Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

- As you know by now, I am a fan of Fritz Baumgarten‘s illusration work.
Bill Peckmann couldn’t please me more than by sending more scans of Mr. Baumgarten’s work. And it seems as though Bill has a large collection of his books. Here’s another one, Teddy und Kasperle. Teddy appears in quite a few of Mr. Baumgarten’s books, and he’s an entertaining character.

The book’s cover

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- Bill Peckmann told me about Hank Ketcham’s autobiography, The Merchant of Dennis the Menace: The Autobiography of Hank Ketcham. I wasn’t aware of it. I learned that there was a chapter on his work at the Disney studio, and Bill said he’d scan it for me. So, I was pleased and excited and knew it’d be a great piece to post here. And it is.

So this is the first part of the book’s chapter, well worth the read. If you’re interested in the book, it’s still available on Amazon.

The book’s cover

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The second half of this chapter will come on Friday.

- Fire Escapes are among the obvious to anyone walking down the street and yet almost invisible to the everyday eyes that expect them to be there.

(Click any image you’d like to enlarge.)

A couple of photos sent me by Steven Fisher showcasing fire escapes
among their own shadows inspired me to start looking anew for these
appendages to many older buildings. The two above are by Steve.

I used to believe that fire escapes were designed to be in the back
of buildings hiding from the public. Designed only to allow an alternate
escape from the building in case a fire arose.

However, it’s obvious this isn’t true. Older buildings have
no shame in baring their exoskeletal escape route.

The brownstone just about features the fire escape as a design feature.

Smaller buildings use smaller fire escapes and
they’re shaped for these buildings.

(L) Other buildings have long fire escapes that stretch over
several attached buildings.
(R) Some buldings have tiny shapes that cover small spaces.

Yet, other buildings don’t have fire escapes. They just
offer “patios” that, essentially, LOOK LIKE fire escapes.

Plenty of patios.

The structure, itself, takes on different shapes as designers
tried to cope with these required exits.

Even some thinner offered a style.

Fire escapes were a brilliant idea, but they don’t look very nice.
If they offer an exeunt for escapees, they also offer a way in for burglars.

Hence the introduction of the gate guard which prevents intruders
from entering, but that also it makes it difficult for a fast exit.

You can’t win.

Finally, here’s another picture from Steve Fisher.
It was taken in Caltabellotta. Sicily.
It’s not a fire escape but what is it?

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Originally posted March, 2009.

- Tuesday brought an Academy event. Howard W. Koch Jr., known widely as “Hawk,” succeeded Tom Sherak as president of the Academy last August. He came to New York to meet the East Coast members, here, and to congratulate this year’s crop of new members. (Emily Hubley is one of the brand new members in New York.)

There was an excellent reception at the Stone Rose Lounge, a relatively new eatery in the Columbus Circle area. The event was pleasant with a notable number of celebrities milling about: Daniel Craig, Rachel Weisz, Billy Dee Williams, S. Epatha Merkerson, Richard Gere and Michael Douglas. There was plenty of drink (martinis seemed to be the drink of choice) and some great hors d’oeurves. The lobster tacos (about 1/2 inch long) and the meatball sliders were both delicious.

The speeches were kept to a minimum. Howard Koch was the only speaker and he spoke for maybe five minutes. The rest was the members chatting each other up. Heidi and I got to talk with Mr. Koch in a relaxed situation for about 15 minutes. We spent plenty of time with John Canemaker & Joe Kennedy, Emily Hubley & Will Rosenthal, Biljana Labovic, and Candy Kugel with her sister, Tina Hirsch. As I said, it was a pleasant evening.

- Thursday evening I saw a screening of Burton’s Frankenweenie. See my review, below.

- On Friday ASIFA East and The School of Visual Arts Animation Department had a regrouping of the original commercial animation studio, Perpetual Motion Studios. I wrote about this in depth with some pictures from the event, at the end of this post. Scroll down.

While I was watching this event, the Yankees won the division series over the Baltimore Orioles. Buck Showalter and his Orioles put up an amazing fight. I’m exhausted having gone through the competition with this team that came out of nowhere. Onto Detroit, next.

I didn’t get the note from anyone that Cartoon Brew was changing their look. It was a surprise one day to go to the site and find something that looked wildly commercial, all headlines and no stories. Oh, wait. The stories are there, you just have to keep clicking on things. It looks incredibly commercial and blaring so early in the morning. I guess it’s good for them. It was a surprise to me, and it feels a bit overwhelming. I’m not sure I like going to the site of loud headlines. Though they do have all the information in cartoon town. What’re you going to do? You have to go with the flow, even when you’re heading downstream or so it often feels. Congratulations Cartoon Brew.

- I received this in my email folder:

I’m excited to share some big news with you. Anime legend Katsuhiro Otomo is slated to appear at the PLATFORM INT’L ANIMATION FESTIVAL at the end of this month, where they will be screening his new short film, COMBUSTIBLE, and also honoring him with a Lifetime Achievement Award. See attached for a full press release.

It would be great if you could cover this great event and also run the announcement ASAP. I’m including an image as well, and can provide a couple more if you’re interested. As space is limited at this event, please let me know if you are interested in a press pass to the event, and also if you’d like to interview Otomo 1:1 while he is here.

How could I not partake of such an interview. I immediately wrote back to say, yes., I wanted IN.

But first, I had to find out who Katsuhiro Otomo is. I looked him up on Google and found out he had directed Akira.

Now, Akira is one of those films that I’ve never been able to sit through. Lots of overworked, integrated animation takes place in a very convoluted story that is virtually impossible to follow. I didn’t make it past five minutes on the first attempt. Fifteen minutes on the next half dozen times. The film is magnificently rendered large, but totally impossible to sit through.

Look at that still, at the top of this post. Crowds of people running and milling about. No focus; no individuals. This is the chosen still to send out accompanying the film. A crowd shot. Busywork. No focus on characters, no identification with any personality. A crowd. That, to me, is Akira.

Sure, I’d like to meet the guy who made this film. It’s such busywork, that it defies itself and its own creation.

However, the Platform Animation Festival will take place in Los Angeles on Friday, October 26, 2012 to Sunday, October 28, 2012. Jerry Beck will interview Mr. Otomo on Sat, Oct. 27th at 9:30 PM. It might be worth attending. Jerry knows what he’s talking about when it comes to Manga, and Mr. Otomo will be making a rare visit to LA.

On Thursday evening, I saw Tim Burton‘s most recent puppet animated feature, Frankenweenie. This, as many of you already know, is a reworking of the live-action short Burton did in 1984. In many ways it doesn’t improve on that short. It basically tells the same story with an added number of homage sequences devoted to various horror flicks that Burton obviously loved.

The film is sweet with no strong conflicts to trouble little children. The animation feels ever-so-slightly limited, but I liked it. It often felt like there was a smile behind the movement, and that the animators were having fun on this film. Quite a few eccentric moves helped to make the gestures feel more individual. Unlike Para Norman, the film isn’t overly slick. That Leica film felt as though it might have been cg animated. You couldn’t really feel the fingerprints on the action. I do like that aspect of Frankenweenie. I always was sure it was real objects being animated, not some cgi puppet.

However, there was often a stiffness to the motion. In some of the first scenes, the lead boy walks as if his legs had no knees.

This might have been less noticeable if I had been more involved in a deeper story, but that is a big problem with the film. The story isn’t particularly engaging. It’s just sweet.

Of Burton’s three animated features this was the least of them.

It’s Such a Beautiful Day is the title of the feature which Don Hertzfeldt compiled of three shorts he produced: Everything Will Be OK (2006), I Am So Proud of You (2008) and It’s Such a Beautiful Day (2012). These shorts formed a trilogy which Hertzfeldt designed to create this feature.

It opened at the IFC theater in New York and received modest reviews from the NY press.

Neil Genzlinger of the NYTimes wrote on Oct 4th: “Considering that he’s a stick figure, Bill, the main character in “It’s Such a Beautiful Day,” sure does have a complex internal life. And this animated film by Don Hertzfeldt does an amazing job of making you feel it, in all its sadness, terror and transcendence.”

The film will continue to tour around the country playing at many cities from Columbia, Mo to Tucson, Az to Chicago, Il. The planned schedule for the tour cn be found here (scroll down).

There’s an excellent interview with Hertzfeldt in The Onion‘s AV Club section which was printed last April when Hertzfeldt initially toured with the film.

- Yesterday, ASIFA East and The School of Visual Arts Animation Department had a regrouping of the original commercial animation studio, Perpetual Motion Studios.

Candy Kugel spearheaded this event working with support from JJ Sedelmaier, who started in Perpetual. Quite a few past employees of the studio came back for the celebration and made for an interesting evening. For them, it was no doubt a reu-nion, for the rest of us it was a visit to a key commercial studio in New York.

The event was prompted by the recent deaths of three of the key personnel. Vincent Cafarelli, Buzz Potamkin and Hal Silvermintz all died within six months of each other, this past year. Rather than making it a memorial for the three, they made it a celebration of the studio’s work.

Tom Warburton acted as the host for the evening. He originally was an intern starting out in Buzzco Associates, the studio that followed Perpetual. Mordicai Gerstein, Russell Calabrese, JJ Sedelmaier, and Thomas Schlamme all came in for the event and sat on a panel up on stage in front of the screen.

This panel talked about the work done at the studio and the different roles they all played,from designing to animation to making music and sound effects.

In the audience there was quite a fill of other artists and past employees from the studio. Rose Eng and Marilyn Carrington were key people in I&Pt. Background Artists Linda Daurio and Cotty Kilbanks, Animators Doug Compton and Doug Crane, Layout Artist Wayne Becker, Editor Jon Levy, Producers David Sameth and Marilyn Kraemer all reunited.

I came from a different crowd of that same period. Mine was less commercial and more theatrical a group so I didn’t know many of these people. Yet, I knew of many of them and was glad to finally meet some. I was pleased finally to meet Mordi Gerstein, having animated his children’s book The Man Who Walked Between the Towers.

I’ve seen Wayne Becker‘s drawings for years, so it was a pleasure to finally meet up with him. I’d worked frequently in my own studio with the brilliant Doug Compton, so I was glad to see him, and I knew Doug Crane from Raggedy Ann.

It’s amazing the number of people who started out at Perpetual and went on to become important directors, designers, and creators within the industry. They must have been doing something right.

As one who sat in the wings watching the planning for this event, I got to see how enormous the amount of work and the number of phone calls it took for Candy to get the event together, and Rick Broas did a lion’s share of the technical work in planning the video and graphics for the program. They did everything from a film retrospective, to announcement invitations to name labels. They’re both to be congratulated for pulling off a fantastic night’s entertainment.

The program ended with Candy’s latest film, The Last Time, which is a memorial to her close friend and working partner since 1973, Vince Cafarelli. Although it wasn’t a Perpetual product, it celebrated the end result of that studio as Perpetual merged into Buzzco with Buzz Potamkin, Candy and Vinnie continued on after Hal Silvermintz moved to open his own studio. After Buzz moved on Candy and Vinnie continued on with the studio which remains open and busy to this day. The film is sad, but it proved to be a positive ending to the evening. look for the spanking new short on the festival circuit.Go to its Facebook page to see a clip. Candy & Rick are appropriately proud of the short.

Here are some stills I took last night:

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The theater where the show took place.

Mordicai Gerstein and Wayne Becker chat in the lobby.

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Mordicai Gerstein and Don Duga say hi on stage before the show.

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Tom Warburton moderated the panel on stage.

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(LtoR) Mordi Gerstein, Candy Kugel, Thomas Schlamme

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(LtoR) Tom Warburton, Mordi Gerstein, Candy Kugel,
Thomas Schlamme, JJ Sedelmaier, and Russell Calabrese

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Mordi Gerstein and Candy Kugel remain on stage during the
opening filmmontage constructed by Richard O’Connor for the show.

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Mordi Gerstein reminisces.

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JJ Sedelmaier listens to the conversation.

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Sorry Candy. It’s a good closeup even though
my cursed camera caught you with eyes closed.

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Candy and Thomas Schlamme remember.

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Tommie Schlamme, JJ looking out and Russell Calabrese.

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Mordi Gerstein watches some commercials
which he designed many years ago.

– I have a love/hate relationship with western art. The truly great, such as Remington, give a power and majesty through an extraordinarily honest approach to the world they found, pristine of the footsteps of western man. Many of the later followers are not quite as brilliant to my taste. I appreciate the extraordinary artistry and craftsmanship of many of these painters, but they stand on a plateau much lower than that of the great. Of course, there’s a wide variation among these artists, and they were searching for something very different than a Remington or a Charles M. Russell or Albert Bierstadt.

Bill Peckmann has sent some beautiful works of what seem to be predominantly early 20th century art. There’s a nice variation among the artists, some are on the genius level others aren’t quite as great. Some such as Thomas Hart Benton don’t seem to fit properly into the overall scheme as a “Western” artist. He seems more like a Mid-Western painter, a WPA artist, rather than a Western one, but I’ll post anything by him anytime. He’s exceptional, to say the least.

Here are Bill’s comments:

Growing up in the Bronx with all of that asphalt, bricks and mortar years ago, it was very easy at that time to become enamored with the wide open spaces and succulent sagebrush scenery of comic book, movie and TV westerns. Like all first loves, those images had a way sticking with you through life. (In most of those oaters, I’d say the scenery often got the upper hand with a lot of those gunslinging heroes.) Somewhat older now, (and hopefully with a little better handle on the arts) it’s nice to see that ‘fine art’ western painting still has that same ability to make you want to become an ol’ cowhand.

Here is a sampling from different art books of a few of the artists who captured the best of the West.

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Here is Maynard Dixon. (IMHO one of the greats, a western Edward Hopper.)

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Maynard Dixon

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Maynard Dixon.

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E. Martin Hennings

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Ernest Blumenschein.
(This painting still floors me every time I look at it.)

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Gustave Baumann.
A western woodcut artist, a niche he made all his own.

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Ernest Lawson.

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Birger Sandzen

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John F. Carlson

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Maynard Dixon

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Gustave Baumann

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Ernest Blumenshein

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Maynard Dixon

Georgia O’Keefe

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Gustave Baumann

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Maynard Dixon

Thomas Hart Benton

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Gustave Baumann

Maynard Dixon

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Gustave Baumann

Maynard Dixon

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Gustave Baumann

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Maynard Dixon

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- Tissa David taught a class in animation out of R.O.Blechman‘s studio, the Ink tank, back in 1991. Eugene Salandra attended the class and kept wonderful notes on the sessions/ With his permission I’m posting the notes from that class. As I scan them, I’ve been reading them. They’re enormously informative and act as a wonderful reminder of many of the basics that sometimes slip through the cracks. So even though we’ve been using these rules forever, it’s good to just read them again.

Anyway, here’s part 3:

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I repeat these first two pages.

(Click any image to enlarge.)

This section also includes a number of bits about animation points for the past’s generosity. There’s a section on Exosure sheets. Another on timing charts. Both are richly informative to the youngsters of today who might not want to know this for the future especially when it’s so obviously part of the past.If you end up knowing that material, believe me, you’re so much the better for it, and your rules will develop into the certifiably strong. He didn’t hold onto those drawings for theft; I think they know it.

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- Continuing on with the Vincent Cafarelli collection of artwork, I ran across some more Fleischer/Paramount models. One piece among them, I think, is something of a rarity. Here they are:

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This seems to be a rarely seen model. “Wags” the dog from Gulliver’s Travels.
I think this was cut from the film, at least I’ve never noticed him.

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This, of course, is not Fleischer but a later Famous short.

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This appears to be from a later Paramount cartoon.

(Thad Komorowski identifies this as Bill Tytla’s
HECTOR’S HECTIC LIFE in the comment section of this post.)

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- Here is something even rarer than that Gulliver “Wags” model sheet.

Apparently, new hirees at Famous Studios (at least in 1956) would go to an art school, of sorts. The following drawings are on reduced animation paper (although they’re the actual pencil drawings, not copies) and stapled – with two staples, one on either side – to black illustration board. Each has additional registration marks drawn at the bottom. Each is one of two drawings that are slightly different from one another. Presumably, they were designed to teach inbetweening. The pencil drawing line work is particularly thin, so I suspect these were projected with an overhead projector. I’d guess that the art student, new employee, would copy the projected drawings and then have to inbetween the pair of drawings.

The drawings start with simple lines and get progressively more difficult until it’s a full sized image of Popeye ready to throw a punch. For the sake of space, and since the first drawings aren’t very interesting, I’ve enlarged only the last half of them. The thumbnails for the first group are small, so you can see them and enlarge them, if you like. If you’re new to the field, try copying and inbetweening at least the last five pairs. It’s amazing that Vincent Cafarelli saved these, and fortuitous for us to be able to see them. Have a look:

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- Bill Peckimann reminded me of a great illustrater/artist who did many New Yorker covers for a short period of time. Lorenzo Mattotti is a sterling artist whose work always inspired. Bill put together quite a few pages from Mattotti’s book of artwork, and the results are exciting. Here are Bill’s comments:

In the late 1990′s, Lorenzo Mattotti‘s New Yorker covers always had a way of jumping out of the newsstands and right into one’s briefcase! So it was a real delight when this book of his collected works came out in 2000.

If there happens to be a dark and dingy day and you want/need inspiration, this is it!

There are more beautiful drawings, sketches and colored images at:
the Official website (in English)
Mattotti blog (in Italian)

Here are some of his works:

Click any image to enlarge.

The book’s cover

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- I have the CU drawings done by Richard Williams for a small scene from Raggedy Ann & Andy. I had thought the original animation was done by Spencer Peel, though I’m not sure. The drafts seem to credit Gerry Chiniquy.

For the first half of the film, Dick spent much of the film holed up while assisting and inbetweening many of the animators at the film’s start. In doing this, he was also able to rework and retime the animation and, thus, have control over it all. Once Dick became involved in a scene, it’s hard to say who animated it.

The problem was that the director has bigger things to do that affect the big picture.

This scene, beautifully cleaned up, is typical of these playroom scenes. And yet, as far as I can tell this was eliminated from the final film. I don’t have time to check the actual film, but the drafts indicate that scene 2.1 / 16 was taken out of the movie. I’ll look at the film just to make sure, but it looks pretty certain to me.

This is a model sheet taken from a similar scene in Raggedy Ann.
It’s obvious that his POV has shifted from left to right, and that may be
the reason for eliminating the scene pictured below.

The scene started out with 32 drawings, but it seems that Dick eliminated three of them (27-29) to hit an accent a bit harder than was done in the original animation.

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Dick had a unique animation and cleanup style. He would draw
his drawings incredibly light going quickly through the entire scene.

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The pencil line of that first round was almost invisible.

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Then he’d go back and work over those lines
just as lightly and just as quickly.

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then he’d do it again, and again, and again.

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This gave him the opportunity of changing and adjusting as he went along.

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It also is a method somewhat similar to the one
that Tytla and Ferguson used in the 1930s. They’d
go for the “forces” and then go back and build up from there.

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Williams used his light pencil lines to build up around his forces.

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Oddly the animation style is unlike Tytla and Ferguson and
more like the tight constructed, planned style of Babbitt.

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Here’s a QT of the cycle with a mix of one’s and two’s.

- Late last night Steve Fisher sent some incredible photos. I pushed aside the post I’d prepared for today and got to work on the new Sunday edition. These are quite amazing pictures. Animation of real life. Here’s Steve with his last minute comments:

I have it on good authority [my contact at the National Audubon Society] that the subject is a red-tailed hawk. I’m told that the brown tail means it is a juvenile and that it was hatched this year.

Unfortunately, we don’t know how old the snake was.

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