Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

- Congratulations to my good friend, John Canemaker, on being awarded the WINSOR McCAY AWARD for career contributions to the art of animation.

How more perfect to give this award to the guy who wrote the first and foremost biography of Winsor McCay. The Annie committee definitely got one right this year.

Congrats, also, to all the other nominees viewable here.

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– I love reading magazine articles from the past about animation. That means mostly Disney. There’s a lovely piece from the December 27, 1937 issue of Time Magazine about Disney and his “folly,” Snow White which has been posted by Joe Campana on his excellent site, Animation Who and Where.

The attractive image to the left was on that magazine’s cover. So much of the PR work on Snow White really gets me. I have this wonderful old 16mm copy of a trailer for the film. There was obviously no animated footage prepared for the trailer, so they used short live action clips of people dressed up like the seven dwarfs walking around a little house they’d built. Perhaps it was the one at the Carthay Circle Theater.

If you don’t know Joe Campana’s site and do go to check out the magazine I urge you take a good look at other posts there. My favorite is still one posted last June on the “Ghosts” of the Mintz Studio. It’s a great piece of detective work that absolutely amused me.

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Modern Mechanix has posted a number of past articles about animation. Here are two short articles about new machinery for animation.
You can check out the original articles on the actual site.
- article 1
- article 2

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The first article is about a Fleischer invention in the 20′s that never made it. It’s a new machine to project animated drawings on a large drum.

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This second article is about an animation camera device at Terrytoons in 1940 that allowed you to rotoscope and combine live action with animation. This piece of equipment remained as an addition to the Oxberry Camera that could be added onto deluxe models.

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– In other news, John Dilworth reports that the first season of Courage the Cowardly Dog is finally out on dvd.

The only problem is that it’s only available in Australia. Perhaps Cartoon Network will get their act together and share this with US buyers! The show was one of their best, and the channel has done everything they can to bury it.

Out with the old – in with the new.

Oh, and the new isn’t even Aqua Teen Hunger Force!
(By the way, there are already five editions of dvd’s for this pathetic program. That’s not counting the feature that no one saw, also available on dvd.)

There are many other, more recent programs whose titles are less memorable. I’m sure their new live-action programming will be more effective for them.

- One of my favorites of my films is The Hunting of the Snark. I adapted this from Lewis Carroll’s poem. It was an enigma to the audience when it was first published – Carroll refused to explain its meaning, and it’s an enigma now.

I remember screening it with an audience of fifth graders – about 200 of them along with a number of their parents. The program, in Chicago, was part of a retrospective of some of th echildren’s films I’d done at the time. I made the decision to show the Snark, even though I wasn’t sure the audience would sit still for it.

The response was amazing. The adults, during the Q&A period, had a lot of questions. The kids had no problems. When, finally, one parent asked me what it was supposed to mean, I decided to turn it around. I asked if one of the kids could answer the question. A lot of kids raised their hands, and the first one gave me the appropriate answer.
A bunch of guys go hunting for a monster________This is how the map was illustrated by
that’ll make them disappear, and one of_________the original illustrator, Henry Holiday.
them catches it. For all intent and purposes
that IS what it’s about.

I love showing this film as part of my programs. It’s easy for me to discuss, and I’m proud of it. I don’t think most animators like it, but that doesn’t bother me.

During the story there’s one key part that all illustrators love to illustrate.

“Other maps are such shapes, with their islands and capes!
But we’ve got our brave Captain to thank:
(So the crew would protest) “that he’s bought us the best–
A perfect and absolute blank!”

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A blank page! What could be easier to illustrate? A couple of illustrators have cheated such as this map found on line:

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Figure One: Bellman’s Blank Ocean Chart _
Barry Smith at the University of Buffalo dept of Philosophy uses this map – a blank slate – to treat it as a map of heaven. Carroll was an Evangelical minister, but I’m confident this is not what he had in mind when he conjured up the lines in the poem.
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Mehendra Singh has a website which is slowly illustrating the entire poem. His illustration for this passage appears to the right. This is part of his comment accompanying the illustration.

Yet another shameless Magritte pastiche, and not the last one to grace these pages, I’ll wager. Shameless — the 10th Muse of Protosurrealism!

Even more shameless — this insistence that the crew of the HMS Snark use the French language for navigational purposes when it is clearly evident to anyone who has ever been lost at sea that English is the natural language of confusion. This is easily verified. Stand on a streetcorner in any francophone city and ask a stranger: where am I? If necessary, pull at shirtsleeves and wave your arms, speak very slowly while pronouncing every phoneme at the utmost decibel level.

Singh has a curious and interesting site in its own right.
Let me encourage you to check it out for all the original illustration on it.
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This is how Quentin Blake chose to illustrate it in his version. Since he obviously was nervous about just showing the blank map, he illustrated the Bellman holding it.
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This is Ralph Steadman’s version. He went for the gold and just showed the map.
Yet, it’s still, obviously, a Steadman.______________
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This is how I chose to depict it in my film. Showing hands and table behind it,
gave me the opportunity of trucking in to white to transition to the next scene –
an image of the sea, itself.

– Today’s Walt Disney‘s birthday. It’s also the second anniversary of this blog. I thought I should post something appropriate for the Disney celebration, and decided to look back some fifty-odd years.

To a young, would-be animator, desperate to read ANYTHING about cartoons or Disney, the Saturday Evening Post offered a miraculous treat. Published in eight installments, Diane Disney Miller gave us a biography of her father. This was not something you saw elsewhere – let me tell you.

The library only offered a small handful of books on animation, and there were no biographies of ANY animator or animation producer/director. Here was the cr̬me de la cr̬me, a biography of the big guy. So I bought every one of those eight issues Рprobably using up my entire allowance for those weeks. (I was ten years old, at the time.) Then, after all eight articles were printed, the biography came out in book form. The perfect Christmas gift.

These days, publishing and marketing have gotten more sophisticated. A new animation book comes out every week, and a new film every other week. However, quantity does not mean quality, and Specials are no longer special. They were then. Things were innocent. A communist hid behind every telephone pole, and animation studios meant Disney.

So, for today, here’s that very first installment of Diane Disney Miller’s book. I’ve left it complete with ads, so you can take in the period as a whole. This book is still entertaining and worth reading, though I’d follow it up with Mike Barrier’s The Animated Man.
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– Sue Coe is one of my favorite current artists. A wholly political artist, it seems to me that she is the extension of the German Expressionists, focusing on man’s inhumanity to man, or Goya‘s Caprichos or Ben Shahn‘s attention to political injustice. All of her work seems to fit into this form, and I am completely attracted to it.

She is represented by the Galerie St. Etienne, in New York. Years ago, I was there, arranged by HBO, to see some paintings by Grandma Moses. While they pulled out the paintings for me, I was able to see a stack of lithographs by Sue Coe, and it made for a memorable day for me.

I’ve posted a number of other pieces about her and will probably do it again. You can view a couple here and here.

About 15 years ago, The New Yorker magazine, printed a number of pictoral essays by her, and I’ve saved several of them. Here’s her study of “Nightcourt” in the Bronx. I believe these images were represented by Galerie St. Etienne.

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- Thanks again to the enormous generosity of John Canemaker, I’m able to post this board of artwork from the Baia sequence of The Three Caballeros.

In this segment from the film, during a big dance number, Donald Duck falls in love with Aurora Miranda. The great Brazilian musicians dance and swing with the birds and other animals in this very colorful and evocative sequence.

(You can watch this number on YouTube today – it might be down tomorrow) in case you don’t know the film.

Here’s a beautiful production drawing with Donald and women from the film. This came from the Latin Baby blog (however it might have been cribbed from Blackwing Diaries.) It’s devoted entirely to the Latin films of Disney. Naturally, Three Caballeros is featured prominently.

The photographic boards come in a very long first page (which had to be broken into two photos) and a more controlled second page. To enable me to post it as large as possible, I broke that first, long board into four parts – each row of the board represents one part. Hence, 1A, B, C, and D are really just one very long board shifted around in photoshop.

Board #1 actually looks like this. However, due to space constraints I can’t post it at a high enough resolution to make it clearly visible. Consequently, I broke it into the four boards just below this.

1a
(Click any image to enlarge.)

1B

1C

1D

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Hans Bacher ‘s site Animation Treasures (now defunct) included this beautiful reconstructed rendering of a Bg from the sequence – see board 1A.
Art such as this will be missed with the tear-down of Hans’ excellent sites, and I can only hope that he’ll be able to get some newer site – not blog – together for this great artwork.

- About an hour ago, it started snowing in Manhattan. We’re supposed to get about an inch of snow (in the City – more, in the outer suburbs) before it turns to sleet this afternoon and rain tonight. It was a bit of a surprise since I expected it to come later today. This is what I saw on the way to the studio this morning.
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______23rd Street looking west toward Sixth Avenue.
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______The steel trees in Madison Square Park.
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______These Christmas trees – to be decorated – were set up this past week.

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- Last Sunday’s post of signage photos brought out the best in some of friend, Steve Fisher’s pictures. He sent them, and I can’t help posting them. They’re funny.
Sometimes, home made ads aren’t much worse than store-bought ones.

(Click any image to enlarge.)

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- I noticed only one new Network Christmas special this year, Dreamworks’ Shrek the Halls which aired last Wednesday. It’s interesting that I also noticed few blogs talking about it. Animated News reported its airing and positive ratings but not much more than that. Jim Hill also gave it a positive review; the comments were mostly negative. The animation blogs were silent, though. The show did get good reviews, but so did those three movies. I missed the program completely. I went out that night, but truthfully I wouldn’t have ________________Turkey, anyone?
watched it if I were home. I’m not a fan of Shrek.

Will Finn did comment on the Tom & Jerry Nutcracker Tale which aired on Cartoon Network. I saw more of that than I did of Shrek. After coming in on T&J Nutcracker already in progress and after watching a minute of it, wondering, at first, whether it was one of those Gene Deitch cartoons then realizing there was a lot of digital composition and movement, I knew it had to be more recent. I figured out what it was and decided I’d seen enough. By the way, when was the last time T&J were animated in the U.S.? Maybe Chuck Jones?

I did turn on the Charlie Brown Christmas show on ABC this past Tuesday. It took me a full five minutes to realize it wasn’t the original one – I wasn’t really paying attention, but the voices were too theatrical. It was Charlie Brown’s Christmas Tales done in 2002. It was too slick, and I lost patience.

Not much “Special” for me anymore in these Christmas Specials. I’m getting to feel like a grinch about animation anymore. At least with dvd we can pull out one of the golden oldies. Magoo’s Christmas Carol, anyone?

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- My good friend, the excellent composer and musician, Ernest Troost, has a film he scored premiering on Sunday night. If you’re looking for something enter-taining to watch, this is undoubtedly it.

The Pictures of Hollis Woods is a film adaptation of the Newbury honor book by author, Patricia Reilly Giff, who also coauthored the script. Tony Bill directed the film.

I’ve written about Ernest’s music in the past (see here and here); he and I did quite a bit of film together, and the work was enormously rewarding.

Ernest moved to LA and feature films years ago. He’s won an Emmy and been nominated for several more. We’ve continued to work together on a couple of Weston Woods shorts long distance.

As for me, all you have to do is tell me that Sissy Spacek and Alfre Woodard are together in a film, and I’m there. Ernest is a plus for me. I’m looking forward to the show.
The Pictures of Hollis Woods
Sunday, CBS, 9pm ET/PT

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- Back in the 50′s the film director, Frank Capra, produced, directed and wrote four specials for TV which were sponsored by Bell. Our Mr. Sun (1956), Hemo the Magnificent (1957), Unchained Goddess (1958) and The Strange Case of the Cosmic Rays (1957) were devoted to explaining basic science to family home audiences. Capra was educated as an engineer, so he had a lifelong interest in science and he initiated these prorams.

Capra also had a long time interest in animation. He was responsible for securing a distribution contract for Disney with Columbia back in the early 30′s. Animation became a large part of these four programs, and Capra found different animation houses to do them. UPA, Disney, Shamus Culhane‘s studio and WB all were involved.

UPA did the artwork for Our Mr. Sun, the first of these programs. (You can watch it here.) I have a copy of the script marked up by Grim Natwick, so I know he animated on it out of the NY studio of UPA.

The shows play a bit like Ward Kimball‘s “Tomorrowland” episodes of the Disneyland television show. Perhaps these are a bit less joke oriented. The animation is just as limited and design oriented. This format has forever affected many who grew up watching them. Check out the new Pixar 2D piece, You’re The Rat, currently on YouTube (it’ll probably be removed soon.) There’s an obvious link.

Here are some frame grabs from this first show of the Bell Science Series: Our Mr. Sun.

(Cllick any image to enlarge.)

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- I apologize for the server problems we had yesterday. Our site was down for most of the day. If you haven’t seen yesterday’s post, just scroll down.

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- Jack Schnerk‘s daughter, Mary Schnerk Lincoln, has put three of her father’s commercial sample reels onto YouTube . This gives me a good excuse to call attention to his work, once again. There are a number of well-known and collector’s item commercials in these reels. Included are spots designed by the likes of Gahan Wilson, Tomi Ungerer, Charles Saxon and Rowland Wilson.

Jack Schnerk was a great animator who deserves considerably more attention. He was a strong influence on me in the first eight years of my career and taught me quite a few large principles about the business. He also told me a few stories of his work as an assistant at Disney’s on Bambi and Dumbo as well as the great times animating at UPA and the difficulties of animating at Shamus Culhane’s studio. Actually, he didn’t tell me about his problems with Shamus; another animator did. Jack complained about the business, but never about how he was treated.

I wish I had more samples of the many scenes of his that I assisted. He worked in a very distinct style – I don’t think I’ve seen anyone elseever draw that way. Somehow, the very rough drawings weren’t hard to clean up, and he didn’t leave the bulk of the work for the people following him. He was concerned about the timing and did every drawing he needed to make sure that timing worked. Most of the time we worked together, he had no chance to see pencil tests. Only on Raggedy Ann did he have that luxury.

Jack had a dark side, that I appreciated, but he also brought a lightness and individual sensibility to the work he did. He took chances in his animation and timing and sometimes failed but usually succeeded with them. That’s more than I’ll say for most of the animators I’ve met in the business.

See Jack Schnerk sample reel 1.

Jack Schnerk Sample reel 2.

Jack Schnerk Sample reel 3.

- Yesterday, I posted John Canemaker‘s archival copy of the storyboard for Dumbo; the sequence where he gets washed by his mother and plays around her legs.

I think this sequence, on film, is one of the greatest ever animated. There’s a sweet tenderness and an obviously close relationship between baby Dumbo and his mother which is built on the back of this sequence. It not only establishes both characters solidly, without words, but it sets up the mood of everything that will soon happen to the pair during the remaining 45 minutes of the film. Without that established bond, the audience wouldn’t feel so deeply for the pair during the “Baby Mine” song or care so much about Dumbo’s predicament.

Tytla has said that he based the animation of the baby elephant on his young son who he could study at home. Peet has said that Tytla had difficulty drawing the elephants and asked for some help via his assistant. There’s no doubt that both were proud of the sequence and tried to take full credit for it. No doubt both deserve enormous credit for a wonderful sequence. Regardless of how it got to the screen, everyone involved deserves kudos.

Here are a lot of frame grabs of the sequence. I put them up just so that they can be compared to the extraordinary board posted yesterday. Both match each other closely. Whereas the board has all the meat, the timing of the animation gives it the delicacy that would have been lost in a lesser animator’s hands, or, for that matter, in a less-caring animator’s hands. The scene is an emotional one.

(Click any image to enlarge.)

(Click any image to enlarge.)