Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

– The BAFTA nominations were announced on Tuesday. These werer the three British films that were nominated for best animated short in what is the equivalent of the British Oscar.

The Eagleman Stag by Michael Please

Matter Fisher by David Prosser

Thursday by Matthias Hoegg

We wish all three filmmakers luck and will look forward to the winner which will be awarded on February 13th.

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- For much of the time, William Benzon has analysed and discussed Disney and Nina Paley films on his website, the New Savannah. Today he looks at Porky in Wackyland, the psychotic Bob Clampett short film from 1938.

It’s a strong analysis which gives one pause. Lots to be said over such a zany short produced well ahead of its time. I found it interesting that Bill Benzon made no mention of Friz Freleng’s 1949 remake, Dough for the Do Do. No loss, since the remake is a sloppy second. Freleng just doesn’t have the juice that Clampett did 10 years prior.

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Michel Ocelot has his latest feature, Les contes de la nuit (Tales Of The Night) ready to make its world premiere at the Berlin Film Festival. This is a cgi animated film in 3D. He had another film with the same title done in 1992 which was done in conjunction with his students, and I wonder if the one has anything to do with the other. ____________________
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– I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that today is the birthday of Edgar Allan Poe. (I am doing a feature about the guy!) It’s his 200th anniversary – the BiCentennial.

The Poe Museum in Virginia is celebrating with all-day festivities.

There will be performances by “the world’s smallest Edgar Allan Poe and by two regular-sized Edgar Allan Poes. Be among the first to see the new exhibit “Poe Revealed” featuring the latest discoveries in Poe research. More information is coming soon. Cynthia Cirile will be speaking about her latest discoveries in the world of Poe research at 1 P.M. We will serve birthday cake at 3 P.M.”

In New York, we can make a pilgrimage to the Bronx to the Poe Cottage Museum. This was his last home prior to his death. They celebrated a day early with a reading by a Poe impersonator.

Or maybe just read about it on line. The Huffington Post, Time Out NY

- Last week, I posted some examples of Lyonel Feininger‘s comic strip art, panels from his 1906 strip for the Chicago Tribune, The Kin-der-kids.

As I pointed out, then, he left comic strips in 1906 and moved onto fine Art painting. This week, I’d like to look at the painting part of his early career.

Bill Peckmann has in his wonderful collection the brochures for two art exhibits that took place in the 80s. He’s sent me material from both brochures that I’d like to post here. The first was a show that took place at the Achim Moeller Fine Art Gallery in New York. Here is the NYTimes review for that show:

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Paris chimneys 1906

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Steam Train 1908

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Cover of second gallery brochure

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Cover of booklet for second gallery show.

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Title page

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Lyonel Feininger

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Haystacks 1907

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Steeple Behind Trees 1907

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Edge of the Wood, Lobbe 1907

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Arcueil I 1907

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The Proposal 1906

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Pedestrians 1908

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Carnival in Gelmeroda II 1909

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Small Blue Locomotive 1909

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Newspaper Readers 1909

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Carnival in Arcueil 1911

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Velocipedists 1910

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Still Life 1912

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Bridge O 1912

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Newspaper Readers II 1916

Many thanks to Bill Peckmann for this material.

Next week examples of Wee Willie Winkie

- Continuing with the drafts I have from Raggedy Ann & Andy, I give you sequence 3.1, 3.2 & 3.3.

The animators employed are: Hal Ambro, Sencer Peel, Dick Williams, Charlie Downs, Tissa David, John Bruno, Jack Schnerk, Chrystal (Russell) Klabunde, Gerry Chiniquy, Doug Crane, and Willis Pyle.

Dick Williams did most of the cleanup of this sequence himself. He was particularly interested in the character of “Babette” which Hal Ambro animated. Dick reworked every one of those scenes while doing CU & Inbts. I’ve posted a model sheet of Babette from one of the scenes in this sequence.

For those of you who’d rather see artwork than charts, I give you another of Corny Cole’s oversized stunning bits of preliminary artwork for Tissa David‘s sequence, the deep dark woods.

“Babette”

“In the deep, dark woods.”

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Here’s a recap of one of my favorite pieces. For some reason, I get turned on by every one of these stills. Perhaps because they were printed in the Halas book which was seminal to my education about animation when I was a child – I think I had the book on permanent loan from my local library. Whatever the reason, I love looking at these pictures.

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- I enjoy thumbing through the Art Director’s Annuals. There’s a lot of amazing illustration to view with plenty of ideas and sharp graphics on display. I have, as a good example of these hard-covered catalogues, the 1957 issue. 90% of the book is composed of illustration in the different advertising fields. A small section is devoted to TV spots and illustration. Naturally, I have a strong interest in this section.

Editorial Art, Advertising Art and Television Art all get their chapters.
Here is a pictoral list of the winners in animation for the TV commercials awards in 1957. A number of these spots have remained familiar (at least as images in old animation books – like Halas’ Technique of Film Animation.)

The biggest prize went to John Hubley’s Maypo commercial.

Storyboard Inc. – producer
John Hubley – Director & Art Director
Emery Hawkins – animator

Ford commercial
Playhouse Pictures – producer
Bill Melendez – director
Sterling Sturtevant – Art Director
Bill Littlejohn – animator

Jello
Ray Patin Productions – producer
Sonia Linker – Art Director
Maurice Sendak – artist

Maxwell House
Audio Productions Inc. – producer
Jerome Kuhl – artist

Piels Brothers Beer
UPA – producer
Jack Sidebotham – art director
Chris Ishii – designer

5 Day Deoderant
Storyboard Inc – producer
John Hubley – art director
Art Babbitt – animator

Jello Baby
Ray Patin Productions – producer
Ruchard Vab Benthem – artist
Ken Champin – photographer

Lorna Doone
Bill Sturm Studio
Frank Broadhurst – art director

The Lion and the Mouse – Prudential
Storyboard Inc. – producer
John Hubley – director
Art Babbitt & Emery Hawkins – animation

Coors Beer
UPA – producer
Jules Engel – director
Fred Crippen – art director

Scott Paper Co.
UPA – producer
Jack Goodford – art director
Grim Natwick, Sam Wiggenhorn – animators

Donahue Sales Corp.
UPA – producer
Jack Goodford, Chris Ishii – art directors
Cliff Roberts – animator

- I’ve been somewhat surprised by the number of people who came out of the woodwork to tell me that they liked seeing these Sad Sack posts. Most of those who commented to me are middle aged; I assume they remember the strip fondly or the War or something, but they liked what they saw. I hope younger fans can still enjoy the interesting pen and ink lines if not the jokes. There were no comments on the posts but the emails and casual comments in conversation leads me to believe they’ve been popular posts.

So, here’s part 3. This was all started by Bill Peckmann who sent me scans from a book he’s owned. I was interested enough to track down the book and scanned them, myself. Thanks to Bill for reminding me about George Baker’s soldier.

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- It’s been a while since I posted more of Albert Hurter‘s magnificent book, He Drew As He Pleased (Simon and Schuster, 1948.) This gem is a rare book, indeed.

Albert Hurter was one of the European illustrators Disney brought into his studio for Snow White and Pinocchio. Hurter was the his own master, drawing designs which would be used generally to further the design of the features and Silly Symphonies.

He truly shaped the design of those early features, and his constant reference to features which didn’t get made until generations later, such as Peter Pan, indicate that there was some influence he had on those films, as well. Just look at all the ownderful pirates in this installment.

Many thanks to Bill Peckmann for the loan of the book’s pages and the arduous task of scanning these illustrations.

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“Here we go again.”
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“Notes on transportation.”
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“PeterPan . . . suggestions for Captain Hook’s Buccaneers.”
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“Including a few even Peter Pan never saw.”
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“Pencil Wanderings”
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“Assorted trolls.”
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“Senility can be fun.”
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“Tame ones.”
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“Wicked ones.”
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“And a few fancy pups.”

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To see past parts of this book go here:
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4

- On Tuesday night, John Canemaker, Joe Kennedy, with Heidi and I escorted Tissa David to a fine Italian restaurant a block away from her apartment and celebrated her recent 90th Birthday.

The evening was a real treat for me, and we all seemed to settle back to some great conversation and an enjoyable evening. Joe Kennedy was prescient enough to bring his camera, and we shot some photos. I’m not usually inclined to post such pictures, but Tissa’s 90th was important enough to me that I thought I’d share them. So here, to bore you out of your minds, are the photos of that mini event.

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Here we all are, gathered from L to R: Heidi Stallings, me,
Tissa David, John Canemaker, Joe Kennedy.

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Tissas and I in conversation when we’re supposed to be posing.

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Tissa and John.

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Joe was snapping the picture.

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The cake

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The lady of the night. It turns out that Tissa isn’t able to eat chocolate.
We ordered some vanilla ice cream, which she loved, and the rest of us
gobbled down the chocolate butter cream cake.

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The latest blizzard had begun as we walked Tissa home.
This was my favorite photo of the evening.

Many thanks to Joe Kennedy for sharing the pictures.

- Here are the LayOuts by John Hubley for the Electric Company piece, Cool Pool Fool. Tissa David animated from these layouts and the verbal instructions from John.

A couple of drawings are missing #7 and #18

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Here are some frame grabs from the spot. They’ve been severely touched up in photoshop since the video has lost all color and is almost unwatchable except as a silhouette film. I’ve reconstructed the colors as near as I can remember them. At any rate, the purpose of these grabs is for you to see what Tissa has done with John’s layouts.

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- Lyonel Feininger was most famously known for his artwork done in Germany as part of the German Expressionist movement. Interestingly enough, he didn’t start his serious art until the age of 36. Born in the United States in 1871, he created two early comic strips which were commissioned by the Chicago Tribune in 1906. They were trying to compete with the best strips of the day and chose to look to their own German-American community. The Kin-der-Kids and Wee Willie Winkie’s World. Both strips stand up with the best of Winsor McCay’s comic strips and, in some ways, is even more graphically daring than McCay.

Bill Peckmann has loaned me an excellent book collecting the strips of Feininger. In this first post, I’ve selected some samples of The Kin-der-Kids strip.

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The paper started the strip off with a big bang.

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A detailed introduction to all the characters.

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To give an idea of Feininger’s art after the comic strips, I’ve culled these few images of his paintings from various sites.

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Oil on canvas

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Oil on canvas

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Watercolor

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Oil on canvas

- I received a request to post the drafts to Raggedy Ann & Andy. I’ll post all that I have. These come from a second and more complete group. The format changed from the traditional Disney formula (8½ x 14 vertical) to this (8½ x 14 horizontal). There’s much more info here.

However, let’s start with a great Corny Cole drawing of the Greedy, a breathing, living taffy pit. Done on 16×17 drawing paper, punched, with a BIC pen.

The Drafts – seq. 2.1 The dolls come to life

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seq. 2.2 – Big news

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