Animation Artifacts &Events 04 Apr 2011 07:34 am
NFB Animation Chart
-In 1967, there was the Montreal World Exhibition of Animation Cinema. This was an historic event that brought together many of the world’s most famous animators. Ararwe occasion when Walt Disney and Max Fleischer would attend the same event. You can read more about it here.
At this event, an important document was sold. It was a large poster delineating the early history of animation through the Golden Age. The chart was developed by André Martin. Anyone who was anyone, back then, owned this poster. Mike Barrier and I recently discussed how long this thing lasted in our hands. Mine was taped to a wall, then moved, then moved again. Bit by bit, move by move, it started to tear and crumble. Eventually it was only a piece of its former self, and it didn’t make it through another move.
Recently, Tissa David gave me a bunch of posters she had in a tube in her apartment. Believe it or not, this poster was among them; so I decided to post the poster. The trouble is it’s so big – roughly 36×48. It meant scanning it in many many parts and trying to reassemble it in photoshop. It took a lot of time and had to be adjusted a lot in photoshop. Even sizing it so it could be posted was a pain in the butt. However, here it is in two versions.
- I scanned it full size for you to see.
- Then I scanned 8 parts of it so they would be larger and more readable in the thumbnail.
These 8 thumbnails are still small, but I couldn’t get them much larger without going to 12 or 16 parts. You’d lose all sense of continuity the original chart has.
You’ll have to spend some time with it if you want to get through it carefully, but you’re welcome to it. I hope my effort was worth the trouble.
Full sized, click it to enlarge and read it as is.
A
Upper left – part A
B
Upper Middle left – part
(There’s slight overlap to help you get continuity.)
C
Upper Middle Right – part C
D
Upper Right – Part D
E
Lower Left – part E
F
Lower Middle Left – part F
G
Lower Middle Right – part G
H
Lower Right – part H
on 04 Apr 2011 at 7:43 am 1.Stephen Macquignon said …
Thank you for taking the time to put this on your site
on 04 Apr 2011 at 8:20 am 2.Don Cox said …
Great poster. Thanks.
The images would have been much sharper as GIFs rather than JPGs. I would have scanned as TIFFs and converted to GIFs.
on 04 Apr 2011 at 8:33 am 3.Dave Levy said …
I had this poster hanging, framed, in my last two apartments. My current place is too small and the poster is once again rolled up and tubed. I won it at one of our ASIFA-East auctions. It was donated by J. J. Sedelmaier. I love this poster!
on 04 Apr 2011 at 8:38 am 4.Bill said …
Hey Dave, that was once my poster, it went from me to J. J..
on 04 Apr 2011 at 12:52 pm 5.Eddie Fitzgerald said …
Uh oh! I can see I’m going to loose a couple of hours studying this. There goes my morning!
on 04 Apr 2011 at 2:53 pm 6.Dan said …
Great!! Thanks so much for sharing it!!
on 04 Apr 2011 at 6:24 pm 7.sean said …
I combined the larger scans into a pdf, printed out the 5×5 pages and am now happy to say we have our own re-creation of the original hanging up in the studio, thanks!
on 04 Apr 2011 at 6:59 pm 8.Michael said …
That makes me happy, Sean.
on 04 Apr 2011 at 9:35 pm 9.The Gee said …
While I have yet to look at it closely, if you have it saved as a PDF or as PDF files, Sean, maybe you could make them available to others?
I am not asking for myself but PDF alternatives to the images Michael generously provided might be of interest to other folks who didn’t consider trying to print the files.
Also, from what I understand, doesn’t the latest two versions of Photoshop have an “intelligent” image stitching feature. I know someone who does archival work and has used it with some success when dealing with scans of old broadsheets, maps and art. Supposedly it is often accurate and requires very little extra work.
And, I don’t mean to mention this after the fact, Mr. Sporn. I know what it is like to have to deal with oversized stuff and greatly appreciate you doing it and sharing it.
on 05 Apr 2011 at 6:14 am 10.Daniel said …
What a treasure! Going to have to make some time to go through this.
Thanks!
on 05 Apr 2011 at 10:09 am 11.Juan Bauty said …
Wowww O_O
on 06 Apr 2011 at 3:39 pm 12.Hobo Divine said …
Hello Michael,
Thank you so much for posting!
on 07 Apr 2011 at 1:46 pm 13.Steve Segal said …
Thank you so much for scanning, reconstructing and posting this. It looks very familiar. I think I studied this at the AFI in Washington when they held an animation retrospective around 1972.
on 07 Apr 2011 at 9:51 pm 14.The Gee said …
I’m a moron if I didn’t read this the first time:
There’s a full sheet version of it and I should have realized that upon reading the post. But, I goofed up. So suggesting something which already had been done….well, I’d chalk it up to Silly Rabbit Syndrome but I just didn’t read the post as thoroughly as needed. I automatically started trying to solve a problem which didn’t exist. enh.
Suffice it to say, apparently the last two versions of Photoshop do have some sort of stitching feature that is a time-saver….but aren’t all of those new features that pick money from your pockets marketed as time-savers?
on 27 Apr 2011 at 1:09 pm 15.Tyler Williams said …
Thanks for this Michael.
I just got finished recreating this poster in Illustrator, so I could print out a clean and crisp poster for my house.
I posted it at my blog. I have it as a 48in X 36in, 300 dpi JPEG, and i also have it in PDF.
Thanks for putting this up, lots and lots of info on that poster.