Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

- Here are more of the stunning pre-production watercolors Rowland B. Wilson did for The Hunchback of Notre Dame while working at Disney. (Last week’s post can be found here.)

This group of images is labelled, “The Siege” and concerns itself with the climax of the film where the people storm Notre Dame Cathedral and Quasimodo pours oil on them. These pictures are so beautiful (and large) that I can’t help but split them up so you can see some of the closeup detail.

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Now this is a Hunchback I could love.

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These two character designs look like they were influenced
by Richard Williams’ “Cobbler & the Thief.” Since Rowland worked
with Dick in London, it’s possible.

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Errol Le Cain by way of Rowland B. Wilson. Beautiful.

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At first I wasn’t sure which end was up on this image.
It might be correctly viewed counter-clockwise.
However, the label in the lower left should be the lower left.

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Many thanks to Bill Peckmann for the generous loan of this material.

Next week Hercules.

- This is the completion of the post I started yesterday. A large number of sketches by Marc Davis which he drew and painted for “The Pirates of the Caribbean” Disneyland exhibit were printed in a souvenir booklet which was originally distributed at the parks. Bill Peckman saved that original book and has shared these illustrations with me, and consequently with you. I’m a fan of Davis’ work and am pleased to present these. Thank you, Bill.

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Marc Davis at his drawing table.

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A lot of photos of the actual ride are part of the article,
but I’ve stuck predominantly with Marc Davis’ illustrations.

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Marc Davis illustrated a “Pirates of the Caribbean” souvenir paperback book for Disneyland. Bill Peckmann, naturally, saved his copy of the book and has forwarded these illustrations from the book. I’m a fan of Davis’ work, so love sharing them with you.

Davis did quite a few illustrations for this ride and others of them can be found here and here.

More thanks to Bill Peckmann.

The wrap-around book cover.

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I still have another whole post of these drawings and will put the m up tomorrow.

- Here I’ve taken 8 frames from Bill Tytla‘s delightful run and worked it into a cycle. Tytla continues the run but doesn’t make a cycle of it – he keeps coming up with new stuff, naturally. I found it enlightening to work on it.

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The following QT represents the drawings above exposed on two’s. This appears to be the way Tytla exposed it in the film.

Click left side of the black bar to play.
Right side to watch single frame.

Don’t forget that Hans Perk has posted the drafts for Dumbo, and this has led Mark Mayerson to post a brilliant Mosaic for the film.

- John Canemaker has a new article about Milt Gross for his monthly piece at Print Magazine‘s website. Essentially, it’s a loving piece reviewing the new collection of The Complete Milt Gross which was edited by Craig Yoe.

I’ve long loved Milt Gross’ work and have closely studied the MGM shorts he did. They don’t quite capture the zaniness of the comic strip work, but he was obviously an inspiration for so much of the animation that was done in Hollywood back then.

Wouldn’t it be interesting if some people found inspiration in his work today and applied it to their animation artwork. Something other than the endlessly angular characters that we’re force-fed these days!

- Speaking of John Canemaker, he’s just loaned me a Ward Kimball scene from Peter and the Wolf. It’s about 500 drawings long, and will take me forever, but I’m going to start posting it next week. The walk cycle of all walk cycles. Something to look forward to (endless scanning and downloading), a great piece of animation to study.

The image above is a good sample.

Mars: SXSW will be playing tonight at the Brooklyn Academy of Music Cinemafest in NYC at 9:30 PM. There will be one show only. Filmmaker, Geoff Marslett will be there along with several cast and crew!

The film is a completely rotoscoped space adventure done by the guy who gave us Monkey vs. Robot and Bubblecraft.

For a trailer go here.

- Recently, I posted a calendar by Wallace Tripp, and the response was strong. So, Bill Peckmann sent me his collection of greeting cards by Tripp, the earliest of which goes back to 1973, and I’m posting those here. (I’ll also have another calendar of his to post later in the week.)

Each and every card is a gem. I still say it’s a wonder that he didn’t work for an animation company designing characters. The guy was a brilliant draftsman, watercolorist and illustrator.

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This is the oldest of the cards.

By the way, take a look at the Tripp Family Archives site.

Hans Perk is posting a series of lectures on Layout. In August 2006 I posted the notes for the Disney afterhours lectures. To coincide with Hans, I’m recapping those notes.

- As noted yesterday, I am missing the notes to Lecture #2 of this Layout Course. - Hans Perk on his site, A Film LA, has posted the Ken Andersen LayOut Training Course from the Disney studio Nov, 1936.

Here’s the a fourth lecture that Phil Dike gave on May, 1936; it was called a “General Discussion”. Unfortunately, two of its pages were copied off kilter, pgs. 8 & 9. The copies here come courtesy of Hans Perk.

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- Bill Peckmann has sent me an incredible cache of photostats. These are watercolor paintings Rowland B. Wilson did while working for Disney. There are two groups of paintings: one for The Hunchback of Notre Dame, one for Hercules.

These were all inspirational sketches, and they’re all extremely long. Consequently, I’m posting them in batches. The first comes from Hunchback, and I’ll post the full sized image, then break each down into a couple of parts so that you can appreciate the incredible detail Rowland did in these things.

I hope you enjoy them.

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More of the Hunchback paintings to come next week.

Many many thanks to Bill Peckmann for sharing these glorious images.

Quay Brothers Commissioned to Create Film about Philadelphia’s Mutter Museum

Stephen ’69 (Film) and Timothy ’69 (Illustration) Quay – the internationally recognized Quay Brothers - have been commissioned by Philadelphia’s Mutter Museum to create a film about its collection of anatomical and pathological specimens, medical instruments and apparatus, and memorabilia of famous scientists and physicians.

Rosenwald-Wolf Gallery Exhibition coordinator Edward Waisnis, through his Pro Bono Films production company, will produce the film. University Liberal Arts Master Lecturer David Spolum is co-writing the script and conducting related research. Filming begins this summer and the premiere is slated for next spring.

Project funding has been provided by the Pew Charitable Trusts, administered through the Pew Center for Arts & Heritage.
Thanks for the tip to Tom Hachtman

Stephen Hartley Blog

- A new blog hit the jet stream today. The very young, Stephen Hartley has fashioned a new blog so he can comment on animation history. Called blabbing on arts and culture, (a big title) it begins today with some thoughts on Tom and Jerry. Worth seeing what comes of it given some of the comments Stephen has made on my site as well as others like Mark Mayerson’s and Hans Perk’s.

George Griffin of View at Biennial

- George Griffin has been featured in the Santa Fe Eighth International Biennial Exhibition with a piece called Viewmaster. It can be viewed here.

Viewmaster was a film George made in 1978. It features a wild series of art/cartoon characters chasing each other as the camera pans slowly past them all. When it returns back to the first on screen runner, it cuts back to the full view of the “Viewmaster”-like mutoscope with all of the characters running around the border. It doesn’t sound it, but the film is powerful. I think this is George’s work at its peak. As a matter of fact, after seeing the film back in ’78, I bought a 16mm print from George. (This was before the VHS/DVD days.) I had to own a copy.

That same full screen “Viewmaster” is on display animated at the site of the Biennial exhibition. You can also view many other pieces by artists such as William Kentridge, Robert Breer, Cindy Sherman, and Dziga Vertov.
Congratulations to George for being in such esteemed company.

View it.

Hans Perk is posting a series of lectures on Layout. In August 2006 I posted the notes for the Disney afterhours lectures. To coincide with Hans, I’m recapping those notes.

- The following is the Disney Layout Training Course’s 3rd meeting. Charles Philippi gave the lecture, and it’s a good one. It’s all about pans. (I posted the first lecture and don’t have the second. One is missing.)

There was a time when I was working for John Hubley on Everybody Rides The Carousel where he had asked me to design a background and setup for a package to be sent out, that day, to Bill Littlejohn for animation. Fortunately, I had just read these notes the day before, and I used what I’d learned. Hubley gave me a nice compliment, and I gave it all to Charles Philippi.

Littlejohn, by the way, did one of my favorite scenes of the entire time I was at that studio. I have the large number of drawings and will someday post some of them. Beautiful animation.

This Layout course is some 18 pages long. Since that’s a job to post all 18, I’m going to break it up into two days. Tomorrow the last half will be posted.

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