Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

Christmas balls dangling – live fruit still kicking Jan 1
Photo by Steve Fisher

- Now that the holidays are past us, and we’re ready to pull down the trimmings, we can get onto the new. As it turns out, there were a number of excellent new sites/blogs created toward the end of the year, and I’d like to call attention to a few.

- The Thief, for me, has been a daily must-visit site. It’s written by four people who started out working at Richard Williams’ Soho Square studio. Their experience and stories about working on Dick’s Cobbler and the Thief (or is it The Thief and the Cobbler?) feature are posted for us to enjoy. This feature is probably the last glorious attempt at a cel-aniamted feature without the slightest use of a computer. It’s undeniably brilliant in some of its animation, and reading about the work is so informative to me, that I quite enjoy it._________________A Tissa David Yum Yum from The Thief.

- Toons At War has been an excellent blog has been focussed on this incredible subject since August of 2006. The material that has been posted on this site has been great to view and study. Lots of beautiful art.

Now David, who hosts and writes that blog, has a new and exciting site. Vintage Disney Collectibles gives lots of rare and interesting material showcasing the marketing work of Disney, particularly in the earliest days.

There are plenty of “Disney” sites out there, but David’s specialization, here, is obviously such a work of love that it can’t help be informative.

In the past I gave some small attention to the work of Paul Lasaine. His excellent site reveals some of the incredible artwork he’s done for a number of films.

His matte paintings, poster artwork and design work for some of the newer cgi features is extraordinary. It’s fun seeing strong works of design and planning for some of the backbone work of these films. The detail of the painting above (from Surf’s Up) gives me a small bit of respect for the strong craft that goes into the making of some of these cg films.

This is a beautiful site with lots of examples of artwork from Prince of Egypt, Surf’s Up, Lord of the Rings and several live action features.

- Bob Jaques‘ relatively new site (mentioned here several times) has become one of my favorite daily stops. Popeye Animator ID does just that; it identifies and highlights the work of some of the animators at the Fleischer studio. People like Lillian Friedman, Louis Zukor or George Germanetti would get absolutely NO attention were it not for the detailed, entertaining and revealing posts on this site. Even Bob’s riffs on reuse animation are just compelling.
Between this site and the new_______________Popeye meets the multiplane camera._
Popeye dvd’s out recently, I think
I’ve recently spent more time watching Popeye than I have in my life. And I’m enjoying it.

- Finally, my friend, Joey Hachtman has a new site on My Space. It’s called Three Designing Women, and it showcases the exciting trompe L’oeil murals she’s been producing out of her Point Pleasant location.
I wrote about her in this earlier post.
The caricature of the Three Designing Women, to the left, is by Tom Hachtman, Joey’s husband. Take a look at the site..

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