Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

Eggs

-Tissa David animated the entire film for John & Faith Hubley. This short, as I said in previous posts, was done for PBS’ Great American Dream Machine for producer, Elinor Bunin. As Bob Blechman verified, they were given very little money and time to do an 8 min. short. The Hubleys gave life to the short by putting it on the theatrical and festival circuit.

Here’s a rough run cycle Tissa did for the Goddess of Fertility, who goes about inseminating the world with her seed. Tissa adds to its eccentricity with having the low point in the cycle the passing drawing. She comes up as each leg hits the ground.

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a “Goddess” run cycle from Eggs
On threes at 24FPS
Click left side of the black bar to play.
Right side to watch single frame.

- How tenuous everything is.
On Thursday a pitcher for the LAAngels was killed in a hit & run accident.
That night the same thing happened to a non-celebrated woman in Brooklyn.
You never know what you’re going to face when you get out of bed.

When you’re a kid, there’s a strong compulsion to chase after the speeding fire truck, with the loud sirens, the speed, the unique look of the hook & ladder.
When you get older, the fire trucks are just as compelling. However, I think the reason is for the tragedy playing out at the end of their mission.

Walking up Bleecker Street yesterday, early morning, you could see the flashing sirens, the multiple trucks and ambulances, the whirring lights. As I got closer to the scene it was obviously a fire in progress and a lot . . . I mean a lot of fire trucks and firemen.

I walked by on the other side of the street and took a rash of photos. It makes for a good Saturday post, so here are those pics.

From about half a block away, the buildup of fire trucks was overwhelming.
You could see a ladder going up to a building’s roof and
the lightest wisp of gray smoke coming out the top.

(Click any image to enlarge.)

Trucks even filled the neighboring cross streets for two full blocks.
There were a lot of firemen at work here.

The fire hydrant issuing water was a full city block away
from the building on fire.

As I got closer, the numbers of firemen increased.
They milled about and watched intently.
Some carried objects back to the trucks.

Two ladders shot up on separate streets to the corner building.

A quiet business continued as I moved past.

I got the sense that all was in order as many of the
fire workers went to their vehicles.

I left to go to work.

Hopefully no one was hurt or actually lost anything in the fire.

- Following up yesterday’s post, here’s a scene breakdown of the Popeye film With Poopdeck Pappy. This short’s a delight. Done in 1940, it has that textural beauty the Fleischer shorts seemed to inhabit during this short period from about 1937 – 1942.

Bill Nolan was the key animator (animation director) of the short with Winfield Hoskins (I’m not sure who he was) receiving the only other credit. Nolan was known for his incredible speed, so it’s quite possible he animated the lion’s share of this short.

(Click any image to enlarge.)

Pan from left to right.

Pappy walks up in perspective then across the screen
from left to right until he reaches the club.

I received this delightful note from Borge Ring:

dear michael ♫♫

You sometimes bring stuff on Popeye
There is a Popeye I like very much. It was animated by Bill Nolan in 1940 and the title is Poopdeck Pappy.
I stumbled on this short on internet and realised why Preston Blair had such a high opinion of Nolan.
Blair is quoted by – if I remember right – Charles Solomon in his book.

writes
Børge

So I ran back to the film (which I know very well.) I’ve made a lot of frame grabs and was going to do a sort of mosaic (without the information that a draft might give me), but it’s taking a lot of time.

Consequently, let me make a post of this brilliant walk. There are many of them in this film and lots of hilarious dances. It’s all so balletic and rhythmic. I urge you to listen to Børge, watch the film again. It’s an absolute beauty; this is my favorite period of Fleischer’s work.

Here’s Poopdeck Pappy’s jaunty walk:

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Poopdeck Pappy’s walk cycle
On ones at 24FPS
Click left side of the black bar to play.
Right side to watch single frame.

- John Canemaker knows that I love great children’s book art. He’ brought this book to my attention and loaned it to me to post some of its illustrations. Un Drago Troppo Solo (Only a Dragon Too) is a beautiful Italian children’s book written by Doris Diedrich and illustrated by Javier Zabala.

It’s the story of a bored boy who tames a dragon. The illustrations are right out the Abstract Expressionist handbook. Using collage, bits of tape, graph paper, splattered paint and strong expressive painting, the illustrations are distinctive and inspiring.

Here are a few of the book’s illustrations:

The front cover | the Title Page

(Click any image to enlarge.)

- Phil Duncan was a mainstay of the Hubley animators in all the time I was there.

You could tell who Hubley’s favorite animators by the frequency in which he doled out sequences to them. Whereas Tissa David or Bill Littlejohn or Barrie Nelson would have been asked to animate entire shorts by themselves, someone like Phil Duncan would get whole sequences to animate. At the same time, John so depended on Phil and trusted what he did.

There were never pencil tests at the Hubley studio. Only one instance of it do I remember, and that was on the Art Babbitt mime scenes from Carousel. As I said once before, I remember John running out to get me asking if I’d like to see animation as good as I’d ever see. We then watched the PT over and over together. Ultimately John took Art’s animation on twos and had me put it on four frame dissolves to get more screen time out of it. A budget was a budget and you had to make the most out of the excellence you had in your hand.

But as I mentioned yesterday, Phil would animate on odd numbers expecting the even numbers to be inbetweened. Most times, John asked me to reexpose the scene on fours and not do the inbetweens. Of course, Phil was aware this would happen and had planned on it.

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Here is a walk cycle (and more) by Phil Duncan from Of Men and Demons, which was nominated for the Oscar in 1969. The full scene includes the three demons walking and then flying up to their cave.

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(Click any image to enlarge to full animation paper view.)

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The rest of the scene breaks out of the walk cycle. I
enlarged the frames to accomodate the remainder of the action.

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“Demon” walk cycle from Of Men and Demons
On threes at 24FPS
Click left side of the black bar to play.
Right side to watch single frame.

- There’s an odd conversation going on at the Animation Guild Blog. It started out with the traditional CG vs hand drawn argument, then it morphed into who get the better salaries and the greater recognition.

Quite a few brilliant animators passed under the limelight and never got quite the credit they deserved for their long and dedicated work in the medium.

Phil Duncan certainly belongs in this
category. I never got to meet him while working at the Hubley studio, but I assisted many of his scenes, spoke with him and came to know his style well.
He worked for many years animating at the Disney studio, starting on Pinocchio and working his way up into the early 60s. He animated on Magoo’s 1001 Arabian Nights and Gay Purr-ee for UPA.

His work for Hubley began with The Cruise in
1966 and continued through many of the important films right up to John’s death in 1977. Phil’s work on Watership Down began with John Hubley and continued with Martin Rosen.

I got to assist many a scene Phil animated for shorts, commercials, Electric Company spots etc. I also followed him through many scenes on the feature, Everybody Rides The Carousel.

His style was so different from all the other animators I mentioned that it was a delight for me to work behind him. His line was always this great feminine stroke that featured plenty of arcs and curves. He usually left only one inbetween between drawings, and he knew that often enough John Hubley would say to put the scene on fours and not inbetween it. I remember breaking the news to Phil the first time I saw this happen. There was an ever-so-slight downturn in his voice, but it was obvious that he expected this to happen.

Believe me, he wasn’t the only animator who heard me break this news. The films were done on such a tight budget that every penny counted. It did give me some power, because I would judge the scenes to see if I felt there was any point that we couldn’t get away with it, and if that were the case I would inbetween it while inking the drawings. John didn’t need to know, and I worked quickly enough so that it didn’t cost him much more of my salary.

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(Click any image to enlarge.)

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Here are some drawings Phil did for the Toddler sequence from Everybody Rides the Carousel. Horse #2. The toddler can turn into a rabbit (meek) or a lion (daring.) Here she turns into a lion as she tries to dress herself with some help from her mother.

These are a couple of layouts by John Hubley.
Below, is a clean up that he sent to Phil Duncan of the mother’s head.

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Here’s the next scene’s animation before it underwent some changes.

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As you’ll notice from the frame grabs above, this sequence changed.
John wanted to go with the girl whose head, for a brief moment,
turns into the lion’s head. (Doubt) I did the change using most of
what Phil had on his original drawings.

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Note that on her hit down onto the floor #35, she turns back
into the toddler child before going back to the aggressive lion.

- Just one photograph today sent my by my friend, Steven Fisher. It made me think about the news story this week about the amount of garbage floating in space, thanks to man. Now that’s the peril of the week.

- After learning that Don Bluth et al were planning to do a film called “The Piper” prior to their working on Banjo: the Woodpile Cat, I wondered and assumed that it was probably The Pied Piper of Hamelin.

Many years ago as a child, I received a gift of a viewmaster projector, and it came with one title: The Pied Piper of Hamelin. Those slide shows usually came with a script that you could read along with each projected slide. I remember that this one came with the lengthy Browning poem. Reading it to myself, I loved it. So I memorized it (and still remember now some fifty years later.

I’ve always been attracted to versions of this story and often seek them out.

Errol Le Cain‘s illustrated a version of the poem, and here are some images from the book, The Pied Piper of Hamelin. It was first published in 1989 (the year he died). The book is an adaptation of Browning’s poem by Sara and Stephen Corrin.

(Click on any image to enlarge.)