Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

- The last few times I’d met with Vince Cafarelli, before he died, he’d told me that he had some things he wanted to have me put on my blog. Candy Kugel has, recently, shown me the material he’d been offering. There’s a treasure of artifacts there, and it’s going to take a lot of time to display them all.

It turns out that when Vince started as a runner at Famous Studios in 1948, at one point, he found that the studio was dumping a lot of old material, and rather than let it be discarded, he took what he wanted. Fabulous gems. There’s an almost complete storyboard for a 1949 Popeye cartoon by Jack Mercer and Carl Meyer, and there are a lot of model sheets. There’s plenty of beautiful and rare work to post in the coming weeks.

I’ve decided to devote Wednesdays to the Vince Cafarelli Collection, and will start this week with all the models that came from Gulliver’s Travels.

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Several of the models, including this one, are the actual thing.
Pencil drawn originals including even the signatures approving the model.

Models approved by: Seymour Kneitel, Eddie “Hurray” Seward,
Max Fleischer, Dave Fleischer, Dan Gordon, Willard Bowsky and
Frank Kelling.

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Most of them, including this one, are lithos done for the animators.

Model sheet approved by: Dave Fleischer, Max Fleischer, Frank Kelling,
Grim Natwick, Willard Bowsky, Dan Gordon, (Eddie) Seward, and
Seymour Kneitel

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An original pencil drawn model.

Approved by: Dave, Fleischer, Seymour Kneitel,
Max Fleischer, and Dan Gordon

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Approved by: Max Fleischer, Dave Fleischer,
Seymour Kneitel, Dan Gordon, and Doc Crandall

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Approved by: Dave Fleischer, Dan Girdon, Seymour Kneitel,
Frank Kelling, Eddie Seward, Willard Bowsky and Max Fleischer

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Approved by: Dave Fleischer, Max Fleischer,
Eddie Seward, and Hig. E. Gibson

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Approved by: Max Fleischer, William Hoskins, Dan Gordon,
Willard Bowsky and Grim Natwick

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Approved by: Max Fleischer, Seymour Kneitel, Dan Gordon,
Grim Natwick, Eddie Seward, and Graham Place.

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Approved by: Edmond Seward, Dave Fleischer, Frank Kelling,
Max Fleischer, Dan Gordon and Willard Bowsky

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An original pencil drawn model.

Approved by: Max Fleischer, Dave Fleischer,
Dan Gordon and Seymour Kneitel

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Approved by: Dave Fleischer, Willard Bowsky, Seymour Kneitel,
Shane Miller, Eddie Seward, Max Fleischer, Izzie Sparber, and
Frank Kelling

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This model is a smaller size in the collection.
No approval names listed.

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This is also a smaller sized model sheet.
No approval names listed.

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Approved by: Max Fleischer, Dan Gordon,
Eddie Seward, Willard Bowsky, and Seymour Kneitel

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Approved by: Dave Fleischer, Eddie Seward, Willard Bowsky,
Max Fleischer, Dan Gordon and Seymour Kneitel

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Approved by: Dan Gordon, Eddie Seward, “G”,
Seymour Kneitel, Willard Bowsky, Dan Gordon,
and Max Fleischer

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Approved by: Max Fleischer, Eddie Seward, Dan Gordon,
Willard Bowsky and Seymour Kneitel

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An original pencil drawn model.

Approved by” Dave Fleischer, Max Fleischer, Nic. E. Gibson,
Dan Gordon and Seymour Kneitel

- Bill Peckmann sent the following drawings, and I’ll leave them to him to explain them:

In the 1980′s, studio gags were a great way to chase away the daily dose of blues from working on a few of the more tedious TV spots that we did. Nobody had a better time of this, than assistant animator Mike Baez and myself at KCMP Studios. Not quite sure why I saved mine but I did and here they are. The gags of course have a “you had to be there” or an “in” feeling to them, so I’ll drop in a few captions to help.

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“The magic of animation even works when you’re shticking around.”

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“Congratulations on a commercial well done!”

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“Mike Baez was always one of the best… ”

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” …and the fastest… ”

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” …and went through 2 boxes of Blackwings in a day!”

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“Adv. clients always loved to add feature film effects to their commercials.”

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“M&M’s with one of their first shots at shading.”

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“Doing accurate cast shadows always meant twice the amount of work!”

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“Always there to help out in a pinch… ”

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” …and then some.”

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“What was a studio if it didn’t have a cookie jar on the receptionist’s desk.”

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“Or a candy jar on the front desk.”

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“Eating, one of any studios beloved pastime, especially the
annual Christmas party at our favorite Mexican restaurant.”

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“Who didn’t look forward to the client dropping off their
food product when we were working on their commercial.”

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“Those clients dropped off a lot of product, and when they did… ”

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” …we definitely had to look into a diet plan!”

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“Lunch hour reading.”

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“20 years before ‘Cars’”

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“Reflections.”

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“Those halcyon years at K.C.M.P. Studios, you don’t know what you got till it’s gone.”

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“All work and no play . . . ”

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“The day after watching your favorite TV series.”

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“With apologies to Arnold S. and Danny D . .”

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“Dreams of a back up, second career.”

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“To the one and only Mike Baez who made working fun!”

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Indiegogo

LAYOUT FROM SC. B45
Drawing by Tissa David

And now the promotion. The POE Project is up and running at INDIEGOGO, where there is a new page seeking contributions (however small) in support of a feature animated film I’m seeking to produce. The film has seen preproduction grow and the film start to blossom under the many thumbs of those who’ve worked on it. The script, the preparatory drawings, the storyboards and animatics (video story reels) and the great early voice over recordings all show us how promising a film this will be. We’re seeking some money to finalize a couple of minutes of the film to show investors what we’d like to see with the finished film.

Please visit our Indiegogo site.

- Of all the pleasures I’ve gotten from the recently released UPA dvd Jolly Frolics the Backgrounds of Paul Julian are a particular enjoyment. His most famous and greatest achievement is, of course, the work he did on The Tell Tale Heart. This is his film. Ted Parmelee directed it, but I’m certain that he pretty much set the camera moves and timing, leaving all the design work for Julian.

I’m trying to feature Paul Julian’s work in a number of posts here, so today it’s The Tell Tale Heart.

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- Well, we’re up and running.

The POE Project has resettled at the Indiegogo site and can be reached here. Things will be a bit different this time. Basically, for the moment, it looks similar to the old Kickstarter piece.

However, we intend to make changes in the coming days and weeks to keep the site active.

- I plan on posting some videos, talking about the film in progress.
- I intend to inform you about some funding that’s in discussion.
- I’ve already set up a Facebook page for POE, to work in conjunction with my Poestory site. Both of these link to the Indiegogo page.
- More pictures will continue to be posted in the coming weeks for the sites.
- Finally, every Sunday, during the Indiegogo process, I’ll write about Edgar Allan Poe, the person, and his small family.

Photo by Steve Fisher

- Tomorrow, we will be opening our new Indiegogo page reintroducing the Poe Project to you. We’ll start with much the same offering we did for the Kickstarter run. However for the length of time this is up, we’ll be writing about the film and Edgar Allan Poe on our site on Sundays. Our goal is about half of what we aimed for last time, but we’re encouraged that we’ll be able to get there this time and will be working on POE soon.

- The Raven makes its way into theaters this week, and I saw it last Tuesday. This is a film starring John Cusack as Edgar Allan Poe. He’s pulled into service consulting with the police on a serial murderer’s killing of numerous people using ideas copied from Poe’s own stories. If Poe wants to save his young fiancée, he has to work hard at producing several new stories built on ideas he gets from the work of the killer. The flilm is ridiculous and tries to be a variant of the Robert Downey jr. Sherlock Holmes movies. Action, action, action with erroneous snippets about Poe and his life.

The film starts with an inaccuracy and goes wildly from there. The title card reads that Poe was found dying on a park bench. In fact, he was found acting wildly outside of a tavern known as Gunner’s Hall or Ryan’s Tavern. With this false premise the film is allowed to end with E.A.Poe dying, in the fresh snow, on a park bench, alone. In fact, he died another four days later after being placed in a pauper’s hospital where he wasn’t allowed visitors.

I noticed the Rotten Tomatoes average of 20% positive reviews for this film. Not good at all, but I’d expect that’s accurate.

The death of Poe has become a real mystery thanks to the poor reporting of his biographer, Rufus Wilmot Griswold. He had published a couple of Poe’s poems, received a very negative review from Poe, and the two became strong rivals. Griswold later published the first biography of Poe picturing him as a depraved drunkard and a drug-addicted madman. Despite objections from those who knew the truth, this negativ image of Poe remains even to this film in 2012.

Poe spent the evening of his death having dinner with three friends, during which he did not drink alcohol. He then went to the train station where he bought a ticket for a later train to Philadelphia, which he was to catch that evening. From this point to that, when he was found delirious on the streets outside Gunner’s Hall, there is nothing known for sure.

- On the Academy’s double bill with The Raven was the new Aardman animated feature, The Pirates: Band of Misfits. The film is well executed; the models are attractive, the detail in the sets is exceptional, and the animation is first rate (although there was something odd going on at times which made me wonder if they’d shot it at the European gauge of 25 fps.). Just the same, it was nice to see 3D puppets as opposed to 3D cgi. The look of this film was so much better than the slick Arthur’s Christmas. One can only hope that Aardman sticks to what they do best – stop motion.

The film is funny. In fact, that was a bit of a complaint I had. It was gag, gag, gag, so that you end up laughing fewer and fewer times. Yet, the big story was inconsequential and felt, to me, as though it had no real drive. The film revolves around the “Pirate Captain” (that’s his name) who wants to win the “Pirate of the Year” award and has to meet a self-imposed challenge to win the award. (Sort of like wanting to win an “Oscar” and making a film with that goal in mind.) This makes for too small a story to keep me captivated, and I felt outside the film for the entire time watching. I checked my watch often enough for this 90 minute movie. Essentially, I found the film is OK, but not necessary. Not quite as strong as Chicken Run.

Tomorrow, April 29th, Sunday 7pm, ASIFA-East presents
The 43rd ASIFA-East Animation Awards

The Awards will be presented, followed by a free food & drink reception.

Again, the admission is FREE! And it’s open to all!

The New School
Tishman Auditorium
66 W. 12th Street
(bet. 5th/6th Aves)
NYC

- Adam Abraham is the author of the new and brilliant book, When Magoo Flew, the history of UPA. He wrote me to introduce his new site, also named When Magoo Flew. The site acts as an archive of his UPA research material, and it’s a new an attractive addition to the animation net. I’ve added a link to my blogroll on the right.

RIchard O’Connor of Ace and Son sent me this link to a film they just completed and which debuted this week at the Tribeca Film Festival. Richard wrote this about the animation:

It was an interesting project and we were pretty much given a video edit of the talking head footage and left to our devices to make it work. There was a need to have a “historical” look countered with the need for fluidity/looseness and I think we came up with a good middle ground. Everything is painted on paper with the line on a separate level (I wanted to do it all on one piece of paper but we ran out of Ingram bond and the cheap stuff caused horrible bleeding AND Cartoon Colour took a month to get us another shipment). You can see where sometimes the tracebacks aren’t there for the paint level.

The coloring looks more like marker on cel, to me, than color on paper. Quite a difficult look to pull off. I’d be curious to see what it looks like on the big screen.

An ArtsEngine, Inc. Production
EDITED BY – Gabriel Rhodes
MUSIC COMPOSED BY – John Kimbrough
ANIMATION BY – Ace & Son Moving Picture Company
ANIMATION DIRECTOR – Richard O’Connor
DESIGN/LEAD ANIMATOR – Kelsey Stark
ADDITIONAL ANIMATION – Liesje Kraai
PRODUCTION ARTIST – Dee Mackey
CAMERA – William Rexer II
SOUND – John Zecca
RESEARCHER – Danielle Varga
PRODUCTION ASSISTANT – Justine Pierce
SPECIAL THANKS – Kwame Anthony Appiah

- With great excitement and anticipation, comic lovers learned this week that Paul Murry and Dick Huemer‘s Buck O’Rue comics compilation would be available in June. Bill Peckmann sent me the following note and material:

Buck O’Rue was a short lived comic strip I didn’t know about; it was done by two Disney greats, Dick Huemer and Paul Murry. The new book is a real labor of love by the author, good friend Germund Von Wowern, and in celebration of the new book due to come out soon, I thought I’d send you a small 21 page, Whitman Sampler box of some of Murry’s comic book work.

Perhaps best known for his wonderful Mickey Mouse comic book adventure stories, he also deftly handled any assignment that Dell Comics threw his way. Here are some outside the adventure story box examples of single page gags, a Donald Duck story and a Disney film adaptation. All of his pages are always bursting with well designed and drawn life!

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This Donald Duck comic contained
the following stories.

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- Last week, we offered some pages from the scrapbook of Rowland B. Wilson. This was graciously loaned to the Splog by Suzanne Wilson, and we have a treat this week. A second installment. these pages were a source of inspiration for Rowland, and the clippings, for us, are also a remarkable view of the animation and illustration product of the time.

Many thanks to Bill Peckmann for initiating this and to Suzanne for sending it.

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- Here’s the last of the scenes I have from 101 Dalmatians. Roger, singing the “Cruella de Vil” song, pulls Anita to the dance floor and does a quick step with her. She’s reluctant but moves along with him. It’s a complex scene full of character – actually, two characters, and Milt Kahl handles it brilliantly, as expected.

Here’s sequence 2, scene 91.

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From here on inbetweens are left for the Asst.

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The following QT includes all the drawings posted above.

There’s a bit of distortion in the Xerox copies
so the registration goes in and out.

[ Javascript required to view QuickTime movie, please turn it on and refresh this page ]

Click on the right side of the lower bar to watch it one frame at a time.

- Wallace Tripp has to have been the source of inspiration for many an animator in the last fifty years. His artwork is so rich and round, his characters so full of life, and his watercoloring so masterful. No one can tell me that Ken Anderson‘s style, from “Robin Hood” on, didn’t emanate from Tripp’s illustrations. I know back in the seventies, many in animation talked about him and bought his books. Those calanders were everywhere.

Bill Peckmann reminded me of this by sending me the following illustrations. Here’s Bill:

Two difficult tasks. Task number one, of all of Wally Tripp’s exceptionally wonderful books, pick your favorite one, and then task number two, pick your favorite pages. Hopefully these pages from Wally’s Granfa’ Grig Had a Pig will fill the bill on both counts for your readers new and old to Mr. Tripp’s mastery of pen and paint brush.

(Sorry to leave out the real blockbuster pages of the book, the double page spreads, unfortunately my puny scanner will not do these pages justice.)

Book cover

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And here’s a page of one of popular the calendars that came out annually.

- Here is the 2nd half of the frame grabs of the UPA film, The Man on the Flying Trapeze. As I said, last week, the film is not the best of UPA. However, Paul Julian’s work, to me, is always sterling, and that’s my reason for putting some focus on the film. Julian did the design and backgrounds.

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36-39 is an interesting transition.
The guy walks through all types of weather
as the fleur du lis framing device falls away.

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39 dissolves to 40 and moves in.

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A beautiful layout and setup.

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47-49 pans down while revoving while pulling out.
It was impossible to try to hook up the artwork,
so I left it apart.

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Start at the bottom and quickly pan up.

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He reaches for the flower -

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– just out of reach.

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The ringmaster sees what is happening.

The Trapeze Artist tumbles and twirls and flies to the end of the routine.

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Crash !

He lets go og the cord at the end of the pan.

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The ringmaster jumps to get it.

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The end of the Trapeze Artist.

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Diamonds are a girl’s best friend.

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No more coins to put in the player piano.

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A car chauffering the girl comes crashing through the piano.

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It passes across the main title card.

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A knowing wink.

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The last scene should start at the feet and move up
to the full band, beaten. (There’s a hint of a move on
the DVD.) But it cuts off here to the End card.

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