Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

- When I first started in animation at the Hubley Studio, I met Tissa David. She recognized how poor my inbetweens were and took me under her wing to try to correct the situation. She gave me private lessons for years. Often she would give me scenes animated by her mentor, Grim Natwick, and she would ask me to remove every other drawing and do new inbetweens for what was left. When I finally got them close to being correct, she’d have me do clean-ups of Grim’s work.

These two run cycles were among the first drawings she gave me to rework. Back then, the only way to see the drawings in motion was to flip them or film them. There were no computers to see them instantaneously moving. You can just go to the bottom of each cycle, and I’ve added a QT pencil test,

I might suggest that if you’re just starting out, you should print out the drawings and then do new versions of the inbetweens for the even numbered drawings. Go back to Tissa’s versions to compare with what you did.

Grim Natwick animated this spot for Mountain Dew when he worked for Robert Lawrence Productions. Here are two run cycles from that spot. It was assisted by Tissa David. All of the drawings, here, are Tissa’s clean-ups.

This is another run cycle from that same film. Again, all of the drawings, here, are Tissa’s clean-ups.

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You’ll note that the character leaves the ground for 1/3 of the spot.
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I love the chicken movement this guy is doing with his arms.
A laugh riot of a run cycle.

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He actually comes down in the crossing position rather than the
classically designed walk where the head moves up.

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Tissa’s tendency is to have the crossing position the lowest in the cycle.
The character bears the weight of his walk with feet solidly on ground.

Run Cycle
On ones at 24FPS
Click left side of black bar to play.
Right side to watch single frame.

This was originally posted in May 2009.

- This is the remainder of the book “The Last Dandy, Ralph Barton, American Artist, 1891-1931” by Bruce Kellner. Last week, thanks to the contribution and scans of Bill Peckmann, I was able to post the first half of the book. Today we complete it.

Barton served as an advisory editor to Harold Ross for his new magazine, The New Yorker. He was a major contributor to Judge, Collier’s and Vanity Fair Magazine. He was one of the most popular cartoonists of his day, and he illustrated many covers for books from Balzac to Anita Loos. He committed suicide in 1931.

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- For the next three weeks, I’m going to focus on director/designer/animator, John Wilson.
Amid Amidi presented me with some art that he thought might be a good match for this blog, and it is. So I’ll take advantage of the material and share it with you. With each week’s post I’ll hone in on one specific film and go from there. We’ll start with Wilson’s first solo film, Tara the Stone Cutter completed in 1955.

But first, let me share some bio information about John Wilson and his company Fine Arts Films.

- John Wilson was born in Wimbledon in 1920. He attended the Royal College of Art and was working by age 18 as a commercial artist with Willings Press Service. In WWII he served with the London Rifle Brigade in African where he was seriously wounded. Recuperating in hospital, he drew many cartoons of which several were printed. Eventually he would recover and get work at Pinewood Studios in the art department where he worked on GREAT EXPECTATIONS and THE THIEF OF BAGHDAD, among other films.

By the time he was 25, he was working in animation at Gaumont-British Animation, a newly formed division of J. Arthur Rank’s studio, working under the direction of David Hand on the “Animaland” series starring “Ginger Nut.”

In 1950 he moved to the United States working in layout and animation at UPA. He found himself working with Bobe Cannon, Pete Burness, Jules Engel, and Paul Julian. Eventually he left for the Disney studio working in Les Clark’s ‘Tinkerbell’ unit on PETER PAN and with Ward Kimball on TOOT WHISTLE PLUNK & BOOM.

He tried to sell Disney on the film Tara, the Stonecutter, but they weren’t interested. He completed it himself in 1955 using a Japanese style to tell the story. Wilson was impressed with the UPA style of modern art in animation, and that’s the route he took for his personal film. Thus his studio was born, called Fine Arts Films, in 1955. Tara had some success playing theatrically with the successful Japanese feature film, GATE OF HELL by Kinugasa (which had won the Oscar for Best Foreign Film.)

Wilson in Korea with the Bob Hope Tour to entertain the troops.

This film led to his producing a verion of Stravinsky’s Petroushka for NBC which aired in 1956 as part of The Sol Hurok Music Hour. Notably, Stravinsky, himself, arranged and conducted the shortened version of the score suing the LA Philharmonic Orchestra. The film was designed by John Wilson and Dean Spille with anmation by Bill Littlejohn, Art Davis, and Phil Monroe. Chris Jenkyns, Dean Spille and Ed DeMattia designed the 16 minute show from Wilson’s storyboard.

Fine Arts Films had produced ‘Journey to the Stars’, a project for the 1961 World’s Fair, an animated voyage through space for NASA, which was seen in 70 mm Cinerama by ten million visitors to Seattle.

Billy Wilder employed Wilson to do the titles for Irma La Douce after which they did a six-minute trailer for this Jack Lemmon, Shirley McLaine feature. It was all about Parisian prostitutes romping about in Montmartre, and animation could apparently make it acceptable. Artists Ron Maidenberg, Sam Weiss, Sam Cornell and Bob Curtis caught the vivid nightlife of Paris in a sexually charged animated short. It was a huge success in promoting the feature.

In 1970 Wilson flew to Chicago to see Carol Channing and Eddie Bracken appearing in “archy and mehitabel in Shinbone Alley”. On the basis of this theatrical musical, Wilson bought the screen rights to the book “archy and mehitabel” by George Herriman and began work on an animated feature which was released by Allied Artists in 1971.

Fine Arts Films was also responsible for many animated commercials as well as weekly music video segments for the weekly CBS-TV series “The Sonny and Cher Show.” The songs included Joni Mitchell’s “Big Yellow Taxi” and Jim Croce’s “Leroy Brown.”

Here are some storyboard sketches by John Wilson for his initial short film, Tara, the Stonecutter. This film started it all for Wilson.

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I haven’t seen the finished film, but I understand that Japanese decorative papers were used in the backgrounds and costumes of the characters.

Here are two press clippings for this film from California papers.

(Click any image to enlarge.)

- Last May, I posted a number of cartoons from Ronald Searle‘s book of illustrations from The Female Approach, a collection of cartoons and illustrations from a number of different sources (including many from “The Bells of St. Trinian’s.”) With Mr. Searle dying this past week, I think it’s only appropriate to return to that book and post a few more of those great pieces.

For a wonderful obituary and commentary, I encourage you to go to Matt Jones‘ piece posted on Cartoon Brew this week. I also can suggest you spend some time visiting Mr. Jones’ tribute blog to Ronald Searle – Perpetua.

The book’s dust cover

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- Today’s the day we vote on the short list of the short films to select the nominees. They will be screening the live action shorts from 10am to 1pm. This will be followed by a lunch break, then the animated shorts for another two hours. I’ve seen and remember all the animated shorts, and, in fact, have already voted on this short list. So I’ll skip that second screening. (Two of the best of these shorts are on line. Cartoon Brew has put up Dimanche and Wild Life. There’s a trailer for a third, A Morning Stroll. All of the others are films I’ve seen a couple of times and have no favorites. (But have dislikes.) I wouldn’t mind if any of the three won the big award and hope all three are nominated.)

Tonight, Heidi and I will go to the annual After New Year’s party of one her theatrical friends. Lots of great Broadway people will be there.

- I’ve seen plenty of movies this week. We’re coming to the near-end of the animated features.
Tuesday we saw Alois Nebel, a film from the Czech Republic about a Polish station master at a small town train station circa 1989. Smuggled Russian alcohol, a murder and lots of atmosphere fill this film. The plot isn’t the clearest, but there’s atmosphere to spare. The animation is tightly rotoscoped and looks like a cross between Waking Life and Waltz with Bashir. Lots and lots of vehicles mix with live action smoke and dust helps add to that atmosphere. The film is essentially a high contrast black and white Eastern European movie.

Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked. I’ll say this, I was able to sit all the way through the film though I kept asking myself why. The film is obviously designed for the five year old girls out there. I’m not sure the audience goes far beyond that. I was entertained watching the poor live action performances as they stared just off while talking to the animated characters. Never a winning eye contact is made. Half the time I couldn’t understand what the chipmunks were saying in their too-sped-up voices. By the way, why hire celebrities like Amy Poehler, Anna Faris or Christina Applegate if you’re going to speed up their voices to an unintelligible sound so that they all sound alike?

On Wednesday it was back to live action:
WE is the first film directed by Madonna. It’s about two love affairs one between between King Edward VIII and American divorcée Wallis Simpson. (If you remember the movie The King’s Speech. His brother who left the throne to marry an American – the American was Wallis Simpson, and she’s the focus of this movie.) It’s also about the affair of a married woman with a Russian security guard. The two stories interrelate, and they both relate to Madonna’s life. The public attention keeps her down on the farm. The movie got too precious, and audience members laughed at points when they should have been upset.

Sherlock Holmes 2 has gotten even flashier that the first film. It didn’t help. The film became monotonous in its loud dissonant attack on the senses. All climax; no movie. I walked out 2/3 of the way through it.

On Thursday there were two animated features:
Chico and Rita is a Spanish animated jazz love story about a jazz pianist and a singer. It’s drawn in a rotoscoped loose line style with lots of evocative backgrounds copied off some beautifully detailed archival photographs. (Many remind me of Johnny Vita’s fine backgrounds for Fritz the Cat.) The film is lovely and touching. It was very nice to see a truly adult feature film with large adult themes (as opposed to something calling itself “adult” and vying for the 14 year old boy’s attention.) One of the better films in this competition.

Cars 2; I’d already seen this film and hope to not sit through it again. (See Sherlock Holmes, above, for the review.) The first Cars started loud and stayed there. This one doesn’t have any of the character development or quiet moments of the first film. A failure in my book.

- Now let’s talk about something worth viewing. I was always a fan of Saul Bass‘ incredible title design. Once I saw some of the Hitchcock designs he created, I was sold and did everything to see anything he did. But then I kept looking and found another designer whose work I felt closer to. Dan Perri has had a very long and brilliant career designing some of the greatest title sequences that are somewhat less flashy than Bass’ work, but every bit as notable for their designs. His titles don’t get the same attention given to Saul Bass, but they’re every bit as deserving.

Perri designed: Bull Durham, Midnight Run, Wall Street, Raising Arizona, Blood Simple, Star Wars, Caddyshack, The Exorcist, In the Valley of Elah and MANY others. He designed many Scorcese films such as Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, After Hours, King of Comedy and The Gangs of New York. As a matter of fact, I was disappointed when Scorcese left Dan Perri to work with Saul Bass on Casino, The Age of Innocence and two others. (Randy Balsmeyer designed the credits for Hugo.)

This past week I found a site for the man’s work, and spent a good hour there looking at many a title sequence. DanPerri.com is a site you have to visit if you have any interest at all in the form. Unfortunately, they don’t give complete sequences, but you can find them on the site, ArtoftheTitle.com. There, you can see Days of Heaven, Mulholland Drive, Raging Bull, and many others worth searching for.

- Screen writer, Irv Bauer, has produced a DVD on the hows of writing a screenplay. Mr. Bauer was one of the writers on the John Dilworth series, Courage the Cowardly Dog. The 4 DVD set can be purchased from Amazon.

- The New York Times hasn’t been remiss in noticing the Ghibli Studio retrospective at the IFC Center. They’ve reviewed two of the films that opened in NY for the first time. Porco Rosso got a love letter of a review from Jeanette Catsoulis on Dec 22nd and Pom Poco received a relatively positive notice with a few darting barbs in the review by Andy Webster.

There are capsule reviews and star ratings for all of the films in the program.

- Last night, Friday, Buzzco hosted a memorial gathering in honor of animator, Vinnie Cafarelli, who died this past December 3rd. It was a sad and moving event, but it was wonderful that Vinnie had brought together some of the older animators to mix with younger.

Candy Kugel had set up a computer running videos of a number of pieces Vinnie had animated, another screen had home movies running, and another table had a book of great photos. (Including several of Vinnie in Cuba with Pablo Ferro posing with some rebels hoisting rifles.)

Bill Feigenbaum, Amid Amidi, Cottie Kilbanks, George Griffin, Arnie Levin, Lee Corey, Larry Ruppel, Ray Kosarin, John Dilworth, Ken Kimmelman, John Canemaker, Vinnie Bell, Debbie Solomon, Howard Beckerman, J.J. Sedelmeir, Tony Eastman, Doug Crane, Richard O’Connor and many others attended. (I apologize if I didn’t post your name; there just were too many for me to I.D.) It was an important event. I kept thinking Vinnie would have loved it.

- The genius of an illustrator, Ronald Searle died this past week. It was upsetting on many levels. He was involved in many animated pieces. I grew up with his art all around me. His artwork was seemingly everywhere in the early 70s, from books to cartoons to New Yorker covers to ads to movie titles such as Scrooge, the Albert Finney musical, or Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines. Fortunately, he leaves his art behind, but it’s a disappointment to know that Mr. Searle is no longer there. (May I advise you to go to Matt Jones’ tribute of a site, Perpetua, for wonderful pieces about Mr. Searle.)

Last May we posted artwork for the Dave Hilberman directed film, Energetically Yours. You can find those preserved cels here. They were contributed by Hilberman’s son, Dan.

I’d also posted some cartoons from a collection book by Searle titled The Female Approach. Tomorrow, in a small memorium for Mr. Searle, I’ll post more cartoons from that book.

Gun Glory is a 1957 film starring Stewart Granger and Rhonda Fleming. Alex Toth in one of his adaptations to comic book brought some small beat of immortality to this movie, directed by Roy Rowland.

Here is the first of two installments of Toth’s magazine. Many thanks to Bill Peckmann for sharing this cowboy classic.

Comic book cover

Inner cover

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- Bill Peckmann forwarded the following interview with artist, Alex Toth. The comments are by Bill:

In the somewhat early days of comic book fandom, there was a class act fanzine titled “Graphic Story Magazine”, it was edited and published by Bill Spicer. In 1969 all of us Alex Toth fans were given a rare, in depth treat by way of an interview with Alex done by Bill. In the days before the internet and with just the means of out of pocket publishing, this professional looking, many paged interview was pure manna from heaven. Up until that time there were only a few capsulated bio’s printed here and there. Interestingly, the interview now is just a little over 40 years old, which is the same number of years as Alex’s age when the interview was given. It also marks an approximate half way point in Alex’s exceptional career. Enjoy.

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(Click any image to enlarge.)

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It seems that memories here were getting a little fuzzy on the dating
of the “I Struck It Rich” story. It was published in 1951 and not in the
1940′s when Alex was still in high school. He did amazingly professional
work while in high school, it just wasn’t this story.

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- This post is for real animator-type geeks. To complete the posting of the scene from Fantasia of Mickey chopping the broom, I have the exposure sheets as well as some notes and that I’d like to share. If you know how to read the sheets, it’ll be informative. If you don’t, take some time to try to understand them. Although there are some complications – several dissolves and indicated effx, specifically – much of it is basic.

These are all copies of copies, so the quality isn’t the greatest.

This is the cover of the folder for the scene.

Inking instructions within the folder.

An interoffice communication about the scene.

Another 2 page note.

Final page of notes.

The following are four samples of effx shading that was done
for all of Mickey and the brooms throughout the scene.
I show the original drawings followed by the effx drawing.

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All of the effx drawings were done with a very light hand.

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I had to push them like crazy in Photoshop so that you could see them here.

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All of the Mickey & broom drawings were done this way as an
indication to the airbrush artists who would follow up.

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You’ll note that the scene was about to be reshot for the airbrushing.

The Exposure Sheets

Here is a note attached to the first page of the
exposure sheets about a reshoot.

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The first page without the note attached.

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- On Friday, Jan 6th, a memorial for
_________Vince Cafarelli
will be held at Buzzco Associates
from 4 – 9pm.

It’ll be an excellent time for all of us who remember Vinnie with fondness to
gather and honor the man.
Candy Kugel and Marilyn Kraemer will be on hand to greet you.

Buzzco Associates
4 to 9 pm.
33 Bleecker Street
5th floor
(212) 473 8800

To honor Vinnie’s animation on this blog,
I asked Candy to pick out a scene Vinnie had animated. These are his drawings for this scene from their Independent short, Command Z. As Candy states in a comment, below, (prompting me to add this note) the film was designed by the talented Lee Lorenz, and Vinnie’s clean up is in Lee’s style.

- Hans Perk has posted the draft for the 1933 Mickey short Ye Olden Days. Since I absolutely love this period of Disney films, I thought I’d combine my frame grabs with some animator IDs. It was fun going through this short.

Obviously, several animators were just breaking in under the tutelage of Ben Sharpsteen. Consequently, you get some scenes that are double assigned; it means that Sharpsteen is closely watching the new animator. A lot of the scenes that are assigned to Sharpsteen alone, actually are done by others with Sharpsteen supervising. When I know who did what (Hans Perk gives away several), I indicate it under the image.

Hans is also missing the first page of the animator drafts, so the first few scenes aren’t assigned below. Obviously Norm Ferguson animates most of the king, so he probably did the one scene in this section.

Ben Sharpsteen

Ben Sharpsteen

Sharpsteen/Harry Reeves – - – Norm Ferguson

Sharpsteen/Art Babbitt

Norm Ferguson – - – Sharpsteen/Art Babbitt

Sharpsteen/Art Babbitt – - – Sharpsteen/Marvin Woodward

no animator – - – Sharpsteen/Ham Luske

Dick Lundy – - – Sharpsteen/Ed Love

Les Clark – - – Dick Lundy

Les Clark – - – Dick Lundy

Les Clark – - – Ben Sharpsteen

Dick Lundy – - – Norm Ferguson

Ben Sharpsteen/Johnny Cannon

Ben Sharpsteen

Ben Sharpsteen

Ben Sharpsteen

Ben Sharpsteen

Norm Ferguson – - – reuse animation

Norm Ferguson – - – Ben Sharpsteen

Ben Sharpsteen – - – Tom Palmer

Norm Ferguson – - – Tom Palmer

Tom Palmer – - – Norm Ferguson

Tom Palmer – - – Norm Ferguson

Tom Palmer – - – Jack King

Jack King – - – Jack King

Ben Sharpsteen/Johnny Cannon

Ben Sharpsteen

Ben Sharpsteen

Ben Sharpsteen

Ben Sharpsteen

Ben Sharpsteen

Ben Sharpsteen

Ben Sharpsteen

Ben Sharpsteen

Ben Sharpsteen

Ben Sharpsteen

Ben Sharpsteen