Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

- With all the screenings I’ve attended in the last few weeks, I seem to continually end up at the Fifth Ave. subway station at 59th Street and Fifth Ave. On display at the station are a
number of polar bears tiled into the walls. These are set far enough away from each other so that the white tiled polar bears set on the white tile backdrops don’t bother each other. You also have to walk the length of the station to see them.

These are glass mosaic murals by artist, Ann Schaumberger done in 1996 in collaboration with Miotto Mosaics. I was able to locate _________________(Click any image to enlarge.)
another work by her but not much other information.

Apparently there are other animals displayed in the 60th Street exit of this station, but I didn’t get to see them. I was primarily interested in the tile artwork downstairs where you wait for the trains.

In the past, I’ve posted features on the tile art displayed at the 23rd St. and the Prince St. subway stations. These are both on the BMT train line. (NY has three lines: the IND, the IRT and the BMT. Originally these were different guage tracks; now there’s no real difference.)

There are fewer bear setups than there were hats or working people – as appeared in other station art. Yesterday, after going to one of the last screenings I had in the area, I decided to photograph these tile bears and present them here.

You’re greeted by these penguins at either side (Uptown or Downtown) of the station.

__
Farther down the station, you come upon these polar bears with an excellent orange ornamentation about them.

Close up you can see the detail on the tiling, but the bears as a whole look better a bit back from them.

__

__
As I mentioned, penguins greet you at the entrances/exits of the station. You can see them on both sides of the platforms.

Above ground, the Plaza Hotel (no longer a hotel) stands. Lots of horse-drawn carriages stand in the cold waiting to take tourists for a ride through Central Park.

- After my post last Sunday about the William Steig exhibit at the Jewish Museum, I was contacted by them to ask if I wanted images of art from the show for my blog, and of course I jumped at the chance.

They sent quite a bit of material as well as the captions that go with the art, and this gives me a good excuse to post more of Steig’s art. Because these images are photos (not scans) of the original art, they show the texture of the paper and the edges including some Steig’s writing, so I feel like there’s a good reason to post it. (The photos of the art, by the way, are all by Richard Goodbody.)_________Photo of Steig circa 1930′s.

I’ll probably display these image in a couple of posts so you can see a good sampling of this man’s work. I don’t have to say that I am a fan; I think by now it’s obvious.

You might want to check out the book, The Art of William Steig, which is a catalogue of the show. It’s available through the Museum as well as through other resources.

Ann Scher left a comment on my last post that the Steig exhibition is on view at The Jewish Museum in NYC until March 16, 2008. It will then travel to San Francisco, to be shown at The Contemporary Jewish Museum from June 8 – September 7, 2008.
If you have the time take a visit.

Here’s some of the earlier work that this artist did.

What a Woman!
preliminary drawing for The Rejected Lovers (1951)
pen and ink on paper
© 1951 William Steig, renewed 1979, 2007
_

In the Nick of Time
from “Dreams of Glory” series, published in The New Yorker, May 26, 1951
pen and ink and wash on paper.
© 1951 William Steig, renewed 1979, 2007
_

“Are we early?”
Delivered to Look magazine, May 17, 1956
pen and ink and wash on paper
© 1956 William Steig, renewed 1984

“What did I do?”
published in The New Yorker, June 30, 1962, pen and ink and wash on paper
© 1962 William Steig, renewed 1990
_

“I got my first haircut at Ditchick’s Barbershop”
final illustration for When Everybody Wore a Hat (2003)
pen and ink and watercolor on paper
original version, in pen and ink and wash, c. 1959
© 2003 William Steig

- Back in the olden days, films were released very differently.

It wasn’t until the early 60′s that an important film opened at more than one theater in a town/city. (I can remember that United Artists package of ten films that first did this. It included To Kill A Mockingbird, Dr. No, and A Hard Day’s Night. Even then we were talking about 60 theaters not 3000.)

In New York key films opened on Broadway, in Manhattan, and you had to buy reserved seat tickets in advance to see it. The film would play there for a month or two and then move onto more theaters locally around town.
I can remember the trip to see How The West Was Won, The Tales of The Brothers Grimm, Lawrence of Arabia, and others.

With this higher priced film presentation, you were given a small booklet or you could buy the deluxe souvenir booklet. In 1963, I found this deluxe booklet for the initial premiere of Fantasia. I bought it from a used-book dealer while I was still in college.

This past week, I watched Fantasia again and used the program to read some credits. That’s when I thought it might be interesting to feature the booklet on this site.

So, here it is. I’ve split it into two posts with #2 to follow.

1 2
____(Click any image to enlarge to a readable size.)

3 4
____
5 6
____
7 8
____
9 10

- The great thing about the holidays is that there are a number of parties where you can catch up to and meet with some people you haven’t seen in a while. I had a great time at George Griffin and Karen Cooper‘s New Year’s day gathering. Some of my oldest and dearest animation friends were there.

It was fun catching up with John Canemaker, Emily Hubley, Bill Plympton, Signe Bauman, Debra Solomon, Lisa Crafts, Nina Paley and George, himself. It was a total surprise meeting up with Veronika Soul again. It may have been 15 years or so since we last saw each other. She’s a fantastic artist whose work always gave me a charge. Now that she’s back in NY and I have her contact information, hopefully we’ll see more of each other.

It was also great visiting with John Schnall. He’s one of my favorite people in animation, and we rarely see each other except for the occasional party.

I don’t generally like posting YouTube pieces; I’d rather direct you to their pages. After seeing John Schnall, he followed up with his YouTube link, and I checked it out.
His pieces had me laughing aloud, and I have to share them with you.

John’s been making animation for quite a while. We worked together back in 1987 when he supervised the production of Lyle Lyle Crocodile for me. If I remember correctly he did his first commercial bit of animation on that film when the family decorates their home for the return of Lyle. Anyway, that’s one of the things I was thinking about while watching that movie at the MOMA screening. (I suppose this is what most people do while watching their own films; remember what was going on when the film was being made.)

The piece below, is an hilarious mix of George Bush and another YouTube hit. For me the joke was completely unexpected and well done. There are a dozen pieces on John’s YouTube site; they’re all well done and funny. Take a look. They give Jib Jab a jab by actually saying something.

(Click image to go to John’s YouTube page.)

- Today’s the day the Iowa voters perform their curious voting rituals. I’ll be all eyes and ears tonight. I’m not sure any one President will be able to undo the horrific work this last guy and his team have done. Certainly, the crop electioneering don’t fill me with confidence. Ms. Clinton, for one, is unable to adequately answer any ONE question she’s asked. Consequently, I see her as just an extension of what we’ve already got. A mouth full of non-sequitors and gobbledygook for answers. The only aim they have seems to have little to do with me. Edwards has continuously spoken up for the poor and disenfranchised. Since they’re not the ones who would put him in office, I’m not expecting him to win. Obama looks attractive to me though a bit languid on the campaign trail. Where’s Al Gore when you need him? As for the Republicans, when Romney is leading the way and Huckabee is his big challenge, they have problems.

Christmas balls dangling – live fruit still kicking Jan 1
Photo by Steve Fisher

- Now that the holidays are past us, and we’re ready to pull down the trimmings, we can get onto the new. As it turns out, there were a number of excellent new sites/blogs created toward the end of the year, and I’d like to call attention to a few.

- The Thief, for me, has been a daily must-visit site. It’s written by four people who started out working at Richard Williams’ Soho Square studio. Their experience and stories about working on Dick’s Cobbler and the Thief (or is it The Thief and the Cobbler?) feature are posted for us to enjoy. This feature is probably the last glorious attempt at a cel-aniamted feature without the slightest use of a computer. It’s undeniably brilliant in some of its animation, and reading about the work is so informative to me, that I quite enjoy it._________________A Tissa David Yum Yum from The Thief.

- Toons At War has been an excellent blog has been focussed on this incredible subject since August of 2006. The material that has been posted on this site has been great to view and study. Lots of beautiful art.

Now David, who hosts and writes that blog, has a new and exciting site. Vintage Disney Collectibles gives lots of rare and interesting material showcasing the marketing work of Disney, particularly in the earliest days.

There are plenty of “Disney” sites out there, but David’s specialization, here, is obviously such a work of love that it can’t help be informative.

In the past I gave some small attention to the work of Paul Lasaine. His excellent site reveals some of the incredible artwork he’s done for a number of films.

His matte paintings, poster artwork and design work for some of the newer cgi features is extraordinary. It’s fun seeing strong works of design and planning for some of the backbone work of these films. The detail of the painting above (from Surf’s Up) gives me a small bit of respect for the strong craft that goes into the making of some of these cg films.

This is a beautiful site with lots of examples of artwork from Prince of Egypt, Surf’s Up, Lord of the Rings and several live action features.

- Bob Jaques‘ relatively new site (mentioned here several times) has become one of my favorite daily stops. Popeye Animator ID does just that; it identifies and highlights the work of some of the animators at the Fleischer studio. People like Lillian Friedman, Louis Zukor or George Germanetti would get absolutely NO attention were it not for the detailed, entertaining and revealing posts on this site. Even Bob’s riffs on reuse animation are just compelling.
Between this site and the new_______________Popeye meets the multiplane camera._
Popeye dvd’s out recently, I think
I’ve recently spent more time watching Popeye than I have in my life. And I’m enjoying it.

- Finally, my friend, Joey Hachtman has a new site on My Space. It’s called Three Designing Women, and it showcases the exciting trompe L’oeil murals she’s been producing out of her Point Pleasant location.
I wrote about her in this earlier post.
The caricature of the Three Designing Women, to the left, is by Tom Hachtman, Joey’s husband. Take a look at the site..

– Happy New Year from the Museum of Modern Art.
They’ll be screening the three color Popeye shorts from the Fleischers today, next Wednesday and next Thursday.

Popeye the Sailor Meets Sinbad the Sailor 1936 17 min.
Popeye the Sailor Meets Ali Baba’s Forty Thieves 1937 17 min.
Aladdin and His Wonderful Lamp 1939 22 min.

The program will be screened as follows: Tuesday, January 1, 2:00; Wednesday, January 9, 1:30; Thursday, January 10, 1:30

Here are some frame grabs from the first third of Aladdin and His Wonderful Lamp to help celebrate the occasion. Despite the lack of use of their 3D camera, in this film, I love the backgrounds here. There’s no credit given, but I’m guessing that Bob Little was in charge here. The beautiful art looks similar to what they were doing on Gulliver’s Travels. I think it’s wonderful work.

_
______(Click any image to enlarge.)

_
______

_
_
______
_
______
_
______
_
______
_
______

______
_
______

______
______

- What better way to issue in the New Year than with models/sketches and drawings from the Pink Elephants on Parade section of Dumbo. Once again, thanks to John Canemaker, I have several photo images to display.

These are rather small images, so by cutting up the large boards and reassembling them I can post them at a higher resolution, making them better seen when clicking each image. It’ll take two days to post them all, so this will be continued later this week.

I’ve interspersed some frame grabs fromt the sequence to give an idea of the coloring.

(Click any image to enlarge.)

- Yesterday, we went to the Jewish Museum on the upper East Side of Manhattan to see the exhibit of William Steig‘s works. Unfortunately, like most other New York buildings, (pictured on the left) there’s a scaffold surrounding the museum, with some kind of construction going on. On Saturdays, entrance is free, so you’ll note the long line to enter. Within, there’s an overly cautious search of your property to make sure you’re not trying to sneak in with a bomb.

On display were many of his original cartoons as well as original color illustrations for the many children’s books he wrote and illustrated. The exhibit included a lot of roughs as well as dummy copies of several books – including Doctor DeSoto.

They dressed up several rooms with wall-sized images from the books as well as copies of the books to view, and there were people with kids strewn about the floor.

I’m sorry it didn’t occur while Steig was still alive. When I first got out of the Navy in 1970, I came upon a small exhibit of his New Yorker cartoons at a rare-book seller’s shop (no longer there.) I was so taken by the drawings that I used all my money at the time, $75.00, to buy the least expensive (and my favorite) one of the pictures. Years later when I told him about the drawing I’d bought, he knew exactly which one it was. He said that’s the only picture bought at that show.

At the Jewish Museum, I learned early on that I wasn’t allowed to photograph the pictures. I still took a few pictures on the sly and have tried to clean them up for this post.

“Are we too early?”
An early New Yorker cartoon drawn before the arrival of
William Shawn as editor of the magazine.

Steig’s cartoons often depicted brutally honest thoughts
on male/female relationships.

There were a number of Steig’s black & white drawings from his books, The Lonely Ones and Small Fry. These were originally collections of New Yorker cartoons.
The Lonely Ones cartoons reflect the influence of Wilhelm Reich and his unusal psychoterapy. Steig was an ardent follower, and the “Orgone box” appears in many of the illustrations or as subtext to many of the children’s books.

In the first room you entered, there was a beautiful New Yorker image of many faces.
Later in the show, this image was enlarged to wall-size, and several of the faces opened
for kids who wanted to interact with the masks.

__
Many of his children’s books were well represented. Abel’s Island, above left, and
Sylvester and the Magic Pebble, above right, were shown. There were some excellent images from The Amazing Bone. (I almost thought I was looking at artwork from my film;
it was the exact same size.)

There were a couple of images from the stunningly beautiful book, Brave Irene. This is the one book I wish I could’ve animated.

The final room included a number of images from Steig’s book, Shrek. It isn’t one of my favorites of his books, but the paintings still are excellent. On a wall opposite were drawings and sketches by several of the Dreamworks artists and their versions of the character. A table in the center of the room displayed a couple of sculptures of the ugly character from the films.

It’s bad enough that the beautiful illustrations of Steig are trashed for the ugly repre-
sentations in those films, but to complete a retrospective of the man’s art with that left a bad taste in my mouth. Obviously, Dreamworks must have helped finance the exhibit. I didn’t take any more pictures in this final room.

The exhibit is attractive and it’s a good way to see Steig as an artist. The art is small, so if there’s a crowd there can be a small wait. However, it’s worth any troubles. There was a book, The Art of William Steig. It was Saturday, and the bookstore was closed, and I wasn’t able to buy one. Perhaps when I do, I’ll post more of the images from this show.

- Today I complete the collection of frame grabs I’ve pulled from UPA’s The Tell Tale Heart. If you don’t have the film on dvd, watch it on YouTube. This film is included among the films preserved in the U S National Film Registry.

However, to quote John Kricfalusi, “‘Masterpiece’?? It’s a total boring slow eyesore.” By that, I assume he means the film doesn’t scream at you; it tells a story, and I guess that makes it boring. The fact that the cartoon lifted the Production Designer to the height of this storytelling process is irrelevant. Perhaps, today’s audiences are too impatient. (I once had an intern tell me that she couldn’t watch Citizen Kane because it was too boring. It was in Black and White.)

Regardless, I have to step off of my soapbox; here are the remainder of these beautiful images. I hope they inspire someone the way they once did me when I first saw the film. I offer these up to Paul Julian, who did such brilliant work of design.

-

Then it was over.

I was free.
_______________________________________________________________________________

But there was still work to be done.

“You’re up very early.”
“The dream I spoke of. It awakened me.”

-

Tw . . . two weeks.”

-

________________________

“Perhaps longer.”
“Nothing out of place, here.”
“There is his bed, his cupboard. All in order?”
“Quite in order.”
“All quite in order.”
“Nothing amiss. You understand that when a complaint is made we have no choice but . . .”

“. . .conceals from their eyes. But not yours, to be sure.”
CRASH !
“What? What did you say good sir?

-

-
Then I heard it. It might have been a hand. A clock.
__________________________________________________________________

But no, louder. Still louder. They must hear it.

________________________________________STOP IT ! Stop it, you devils !

YES ! I did it. It’s there under the floor. OH, STOP IT !
It is the beating of his hideous heart !

_____________True, I am nervous. Very, very dreadfully nervous.

_____________________________________But why will you say that I am mad?

- Recently, there have been a number of attacks on the classic
UPA film, The Tell Tale Heart.
A number of voices – all on blogs
and internet chatter – have called the animation for this film poor. Even recently, in a letter to Michael Barrier, Tee Bosustow writes “about the bad animation in Tell Tale Heart.”

Pat Matthews was the film’s sole credited animator, and he was good, having worked at Fleischer’s and Lantz’ studios before arriving at UPA. His work in this film is exactly what was required of him. Rather, The Tell Tale Heart is a tour de force of production design. It is probably one of the first non-war/propaganda animated films, since Baby Weems, to so feature this element of production over everything else – except story. Paul Julian‘s brilliant artwork oozes from the pores of every frame of this film. Together with James Mason‘s narration and Boris Kremenliev‘s strong musical score, the film evocatively tells the strong Edgar Allan Poe story. This tale has not been told on film any better since it was made in 1953. Ted Parmalee directed the film with authority.

It’s odd how I feel as though I have to defend this movie. I think it a brilliant film and have to remind myself that I’m not alone in believing this. It was nominated for the Oscar and for good reason (it lost to Toot Whistle Plunk and Boom. Ah, the irony!)

Here’s the first of two posts, using frame grabs to feature all of the scenes of the film.

(Click any image to enlarge.)

True I’m nervous. Very very dreadfully nervous.

Then it was over.
______________________________________________ To be concluded tomorrow.