Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

- On October 10th the Motion Picture Academy will present a program of films by John & Faith Hubley. John Canemaker and Emily Hubley have assembled the program and although it is composed mostly of films by John (I’m not sure he would have been happy about that), there will be a lot of his early films like Flathatting (for the Navy) and The Magic Fluke and Rooty Toot Toot (for UPA.) There will also be recently restored prints of Adventures of an * and Tender Game as well as the late film, Voyage To Next. The show will have plenty of surprises of very rarely seen and hard-to-find material.

To reserve a seat go to Oscars.org. Academy members – $3.00. General Public – $5.00. or you can pay by mail with a form you’d get on line. Don’t wait; it’s probably sold out by now.

I will be posting as much of the Hubley art as I can in celebration of this show. To start with here’s the storyboard for Cockaboody.

– I have a photostat copy of the storyboard to John and Faith Hubley‘s short film, Cockaboody. So I thought I’d post it to give a good demo of a storyboard from a master. The board was done in 1973.

I had worked at Hubley’s for four months on Letterman and was layed off when that work ran out. They started preliminary work on Cockaboody while I was working on the feature Tubby The Tuba.

I left that project in time to get back to see the final scenes of Cockaboody colored, and I did a little animation of a rocking chair, with the two girls cradling it, at the film’s end. I didn’t do enough work on the film to receive credit, but I can still see my pencil lines on those two girls at the end of the film.

The film tells the story of two girls playing in a room next door to their babysitter. They laugh they cry they laugh they cry.

The audio track was improvised by Emily and Georgia Hubley in a recording studio years before they started the film. From the edited tracks a story was culled, and a storyboard formed. John did all of the drawings in storyboarding it.

There are 17 pages of board in all. I’ve inserted frame grabs so you can see how the final turned out. Tissa David animated the entire film.

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The storyboard, with all of the drawings done by John, was developed in conjunction with the Hubley’s class at Yale. The students actively discussed the board and offered their participation in the growth of the film’s origin. A documentary was also produced showing the production of the animated short.

You’ll notice that the action in the film varies from the setups in the storyboard. This undoubted had to do with Tissa’s involvement. She would often rework things with John and alter the filmmaking. John, and most of the directors Tissa works with, was open to this. She has a masterful sense of camera placement and uses it throughout this film.

(Click any image to enlarge.)

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The film was an outgrowth of an early recording John and Faith made of their two daughters, Emily and Georgia. While teaching at Yale the Hubleys worked with the students in their class to help develop this storyboard. One of the students, Kate Wodell, came to work in the studio and was a mainstay there for many years and continued for a while helping Faith on many of her shorts after John died.

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– Naturally, in a place like NY there’s an awful lot of signage about. The image to the left gives a good idea of the typical everywhere in this city. There are signs on the temporary construction, signs on the building, signs on the windows. Signs are everywhere and have become the ordinary part of the landscape. In fact, they’ve become part of the building, itself.

The signs that interest me usually are the ones that are actually painted on the buildings, themselves. I have to admit I’ve always been curious about these, and I’ve wondered how they actually do them.

Unlike the usual poster that’s printed onto strips that are pasted together on the billboard, these posters are actually painted in place on the brick walls. How, exactly, are these done? Realistic looking images are painted there. Paint by numbers? Perhaps I’ll do a little research and try to find out.

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Of course, the City provides many blank canvases (open building walls) where ads can be placed. Several can be seen looking down any street. It’s actually not much different from the construction site image at the top of this post. A space is a space, and that space can be rented out. (The image on the right is a closeup of the one of the several signs on the left.)

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The fashion industry seems to have their own wealth of ads on buildings. These are photographically realistic, yet they’ve obviously been painted there somehow.
You can see the bricks under the coating of paint.

This Cartoon Network ad for “Boondocks” is painted right over a number of windows.
(You can see the lit window shining through it.) How do these folk see out? I assume
it must be some kind of special paint.

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This ad for Sprint presents a new problem. When you look at the sign straight on, it looks fine. However, if you move a bit, you’ll see that the building/wall on which it’s painted has a shift in it. The sign had to have been designed to take in this change in level of the canvas. An interesting problem. (If you look closely at the Boondocks sign, you can see the same problem existed there.)

Here we have a melange of signage, not all of which are painted on walls. Does the skull represent a building under reconstruction?

Of course, any construction site offers plenty of blank canvas.

Naturally, I couldn’t pass up this image. The tiny Commerce Bank on the corner is overwhelmed by the Chase Bank next door and on the second floor. However Commerce seems to have painted its own add on the Chase construction-site doorway.

Finally, an image sent me by Steve Fisher, shows an odd and
funny juxtaposition of signs. It would make me a bit
nervous to have my pet cared for by this veterinarian.

- The Ottawa Animation Festival has been ongoing for the past couple of days. We have a film in the program and would have really enjoyed being part of it. However, funds are tight, and I had to pass on it this year. It’s something I’m a bit sad about, but whatcha gonna do!

Richard O’Connor at his studio blog Ace and Son, is giving a daily diary of the Festival.
Here’s day 1, day 2, you can scroll up from there for the rest.

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- Cartoon Brew featured a couple of videos this week that really had me thinking. Using some kind of computer animation, a couple of people replaced their faces (partially) with some celebrity parts. It was especially freaky to see some of the results. Surprisingly two of them went for a couple of the same celebrated faces: Castro, Paris Hilton, Mao, Brad Pitt et. al. The first video is more interesting than the second. The third vid shows moving facial expressions on various cartoon masks.
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This all makes me glad that I’m in the twilight of my career. I think animation will incorporate all this motion capture stuff and will mutate into some kind of sad computation. I don’t see this stuff as animation but as Effx, and I think the industry has just gone off the tracks and walked away from any kind of real animation.
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One commenter suggested that the early Disney stuff will someday look like garbage in comparison to what’s being done. Considering how many young people attack Snow White today, I’d have to say I agree with whoever wrote that. It’s inevitable that the people growing up with this computer nonsense will want more of that. No one will have to draw Daffy Duck in the future; just get some second rate actor to rant and put it into Daffy’s 0101010101 algorithm, and no one will ever have to draw animation again.
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Given all the recent reading I’ve been doing about the silent Disney films, or Shamus Culhane’s bio or early Russian animation, I’ve been even more inspired to draw these days. I can imagine how frustrated I’d be with cgi if that’s what I did for a living. Given what I do work on it takes even more imagination to say I’m doing it for a living.

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- Bill Benzon is back to his analyzation of Disney’s Fantasia as he comments in depth on the Ave Maria segment of the film. This is on his blog, The New Savannah. If you haven’t read his other pieces on Fantasia, you should check out the past posts. ______________________
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- Sergio Aragones, Jack Davis, Paul Coker Jr., Al Jaffee and other MAD Magazine artists will gather in a weekend long celebraion of their work at MAD. The upcoming event of the National Cartoonist’s Society event in Savannah Georgia will have special rates for members at the Courtyard Savannah Marriott Hotel.

Rooms start at $119 and are available from 11-10-2011 through 11-14-2011.
You must reserve by 10-27-2011 to take advantage of this special rate.

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- Another coup sent my way by Bill Peckmann. Here we have a stash of early comic covers from the brilliant artist, Harvey Kurtzman. So sit back and enjoy the trip as you scroll down. Many thanks to Bill for sharing his never-ending archives. Here’s what Mr. Peckmann has to say about the covers (all comments beneath the Covers are also his):

Forward Harch! With the last half of Harvey Kurtzman’s covers. Again they are in the order they were published. There willll be a segue between the war titles and MAD to give your readers a sense of where Harvey was coming from when he started MAD comics. It’s amazing how the wonderful coloring of the covers just holds up so well after all these years! The first TWO-FISTED TALES cover is so visceral in a non action way, you can just feel the bone numbing cold of those minus degrees in North Korea.

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Harvey’s last TWO-FISTED cover.

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His first MAD cover, # 1.

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His last FRONTLINE cover. After this, his crew of Jack Davis,
Severin & Elder and Wally Wood took over cover duties.

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You had to live in NYC to really appreciate this cover,
it’s a perfect spoof of the then NEW YORK DAILY NEWS,
lay out, right down to the type faces, everything!

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A cute, clever idea, but as a kid, I felt we were being ripped off,
we wanted a full blown HK cover!

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Even EC Comics got swept up in the 3-D fad,
they did 2 books, how they got Harvey to this cover
I’ll never know, maybe because there’s one MAD story in it.

- Bill Peckmann sent me the following article about Jack Davis from Fanfare Magazine of Summer 1983. The article chronicles the record cover art of Jack Davis up to that year. As Bill wrote me, the B&W illustrations have a lot to be desired, however the material is so valuable that I’ve chosen to post it just the same. We have what we can get. There’s a lot of information in the writing, and the images are not ideal but certainly liveable; after all, it is Jack Davis. I hope you agree.

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Front cover

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Back of wrap-around cover

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Many thanks to Bill Peckmann for scanning and sending and sharing.

After posting a large piece about Moonbird last Monday, I felt inclined to recap this Bobe Cannon walk from the film. I love it. Originally posted March, 2009

- If I had to choose who was my favorite animator, I’d have a tough time. Equal credit would probably have to go to three different people: Bobe Cannon, Tissa David and Bill Tytla. Ed Smith and Jim Tyer would fall just a smidgen below these three, for me. But there are none like them all, as far as I’m concerned.

I’ve posted a lot of drawings from Tissa and Bill Tytla, but have very few drawings by Bobe Cannon (nor have I seen many published anywhere.)

Here is a walk cycle from the beginning of Hubley’s monumental short, Moonbird. The odd numbers are extremes by Cannon, and the inbetweens (even numbers) were done by Ed Smith. Three different sized papers were used for this, and you can view them full sized if you click the thumbnails.

You’ll notice there’s paint all over the drawings. The ink & paint involved tracing the drawing, then using oil paints to cover all of the clear area in black. Some of that paint seeped onto the originals. In one drawing even to coloring the hat accidentally.

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(Click any image to enlarge.)

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“Marky” walk cycle from Moonbird
On twos at 24FPS
Click left side of the black bar to play.
Right side to watch single frame.

There’s a lot more to this scene including several variants on the walk.
At some future time, I’ll add the other drawings to show off the entire scene.

- Back in 1986, Shamus Culhane sent me a copy of his new autobiography, Talking Animals and Other People. I properly sent him a thank you note, and have to admit that I put the book aside and didn’t get to read it. All these years later, I have finally read it and thought I give some comments on the book.

Shamus and I were never close. He always seemed, to me, so full of himself that I had a hard time getting past the image he tried to put across. It all climaxed with a serious argument we had when I was on the Executive Board of the animator’s u-nion, Local 841, in NY. Shamus was starting a studio in NY to produce the sequel to the show he had done in Italy, Noah’s Animals. This one was to be called King of the Beasts. He came to the Board to add an amendment to the contract. He felt that animators would work on a scene and quite often not heed the director’s instructions and incorrectly animate the scene. He wanted the right to ask for the scene to be reanimated at no charge. The Board, in asking questions about the proposal, seemed not too pleased with the idea. Somehow it came to an argument between me and Shamus, however civil,
over this idea. I asked how many times was the animator to redo the scene for the Producer without getting paid; the notion seemed so Producer-sided that I couldn’t believe that Shamus was requesting this proviso. The Board voted it down.

After that, Shamus wouldn’t talk to me again whenever we met in NY. He came to the Raggedy Ann studio several times that year but refused to say hello to me again. Oh, well. However, he did send me a copy of his book.

And I read it this past week. Finally.

I have to say it started Gangbusters for me. I just zipped on into the book and loved every second of it. Here was a guy who had lived through the early days of silent animation and continued working for some of the best. Bray, Fleischer, Iwerks, Van Buren and Disney followed by animation for Jones and direction for Lantz before opening his own studio to make TV commercials and shows. After several years of success he went bankrupt, then he animated for Hubley and ran Paramount, finally producing a couple of odd one-off TV programs. The man had done just about everything. And it’s in the book.

There’s a first-hand account of all these studios that, if nothing else, serves as strong corroboration about how those studios were run – in some detail. The reader rides along with Culhane, almost feeling as though you were there with him. His story is so well told and written that it almost reads like a rousing Mark Twain action yarn about early animation. It flows. Of course, it’s all from the POV of Culhane, so there may be some bias,
but, factually, the first half of the book seems pretty accurate. I can’t vouch for the second half when Culhane talks about his own studio. Some of the work at that studio included the Ajax elves, Around the World in 80 Days credits, the dancing Muriel Cigar, as well as Hemo the Magnificent and other Bell Science series shows. It’s an impressive list of credits, if you know any of the films.

The first half of the book, through the Warner Bros. section, is just great. If you know any part of this animation history, this book will fill gaps you may have. Once I got to the Lantz section then through to the end of the book, Shamus Culhane’s ego entered and seemed to keep growing. Perhaps it’s a well deserved ego, but it did present something of a problem for me . . . a hiccup every time I stumbled over it.

But the book is eminently readable, and I heartily recommend it to everyone interested in animation. It’s not only informative but fun.

Opening title pan down- Moonbird

- In 1964, John and Faith Hubley‘s film, Of Stars and Men opened at the Beekman Theater in Manhattan. This was their first feature; it was accompanied by a number of their short films. I was in High School, and this is the first time I saw any of the Hubley films, and my life had changed at that screening.

The flat colors of the Disney and Warner Bros cartoons were suddenly replaced with textures. It wasn’t only the backgrounds that had a texture; it was the characters as well. I’d already taught myself quite a bit about animation, but this was something new for me. I sat with saucer eyes watching every element and filmic device John Hubley came up with in creating these flms.

It was so clear that Hubley was using a system of double exposures, doubling the characters in at an exposure of about 60% so that the white paper would be somewhat translucent over the dark backgrounds. The rough pencil lines of the animators clearly delineated the characters in this technique, though they picked up some of color of the Bgs. Obviously, the white paper of the character had been painted black – up to the animator’s lines so that the extraneous parts of the paper was matted out. What a brilliant idea!
I explain this process in depth in this post from the past.
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This enabled us, the audience, to see the rough lines of the animators and brought the same life the Xerox line had brought to 101 Dalmatians. It was thrilling for me.

The sing-song muttering of a child introduces us to “Hampy”.

The rough lines of animator, Bobe Cannon, are a treat on the screen.

Glorious textures!

Every oil painting background beautiful, alive and modern.

The other amazing thing was that the films used real dialogue.
It didn’t sound like a script. It was obviously, somehow, improvised.

It took me a while to learn how this was done
and what a wonderful way they had of doing it.

Moonbird was different from the other shorts of that period.

Its soundtrack was completely improvised by the
two boys of the Hubleys, Mark and Ray.

. . . but it also used NO music track.
This is very different for the Hubley films that had
such a devotion to the use of jazz on the soundtrack.

The film not only looked different for the time, 1959,
but it sounded different.

This film had clearly been the results of years of experimentation.
After all those brilliant UPA shorts, particularly Rooty Toot Toot.
The original Hubley produced shorts took a new, brilliant turn.

Adventures of an * moved animation forward
in its pursuit of 20th Century Art.

Picasso and Steinberg had been mimicked in the UPA films.
With Adventures of an * the Abstract Expressionists
came under the magnifying glass as John Hubley used
the New York school as his inspiration.

With Tender Game they moved that style into a more emotional
character animation, and by the time they did Moonbird, they
had settled into a very rich style that animation hadn’t noticed.

Two of animation’s finest animators delivered
the brilliant lyricism in this film.

Bobe Cannon, for years, had delivered great animation.
His work with Chuck Jones had produced new and rich
experimental heights particularly in the 1942 short, The Dover Boys.
Hubley had stated that this film was an inspiration
in the move to 20th Century graphics in animation.

Cannon’s work with UPA, both directing and animating,
brought a new sense of poetry to the medium that finally
plays out in this film, Moonbird.

The young Ed Smith rose to great heights
while working for Hubley. His work on Tender Game
showed a natural warmth that spills over in this film.

Animation, double exposures, oil painted Bgs,
improvised voices, no music all pushed this film
to the forefront of animation at the time.

Despite the looseness of the style, it all blends
together as if it had been done by the one artist.

I love the soft airbrushed look Hubley was able
to pull off with much of this double-exposed artwork.

And yet the characters always remain front and center.
A tribute to the two animators and the directoral staging.

This delicate and lyrical film was followed by an anmiated
discussion of nuclear warfare and armament. The Hole
was twice the length and had a political point to make.

The characters’ colors change and fluctuate and sparkle
even as scenes progress, but this all becomes part of
the style which the Hubleys pursued for
the rest of their filmmaking life.

As in Moonbird, the voices in The Hole were improvised
. . . but this time by adults, Dizzy Gillespie and George Mathews.

The Hubleys took their process of improvisation to a new level.

In the end, animation grew up, once upon a time.

The question is whether we’ve squandered that development
and have retrogressed to the 19th Century illustration styles
that Disney pursued. Recently, we seem to have had only
bad drawing or cgi puppets to choose from.

Time to step up, ladies and gentlemen.

- The following first eight photos were sent to me by Steve Fisher. At first I thought there was a religious undercurrent to all of the photos, but then I realized they weren’t. But they felt connected. Steve tells me that the only real connection is that they were situated near each other. Within a few blocks he had photographed all of them. Yet, that religious feel still is there for me.

Steve had sent me the last four photos earlier, and I made the connection.

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Blue-tile roof of residential building on Parsons Blvd.

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Blue stain-glass interior of the Mary Nativity
Roman Catholic Church on Parsons Blvd.

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Domed Russian Orthodox church
on 147th Street and Cherry Avenue.

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Brick chimney at Oak Avenue and Parsons Blvd.

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Another tree that fell victim to Hurricane Irene.

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The family plot was spared any damage.

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Handicapped zone

Many thanks to Steven Fisher for the photos.

- This past week, Yowp, the excellent site devoted to Hanna-Barbera’s early product, offered a fine piece on Arnold Stang. After reading it, I thought it worth telling about my one contact with Mr. Stang.

I was about to do my first half-hour show for HBO. It was a musical version of the Bernard Waber children’s book, LYLE LYLE CROCODILE. Charles Strouse had written some fine songs, and I cast them with auditions. The two people who made it through without auditions were: Charles Strouse, himself, in the bit singing role as a moving man. He had a small part of the chorus in the opening song. _____________Arnold and Charles’ characters sing together.
Arnold Stang was cast as a bird
owned by the family. I couldn’t help myself; I had to bring in the guy who was a key part of 50 & 60s animation history – at least for my own amusement.

Arnold had to squawk a number of times, speak a few scratchy lines, and sing a couple of lines in the opening song as he, the bird, is moved into the House on East 88th Street. When we recorded Arnold singing, it was to a temp track of the music. The engineer, Strouse and I sat in the control booth with Arnold in the large recording booth.

He sang the lines. I was excited and pleased and felt he’d gotten it on the first take.

Charles Strouse said otherwise and asked for them to be redone.

The same results; I knew they were great, Charles was annoyed about them, and he made the mistake of going over me, the director, to punching the button to talk to Arnold in the booth. The two of them got into a shouting match over the ridiculous. Charles wanted Arnold to sound more like a bird. Arnold kept pointing out that he wasn’t a bird and such birds don’t talk, never mind sing. He also pointed out that he played a cat and dog and many other types of animals, but he was always a human, not an animal.

With every jab, Charles Strouse came back with another. The two of them were screaming, and I finally had to stop it. I took the button from Charles’ hand and asked Arnold to excuse us while we discussed it in the control room. From that point on, Arnold couldn’t hear us as I told Charles that he was being ridiculous and Arnold had been doing a good job. He backed off (hopefully realizing what a jerk he’d become.) However, now Charles had gotten the talent upset and he was supposed to perform under such stressful conditions. It was very unprofessional of Charles, and equally so that he thought he could take charge of the recording session. I was the director and would make all decisions from then on, and only I was allowed to speak to the performer, Arnold.

Charles yielded. What else could he do. I asked Arnold if he could step back to the beginning and try to smooth his feathers and do it one more time for me. He agreed, did a great job, and I thanked him for his help.

In fact, it did turn out great. Arnold brought a nice and funny character to the bird. Which was a minor part and not worth an argument.

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Years later, for a special Birthday I had coming up, Heidi wanted to throw a surprise party. She invited Arnold, and he left a wonderful message on her machine thanking her but not able to attend. She still has that recording and it’s pretty cute. Arnold speaking in his natural voice sounding so positive and lovely.

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- J.J. Sedelmaier has started a new column for Imprint Magazine. Imprint is, basically, the blog for Print Magazine. You’ll remember that John Canemaker had a year’s worth of excellent and diverse columns there, and Steven Heller continues to write some very smart pieces. Just look at the announcement about Pablo Ferro which leads to this great, recent bio of the designer.

But, back to J.J. Sedelmaier’s piece on Gary Baseman. It’s a wonderfully illustrated piece with lots of artwork from Mr. Baseman. A wonderful illustrator, he has been working for years in animation thanks to both R.O.Blechman and J.J.’s studios. He also did a fine series for Disney with “Teacher’s Pet.”

J.J. shows how they achieved his painterly style, in a commercial his studio produced, using the cels. It’s a good article and something to look forward to monthly.

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- Illostribute is a blog devoted to the art of Illustration. They currently have a tribute to Mary Blair, which seems to have pulled many of her gorgeous illustrations from the Canemaker book, The Art and Flair of Mary Blair. (This book is a beauty and should be owned by everyone in animation.)

It’s a curious site in that they seem to post illustrations inspired by the featured artist; this they do on the Mary Blair feature. There are several older posts I found interesting. It was nice, for example, to see some paintings by Jack Levine and be reminded of his great work.

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