Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

- Michael Barrier responded negatively to my comments on Don Bluth’s Banjo the Woodpile Cat. I thought to write a letter to Mike in comment, but decided it’d be more fun for me to post my response to his response here.

Let me break this down into two parts. The first addresses the funding of new animated projects.

In my post, I said, “My only sadness is that the Bluth studio isn’t moving forward with more features . . . I wish he could engender the cash to continue on with the medium.”

To that, Mike said, “I couldn’t disagree more. Bluth is for me a white-bread Ralph Bakshi, someone who sucked up money that should have gone to other people, then used it to make terrible features that tanked at the box office and ultimately made it more difficult for good films to get made. If Bluth is finally on the sidelines, that’s cause for rejoicing. I hope he stays there.”

There’s an old saying within film circles: Any publicity is good publicity. That means getting a lashing from the critics is, in many ways, just as good as getting a rave. The idea is to get your name out there and to be noticed.

The same, in my mind, goes for animated films. The more the merrier. Just because a film or three fails doesn’t mean financing will dry up for everyone. Despite the obvious thought behind it, that’s a logic that has no real bearing on what happens within the film industry. There being a small number of animated features is what makes it more difficult. When a type of film is a rarity, it’s unlikely money people are going to trust another with their money. Make animated features commonplace, and it’s more likely money will come. As a matter of fact, another dozen features would make things easier.

Given the state of 2D feature animation today, a Bluth film would be a gem in comparison to what’s out there. Somehow I can’t pin my hopes on Bye-Bye Bin Laden, now showing at the South Beach Film Festival. Who knows? Maybe it’s good, but for some reason my expectations aren’t high. It’s obviously a flash film chock full of stupid jokes, but it’ll do nothing to advance the medium AT ALL. Don Bluth’s attempt to do full and high character animation will advance it – if only to develop new and trained animators.

After Titan AE, the Bluth studio closed, but Fox turned to others that they’d used to help finish the film. That studio became what is today Blue Sky, employing lots of cg animators doing markedly different work from those on the West coast. To me that was a positive (regardless of whether I like Bluth OR Blue Sky.) There’s another studio out there generating lots of money for animated films.

Does it help the medium? If you’re just talking about getting more animation funded, then yes it does. Maybe one of these films will be good.

The second point has to do with what furthers the medium as far as quality is concerned.

This is a tough one to respond to considering how negative I am toward most current animation.

As opposed to the days when Don Bluth made Anastasia and Disney did Treasure Planet, we’re now living in an age of cgi animation. The best Hollywood theatrical features are predominantly cg.

Madagascar 6, Toy Story 5, Shrek 12, and Ice Age 9 aren’t going to advance the medium any more than that original Toy Story did. That film showed executives who originally didn’t even invest in collateral marketing (no dolls, no Woody Big Macs, no coloring books), that they could make a bundle from this new medium. They’d made an error in not supporting that film and had to make amends. Once you had the characters rigged, how easy it would be to do follow up films. Why waste time drawing all those cows for Home on the Range. Nickelodeon jumped in with Barnyard‘s ugly cg cows that were horrible in the film and no better in the series. But hey, they made money. Isn’t that what it’s all about?

Sorry Mike, gone FOREVER are the days of Snow White and Dumbo. Cinderella and Alice in Wonderland are gone. Even 101 Dalmatians and Jungle Book are gone. Hell, even Hunchback of Notre Dame and Treasure Planet are gone.

Today’s features are Hoodwinked and Delgo, Roadside Romeo and Space Chimps, TMNT and Valiant. Had enough or should I mention Everyone’s Hero and Igor?

Happy Feet and Bolt were nominated for Oscars. So was Jimmy Neutron. The medium isn’t even medium any more; it’s in minor mode. Dreamworks is on automatic pilot with their rowdy movies; Disney is trying to find itself, and Pixar keeps thinking they’re pushing the envelope. I know, let’s put it in 3D so they can charge more and promote a higher opening gross!

If we’re just talking in the abstract, you’re right. The soft animation in the Bluth films is not good animation. But in reality is it any worse than the last half dozen 2D features you saw? Should someone who literally, like the “white bread Bakshi,” kept the medium alive in a fallow period of The Black Cauldron and Basil of Baker Street? We no longer have Milt Kahl, John Lounsbery or Frank Thomas. No Hal Ambro, John Sibley or a dozen other greats to animate the featurees. John Pomeroy and other younger animators are what we have today, and constructive criticism might help turn their styles a bit. Saying they shouldn’t work again is kind of crazy.

Independent animation may be the place to watch. The only hope isn’t in the development of the character movement but the development of the themes. The flash animated (meaning limited animation) Waltz with Bashir made headlines and a little money; the flash animated Sita Sings the Blues (which couldn’t even get a release) gathered the attention and showed what could be done with a story. Persepolis was a bit fuller animation, but the story was the film. No improvement in animation technique, but good words for animated films. Bill Plympton has been producing features for years. There’s some real and personal animation in there, even if I’m not the ideal audience for his films. And don’t forget The Triplettes of Belleville. They really tried something AND made some money for their low budget effort.

There’s hope, but not much. No studio is doing anything of note with 2D animation, and the medium isn’t growing except in the hearts of a handful. CG is in the early stages of developement, and who knows where they’ll land.

I was all over the place, and I don’t think I completely answered Mike’s thoughts. I do know I disagree with what he’s saying in his recent post. I usually agree with what he has to say. I agree with that review of Treasure Planet, for example. However when he tells me that someone with the background of Don Bluth shouldn’t be making more films I can’t agree. When he says The Polar Express is good, I have to disagree. All I can see is that it inspires lazy film makers like Robert Zemeckis to do more. Beowulf anybody? How about Jim Carrey in The Christmas Carol? Yet I won’t say Zemeckis should stop making movies, because I know he’ll get the ball rolling for a few more. Maybe one of them will be good.

Where’s Mr. Magoo when you need him?

- Yesterday’s NYTimes featured an article about the forthcoming Walt Disney Family Museum to open in October in San Francisco. Former deputy director of the Harvard University Art Museums, Richard Benefield, will run the Museum. It’d be nice if a genuine animation historian were somehow involved.

I enjoyed seeing the reason Diane Disney Miller gave for feeling the necessity of the museum. A 1994 biography by Marc Eliot, “Walt Disney: Hollywood’s Dark Prince,” that depicted him as a bigot angered her. Neal Gabler’s book, “Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination,” also upset her. That book gave an unflattering picture of Disney’s marriage, despite the fact that the family opened all their records to Gabler.

Ms. Miller also feels that the “Empire” has passed Walt over as a person in their attempt to globally brand the Disney name. Reportedly, this comment has confused the directors of studio Disney. After all, “. . . the company recently issued collectible figurines in his likeness and runs a fan club and magazine dedicated to him.”

Diane Disney Miller hopes the museum will portray a complete picture of her father, offering positive as well as not-so-positive material to the public. The museum will include, for example, a video about Disney’s friendly testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1947 and acknowledge the bitter animators’ strike in 1941.

Too bad the SF Chronicle won’t be around to give us a good report on the opening. Regardless, I’ll have to schedule a trip to the city to see this site once it opens. In the meantime, the Museum’s site is already up and running offering some bits of information and an operating book store (which doesn’t sell Gabler’s book, but does offer numerous John Canemaker tomes.)

- April 4th through May 9 Paul Glabicki will have a solo show in NYC at the Kim Foster Gallery, 529 West 20th St. in NYC.

Paul is a friend who came up through the film world at about the same time as I. His interest was always more into the experimental, Independent film, and his work was always exquisitely detailed and complex films. We often found each other at the same festivals in differing categories.

I received some information about his upcoming show, and I’m posting some of the information and statements that were sent me by the gallery.

Paul Glabicki is an experimental film animator whose work has appeared at major film festivals, as well as national and international museum exhibitions. His animation work has been carefully crafted by means of thousands of meticulous hand-drawn images on paper. His films have screened at such prestigious sites as the New York Film Festival at Lincoln Center, the Cannes Film Festival, the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of Art in New York, and the Venice Biennale. He has received numerous awards, grants, and fellowships, including a Guggenheim Fellowship. Grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Amencan Film Institute, and several grants from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts.

His new drawing series titled “ACCOUNTING for…” began with a Japanese artifact acquired by the artist several years ago: an accounting ledger book dating from the 1930s.

The relentless record keeping, the beauty of the mark-making, musings about its contents and purpose, the fact that it survived and came into his possession, the patterns that emerged when the book was carefully taken apart and arranged on a wall, the suggestion (by changes in the writing style) that more than one person made the marks, and other thoughts, images, and responses grew out of the artist’s interaction with the book.

Paul was interested in the book as a found personal, temporal object imbedded with meaning, function and mystery. Most intriguing to him was the fact that it made a leap from past to present written day-by-day; month-by-month, entry-by-entry, mundane and utilitarian (not intended to be an aesthetic object), recorded in time, and revealing patterns and rhythm over the duration of its writing.

The opening reception is Saturday April 4th 6-8pm.

You can see a 10 min short by Paul, Object Coverstion, on YouTube here.

- Banjo the Woodpile Cat first aired on ABC on May 1, 1982, and that’s the first time I actually got to see the film. As I stated yesterday, there was a long wait for this one and a lot of hope and excitement in anticipation.

(Click any image to enlarge.)

The film wasn’t all that I’d anticipated. I had real problems with the story, however the animation was so much better than what we were used to seeing that it was obvious that better things were coming.

The story seemed to be little more than a bunch of vignettes hung together by the weakest of threads. A frustrated kitten heads out for the road and gets lost. An older cat, excellently voiced by Scatman Crouthers, helps him out, and he returns home.

The film is tied together by some poor songs which accent any hokeyness the film has in its underbelly.

The quality of the animation was feature theatrical in nature and was at least equal to the animation that was coming out of the Disney studio.

I had been bothered by the poor and shallow short, The Small One. All style had left the films and the music by Robert Brunner (who also scored Banjo) was too popular and without the heft that that story needed. The movement, I think, was certainly not up to the quality of Banjo.

That same year, The Secret of Nimh was released. This was a solid meal from the Bluth people. They had jumped from something so mediocre in Banjo, to something far superior to anything that Disney had done since The Sword in the Stone.. It was obvious that Banjo was a primer – an exercise to move the fledgling studio forward, and it was a success. A new competitor was born.

Now a DVD has been released of Banjo the Woodpile Cat, and it comes with a number of extra documentaries. As a piece of history, this is a must-have for animation enthusiasts. It was the stepping stone to something that moved animation forward. Without those industrious people at Bluth’s studio, the small rebirth of animation in the 90s wouldn’t have happened. The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast et al are all the outgrowth of these steps taken by that rebellious group.

It was a hard move for them to have made, but they did so knowing full well that they were right. The end results have confirmed it.

My only sadness is the the Bluth studio isn’t moving forward with more features. I’m sure it’s difficult in these 3D days, and the energy required is for the young, but I wish he could engender the cash to continue on with the medium.

Don Bluth and his partners and studio deserve a couple of books to properly place them in animation history. You can be sure that I’ll have more to say on the subject soon.
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All images come from the dvd and are
copyright © 2009 Don Bluth Films, All Rights Reserved.

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- Recently on the DVD market is the high quality version of Banjo, the Woodpile Cat. This film merits some attention as being a link from the stasis of animation in the 70s to the somewhat Golden period in the early 80s.

A small group of people, who were employed in the Disney animation system, began meeting after hours and weekends to develop their own talents to a greater extent than they felt they were achieving within the confines of the Disney system.

Led by Don Bluth, Gary Goldman and John Pomeroy, this small ever-mutating group connected with animation exercises for a film called “The Piper” based on a poem. However, the story for this piece kept growing, and they knew they’d never complete it unless it were a feature.

Changing course they came upon the story of Banjo, the Woodpile Cat, and the film slowly entered its development going into production in 1975. As this production started developing it became evident that the trio – Bluth, Goldman and Pomeroy – would have to move off the Disney lot, and they quit. Immediately thereafter, a larger group joined them including animators: Lorna Pomeroy, Heidi Guedel, Linda Miller, Emily Juliano; assistant animators: Frank Jones, Dave Spafford, Vera Law and Sally Voorhees and Diane Landau.

This staff started working as a close knit team in the garage behind Don Bluth’s home. Interest was ignited by a group called Aurora, composed of ex-Disney executives, in working together with the Bluth team. They also presold the forthcoming film to ABC, and there was talk of a feature.

They were a tight group working in cramped corners, but they used every resource they could. Without seeking outside help, they were able to add a number of key people who would help complete the project. It took almost five years for them to finish Banjo.

- This attention certainly caught the eye of those of us in New York. Animation back in the 70s was something of a wasteland. In New York there was Ralph Bakshi who had done a couple of features, ran into trouble with Coonskin and took off for LA to continue a spotty career. There was also the Hubley Studio doing their annual, stunning shorts and not much that grabbed widespread attention in the market. Disney was producing vapid charmless films.

Suddenly, there was this insurrection, and a new studio was born in love of the medium. I can’t exaggerate the excitement this caused in the “young” animatorsat the time – even 3000 miles way. We couldn’t have asked for more to watch in our gossip pipe lines.

We’d heard and read about Banjo the Woodpile Cat, but before too long, they were talking about Mrs. Frisby and the Secret of Nimh. I think I read every bit of PR I could find. Mind you, I had no interest in going to LA, so the studio wasn’t a place where I might work; it was the hope that something, anything would put some pepper into the laconic industry.

I remember having just finished Morris’s Disappearing Bag for Weston Woods and starting Doctor DeSoto when I had a conversation with my composer, Ernest Troost, about a publicity puff piece I’d read about all the methods the Bluth people were using to revitalize a dying medium.

It was exciting. Change was in the air.

To be concluded tomorrow.
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All images come from the dvd and are
copyright © 2009 Don Bluth Films, All Rights Reserved.

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- If I had to choose who was my favorite animator, I’d have a tough time. Equal credit would probably have to go to three different people: Bobe Cannon, Tissa David and Bill Tytla. Jim Tyer and Ed Smith would fall just a smidgen below these three, for me. But there are none like them all, as far as I’m concerned.

I’ve posted a lot of drawings from Tissa and Bill Tytla, but have very few drawings by Bobe Cannon (nor have I seen many published anywhere.)

Here is a walk cycle from the beginning of Hubley’s monumental short, Moonbird. The odd numbers are extremes by Cannon, and the inbetweens (even numbers) were done by Ed Smith. Three different sized papers were used for this, and you can view them full sized if you click the thumbnails.

You’ll notice there’s paint all over the drawings. The ink & paint involved tracing the drawing, then using oil paints to cover all of the clear area in black. Some of that paint seeped onto the originals. In one drawing even to coloring the hat accidentally.

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(Click any image to enlarge.)

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“Marky” walk cycle from Moonbird
On twos at 24FPS
Click left side of the black bar to play.
Right side to watch single frame.

There’s a lot more to this scene including several variants on the walk.
At some future time, I’ll add the other drawings to show off the entire scene.

- Fire Escapes are among the obvious to anyone walking down the street and yet almost invisible to the everyday eyes that expect them to be there.

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

A couple of photos sent me by Steven Fisher showcasing fire escapes
among their own shadows inspired me to start looking anew for these
appendages to many older buildings. The two above are by Steve.

I used to believe that fire escapes were designed to be in the back
of buildings hiding from the public. Designed only to allow an alternate
escape from the building in case a fire arose.

However, it’s obvious this isn’t true. Older buildings have
no shame in baring their exoskeletal escape route.

The brownstone just about features the fire escape as a design feature.

Smaller buildings use smaller fire escapes and
they’re shaped for these buildings.

(L) Other buildings have long fire escapes that stretch over
several attached buildings.
(R) Some buldings have tiny shapes that cover small spaces.

Yet, other buildings don’t have fire escapes. They just
offer “patios” that, essentially, LOOK LIKE fire escapes.

Plenty of patios.

The structure, itself, takes on different shapes as designers
tried to cope with these required exits.

Even some thinner offered a style.

Fire escapes were a brilliant idea, but they don’t look very nice.
If they offer an exeunt for escapees, they also offer a way in for burglars.

Hence the introduction of the gate guard which prevents intruders
from entering, but that also it makes it difficult for a fast exit.

You can’t win.

Finally, here’s another picture from Steve Fisher.
It was taken in Caltabellotta. Sicily.
It’s not a fire escape but what is it?

- Last Monday, PBS premiered a documentary on two women entrepreneurs — Elizabeth Arden and Helena Rubinstein. The Powder and the Glory features a number of different film clips and interviews and also several animated sequences done by Animator, Bob Flynn. He created several sequences for the film done with the help of those at Fablevision.

The program will air in New York on WNET, CHANNEL 13 today, Saturday, March 28, at 1:30pm.

You can see some of the animation here. It has a distinctive style and works well within the program. I particularly liked the sequence wherein Helena Rubenstein is robbed. The style is a bit reminiscent of James Thurber’s art.

Hans Bacher has the post of the week that excited me most. On his site, Animation Treasures, he’s taken some Background layouts for Bambi and has placed them alongside their finished Backgrounds. The comparison is amazing and deserves your attention.

How many times have we seen animation drawings compared to the finished cels? Here are some brilliant designs in execution. Hans also talks a bit about the painting of these stunning Backgrounds on glass.

By the way, if you don’t own Hans’ book Dream Worlds: Production Design for Animation, get out there an buy it or demand your local library carry it. The book is an essential for those interested in pursuing any career in animation. Or even those who have a strong interest in the medium.

- John Schnall sent a recent ad he did for Bzztrust, a business website. He asked that I post it, and it’s expectedly funny. So why not!

- Brian Sibley, on his very entertaining and informative site, has posted several excellent pieces about Alice in Wonderland. One includes a history of Snap, Crackle and Pop (there is a connection) that deserves your reading. (If anyone can identify the studio that did the British Alice commercial, please let me know.)

Brian posts a clip from a Jonathan Miller version of the story that I was not familiar with. The fact that Alan Bennett appears as the Mouse was enough for me to order the film.

- Cable TV has changed and not for the better, just toward the more corporate. In the old days you could turn on the Disney channel and catch some Disney animated shorts – the classic kind, not the Flash kind. You could see some of the 60s Paramount cartoons on Nickelodeon. You could tune into TNT and see early MGM cartoons. Today, if you’re lucky, you might see one of the more popular Harman-Ising shorts sandwiched in between two late-Droopy cartoons on Boomerang’s MGM show.

(Click any image to enlarge.)

I was a big fan of those Harman-Ising MGM cartoons. The sheer opulence of the productions was staggering to watch. For over a year, I taped an early morning program on TNT trying to grab all of the Harman-Ising shorts they aired. I was able to capture about 90% of them. It’s unfortunate that no DVD has been released of these gems so that collectors like me can feel satisfied. The Turner transfers were pretty good, and a simple DVD release of these would be worth a lot to me.

Not too long ago, I was able to buy a couple of drawings on ebay from the Harman-Ising shorts. There wasn’t much competition for them, and I was able to afford them.

One drawing is from the odd series featuring the “two curious pups.” I had an old Blackhawk 8mm copy of this short (in an edited version) and would run it back and forth still frame. I’ve captured some stills of this very scene to give you an idea of what’s happening.

The Pups’ Picnic (1936)

I don’t know who animated this scene,
but the drawing is a beauty, as far as I’m concerned.
The paper siize is 9¾ x 12 w/two round holes.

- I found a couple of articles about Terrytoons and thought I might share them. (Even Terrytoons had their share of PR.) The first talks about the films they’re about to release in 1941.

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

Many years later Terrytoons, having been sold to CBS, were about to premiere a prime time show (7:30 wednesday nights) that featured Dick Van Dyke (pre Dick Van Dyke show) talking to cartoon characters on a television set.

Even back then I thought it was a cheesy show but still tuned in for the few weeks it was on air. Eventually, after the show was pulled Terrytoon cartoons showed up on saturday morning with The Mighty Mouse Show. This was a big deal; it was the best show on Saturday mornings way back then – years before Bullwinkle, Huckleberry Hound and terrible terrible programming.

Here’s a piece promoting the Dick Van Dyke hosted show:

The cartoons leased to local WOR-TV included a lot of silent shorts with classical music backing and some early-30′s cartoons.

They started a show called Barker Bill’s Cartoon Show. A ringmaster named Barker Bill introduced cartoons. He was a cartoon character that appeared in a couple of early 30′s cartoons. For this show a live actor impersonated him and introduced old time B&W cartoons.

The show was later retitled Super Circus with Claude Kirschner, then Big Time Circus with Claude Kirschner. He was a local NY announcer who acted as the ringmaster (who was not Barker Bill.) He was apapropriately dressed as a ringmaster and chatted with a clown hand puppet named, “Clowny.” (You can see the originality of the creation.)

When the Terrytoon deal ran out, they then showed foreign, dubbed cartoons.

My first memory is of lying on a couch as it’s hoisted through a window and placed on a truck. I remember, next, lying on that couch on the open backed truck as it drove across an expansion bridge at night. The stars in the sky blended with the lit beams of the bridge to provide a glorious memory. I was probably five or six, and my stepfather was moving my mother out of her Queens home and into their new home in upper Manhattan – or maybe it was the Bronx. I don’t remember.

Those stars and lights of the bridge have stayed with me for a lot of years, and that’s how I entered the new home and a new life. There were five of us – five siblings – and a loving home. Lots and lots of shouting and arguing, lots of running about and lots of energy.

All of our games were imaginary in those pre-computer game days. Cowboys and Indians, Johnny Tremaine, and Cindy. Cindy was our dog – a doberman pinscher. But more she was a cartoon character. We created “films” with the opaque projector we’d found in the trash and these rolled up drawings that slid under the projector told stories. We all had our own studios and made nightly premieres often with soundtracks designed on a reel to reel tape recorder that belonged to my father. With all these “movie studios” we also had newspapers so we could review and talk about each others films. The printing press set allowed us to print out these papers and scatter them about.

Our parents supported all this creativity by not being discouraging. I had the craziest dream of becoming an animator – the next Walt Disney – from the earliest age. I was good at math and english, but my parents didn’t try too hard to get me to work at a career that might actually be profitable. They supported my crazy dream even to the point of helping me build a multiplane camera stand and giving me more than ample room to have my little “studio.”

When I’d actually gotten into the world of animation and things were particularly difficult, it was my mother who did everything for me supporting me in every way possible to continue on in a difficult and complex profession and a small-time entrepeneur to boot. She did the same for all of her kids; she was the safety net if we needed it.

Somehow despite all the turmoil in our lives over the years, we’ve stayed a particularly close family. We don’t all see each other every day – or even week – but we’re ready to help each other out if need be. Whatever’s necessary. This came from both of our parents but most particularly from my mother who was the strong matriarch of our family. She was very independent right to the end, and I think we all picked up some of that strength from her.

Now she’s gone and I’m sorely missing that strength, that back-up support she gave.

Edgar Allan Poe wrote that he believed heaven was in and amongst the stars above us. When we died we moved to that world and shone down on those below. I can only keep my eyes on the stars and think that in some way she’s still there for us. She’s put these five kids out into the world, and now that we’re turning into oldsters, we have the best of what she wanted for us. She’s become the star watching over us, and that’s probably all the support I’ll need.