Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

- I recently received an email from Sky-David. He has a a small animation company in Carlsbad, California. He’d written that he enjoyed my blog and particularly liked one quote from an old interview with me.

“I like a pencil dragging across a piece of paper and the problems you get with that.” That is largely what my business does, it is just me and one computer assistant. I got the degree in animation from Cal Arts 1972 – 74 and later got a degree in Physical Therapy and Life Sciences my second loves. That gave a firm financial base to keep my first love, animation going. By circumstance I got animation jobs for the bio-information technology sector, that pays very well. Not anything to see in a film festival yet it opened doors. Then an educational animation THE LUMINOUS RADIANCE OF THE LYMPH SYSTEM. And then a client asked me to do naturalistic animation of the development of the human embryo as seen from inside the womb. Then a woman who wrote a story with 4 animals saw two of my early 1970′s films, AURA CORONA and SONOMA and hired my company to animated her short story THE WOLF AND THE SNOW OWL because my early films are in the same style as the drawings for the original story. _____________(Click any image to enlarge.)

And my animated documentary, FIELD OF GREEN: A SOLDIER’S ANIMATED SKETCHBOOK that is based on a sketchbook diary that I made during the late 1960′s in combat won the grand prize for animation at the 2008
Black Maria Film Festival.

After reading this letter and doing a small bit of reading, I realized I’d known Sky-David as Dennis Pies back in the early 80′s when he was teaching animation at Harvard. Actually, I’d known his films and was a strong admirer, though we met only a couple of times back then.

His earlier films felt like beautiful, animated landscapes though they were distinctly abstract. His absence was felt when they stopped appearing on the festival circuit, and I often wondered where he’d gone. One of these films, Ace of Light, can be found on YouTube. This is a film that was animated with light, shot on an Oxberry using an arial image projector.

Newer films are shown on the Sky-David site.
Other older film titles include: Nebula (1972), Merkaba (1973), Aura Corona (1974), Luma Nocturna (1974), Sonoma (1977), Surface Work (1978), Hand Piece (1979), A Hard Passage (1981), Ace of Light (1984), Dissolve in Light (1984), Sky Heart (1988), and The Green Child (1992).

There’s plenty of information and movies on his studio’s site Sky David Studio. Here are some stills he sent me.

_____________Field of Green

_____________Field of Green

_____________Field of Green

_____________Wolf – Snow Owl

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