Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

I found this tiny piece of information in the current edition of “Kidscreen” (Sept 2011):

The science of animating emotions like elation, anger and
jealousy just got a little more exact. Disney has teamed up
with Carnegie Mellon University to develop a process for
animating the most expressive faces yet.

Using motion-capture footage that pinpoints and subdivides
key facial regions to build a full 3D model, it’s now possible to
alter just one part of an expression—say, a raised eyebrow—
instead of having to manipulate the whole face.

Duh!
Isn’t this something that 2D animation has been doing since “Steamboat Willie”? At least! Now that I think of it, there’s a scene in “Plane Crazy” that does it. It probably goes back to J.R. Bray . . . on second thought, I take that back. Bray’s films were more limited than H&B. But then, you could always raise an eyebrow in limited animation, couldn’t you. What a pathetic conversation. What happened to “animation”?

If you want to see a good example of different parts of the face moving on their own, and done to the point of brilliance, try watching this pencil test of a scene by Milt Kahl of Sher Khan. A great piece of acting, artistry, and technique combining to make something one has to watch several times just to get past the sheer power of the animation. The above illustration comes from a PT posted on Vimeo by Jamaal Bradley.
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As a matter of fact, you could watch any Milt Kahl scene, or Frank Thomas scene or Tissa David scene or Ed Smith scene or . . .
just watch any professional scene done in 2D animation.

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- J.J. Sedelmaier has another fine article on the Imprint blog. It’s the start-to-finish breakdown of a spot designed by New Yorker cartoonist, George Booth.
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- As I wrote earlier this week, the Motion Picture Academy will present a program of Hubley films on Monday, October 10th. John Canemaker, together with Emily Hubley, has arranged an incredible show with beautiful prints. It’s also not the usual Hubley fare, with its focus on the early John Hubley, and there will be lots of surprises.

The photo, above, was in the invitation sent to me (no doubt from John Canemaker’s collection), and the information below, comes from the AMPAS magazine:

MONDAY NIGHTS WITH OSCAR PRESENTS
AN ACADEMY SALUTE TO JOHN HUBLEY

Hosted by Academy Award-winning animator John Canemaker (“The Moon and the Son: An Imagined Conversation”). Co-curated by filmmaker Emily Hubley.
.The Academy celebrates one of animation’s most innovative and influential designer-directors, John Hubley, with a special evening featuring rarely seen films and an illustrated look at his life and his art.
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Hubley (1914-1977) is known primarily for two decades of film collaborations with his wife, Faith Elliott Hubley. The couple, who opened their studio in 1955, focused their animated films on such serious subject matter as the death and rebirth of the creative process, children’s awareness of their place in the world, the Cold War, overpopulation and nuclear annihilation. The resulting innovative work garnered many awards, including three Oscars (for “Moonbird,” “The Hole” and “Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass Double Feature”).
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Their impressive body of work was, however, a second blossoming of the career and life of John Hubley, who had already personified new directions in animation and a rebellion against traditional Disney studio style and content.
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During this evening celebrating Hubley’s profound and continuing impact on the art and industry of animation, Canemaker will trace Hubley’s early training and contemporary art influences, his art direction on “Pinocchio” and “Fantasia,” his involvement with the infamous 1941 strike at the Disney studio, and his innovative designs and direction in World War II training films and at the great modernist studio UPA. Canemaker will be joined onstage by one of Hubley’s daughters, Emily Hubley, and Michael Sporn, who worked closely with both John and Faith.
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Films that will be shown have been generously provided by the Hubley family, the Museum of Modern Art, Sony Pictures and the Academy Film Archive.___________________.

Monday, October 10 7 p.m.
Academy Theater at Lighthouse International
111 East 59th Street (between Park and Lexington Avenues), New York City
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Tickets:
$5 general admission/ $3 Academy members and students with a valid ID.
On sale now at oscars.org, by mail (form available on oscars.org) and at the door (subject to availability).
Box Office opens at 5 p.m. on night of the event. Doors open at 6:30 p.m.
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For more information, call (212)821-9251 or e-mail ampasny@oscars.org.

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- James Gurney on his blog, painter and author/illustrator of the Dinotopia books, got his start doing backgrounds on Bakshi’s Fire and Ice with Thomas Kinkade. He’s doing a whole series of posts on it on his blog, Gurney Journey. It’s well worth your visiting his site.

Part 4 with links to other parts.

Many thanks to Pat Rock for leading us to the link.

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- Thanks to Greg Kelly for passing this link onto us. It’s for an issue of China’s Modern Sketch magazine. It’s published by MIT’s Visualizing Cultures, a unique website.

Essentially, this magazine is a Chinese edition of cartoons and cartoon art from 1934-1937.

As written in the post: “Published in Shanghai monthly from January 1934 to June 1937, Modern Sketch conveyed a range of political and social commentary through lively and sophisticated graphics. Topics included eroticized women, foreign aggression —particularly the rise of fascism in Europe and militarized Japan, domestic politics and exploitation, and modernity-at-large as envisioned through both the cosmopolitan “Modern Girl/Modern Boy” and the modernist grotesque.”

Much of this work is beautiful and worth spending some time poring over.

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- William Benzon, on his site New Savannah, has more to say about Fantasia. The current piece is about Bill Tytla’s Chernobog in the Night On Bald Mountain segment. Beautiful images and a good read. Bill wrote me about it:
“Now I¹ve gone and done it. On the strength of Tytla¹s work I¹ve compared this segment to Milton and Shakespeare. However, since my literary critic¹s license has already been revoked (actully, I tore it up myself), they can¹t take it away from me again.”

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The photoshopped ad.

The original ad.

- Finally, here’s an ad that was posted on Boing Boing this week. Who knows when it was published or how Cory Doctorow discovered it, but it sure speaks to the power of language and how whimsically time deals with it.

That’s what my original post read. However, David Gerstein, in the comic section of this post, directed me to the actual ad before the photoshopped version of it appeared on Boing Boing. Nothing’s really what it seems on the internet.

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