Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

- Here’s a piece I posted in Feb. 2007. I think it worth revisiting:

- We have two dvds that feature films adapted from Hans Christian Andersen tales. These films include: The Red Shoes, The Little Match Girl, The Emperor’s New Clothes and Nightingale. In making the extra material for the dvds, including a couple of documentaries, we’ve had to prep a lot of artwork and images from the films.

I found when scanning in Jabberwocky for this “Splog” that the images came alive in the digital format. It’s much more striking than the original films. That’s also true of the artwork we’re scanning from some of these films.

Nightingale was adapted from the Andersen tale, but we made a decision, early on, to base the story in feudal Japan rather than China. This allowed me to cast one of my favorite actors, Mako, as the Narrator and Emperor.

It also enabled us to adapt the beautiful art of Japan to the animation.
(Click any image to enlarge.)

The backgrounds were done by Masako Kanayama from layouts prepared by Rodolfo Damaggio and Sue Perotto. They were done in delicate watercolors with a limited palette. The characters were inked with sepia colored brush markers so that there was a dramatic thick/thin line. To expedite the production, I animated with the marker. It allowed more control in my scenes and saved the inking stage.

The following setups give an indication of the work.

This opening pan set the mood of Feudal Japan with gold paint flattening out in the filmed version. Here it looks gold as it should, rather than the brownish tint in the film. The actual Bg is quite long.

Not once did we consider looking at anime for the style. We studied the great artists of Japan of the period and looked at actual photographic reference. It never pays to study animated films for influence in preparing an animated flim. Take the inspiration from artists and real life.

The Emperor’s court took some concern. It gave us the opportunity of showing off some of our research about interiors and allowed us to show off many of our principal characters in the opening setpiece.

In the original there were really only two primary characters: the Emperor and the Nightingale. Since the Nightingale couldn’t talk, Maxine Fisher, who adapted the story, introduced the young girl who knows the Nightingale from the forest. She’s the intermediary between the bird and humans. She also sings all the key songs. June Angela, a fabulous actress and a wonderful soprano played the part.

She knows the whereabouts of the Nightingale and can take the Emperor’s consort to her.

She can also console the Nightingale when she’s hurt by the Emperor.

The Emperor had to develop into a very sympathetic character over the course of the film. In Andersen’s story he learns a lesson from the Nightingale. The mechanized bird cannot live up to the real songbird. We also gave the Emperor nightmares that developed out of the Emperor’s spirituality; this was a small nod to Andersen’s outspoken Christian commentaries throughout all of his stories. We allowed the Emperor to have his own gods.

- Earlier this week, I posted a piece from the 1975 animation issue of Millimeter Magazine which gave a bio for Tissa David. Within the same column there was another animator who’d made waves in NY back then.

Jim Simon had created Wantu Animation which gave a “black” presence on the animation scene. Jim would annually win a lot of ASIFA East awards with his short spots, and you’d be impressed with the well animated output. His design sense was original. However, he left the city’s animation scene for LA and got involved in Yogi’s Space Race, the Smurfs and X-Men. After that, I’ve completely lost track of his career. If anyone knows where he has ended up, please don’t hesitate to leave a comment.

Many of his short pieces for Sesame Street are up on YouTube, so you can get an idea of his studio’s output.

Here’s the bio that was printed in 1975:

Wantu Animation is the hot new studio in New York, and Jim Simon is the young animator who is making a lot of people sit up and take notice. They notice the infectious brand of humor, the outrageous characters, the catchy music, the non-stop swirl of captivating motion inherent in all of Jim’s work. In fact, they noticed so much that he has been receiving awards for his animation right and left.

Such recognition is not entirely new to him, either; upon graduation from the High School of Art and Design, he received an award for excellence in animation, two scholarships from the Junior Epstein Memorial Foundation and a scholarship to the School of Visual Arts. There he majored in live-action TV production but became more and more drawn toward animation because of the personal satisfaction afforded him. Out of school, he landed a job at Paramount Motion Pictures cartoon studios as a background artist. Four months later the studios closed down, but by then Jim had managed to join the union. Having so little experience, he couldn’t get much work, until the director of’Paramount came back to New York with the Spiderman TV series. After a year and a half on that as assistant animator, Jim decided to freelance on his own. “I was turning out so much work, they had to promote me, because I was earning more money than some of the full-fledged animators. But it got to the point that I was just too excited about the things going on inside my own head, which I could not release while working for someone else. Also, I was young and wanted to gather a bit of knowledge about the different studios and different aspects of the business. After freelancing fora year, I realized that I wasn’t going to be allowed to animate this way either. I figured the only way I was going to become an animator was by making myself an animator.” When he inquired about doing work for Sesame Street, he was told he would need a reel and a company. “So I borrowed $250, hired a lawyer to set up a company, did a couple of story boards on my own but sticking with the Sesame Street vein of thinking, and marched back up there. And right off the bat, they bought four of the five boards that I had brought up.” That was the start of Wantu Animation. “Wantu” is Swahili for “beautiful” and the symbol used for the logo means “new birth.” That’s the theme of the company, the New Birth of Beautiful Animation, and Wantu hasn’t stopped growing since.

“There’s a new show coming out in September called Vegetable Soup. We were contracted to do the musical opening for it, plus 13 cooking spots for which Bette Midler did all the voice tracks, and also 48 thirty-second breaks. When you add it all up, it comes to about an hour’s production for our first year. We’ve won four awards for that particular show already, and two for Electric Company films. One particular film did not win all the awards, which goes to show that we’re a well-rounded studio.”

His unique style of drawing has earned Jim a few puzzled comments. “When I first did the boards for Hey, Diddle Diddle, people looked at them and said, ‘What are they? Some of them don’t even have eyes.’ They were cats, cool cats. No eyes on them, but you believe them when they’re moving. I’m basically a ham. I used to be very shy, but I lived through my characters. If I had another profession to choose, I would probably want to be an actor. When you see my characters moving around and doing crazy things, that’s me letting off steam.”

“There’s nothing coming out of agencies that we cannot do, and deliver on time,” states Jim. “We’ve turned approximately fifty films this year, about three, sometimes close to four minutes a week. Some of our freelance animators can hardly believe that they can see their finished work a few days after they do their part. We’ve gained about four years experience in this one year from the amount of things we’ve done, and the time we did them in. We’ve built up tremendous confidence in ourselves and our capabilities.”

Besides this confidence, Jim also harbors a special kind of optimism. “We’re working on a TV special; we developed the characters around Bette Midler, and she loves them to pieces. We also have concepts for features and other specials, but the hardest is always getting that first one across.”

Such personal flair is making Wantu Animation a studio to watch for, that is if you haven’t noticed it already.

You can watch “Hey Diddle Diddle” on YouTube. Go here.

- Here’s a small bit of the Mad Madame Mim as animated by Frank Thomas. It’s not particularly enlightening, but I still enjoy looking at the drawings. I believe these drawings might have appeared in some publication or other but haven’t been able to locate them. (There are some other drawings in the Thomas/Johnston book, The Illusion of Life (pg 180-181), but I think that’s from another part of this scene.)

the most interesting part about these drawings is the breaking of joints as she turns her arms around with her body. (There’s a bit of odd foreshortening in her right arm on drawings 1 & 2.)

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(Click any image to enlarge.)

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Madame Mim turns.

-Tissa David animated a lot of the Electric Company pieces for John Hubley. Hubley would design and write the spots, and he would get some real pros to do the tracks. In the case of this film, I believe it was the jazz legend, Billy Taylor, who wrote the music and did so for a number of Hubley’s Electric Co. films.

I’d like to post John Hubley’s LO drawings and follow it up with a few of Tissa’s animation drawings. John would usually do the loosest of layout drawings – usually in the presence of the animator as part of a discussion – and then hand it off to this person he trusted. Of course, the less he trusted the animator, the more he had to do in the LO.

In the case of this spot, Tissa received the following drawing. (That’s right ONE drawing.)

(If you click any of the images, they’ll
reveal the full animation drawing.)

If you enlarge the image, you’ll notice tape marks and pin holes where Tissa attached it to her wall.

Here’s a short sequence of drawings done by Tissa. The missing mouths are on a separate level. This piece is built on reuse done artfully.

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Here’s how the drawings looked when they were colored. They were colored on heavier paper. Sharpie outlines and marker coloring. The white background was all they used for the final. The animation carried the piece.

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Finally, here’s a copy of the film found on YouTube:

- The 1975 issue of Millimeter Magazine is an animation issue. There are a number of enormously informative articles. I was rereading the copy of the magazine, this past weekend, when I came across the Close Up section, wherein a couple of bios appear.

I’d like to show one for Tissa David that was included. I assumed John Canemaker authored the piece; there is no byline. When I asked him, he responded thus: “I wrote the article on Tissa. The quotes are from my first formal interview with her.It was for Millimeter when I was the animation editor and put together special animation issues.”

Tissa looks so young in that photo.

“I am a frustrated comedienne, for sure,” Tissa David will tell you, only if you ask. “I am a clown. If I weren’t shy, I’d probably be on the stage.” Instead she is an animator, one of the world’s best and busiest, and one of the few women to have reached the top in the traditionally male-dominated animated cartoon field.

She joyfully toils in her East-Side New York apartment, a warm, plant-filled place that often smells of baked apples. Classical music swirls quietly from a radio and the glow cast from the light under her animation board gives her the look of a sorceress.

The lady has class—a fact one gathers upon first meeting, but a fact that is reaffirmed by catching a look at the creatures she is conjuring to life on her drawing board. The graphic line is strong and free, yet elegant (as is the artist); and when the drawings are flipped, the creatures move through their paces with a deliciously droll humor, a wit that is uniquely Tissa David’s.

As a child in her native Hungary, Tissa saw Disney’s SNOW WHITE and thought (as so many others have thought after experiencing that film masterpiece), “Now this is something I want to do.” After graduating from art school, she became an assistant animator at Magyar Film Iroda in Budapest; a little more than a year later, in 1945, she was a co-owner of the Studio Mackassy and Trsi supervising all phases of production including story and camera and was sole animator of the puppet and cartoon films.

She left Hungary in 1950 during the height of the Stalin regime, and finally landed in Paris.

Jean Image Productions hired her in September 1951 and for two years she read sound tracks, planned layouts, animated, and did the entire editing of the feature-length, BONJOUR PARIS (1953). That studio closed and Tissa animated at La Comete next, a studio that had been Paul Grimault’s.

“I had absolutely no relatives outside of Hungary except in the United States. So I asked for a visa in 1950. It took at that time five years to get a visa, that was still the quota system. So I came to New York…I loved the U.P.A. cartoons. I decided I wanted to work in that studio.” In 1956, the United Productions of America’s New York Studio was the last tenant in a brownstone on Fifth Avenue and 53rd Street slated to be torn down for the construction of the 666 Tishman Building. There was a French girl in the UPA studio and so she introduced me,” Tissa recalls. “I had no sample reel. I went in once to make a sort of tryout. I was scared; I didn’t speak English, so I was just waiting, waiting, and Grim came by…Grim Natwick is the history of animation and I can rave about him. He created Betty Boop and animated the character of Snow White all the way through. UPA had an awful lot of work and they needed an assistant to Grim.”

At that initial meeting, Natwick boomed, “Now, you know what animation is!” Tissa quietly answered, “Animation is—animation.” Natwick laughed, “You can’t argue with that!” and thus began a professional partnership that lasted twelve years. “Isn’t it strange,” says Tissa today, “that SNOW WHITE got me into animation and I really learned my animation from Grim. I know a great deal about animation, I know I know, because even today I don’t do one line without something in my brain Grim told me.”

After UPA closed in 1958, Tissa and Grim freelanced as a team on countless TV commercials, and since Grim’s retirement, Tissa has soloed successfully and most notably on several John Hubley projects, i.s.: Of Demons and Men (1970), Eggs (1970), Children’s Television Workshop segments Cool Pool Fool, True Blue Sue, Truth Ruth and others, and Cockaboody (1973). Her latest animations include three CTW Letterman episodes, a scene in Shamus Culhane’s Noah’s Ark production, and over 110 feet of Hubley’s Bicentennial film, People, People, People. She has just completed some experimental animation fora Dick Williams project and is now starting, also for Hubley, a TV special based on Erik Erikson’s writings.

A description of Tissa David’s style of animation is difficult; for while it is a distillation of the Disney influence in timing, the UPA sense of humor-through-graphic-design, and the strong, poetic John Hubley mode, it also contains a different character, unique to Tissa David, that she calls the “female difference…If the same scene is animated by a man and by me, there will be a great difference, not in quality but in interpretation. John Hubley told me I have a fine sense for detail, not in the drawing itself because I make very loose drawings, but in a scene, in expressing feelings. I am a very intuitive animator—I never know when I sit down to work what will happen.”

For all her gentleness, Tissa also contains an inner core of strength exhibited in her single-minded devotion to her art. Her opinions about that art, herself and other topics, is disarmingly to-the-point: “I believe very strongly that one must know how to draw,” she will offer on the subject of how-to-animate. “Even if you just animate objects, you must have a knowledge of drawing.” As for her struggles securing her place in animation, Tissa will admit, “…its very hard. Women can find work in animation if they have enough will to follow through and really do it. Even today, I’m always saying if I keep busy long enough, I will become a good animator.”

At the time this piece was written, Tissa was completing work on a pilot for Dick Williams’ film, Raggedy Ann & Andy; this one minute piece got Dick the film over Joe Oriolo and Shamus Culhane. She would thereafter work on John Hubley’s Doonsebury Special (just as he died mid film); and she was to animate for R.O.Blechman’s Simple Gifts.

Here’s the final part of the revised storyboard for the Disney short, Melody: Adventures In Music. This version of the board was done in April ’52 and is closer to the final film (which was done in 3D.) See Part 1 here.

You’ll remember that I posted the first version of the board for this film in two parts here: Part 1 and Part 2. Many thanks to John Canemaker for the loan of all this material.

Here’s the whole board:

You’ll note that this board is configured oddly. You’ll also note that on each of the two photos there is a “THE END” card. I can only assume these are alternate endings.

(Click any image to enlarge.)

Now, here is my breakdown of the board, trying to keep the size as large as possible so that you can read it.

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You’ll notice as you look through this part of the board that a lot of the
artwork sketches I posted in the past two weeks are displayed here.
Art part 1 and Art part 2

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Next week, TOOT WHISTLE PLUNK & BOOM

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– I knew something was planned for Madison Square Park when I passed through it on Thursday.

Lights had been erected in a circle, around the
“Oval Lawn.”

So I took a couple of photographs in anticipation, not knowing what was planned –
an art piece? an Oktoberfest? a concert?

This Saturday, passing through I noticed a flurry of activity with the usual tents being put up. This sign, to the right, revealed what it was for

___________HALLOWEEN !

I mean . . . Fall Fest !

(Click any image to enlarge.)

Lights had been set all around the “Great lawn.”

On Saturday, a couple of tents had been constructed
and planning for the event was in progress.

The smaller lawn became a cemetery filled with pumpkins.

Bushels of hay flanked the cemetery, and the front of the park
was still in development.

But then I went back to the park later that afternoon, and it’s like none of this had existed.
Everything – tents, pumpkins, hay – was gone as if it had never been there.

All that I saw to prove I hadn’t dreamed up these photos was the chit I found, pictured to the right. Apparently, the pumpkins went to the kids.

The only remaining thing was the lighting and the foliage. The squirrels enjoyed the lights; I enjoyed the foliage. Apparently,
those lights must be for some other event up and coming.

- Sarah Palin made her SNL debut last night. My friend, cartoonist, Tom Hachtman did this cartoon celebrating the rise of Ms. Sarah. It’s one of his first attempts at animation. (and it wasn’t done with Flash!) The drawings were originally assembled to animate by Bill Skurski.

Michel Ocelot‘s animated feature, Azur & Asmar: The Princes’ Quest, has quietly opened in NYC at the IFC theater for a limited run. It plays daily at 5:20pm (and at 11 pm on Sat & Sun).

The too few reviews have been quite favorable. Read here:

the NYTimes says “…the movie has a terrific flair for arabesque patterning, a gemlike luminosity of surface and a handsome, classical cast of mind.”
Time Out NY says “…Azur & Asmar is absolutely gorgeous, as the director integrates visual elements and techniques drawn from medieval illuminations and Arabic art…”

The Weinstein Co. will release the dvd for this film on Nov. 11th.

Harvey Deneroff has an excellent piece on this film on his site.

- The following letter came from Jennifer Jeremich at CalArts re sending money to support Corny Cole, whose home was destroyed this week in the Marek fire:

Thank you for contacting CalArts about helping Corny Cole recover from the loss of his home in the Marek fire earlier this week. Your compassion is deeply appreciated not only by Corny and his wife, Linda, but also by all of us at CalArts who care about their well being.

For those of you who have asked for advice on how to get financial assistance to Corny, we have designated a primary point person who will collect funds for him. Any checks should be made payable to Cornelius Cole and sent to the following address:

California Institute of the Arts
ATT: Trish Patryla, Office of the Provost
24700 McBean Parkway
Valencia, CA 91355

On behalf of Corny and Linda, thank you so much for your concern and well wishes.

Jennifer Jeremich

This letter came by way of Roberta Levitow, and I thank her for sending it to me. Once again, let me post this Paypal link which I posted yesterday, in case you want to contribute that way: PayPal link.

- A week after the DVD release of Azur and Asmar, on November 18th, First Run Features is going to release the boxed set of my films on dvd. This is something I’m particularly proud of.

They’ve just sent me a press release to approve. It’s quite amazing that I allow people to say such wonderful things about me at this stage in my life. Here’s a small part of that two page release (that eliminates some of the overly positive hyperbole.)

First Run has long been a fan of Michael Sporn, and when made available we’ve eagerly released his beautifully crafted, socially aware films. Thus we’re proud to announce this new Collector’s Edition Box Set, which brings together in one package all twelve Sporn films that we’ve released over the years.

Based on stories from such acclaimed writers as William Steig (author of Shrek), Russell Hoban, Hans Christian Andersen and Lewis Carroll, the 12 films in the Box Set are considered among his best – and most personal – works, and feature a stunning cast of voices, including James Earl Jones, Ruby Dee, Tim Curry, Amanda Plummer, Danny Glover, Linda Lavin, Regis Philbin, Ossie Davis and F. Murray Abraham.

The six disc set also comes with copious bonus materials created by Sporn especially for these DVDs, including short films (In the Animation Studio, etc), animatics (storyboards), art galleries, and audio commentaries.

THE COLLECTOR’S EDITION BOX SET FEATURES THE AWARD WINNING FILMS
• Whitewash • The Talking Eggs • Champagne • The Hunting of the Snark •
The Marzipan Pig • Jazztime Tale • Abel’s Island • The Dancing Frog • The Red Shoes • The Little Match Girl • The Emperor’s New Clothes • Nightingale

- Thanks to Nancy Beiman who left this Paypal link in the comments section of yesterday’s post. It’s a place where you can donate some money to a fund being raised for Corny Cole after his house fire.

- After thinking about Corny Cole yesterday, I couldn’t help but think about The Mouse and His Child, a feature he worked on immediately following his work on Raggedy Ann.

The Mouse and His Child was directed by Fred Wolf and Chuck Swenson and has some real charm. However, it created a small problem for me.

When I’d begun work on The Marzipan Pig, I had to guarantee the brilliant writer, Russell Hoban, who authored both books – The Marzipan Pig and The Mouse and His Child – that no spoken dialogue would be created by me or Maxine Fisher, who was writing the script. Hoban was annoyed by the script for The Mouse and His Child. He felt they had butchered his story.

In fact, the film ends 3/4 of the way into the story. Elements of the last quarter of the book are rushed through the film in one last scene before the end titles. (I have to admit it’s a bit confusing.) This is a scene Corny animated. It’s all one scene; no cuts; an animated BG.

(Click any image to enlarge.)

The Jack In The Box looks very different from the guy in Raggedy Ann.

- I received emails from both John Canemaker and Roberta Levitow about Corny Cole‘s home burning down in the recent fires in California. He says that 90% of his artwork saved from over his many years has all been destroyed. Even worse is the loss of his numerous pets – cats and dogs – that all died in the fire.

I understand that a fund raiser is being formed to help Corny out. When I hear anything more, I’ll pass it on.

The FOX report reads:

The Marek Fire destroyed more than three dozen homes in a Lake View Terrace mobile home park. One man, a noted animator, lost not only his home, but his life’s work to the fire.

You can check out a Fox video here.

The piece, naturally enough, appeared soon after I learned about it on Cartoon Brew. (They’re always ahead of the curve.) I don’t mind repeating the info in case anyone’s missed it.

For those who don’t know who Corny is, let me repost this piece I did back in 2006:

- I have quite a bit of artwork from the film, Raggedy Ann & Andy: A Musical Adventure, the 1976 feature film by Dick Williams. Hence, it’s always an easy decision to post some of it. Unfortunately, every animation drawing is so large, it takes a lot of time to scan and put it together.

____________(Click any image to enlarge.)

I think in many ways, the unsung hero of Raggedy Ann was Corny Cole. He was there from day one working with Dick Williams and Tissa David – once the one minute pilot had secured the job for Dick. Corny was brought in as the key designer, and Gerry Potterton came on as Dick’s Associate Director.

I was hired soon thereafter, even though I had no idea what I’d be doing. For the first couple of weeks, while they were recording, I just moved furniture and read the script and whiled away the time by drawing Johnny Gruelle‘s characters.

I helped Dick and Gerry add spot coloring to the storyboard as the animatic was being shot. We spent a long Saturday coloring like mad with colored pencils. We worked on the last section of the animatic to be shot. I’d say 90% of the board was done by Corny. Dick and Gerry added spot drawings as needed, while we built the animatic.

Corny then did lots and lots and lots of drawings to give to animators.
Some of those drawings are posted herein for a scene at the beginning of the “taffy pit” sequence. These drawings were also used in the animatic.

After Corny finished feeding the animators, he started animating, himself. He took on a sequence that filled the screen with a pirate ship full of dolls floating around some rough waters. The large sheets of paper were filled with Corny’s black bic pen lines. Doug Compton eventually worked with Corny to finish this overworked sequence.

- John Celestri sent me a clipping from the Cincinnati Enquirer re the kidnapping of Ann & Andy. Hence, I am prompted to post the following layouts and storyboard drawings by Corny Cole.

This first Layout marks the introduction of Raggedy Andy. He’s under the box. This drawing gives you a good idea of the detail Corny put into every drawing.

The following images come from the first shots of the Pirate Captain. He espys the new doll, Babette, and falls madly in love.

The first four stills are 8.5×14 copies of the storyboard; the remainder come from the director’s workbook. They’re all sequential.

I think the parrot, which was added in pencil, is the work of Asst. Director, Cosmo Anzilotti. The bird just shows up later, so Cosmo probably tried to give him some business.

It’s here that the Pirate goes into his song (everybody sings in this film) and concocts his plot to kidnap the French doll.