Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

- I received the following film in an email from Karl Cohen in San Francisco. Karl writes: “Alan Sperling is a former employee of Richard Williams when he had a studio in LA and has worked in SF for many years.”
In fact Alan also animated on Cool World, Toy Story, and Monsters Inc.

He did the following film, Scratch, for the Haitian relief effort and he’s just trying to get it seen by as many people as possible. So take a look, if you haven’t seen it as yet.

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- Recent posts about the internet toast the 50th birthday of the late Joe Ranft.

I think the most fitting tribute for this man will come later this year when John Canemaker‘s beautifully written and sensitive book, Two Guys Named Joe arrives in book stores. The stories of Joe Ranft and Joe Grant are detailed, elaborated and interrelated without an iota of sentimentality. This is a gorgeous and strong book and a magnificent tribute to both Ranft and Grant. It’s one of the best books in John’s canon. Look for it in August.

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Speaking of Joe Ranft, I saw a screening at MOMA last night of Waking Sleeping Beauty, a must for any animation enthusiast. It’s a fast paced intriguing story when all layed out. I’ll review the film later this week. I just wanted to mention that Joe Ranft was featured prominently (though never identified) throughout the film. He, obviously, was a big part of that period.

I also got to meet Tomm Moore, who sat in front of me, at the screening. I’m pleased to finally be able to put a face to The Secret of the Kells. I’ve seen the film twice and have a lot of respect for the enormous production he was able to pull off so successfully. It’s so hopeful for all of us independents to see the little guy with so tiny a distributor making such large waves.

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- Other sites talk about the press release this past week of Disney’s closing Imagemovers Digital, the company Robert Zemeckis used to make his last couple of MoCap features. This was hardly great news given the costs that those films absorbed. When the Jim Carrey Christmas Carol costs $174 million, it’s unlikely to return its investment. Ultimately, it will probably break even, but one wonders if the same financial “success” wouldn’t have been achieved using traditional animation. When Bolt costs $150 million and returns $114 from US receipts, it’s averaging about the same as the $50 million loss Christmas Carol currently shows. Beowulf had a $150 million budget and brought in $82 million.

It seems clear to me that the writing was on the wall. The wonder is that Disney still has the deal to release The Yellow Submarine. Undoubtedly that film will ignore the great graphics of the original to bring us a MoCap version of the four Beatles – in that wonderful Zemeckis “walking-dead” style. How much can that lose – and cost?

Remember, a bad movie is a bad movie, whether it’s traditionally animated like Treasure Planet or cgi like Space Chimps or MoCap like Beowulf. Disney’s not moving away from financing bad movies, they’re cutting costs on financial risks.

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- For those of you not living in New York, this is the kind of outdoor advertising Adult Swim uses to promote its wares.
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Almost as good as the shows themselves. 25% P’Toots.

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- Finally, I wanted to revisit something Amid Amidi posted on Cartoon Brew over the weekend. Brian Duffy wrote to me to introduce me to a couple of sites. As an enormous fan of optical toys, with a mini collection of non-authentic pieces of my own, I rushed to look at the wares on the site, the Richard Balzer collection. There, I loiotered for hours and have returned many times since first viewing them. Everyting from Praxinoscopes to Thaumatropes to Zoetropes are displayed in a stunning collection of artifacts in this wealthy collection. They also have a blog, dickbalzer.blogspot.com, which is demonstrating via flash videos how the pieces operate. I look forward to viewing some of the zoetrope animations and will continue to return for updated pieces. I love this stuff.

By the way, the toy zoetrope to the right is one I own, a giveaway from Wendy’s back in the ’90s.

- So, finally, we’ve reached the end of this magnificent Frank Thomas scene from The Brave Little Tailor. The other three parts can be found here: Part 1, Part 2, & Part 3.

Many thanks to friend, Lou Scarborough for the loan of the xerox copies so I could post the scene.

We start with the last drawing from Part 3.

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The following QT movie represents all 246 drawings of the scene.

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

- The last couple of weeks has brought some pretty unfriendly weather to the New York area. The blizzard of snow we had two weekends ago had barely been washed from our streets and backyards, when we were hit with 5 inches of drenching rains and 50 mph winds this weekend. It’s still ongoing.

All this is nature’s way of saying Spring’s in the air. To celebrate (and to look at something less angry than our current street scenes) I thought it’d be appropriate to post these photos my friend, Steve Fisher, shot at the Botanical Gardens. Always a haven, the gardens are located in the Bronx just across the street from the main entrance of the Bronx Zoo. Once inside everything changes, the atmosphere quiets down and nature takes its course. Take a look at these photos, and many thanks to Steve for sharing them.

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(Click any image you’d like to enlarge.)

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The short break is over. Now back to the intemperate weather.

- Here’s a secondary character from the Ub Iwerk’s Flip the Frog short, The Office Boy (1932). This was animated by Pete Burness. Milt Gross’ influence is obvious. The animation industry was smitten with him – for good reason.
There’s a wonderfully loose quality to the the run that was all but lost in later animation when things got sophisticated. Today, that loose quality is dead as a doornail.

(Click any image to enlarge.)

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The following QT movie represents the 20 frame cycle above on one’s.

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

- I’ve dedicated a number of posts to the artwork and cartoons of Rowland B. Wilson.
I have been a fan of his work for a very long time. Years before I had the opportunity of inbetweening on his Scholastic Rock designs at Phil Kimmelman & Associates which was back in the early ’70s.

Bill Peckmann and I seem to share a lot in appreciating a number of artists and their artwork. Rowland is high on the list. Bill has loaned many works for posting, and I’m certainly indebted to him for contributing all of these RBWilson pieces.

Here are more of the cartoons of Rowland B. Wilson, starting with a news article written about him for the Westport News.

(Click any image to enlarge.)

Let’s start with the New England Life advertisements. RBW did quite a few of them:

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We finish this post with some more Playboy cartoons:

It must have been a treat for Bill to see his name in this cartoon.

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Personalized, no less.

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- Richard Williams, as we all know, was the genius who single-handedly fostered the renaissance of animation in the 60s & 70s. His London studio became the center of animation when the Disney studio faltered for that period.

Or maybe we only know him as the author of that book, The Animator’s Survival Kit. That’s the book in which he has put his immense knowledge about the technique of animation, and there’s also his series of DVD lectures. Or maybe it’s the series of lectures and the companion book.

Recently released is the revised edition of the book which is at least 40 pages longer and includes a sample DVD to give an idea of his lecture series.

Both books are identical until page 339, the new book expands on the original. It talks about what Williams calls, “. . . the more difficult areas of animation,” such as animal action and gaits and offers suggestions on how to correctly use live action, to help push the medium further. (No mention is made of Motion Capture.) In fact, there’s a long piece comparing use of semi-realistic to cartoon animation.

The book says it’s for all types of animation from 2D to cg from puppet to highly rendered. However, to me, it feels more inclined to speak to the 2D drawing animator. I’m sure there are a lot of lessons the cg animator can and should take from the book, but I’m not sure how much use will be made of it.

Some of the lessons are excellent, but I wonder if others aren’t too sophisticated for those who will use the book to actually learn the craft. In fact, at first glance it looks like the Preston Blair book on acid, but Dick goes into a discussion about the Blair book and then builds on it, taking the material into a very complicated world. The delight is that Dick never sees his lessons as compicated, but moves straight on assuming we’ll all follow. The pages are hand lettered for the final 2/3 of the book, and this is particularly inviting for the artists out there. Howver, the drawings are dense with information and material and should not be confused with anything less than what they are. Richly informative.

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At first glance, the book looks like an update of the Preston Blair book, but
Dick takes on that point and builds from there leaving no doubt for the reader.

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The additions are literally added to the end. 40 odd pages that are devoted
to more compicated motion patterns or things Dick left out the his original book.

It’s quite a tool if you use it well. A course, in itself, within the 380 pages. Every dedicated animator should own one, and then they own it they should read it.

- Imagine you’re a kid in 1949 eating your Grape Nuts Flakes in the morning. You’re about to pour on the milk when you realize you’ve found the Flipbook that was included in the box. Would that start you on your way of wanting to become an animator? Would you just flip it and throw it out?

Back then the Walter Lantz studio had a promotion going where they gave a number of flipbooks free to consumers of the Post cereal.

The pages were double-sided. This side features Oswald the Rabbit blowing up his tire. The flip side has Andy Panda. Andy is in full color, whereas Oswald was just line work, so you know which one was still a “star” in 1949.

The registration wasn’t very good on the printed page, and I had to adjust a bit to make it work. The paper it was printed on is newsprint and delicate. The images in the thumbnail are about twice the size of the original.

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The following QT movie is exposed on 3′s to make the action work.

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

- The esteemed illustrator/cartoonist, Jack Davis, did some brilliant art and design work for animation when working for Phil Kimmelman and Ass. Bill Peckman sent me the following article from Squa Tront magazine, and he added a couple of illustrations Davis did for PK&A.

Here’s the article:

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(click any image to enlarge.)

Pages 2 & 3 made a double page spread that looked like this.
I’ve split it apart so the images would be larger in thumbnails.

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Some characters Davis did for a “Mrs. Smith Pies” ad.
All of the characters should be holding the product in hand.

A PK&A ad by Davis.

And, of course, the notable caricature by Davis of
Phil Kimmelman and his Associates for their print ad.
(As taken from the Funnyworld issue #18 – PK&A
regularly supported Mike Barrier’s magazine with their ads

- What more can I say. It’s arguably the greatest Mickey scene ever animated. Frank Thomas did it, and this is part 3 of the displayed drawings and developing QT pencil test. In case you can’t guess, it’s from The Brave Little Tailor. Many thanks to Louis Scarborough Jr. for the loan of the scene to post it.

Here are: Part 1,
Part 2

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The following QT movie represents all 183 drawings of the first 3 posts.
As more of the film is posted, I’ll add more of the scene to the QTs.

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

- There’s an advertising campaign for Diesel jeans that has filled the local train station (West 4th St, a major thoroughfare) and has gotten my goat. As a matter of fact, a number of other people have brought it up to me, so I know I’m not alone.

BE STUPID – that’s the campaign.
Immediately, you have to wonder what sort of jerk came up with it.

Next to the type a bunch of models are posed in moronic poses.
I guess it’s supposed to be creative.

A guy with a smoking helmet covering his head is very attractive.

Riding the rails.

This is the one that particularly annoys me.
How many creators out there like to think of themselves as stupid.
Perhaps the “creative” character that came up with this campaign.

Living in New York, you find at least some wit in the public.
That’s Sarah Palin stuck to poster.