Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

- Bill Peckmann sent a host of hilarity via email. So I have only to post it. Thanks for the smile to Arnie Levin for the great sense of humor and Bill for sending it to me.
Bill writes:

This is for Arnie Levin, a true prince of a man in the realm of cartooning, (both animation and print) and life!

Book’s cover

Back cover

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Bill writes:
Less is more, not a line or thought out of place, “P” for perfection, it all applies to Arnie!

You’ll remember that Peter Hale sent several adaptations of Disney’s Peter Pan in book form. This version is by May Byron.
Here are introductory comments by Mr. Hale:

Here are the scans from the hard back book by May Byron. The volume is small (51/2″ x 71/2″) as it is designed for children. It is the same size as the Hodder & Stoughton ‘Peter Pan and Wendy’ illustrated by Mabel Lucie Attwell, but the text layout is different (although the text itself is the same).

The copy I own has no dust jacket. I have included a scan of the dust jacket from a 1956 edition, as the front illustration, at least, is probably the same.

Front dust jacket cover

Frontispiece – Title page

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Rear dust jacket cover

(I notice that there are some mix-ups going from the sincgle to the double-pages sent. The text doesn’t properly follow.) However, I did post these for viewing of the illustrations and the match to the page texts, so follow that.

- Here’s one of the scenes saved by Vince Cafarelli from a commercial he did while at Goulding-Elliott-Graham. The commercial was animated by Lu Guarnier, and Vinny was the assistant on it. Hence, he saved the rough drawings (instead of Bert Piels. (Sorry I don’t know what he’s saying, though I’m looking for the storyboard.)

So, here are Lu’s rough drawings in this CU

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The following QT movie was made by exposing all drawings on twos
except for the extreme positions that were missing inbetweens.
For those, I dissolved from one extreme to the next.

It drove me crazy that Lu Guarnier always animated on top pegs.
Next week with the last of these three posts on this Piels Bros commercial, I’ll talk about Lu’s animation and some of my pet peeves.

I thought for my birthday, today, I’d start with a recapped post. This is a story I’ve told a lot of times, however this is the only time Tissa told it, and I think it’s her version of my version.

- Today’s William Shakespeare’s birthday. It’s an odd choice of date given that there’s so little information about the guy. But since today’s also my birthday, I’ll enjoy the association by accident.

I’ve decided to post something that’s been floating around my studio for the past couple of years. It’s one of those things that never got properly put away once we moved into the new digs. But since I like seeing it, I also like stumbling across it in the morass of paper in my office.

Tissa David did a birthday card for me for my 50th birthday. She recounted, in storyboard, our first meeting. I was on my second day working for the Hubleys – my first animation job.

It’s close to being accurate, but not as nasty as the version in my head. Here’s Tissa’s board.

Helen, is Helen Komar, a lifelong assistant working in NY first at Paramount then onto lots of other places. She managed the animation area for John and Faith for a couple of years. Another great person who slips through the history books.

I had inbetweened two of Tissa’s scenes on the first day of work. Tissa came in the next day while I was busy working on more. She went to Helen’s desk and the two of them talked for a short bit. Then I heard, “Who has made these HORRIBLE inbetweens?” spoken in the most definitive Hungarian accent you’ll ever hear.

When I sheepishly admitted to it – since only Helen or I could have done them, and there was no doubt Helen hadn’t – Tissa offered to give me some lessons in how to make a proper inbetween. Those lessons seem to have been ongoing most of my life. I’m not sure I can do a really good inbetween to this day. But I sure have gained a lot of knowledge via Tissa and her caring for animation enough to spend a lot of time looking over my shoulder.

I’ve spent a lot of recent posts writing about the animation of some of the earlier features. I thought I’d give a little focus on the storyboard of Dumbo. The variety and styles of the images is impressive. I’ve culled a lot of storyboard drawings from various sources and present in somewhat chronological order.
This was the first feature Bill Peet worked on. You can see his entire “Dumbo washing” sequence storyboard here.

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Yes, that’s a bird on Dumbo’s trunk – not Timothy.

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- Bill Peckmann surprised me this week. He sent a number of stills from the book, The Art of the Tin Toy, featuring tin toys. These are all wonderful, and I knew it would make a great post to show on Sunday. Hence it’s here. I have to admit I didn’t know. Afyer her mother died, I offered her outfit to cousins. that I’m personally more attached to those toys of characters like the barber and his customer, or the tin frog, or even (and maybe especially) the Mickey Mouse.

I hope you’ll have some you like.

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The book’s cover

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Many thanks to Bill Peckmann for shaking it up a bit.
______________________

Here is a film we did for a home video of children’s poems. It’s a poem by the late Russell Hoban. The animation is by Mark Mayerson, and the design is by Jason McDonald. The music is by Caleb Sampson. I think all of these artists did brilliant work, but then Hoban’s thoughts and words always pull out the best.

Congratulations to Candy Kugel and all the others at Buzzco, including animator Rick Broas and partner Marilyn Kreamer, for the screening of their film, The Last Time, as part of the Tribeca Film Festival. The film premiered this past Wednesday and will play four more times see schedule below) as part of the program, Let There Be Light: The Cycle of Life.

The Last Time is an animated tribute to Candy’s late partner Vincent Cafarelli, after the end of a 38 year partnership.

The remaining screenings will take place as follows:
One Last Time

Tuesday 4/23/2013 at 5:30 PM at Clearview Cinemas Chelsea 4
Friday 4/26/2013 at 6:30 PM at Clearview Cinemas Chelsea 6
Sunday 4/28/2013 at 11:00 AM at Tribeca Cinemas Theater 2

- Tom Sito will be in the USC Cinema School Courtyard on Weds, April 24th from 11;30-1:30 to sign copies of his brand new book, Moving Innovation: A History of Computer Animation. I think this is the first of its kind, a history of computer animation. From my miniscule standing point, it feels like too soon to be writing a history of the medium, but it’s obvious I’m wrong. All that time with NYIT and Robert Abel and LucasFilm.

My knowledge of computer animation is close to nil, so i would like to know something about it. It’s probably my largest gaping hole in my knowledge of animation, and I do feel a bit guilty about that. I keep putting my toe in the water, but I don’t seem to have much of an inclination to learn a lot about the subject.

I’ll definitely read the book once I can get my hands on a copy. After I’ve done so, I’ll tell you what I think of it. Tom’s got a nice amiable writing style, so he should be the perfect one for the subject. Looking forward to it.

Animators Lee Corey and Frank Rivera have teamed to create the new animation company Ani 2. They write that their “specialty is pre-production and animation offering a mix of hand drawn digital 2d character animation, character design and creation, traditional art, VFX, stop motion, whiteboard, 3d design and backgrounds.”

Their website shows the sample reel, gives an indication of a series they’re developing and has a complete rundown of their bios.

Ani2 Entertainment is located at:
33 West 19th Street, 4th Fl., New York, NY 10011
phone: 917-362-0096

- IFC has been airing new comedy series for the past couple of years. Interestingly enough, they’ve done a couple of animated series, none of which have outlasted their first season. Perhaps the short running series will change with the current show on the cable channel. Out There has been running since February and is a quiet winner, if you ask me. Last night they aired a couple of episodes ending with the series finale at 10pm.

The series was created by Ryan Quincy,who worked with 20th Century Fox, Nickelodeon and Disney amd has wod two Emmy Awards for his work on South Park. The show’s voice overs are by Ryan Quincy, Justin Roiland, Fred Armisen, and Megan Mullally. They’ve also had guest voices. Sarah Silverman and Ellen Page guested on the final episode; Cheech and Chong did another episode. The show is definitely in the voice over readings and the writing. Like most tv animation these days, it’s what Chuck Jones once called “illustrated radio.” The show reminds me a bit of another IFC series, Portlandia. On April 5th Ryan Quincy was selected as “Artist of the Day” by Cartoon Brew. I’m not sure I’d go with the word “Artist” when talking about most of the Cartoon Brew honorees, but “Cartoonist of the Day” definitely works.

IFC has a site for the show at Out There. You can see a souple of the episodes on line at the site. Ryan Quincy has his own site, which I prefer. It doesn’t try to sell the series too hard, though it obviously features it.

I have to admit, I’ve only seen two episodes, both last night, and was impressed. It has a nice playful, minimalist drawing style, and the writing is low key good. It’s basically about a family in the suburbs which includes a teen and a younger boy. The show focuses on these kids.

I expect the show to be renewed. and I’ll look for it.

A rich Alex Toth comic creation arranged and sent to us by Bill Peckmann. Bill writes:

In the new recently published “Genius Illustrated, the Life and Art of Alex Toth” by Dean Mullaney and Bruce Canwell, there are pages, after wonderful pages, of Alex’s terrific, original comic book art. I thought it would be fun to see a couple of those original splash pages (thanks to Mr. Mullaney) followed by their stories from when they were originally printed.

Here is a 16 page Alex Toth story that appeared in DC’s “Adventure Comics” in 1972. The “Black Canary” was a super heroine that got her start in 1947 and was updated by Alex 25 years later in this two part story. Lucky for us bird watchers!

This is the Splash page of page one – “the author’s proof”

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The Splash page of the Title page for story 2.

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Here is the prologue page to Toth’s “Batman” story, the splash page follows. It was the only time he did a story of the caped crusader and what an excellent one it is. Teamed with friend, writer, editor Archie Goodwin, who was smart enough to entice Alex to illustrate, by writing a tale that came with one of Toth’s great loves, World War One airplanes!

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Prologue page
This story appeared in DC’s “Detective Comics”, # 442, Sept. 1974.

The Splash page of the Title page

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The Title page

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Many thanks to Bill Peckmann for all his work in getting the story to us.

As promised last week, I have this Peter Pan strip book to post. Peter Hale sent me three book adaptations of the Disney animated feature, and I plan on posting all three. Today we start with this strip book, and I think you’ll appreciate it.

Peter writes:

I do not know who the artist was. This version does not appear to have been printed in any other form.

I originally had a copy of this book as a child, but although I kept it for a long
time it final got lost. I recently found another copy and have had the opportunity
to regain my childhood!

Here are the scans. You’ll have to click the images to enlarge if you want to read them.

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Among Vince Cafarelli‘s remaining artifacts there are lots of bits and pieces from several Piels Bros. commercial spots. I decided to put some of it together – even though they’re not really connected – into this one post.
There are animation drawings I’ll try to post in other pieces.

Here, we have a storyboard for a spot; I believe this is an abbreviated spot promoting some contest Piels beer was running. I think this is from a shortened version of a one minute spot since there are animation drawings which are obviously from the same setup, but they’re not part of this storyboard. (There’s an unveiling of the barrel, which is upside down.)

Since the boards are dated 1957, and given the use of signal corps pegs, I believe these were done for UPA.

Regardless, the drawings are excellent. I presume they’re hand outs to Lu Guarnier, animating, and Vince Cafarelli, assisting.

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The following are three drawings from the opening scene of this storyboard. Others from this scene weren’t saved.

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Here’s Bert.

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And here’s a single drawing of Harry from the scene.

Let’s follow that with layout drawings from two different spots. The first doesn’t really offer much, but the quality of the clean-ups and the drawing is first rate. I’m pleased to post it:

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Here are layout drawings for the second of the two spots I have in hand. I presume this is also a spot promoting that contest.

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In the next week or two, I’ll post some of the animation drawings left behind so you can get an idea of the movement and Lu Guarnier‘s animation. I’ll probably have some to say about Lu’s style of movement. It drove me crazy when I had to assist him. The movement always looked great on screen, but it took a lot for an assistant to get it there.