Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

- Thanks to The Thief blog, and further discussed by Mark Mayerson, information is out there about Richard Williams‘ new site for his Masterclass set of dvds.

Dick’s website is very informative and gives an extended promo tour of the dvd’s showing a longish segment. Take a visit even if you don’t plan on buying the instructional set which is currently selling for $999.

Of course, Dick’s companion book is still available. The Animator’s Survival Kit is for those who still can read and comprehend from the written word. The book also comes with pictures, but they don’t move like the dvd does. It’s only $20 in paperback, though.

Years ago – and I mean years ago – Dick brought gifted animation stars to his studio to lecture the British crew. He put together a set of notes for Art Babbitt’s lecture series that took place July 1973. When Raggedy Ann was in production, Dick had offered us all copies of his notes. It’s a big volume, and it involved extensive photocopying. I don’t think it took long for this book to make it all across the animation industry. Everybody seemed to have owned a copy. This was certainly Dick’s credo – to promote good animation.

Dick also had another notebook that was larger. 11 x 14 copies were even harder to photocopy, but this book seemed clearer and more planned. It was also not distributed as widely. It was obvious that Dick was looking to write a book, and this was its predecessor.

I have copies of both, and they’re very different. I thought I’d celebrate the promotion of Dick’s new dvd’s by posting one of the chapters from the Art Babbit Lecture series. It’s a bit hard to follow, but if you make the effort, you’ll find a lot to learn. These WERE essentially Dick’s notes on Art’s lectures; they weren’t designed to teach.

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- Yesterday, I started posting this Disney children’s book, The Runaway Lamb. It was adapted from the Live Action feature (with a short animated sequence), So Dear To My Heart.

It’s not quite as strong a film as was Song of the South, but it still retains a sweetness that makes it worth sitting through. The animation wasan’t quite an equal to the earlier film with its great Joel Chandler Harris characters, but it holds up with the animation of many of the compilation features of the time.

One of the more interesting aspects of the film is the credit for the animated sequence, story treatment is credited to “William Peed” which was, of course, Bill Peet’s actual name.

Here’s the remainder of the book, loaned to us by John Canemaker. My thanks to John.

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(The book’s back cover.)

- So Dear To My Heart was Disney’s second try at a live action feature, following Song of the South. Like the earlier film, they employed the same two children, Bobby Driscoll and Luana Patten, and told a story around them and their pet lamb. There was a sweet animated sequence which was directed by Ham Luske. Mary Blair, John Hench and Dicke Kelsey designed it. Animation Department
Les Clark, Milt Kahl, Hal King, Eric Larson, John Lounsbery, Don Lusk, and Marvin Woodward were credited as animators.

Here’s a book that built on the film’s characters. It’s done in a style somewhat similar to the animated sequence in the film. The book is illustrated by Julius Svendsen, who became an animator at the studio, working in films from Melody (1953) to Robin Hood (1973). He also did a nunber of comic book illustration for Disney in the late 50′s and 60′s, working with Floyd Gottfredson.

The drawings in this book are excellent; strong poses with fine watercolored backgrounds. It’s similar to but totally different from the Little Golden Books that were being done at the same time.

The book comes from John Canemaker‘s collection, so I want to thank him for allowing me to post the pictures. A lot of scanning’s involved, so I have to break it into two posts to give you the full book.

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____________Look for the conclusion tomorrow.

- When I posted several of Norman McClaren‘s drawings, recently, it got a bit of attention. I received a number of comments and emails about the post, and I realized that fewer people have seen these drawings than I thought. Obviously, it means, to me, that I should post more of them.

McClaren was certainly a brilliant artist, and his experimentation and developments brought about a real maturation of the art form. I wonder how he would have dealt with the technology we’re using today. Remember, he realized that the soundtrack could be drawn and did his own exploration of this part of the process.

The book was published in 1975 by Tundra Books.

Because the one illustration which graces the book’s cover, was of such interest to those reading my piece, I’ll start with the rest of that page. It’s a series of sketches done for the film, “Là-haut sur ces montagnes” and was drawn in 1945.

__________________(Click any image to enlarge.)

The two illustrations above are connected on the same page. I separated them .
The entire page is labelled: Sketches for the film, “Là-haut sur ces montagnes.”

“Interlocking faces”

“Untitled”

“Tesseractine House”
I’m fascinated that a number of his illustrations look not too unlike Steinberg’s work. It’s obvious he was an influence for a lot of animators in the late ’40′s.

“Four Dimensional Cars and Bicycles”

“Memory of A Mexican Beach”

“St. George and the Porcupine”

- Here, as promised, is the first stat of the Alice In Wonderland storyboard.
The Mad Tea Party – “A Very Merry Unbirthday”
This comes from the archives of John Canemaker ‘s collection, and I am grateful for the loan.

I don’t know who the artist is, (John and I guessed at Joe Rinaldi) though it’s dated 1949.

As with past boards, I post the original stat here, and then follow up by breaking the very long columns into two or three, thus allowing me to post it larger for easier viewing. This is the original:

(Click any image to enlarge.)

And here are the breakdowns:

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John has given me more boards from Alice. One for her talk with the flowers “All In A Golden Afternoon” and Alice in the Rabbit’s house – growing larger.
I’ll post these on future posts in the next week or so.

- There’s always a surprise at Madison Square Park when you walk through it in the early morning. On Thursday, I’d seen a bunch of tractors and large vehicles, basically immobile at 7am. Not much else
On Friday, Tents had been built all over the park. Many of them. I took some photos to chronicle whatever was coming.

These little tents meant and event of some sort was to take place this coming weekend.
I saw no signs throughout the park to advertise what it was that’d be coming._


The tents circled all around the large lawn._


The sculptures – some of them – had fences constructed around them.
I snapped my photos and continued on through and off to work._


I returned Saturday to see that work had been done on the tents.
Signs had been attached to show that things would be sold.
Other signs asked people to watch what they did with the food._


There weren’t a lot of people in the tents, working on them.
Everything had been prepared by 7am. _
I asked a sweeper near the dog-walk what was happening. She told me that “The Big Apple Bar B-Q would take place Saturday and Sunday.

I decided to return to see.

Saturday night presented a completely different picture.

Throngs of people greeted us at 5pm. 26th Street (the back of the park where
we entered) was almost unmoveable. Crowds were lining up to buy BBQ.

The circular reflecting ponds was less busy but still crowded, and the
oval lawn was filled with people picnicking.

The gated sculptures were just part of the background.
I don’t think too many people were giving these objects much mind.

The back 1/4 of the park was jammed to the point of uncomfortable.
This is where they were selling beer, and alcohol couldn’t be removed from this area.

There was also a bandshell erected with loud music. Oddly the music
was louder back on 26th Street than it was here, at 23rd Street.

Getting out of this area was all we wanted. It was too crowded.
It was also gated and near impossible to find an exit once we were in.
Finally out of it, we found a lot of people cueing up to buy pulled pork.

They’d set up some picnic tables where people ate the hard won meal.
Leaving we saw several blocks of trucks supplying ice and other materials for the event.

We headed for the not-too-far-away Rodeo Bar. They served BBQ food, but we weren’t hungry. A beer sounded good though. Since the temperature was in the 90′s, being outdoors was more of a trial than necessary. The air conditioned bar was a pleasant respite.

- Reading palms can probably tell you a lot about people.
LIFE Magazine, back in Dec 13, 1937, decided to see what they could learn from the palms of a number of celebrated people.
_________________Let’s see what they had to say about Walt Disney‘s palms.

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________This is the full layout of the piece. I’ve split it for better sightseeing, below.

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Yet again, this magazine article came courtesy of John Canemaker and his invaluable collection. Many thanks to John.

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- Speaking of good palms, let me promote the gallery opening and congratulate my good friend, Lew Achenbach.

His show “Spirit Animals, Contained Chaos and Actuality” will run from June 13th through June 27th. There’s an opening reception on Friday June 13th from 5-8pm.
The website is here.

The show is located:
Upstairs in the Historic Temple Theare Building
at 628-632 Centre Street
Ashland, Pennsylvania

The art, like the artist, is certainly going to be modern.

– Here is a preliminary storyboard done by Bill Peet of the Wizard’s Duel from Disney’s Sword In The Stone. It’s another gem on loan from John Canemaker, and is a companion to the piece I posted last Friday by Peet. The oddity of this board is that it’s dated April 1949. (The numbers at the bottom of the board clearly read “449.”) I didn’t have any clue that this film was in development that early. The book was published in 1938, so it’s quite feasible.

If that date is accurate, it’s amazing how close the characters stay to their final models. This could easily be explained with the heightened us of xerography in animation after 1958. Post 101 Dalmatians, this loose style was easy to translate into animation, and Ken Andersen was easily able to adapt to this style by Bill Peet that all of the animators in the studio loved.

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Note in row 2 how the spider turns into the tiger’s face; it’s a graphic turn. This never would have made it to the final in a Disney film, and it didn’t.

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I love how extra drawings which have been pulled make it to the bottom of the second board.

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- I always thought Disney’s The Sword In The Stone a somewhat underrated film. The background art is sensational, and several sequences are brilliantly animated.

Bill Peet‘s adaptation from TH White‘s book, The Once and Future King, loses some of its poetry in the adaptation, but the book’s storyline features a lot of rambling making it hard to construct a screen story. I’ve watched this film quite a few times over the years, and somehow it always gives me a bit of a charge that comes with many of the older classics.

The extras on the dvd seems to consist predominantly of storyboard drawings by Bill Peet. So why not show them off? There’s no continuity to attend to, hence the images are gathered in small clusters. The sequence everyone jumps to analyze and discuss is the Wizard Duel between Merlin and Madame Mim (animated by Milt Kahl.) Consequently, a lot of the drawings on the dvd come from this sequence. I, personally, would have loved seeing some of the squirrel section. I found it quite moving and full of real character stuff. It would be nice to see how Peet developed this.

There’s no hint of a continuity on the dvd, but I’ve heard that the storyboard drawings in the vault are just placed in manilla envelopes with no suggestion of an order. It would make sense that they’ve just plopped these images on the dvd as they have with no order, details or related information.

_______Here’s a creature that never made it to the battle of the wizards.

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___________Another fantastic creature that didn’t make it into the film.

I’m not sure if this drawing is also from the duel. Or was it another sequence where Wart becomes an animal – cut out of the film?

This looks like it may have been planned as a home for Merlin. Did it inspire anything for The Rescuers?

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___________It’s magic !

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Here are a couple of models Peet obviously did –
_______________________probably more for himself than anything.

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- I’m going to put together a couple of posts on Disney’s Alice In Wonderland, and I think this LIFE Magazine article from June 18, 1951 is an excellent place to start.

It’s interesting that they call the article, “Alice In Disneyland.” This is one of the first references to “Disneyland” that I’ve noticed. There was a TV show done for ABC, “One Hour In Wonderland,” a 1951 Christmas show which promoted the heck out of the movie. Kathryn Beaumont, dressed as Alice, got to parade around with lots of kids. This show probably served as the prototype for the “Disneyland” TV series, but made no reference to the name of the future theme park.

This article comes from John Canemaker‘s the collection, and I have to thank him for his contribution, _____(click any image to enlarge.)
yet again.

I’ve chosen to leave any periferal ads in there, for context and amusement.

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– On Monday night, there was a presentation at the Museum of Modern Art of a number of Hubley short films that highlighted their JAZZ SCORES series. The program was well organized by film curator, Josh Siegel.

Emily Hubley presented the films at the start and had a couple of words about her parents’ work. She was joined in the audience by her sister, Georgia Hubley, and her brother, Ray Hubley. Their families were also present. Only Mark Hubley wasn’t able to make it down for the show. ________________________________Emily talking in front of the auditorium

The films were presented in clusters of composer.
Tender Game, with music by Ella Fitzgerald and the Oscar Peterson trio, led off the program. With a newly constructed print the colors dazzled with depth and beauty. You could see the texture of the paper in the backgrounds and the beautiful brush strokes. The art couldn’t have looked more stunning.

Three Dizzy Gillespie shorts followed:
The Hat has an improvised voice track with Dudley Moore and Dizzy Gillespie. They also did the score – Dudley on piano, Dizzy on trumpet.
Date with Dizzy is a live action piece that promotes the “Storyboard” ads. A live action director, “Don Babbitt,” tries to get Dizzy and his group to perform a score to their animated ad. The ad was drawn and animated by R.O. Blechman.
____The Hat played on the big screen______Voyage to Next features Maureen Stapleton
_____________________________________and Dizzy Gillespie. Dizzy did the score with Dee Dee Bridgewater singing. (I did a lot of work on this one. I have a lot of Bill Littlejohn’s drawings, and I’ll show them off sometime soon.)

Following this, Benny Carter‘s widow, Hilma Carter, and Ed Berger, Carter’s biographer, introduced shorts that Carter scored.
Adventures of an * was the featured piece with a newly reconstructed print (I wrote about this here) and an out-of-this-world art exhibit of many backgrounds and cel paintings. (Actually cels weren’t used. The characters were colored on paper with crayon and wax and blackened all around their shape. This was then double-exposed into the backgrounds.)

Finally, Of Men and Demons, finished the night. This film was scored by the brilliant Quincy Jones, and the score is a major strong point. There is no dialogue, hence there are no voices heard. Tissa David animated a lot of this film and re-worked a lot of Art Babbitt‘s scenes in this film. Bill Littlejohn did much of the demons.

Tissa sat to my left along with her close friend Ruth Mane, who was a first class inker and checker in NY’s animation story. We worked closely at Raggedy Ann.

____Emily Hubley, Josh Siegel and Tissa David in the lobby of MOMA.
____I met them there when I arrived.

__A crowd after the screening.
__Left to right: John Canemaker, me, Ed Berger, Hilma Carter, Ron Magliozzi (Assistant
__Curator, Research and Collections, MoMA), Emily Hubley, Ray Hubley, Georgia Hubley,
__Josh Siegel (Assistant Curator, Department of Film, MOMA).

The screening was pretty much full, but I wouldn’t say the animation community was well represented. I saw a couple of young animators there including Tim Rauch and Emmett Goodman. Ray Kosarin, just back from viewing some 1700 films at Hiroshima’s prejudging, was also there and seemed charged by the Hubley films.

The museum had a dinner for some of the guests including John and me, Amid Amidi, the Hubleys and their families, as well as Hilma Carter and Ed Berger. Tissa had to leave right after the screening. It was a real treat of an evening.