cruella de Ville, Pongo & Perdita, and even some of the pups. I was not as enthralled by the middle action-adventure section (immediately following the “Twilight Bark”). I had a lot of respect for what was being done, but I preferred the London portion of the film. I did know a lot about animation when I first saw it, but I know a lot more now. I also, now, know quite a bit about 101 Dalmatians, itself. The odd thing is that my opinion hasn’t changed a bit since that first screening. Today, I am in awe of the beautiful walk cycles Blaine Gibson animated at the beginning of the film as Pongo eyes potential mates. Throughout the film, I can see all the cuts, cel shadows, interesting effects and mistakes within them, and, yet, I still love the movie. Everything has changed within me, but nothing has changed within the movie that I first saw. It’s still excellent.

- Jeffrey Pepper’s excellent website 2719 Hyperion has featured the odd Disney short, Donald and the Wheel, in a fine analysis. The article was originally posted on the site in 2009, but this is the first time I’ve caught up with it.

I initially saw this short when it was originally released in 1961. It played locally in New York on a bill with a non-Disney live-action feature (which I can’t remember.) I have to say that I wasn’t in tune with this short, but I enjoyed the surprise of seeing it in the theater back then.

An even greater delight for me was seeing Symposium of Popular Song with the film, P.T. 109 in 1963. Also on that bill was the Disney animated short, The Saga of Windwagon Smith. I don’t remember that much about the feature (other than an image of Cliff Robertson as JFK), but I do remember the two shorts which I’ve seen many times. I absolutely love Windwagon Smith and have studied it backwards and forwards. I also bought a couple of drawings when I saw them available on ebay. Symposium of Popular Song took the TV creation, Ludwig Von Drake and introduced him to theaters in this Bill Justice/Xavier Attencio short that was primarily stop-motion cut out animation. What a double bill! And I’m talking about the shorts, not the feature.

I had seen Donald in Mathmagicland many times prior to ever seeing this newer film. I can’t say I have the same love for Donald and the Wheel. I had a very hard time accepting the two narrators: the Spirits of Progress, Sr., and Progress, Jr. They’re silhouettes done using the Sodium Process invented by Ub Iwerks and used in Hitchcock’s The Birds and Disney’s Mary Poppins. The halo around the characters is all we see of them, and they’re boring, and their song was worse. (I remember spending a lot of time back then trying to figure out how they were done.) As 2719 Hyperion points out Donald and the Wheel did some experimenting with the Xerographic process preparing the way for features like 101 Dalmatians and Sword In The Stone.

But I do pine for the time when a feature – not even a Disney feature – would be accompanied by two such animated shorts. Seeing a Pixar short attached to a Pixar long is not the same thing, believe me. 1963 was also a time beyond the Saturday morning kids matinees in theaters when 10 “Color Cartoons” were featured with a Francis the Talking Mule film. No, it was just part of the filmgoing process to be able to see an animated short on a big screen.

- This week I received an email from Louai Abuosba. Along with a number of others, he’s come up with a “meetup.com group aimed at providing a structure for student and professional NYC area. Animators to teach each other skills they don’t have or want to sharpen.” They met this past week in Dumbo and have plans for future meetings. If anyone is interested, you can sign up using Facebook or just go to the site and send Louai a note. (Sorry I didn’t get this out in time for the Sept. 1st meeting, their first, but I got the information too late to get it on the Splog.)

- Here are some more comic book covers courtesy of Bill Peckmann. From his incredible collection, he’s sent us a blast of early covers by Harvey Kurtzman. Bill’s note reads:

Sorry, these covers are far from being pristine, but I thought it’d be neat to show Harvey Kurtzman’s comic book covers (TWO-FISTED TALES, FRONTLINE COMBAT and MAD) in the order that he drew them. These are from 1951.

Here comes some great drawing.

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More from Bill:

In issue No. 5 of ‘Frontline Combat” was one of Harvey’s classic war stories titled “Big ‘If’!”. No time like the present to send it along.

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- Having pulled into the great Carl Barks story, “Sheriff of Bullet Valley,” we can’t repeat the adventure, but we can find another just about as good. “Luck of the North” is a gem. Bill Peckmann has begun sending a copy of the comic book in a reprint mode, and here are his comments:

It’s a reprint of Dell’s 1949 Donald Duck Four Color #256 titled “Luck of the North”. The cover is from the original comic, but the re colored, reprinted story is from Gladstone Publishing, LTD.’s Giant Comic Albums.

He also sends along the original comic printing of the first title page of the story. You can see how much was missing from Barks’ brilliant art in the pulp mode printing.

Anyway, here’s part 1 taken from a reprint version:

The original comic cover.

This is what the original comic looked like.

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Bill’s note on the page above reads: ____________
_______________One of the all time impressive comic book pages!

____________ And I have to agree with him.

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