Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

Hurricane Panic.

- There’s a panic going on throughout New York and New Jersey. NYC is scheduled to be in the direct line of Hurricane Irene. Meteorologists have, at last check, scheduled the eye of the hurricane to pass over Manhattan. Should be fun.

On Thursday night – two days before the storm hit – Gov. Chris Christie declared a “state of emergency” in New Jersey. Since it was barely raining on Thursday, I thought that was a bit of cheek, but perhaps the Mad Gov is afraid of what may happen. You’re in good hands in N.J. Oh wait, Cuomo did the same on Friday in NY.

Mayor Bloomberg, on the other hand, took his
own steps. He demanded evacuation of some hospitals and senior centers that seemed to be in the way of the storm. He also announced that ALL mass transit would be halted during the course of the storm. That means from Saturday noon to Monday morning, who knows when, there’ll be no buses or trains running. I guess we’ll have to walk to make it work when the expected hurricane passes Sunday afternoon.

Of course, as I recently detailed, I assume there’ll be flood conditions inside my studio and have taken a lot of preparations. The last will be to get the cat to higher ground for the duration. He’ll come back with me to my apartment to face two other cats who live there. Lots of hissing and spitting expected atop the heavy sound of rain on the skylight. I’m not looking forward to the aftermath. Though maybe, like the last hurricane, it’ll be all panic and little reality. That’d be nice.

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Another Plympton Show.

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- This past Monday, it was a beautiful day in New York. Under the shadow of the Empire State Building, that evening, there was a program of early and late Bill Plympton films showing at the Big Screen Plaza.

This is an outdoor arena with a very big screen overlooking a food court. Lots of tables and seating places around a rectangular fountain makes for a pleasant ambience for watching animation. They’ve finally gotten it together and have their sound problems repaired (something encountered at a couple of earlier screenings this Summer.)

As the films played overhead, Bill sat at a table in the back where you could buy a copy of some of the cartoons, or his big book. Or, you had the chance just to meet Bill.

The center film of the program was a screening of Bill’s first feature, The Tune. It’s been quite a while since I’d seen this film, so it was a pleasure to rejoin it. The Tune feels like early Plympton, and that’s a wonderful thing. Lots of metamorphosis and surprise distortions and complete nonsense thrown your way, all to the score of songs played throughout, as the lead character searches for a hit tune.

And, as I said, the weather was brilliant.

Bill Plympton, as ever, was the gracious host.

Jaime Ekkens is the coordinator for all Big Screen events.

The film played overhead in the beautifully crisp NY evening.

Bill worked the table.

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the Ghibli Blog News.

- On the Ghibli Blog recently, there have been a number of key posts. Principal among them was the news that Madhouse Productions in Japan has stopped work and pulled all production on the completion of The Dreaming Machine, Satoshi Kon‘s last film. When Kon died last year the studio, under the supervision of designer Yoshimi Itazu, was continuing work on the film. It’s obvious that budgetary cuts have stalled this work and have put it into a full stop even though work was half done. It’s questionable if the film will continue work and complete this master’s final production. Satoshi Kon, of course, is the director of “Millennium Actress”, “Tokyo Godfathers” and “Paprika.”

- Back on Aug 12th, the Ghibli Blog posted this CNN video, an interview with Hayao Miyazaki about the formation of Studio Ghibli. He talks about the inherent problem of an animation studio: at first you form the studio to do the work; then it gets so you do work to keep the studio running. The cart pulls the donkey.

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A Kickstarting Request.

I received the following note and request, this week. I thought it worthwhile to promote it:

I’m a recent graduate of California State University, Northridge’s Animation program, and I’ve recently released my final short film online. Tanks for Nothin’ is a fun little 50′s, retro cartoon about an imaginative tomboy named Lucy, who uses her creativity to get back at her mean older brother. I spent a year developing and animating “Tanks”.

It’s got a great musical score, and every last frame has been lovingly assembled. The only thing it’s lacking is an awesome sound design. I’ve been approached by a talented Sound Designer from an Academy Award winning animated short, who’d like to collaborate on my film. I’m using Kickstarter.com to raise the funds for the sound studio overhead.

If you’re not familiar with Kickstarter.com, it’s a site that helps art projects raise funds from online backers in exchange for rewards. In the case of my project, backers can earn original signed artwork (I’m just starting out, but I plan to make great animated stories for years to come – this is a chance to get my “Rookie card”), a DVD of the finished film, movie posters, and even their name in the credits. I’ve heard most projects are funded by under 5 dollar pledges. Kickstarter is an all-or-nothing platform, so if the project doesn’t reach its goal no money changes hands.

If you think this is a worthwhile project please help out by telling your friends about it via Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler, Linkedin, etc. I really need help getting the word out there (I only have until Monday Aug 29, 3:02am ET. left to raise the funds).

Tanks for Nothin’ site.

I don’t intend to turn my site into an open venue for everyone, but thought this project of interest, and I hope it does well.

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- I also wanted to post a reminder that Grayson Ponti has one of the best blogs out there (for animation freaks, that is.) The 50 Most Influential Disney Animators offers good bios and passable critiques of many different Disney animators, past and present.

Of course, the two inherent problems with the site are that many great and brilliant animators didn’t work for Disney. They’re all left out.
So, too, are all the wonderful story artists/writers and production designers that have seriousl affected the films (both Disney and non).

- Bill Peckmann has sent a number of early Jack Davis crawings our way, so let me turtn it over to Bill:

After Jack left EC/Mad Comics in the late ’50′s, after Harvey Kurtzman’s “Trump” and “Humbug” magazine’s didn’t get the solid footing they so richly deserved and went belly up, and before Jack carved out that wonderfully successful niche for himself in the world of humorous illustration in the ’60′s, he had to really scramble for work to keep the wolf from the door. Here are some examples from that period from late 1958 to 1961. Jack would say that some of this art was done in his “fast” style.

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These first four western covers were done for
Stan Lee for Atlas Comics, later to become Marvel Comics.

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A cover for “Cracked” Magazine, Mad’s longest running rival.

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4 B&W pages from inside “Cracked”.
The first 3 pages are a spoof on TV show “Peter Gunn”.

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A single page (Kurtzman type) gag.

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This western magazine was published by Jim Warren
who also published Harvey Kurtzman’s “Help!” Magazine.
It was rumored that Harvey was also the editor of this book,
I don’t know about that.

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A 3 page gag from “Wildest Westerns”.

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Believe it or not, Jack actually did a Dell Comic book.

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4 pages from “Yak Yak”.

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All the art was sent in the chronological order it was done.

- Mike Barrier had posted a great letter from Borge Ring about David Hand and animation timing. I responded with a short note. I thought I’d written that I wish Hand, who had an enormous knowledge of animation, had said more about the subject in his autobiography. Instead, the book was about his life not about the work he did for his life. Borge Ring misunderstood my badly worded comment on the site, and wrote a letter to me about it. A couple of letters later, things were straightened out, and Borge had written even more wonderful stuff about David Hand’s knowledge. I asked to print that note, and Borge gave permission.

Dave (Hand) was good at rages. They say -When Walt toppled Dave’s well planned day schedule in midmorning, Dave stood at Walt’s office gripping the table with white knuckled hands.blasting Walt.

Disney later reminisced, “He didn’t know that I never loved him more than at those moments because he cared”

John Canemaker is bound to have Dave’s Cookham lectures – One of them deals specifically with exposure lengths.

I remember a remark:
“6 frames is a hold – 4 frames is neither hay nor grass.”

He never mentions 3 frames.

Preston Blair puts in 3s in the endscene of “Dance of the Hour ” – Croc twirling Hippo, but you don’t notice they are threes.

On request Dave talked about timing to a beat. (the old Jaxon gambit):
“Disney uses many beats but mostly 12 and 8 – because they are easy to break down into inbtws -”
An 8 beat (metronome on 180) with keys 1 – 9 – gets inbtw 5 in the middle and later 2 and 4 -
A 12 beat (metronome on 120) has 1 – 13 -with 7 in the middle

But Duncan and Littlejohn knew all of this and could have told you if you did not already know.

Dave was not very conversant with music and his musician told him to think in (numbered) bars of four beats each, and gave the following rule of thumb, “Place all strong accents on 1 and on 3 in the bar and you will never get me into trouble”

Dave added “You can place your strong accents wherever you choose as long as it makes sense musically.”

“When lengthening or shortening a passage on your barsheet, never add or subtract less than one beat.”

When adding a foot to the timing he did not rewrite the barsheet.
He cut out one line of a virginal barsheet wrote on it and stuck it on to the rim of the sheet. Therefore you got barsheets with “whimpers” sticking out or empty lanes if you had deleted some beats to shorten a passage.
When the barsheet was final he rewrote the numbers of all bars.

Dave animated a little film one afternoon – working to an 8-beat. He drew 1-9-17 -25-etc in very thin grey lines then added all inbtws thinly, flipped and went over the whole scene straight ahead with a fat black line.
He was fast like lightning though he had not animated since 1934

“How do you choose a director?” I asked
“You take a very good animator who is known for getting along with people.”
The new director doesn’t animate, and after awhile they begin to miss his good footage. “Animation developed by leaps and bounds and
after a year the other animators have passed him in quality.”

“Have any of you any experience in story?”
“Oh yes – Jensen and I storyboarded this guy’s script for a feature.”
“But that isn’t story. That is only continuity And that is easy – that is eh if.

Hand and Geronimi stuck to their pleasant style of timing when shorts directors like Jack Hannah sharpened theirs under influence from certain other studios.

Michael,
All this is memory debris that YOU no longer need – But I know It is a warm feeling to hear the “sound” of Old Gold from someone who was in Walt Disney’s studio when “the things” happened.

Kaj Pindal and Kimball were railway pals
“Ward give me the magic feather on animation.”
“Timing is everything,” was the answer.

greetz
Botge

A three stagger 123 -234 – 345 – when shot on twos makes the character look VERY heavy There is one such in “Robin Hood”

By the way, there’s also a wealth of information in Mike Barrier’s interview with David Hand on Mike’s site.

To continue with all things Tytla, here’s a representation of the “Baby Mine” sequence from Dumbo. This is one of my very favorite sequences in one of my favorite animated films. The newish Blue Ray version of this film is excellent except for one thing. The commentary on this disc pales in comparison to the 60th Anniversary DVD. The original was done solely by John Canemaker and is enormously informative. I wish John would just turn that track into a book.

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- Dumbo is certainly one of my favorite Disney features if not THE favorite. Naturally, the “Baby Mine” sequence is a highlight. The sequence is so tender and fine-tuned to appear straightforward and simple. This, of course, is the heart of excellence. It seems simple and doesn’t call attention to itself.

This is a storyboard composed of LO drawings from the opening of that sequence. They appear to be BG layouts with drawings of the characters cut out and pasted in place.

It’s not really a storyboard, and I’ve always wondered what purpose such boards served to the Disney machine back in the Golden Age.

Below is the board as it stands in the photograph.

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Here is the same photographed board, split up so that I can post it in larger size. I’ve also interspersed frame grabs from the actual sequence for comparison.

Thanks to Steve MacQuignon for locating this video.

Info from Hans Perk at A Film LA:

Directed by Bill Roberts and John/Jack Elliotte, assistant director Earl Bench, layout Al Zinnen.

Animation by Bill Tytla (Dumbo & Mrs. Jumbo’s trunk), Fred Moore (Timothy) and assorted animals by Bob Youngquist, Harvey Toombs, Ed Aardal and John Sewell.

Hans Perk has posted the drafts for Dumbo, and this has led Mark Mayerson to post the brilliant Mosaics he’s created for the film.

- These are the notes for the Disney studios after hours classes on Action Analysis give on April 26, 1937.

The action they studied was a loop from a Charlie Chase film wherein he throws apples from a fruit stand while the attendant tries to stop him. They are particularly studying the drapery involved. Don Graham, as usual, conducts the class with involvement from: Roy Williams, Milt Neil, Joe Magro, Rose, (Ray?) Patin, and Izzie Klein.

Cover sheet

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Just a reminder that there are many more Action Analysis class notes on Hans Perk’s invaluable site, A Film LA.

- Hans Fischerköesen was an animation pioneer in Germany. Because of his asthma, he could not fight in World War I but was sent to work in Army hospitals. Having produced a very popular ad for a shoe company, he established his Fischerköesen Studio in Leipzig to specialize in advertising films. By 1937, he’d won both first and second prizes at a Dutch-sponsored competition for commercials with the runners up including George Pal and Alexander Alexeieff. By this time, Fischerköesen had made around 1,000 publicity films.

When World War II broke out, German cinemas lost the distribution of Disney and other animated shorts. Goebbels sought someone to fill the bill for a German animation studio. Fisherkösen got the job, but received the mandate to work with Horst von Möllendorf, a popular Berlin newspaper cartoonist, as a gag writer-storyman. He was also required to compete with Disney and Fleischer using multiplane effects.

The first film they did, Weather-beaten Melody (1942) almost shows off the technique with a bravura sequence using both the multiplane and stereo-optical processes. It’s this opening sequence that I’m featuring in this post; this is far beyond anything done even in subsequent films. Unfortunately, these frame grabs come from a streaming video, so the quality leaves a lot to be desired.

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The opening title – Scherzo

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When the credits fade off, the sky opens up.

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The camera pans down to a field of flowers.

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The camera moves right into those flowers.
This is obviously a stereo-scopic set, much like the Fleischer camera.

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The camera moves in among the flowers.

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It reaches a point, and stops.

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Cut to our main character, a bumble bee.

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The bee seems to float in the air rather than fly.
Very odd animation, very attractive multiplane setup.

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This is a very long pan, with many multiplane levels.

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The bee flies INTO a dandelion.

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He sneezes breaking up the dandelion.

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The bee flies up toward the sky with
dandelion bits all about him.

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The bee grabs two fronds of the dandelion
to slow his descent to the ground.

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It folds up the dandelion buds as if
they were umbrellas.

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Again the bee uses the “umbrellas” to float mid-air.

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The bee moves toward the camera in a forced perspective.

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And it finally lands down near the flowers . . .

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. . . and flies off into the next scene.

The film moves on to follow the bee who finds a gramophone in the grass. With its stinger the bee is able to play the music on the record for the other bugs.

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At first the record doesn’t move.
It’s the bee who runs in circles.

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We pan from the bee in a multiplane shot
toward some other bugs . . .

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. . . who are dancing to the jazz music.

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There’s a group of “June Taylor” type dancers.
The animation is probably rotoscoped, though it’s well done.

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The bee was exhausted from running in place,
so other bugs and a frog turn the record.

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The bee still falls into exhaustion.

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The final shot shows an overview of the gramophone
and all the bugs getting the music to play and dancing.

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The camera pulls out . . .

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. . . in another beautiful multiplane shot.

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We end on the bug writing “Ende” with his stinger.

Here is a QT of the movie:

You can find an excellent biography of Fischerköesen by William Moritz here.

He also did several other films during the War. The Snowman (1943) and The Silly Goose (1944). Both use the multiplane, though The Silly Goose uses it in a rather unorthodox way. It’s truly daring.

Fischerköesen continued to make advertising films until 1969, and died in 1973.

The Snowman is part of the DVD The Golden Age of Cartoons: Cartoons for Victory! This is part of the excellent product produced by Steve Stanchfield of Thunderbean Animation.

As I mentioned earlier, the quality of the frame grabs has a lot to be desired. You can find better ones on Hans Bacher’s wonderful site, One1More2Time3′s Weblog. Also there are other films including some of the advertising films.

There is also a letter in the comment section of Hans’ site. I thought it interesting enough that I copied it here:

from MariaElena Kadala

This were my grandfather’s films … I’m trying to get these pictures into Wikipedia articles about the films, without success. Perhpas you can do it?

While he was imprisoned by the Russians after the war (having been accused of being a Nazi) they asked his workers to provide the secrets of his techniques. They made a duplicate copy of all information, which I inherited, being the lone “techie” among many artistic heirs.

- The past week has brought torrential rains to New York. A week ago, last Saturday night, some 11 inches of rain fell on Manhattan within about 6 hours. At 3:30 am Sunday, I decided to go to my studio to see what the damage would be. I’d had major floods in the studio, and have sandbags permanently greeting guests at the front door. Usually, the sandbags work to keep the water out. However, the pounding rain let me know that things had gotten serious. I wasn’t as much concerned for the studio as I was for the cat within the studio, Robbie. He’d never seen floods within his home before.

Sure enough there were four inches of water troughout the space, when I got there. I propped open the door and went to work. There’s a subpump within the studio that never seems to kick in on its own. I jiggled it until it started, and it took up a lot of the water and spat it outside to the drain. Within two hours, the water was down to a mopping chore. I decided to lie down for an hour or so; the cat was hiding in a high space, and wouldn’t come out after initially greeting me with lots of purring. In two hours, I began the big mop and finished that another two hours later. Chore complete.

To get rid of the moldy smell within the studio, I mopped again two days later using bleach within the washing water. It did the trick. I’m sorry I didn’t take some pictures. Seeing the cat food floating would have made a good photo.

You can understand why Heidi continually calls me Noah. A drop of rain falls, and I worry about the possiblity of flooding within the studio. Fortunately, I think the space well worth the problems.

Here are some shots Steve Fisher took of a tennis court in Queens.

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It looks pretty in the photograph.

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But it’d be annoying if you wanted to play tennis.

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Or if you owned the court and had to clean out the water.

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Aside from the flooding coming in the front door, we’ve also had some coming in the back door through the bathroom. It’s not as pervasive, but it’s been MUCH more frequent these days. However, some arduous work by a plumber found the pipe line with a lining of grease about two inches thick, not letting the water move through it. Someone in the building’s been dumping grease in their toilet, and it’s been building. They finally cleaned that out and everything seems to be fine now.

The tiling in the bathroom has plucked up from the floor, and the builiding management is going to lay some marble tiles for me. So it’s an upgrade. However, the uplifted tiles have left an interesting pattern on the floor in the bathroom. I did take some pictures of that.

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These abstractions led me to look outdoors, and voila I found a nearby billboard about to be replaced.

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Meanwhile, just outside my front door, the sandbags remain and the bricks are ever deteriorating.

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The sandbags, made to step over.

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The plaster fades away revealing the disintegrating brickwork.

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These bricks are still wet.

Enough said. I just hope the rain coming tonight won’t compare to last weekend’s deluge. There seems to be proof positive of Global Warming everywhere we look, but the Republilcans and the Tea Party refute science. We’re in a sad state.

This is a piece I originally wrote in October 2006 for this blog. I wanted to reprise it given the amount of attention I’d given Iwerks lately re Tim Susanin‘s book, Walt Before Mickey, and the Iwerks multiplane camera.

- From my earliest days, as soon as I’d learned who he was, I was a fan of Ub Iwerks.
I began to wonder if it was just the publicity and myth of Iwerks which had followed with him all these years. We read about all those 1930′s East coast animators moving to the West, not to work for Disney but to seek out Iwerks – it was well known that he was the “true artist” behind those Disney shorts.

With Bob Thomas’ 1958 book, The Art of Animation, I read, for the first time, about Iwerks and his importance. Only recently did I begin to wonder how responsible Iwerks actually was to Disney’s success. Was this just that myth being carried over the years? Or was he brilliant?

A quick look at the animation done at the time and we see some basics not yet developed.

There weren’t many stories written before Disney, so animators divided up their pictures. For example: They’d decide to do a film where Mutt & Jeff would go to Hawaii. One animator would start on the beach and end with them on surfboards. The animator would make it up as he went along until he turned out the required footage – maybe 2 minutes of work. The next animator would pick up Mutt & Jeff on surfboards and take them to being washed up on the beach, etc.

Obviously, the lead animator doled out rudimentary plot points, but a lot was left to the individual animator. Look at the book, Walt In Wonderland by Russell Merritt & J.B. Kaufman to see how Disney started developing stories during this period.

The same was true for animation techniques and methods. Animation burst out of its seams with the creation of Mickey Mouse. Disney had initiated a lot of ground work, but the medium really started growing with the enormous success of Steamboat Willie. Iwerks led the way, not only by the amount of work he did but the quality.

Take a look at these five Iwerks drawings from that short.
One of the first lessons an inbetweener learns is that a face turn shouldn’t have a direct middle in it. The middle drawing (#3 here) shouldn’t be straight on; it should favor, slightly, one side or the other.

Despite the simple drawings of Mickey, Ub Iwerks seemed to understand this instinctively. He didn’t really get lessons from anyone. As a matter of fact, he was creating the rules. This comes close to being straight on, but the mouth gives it away. The face is facing screen left.

Another simple inbetween lesson is to offset the inbetween (usually an animator or good assistant will set this up for the inbetweener.)

Here Mickey is standing upright on #1 and he’s upright on #5. Drawing #3 has him with knees bent, beating in tempo to the sound. Even though this is from the first sound cartoon, done in 1928, the offset rule is in effect.

I think it’s pretty clear that some sophistication has entered the animation that Iwerks was drawing. This same sophistication isn’t in other animator’s work.
(Click any image to enlarge.)

Add to this the fact that Iwerks was probably the fastest producing animator, and you probably have good reason for knowing he was the genius behind Disney.

This, of course, didn’t remain that way. After Iwerks left, leaving behind enough animators trained by him, their work developed exponentially. Better artists were entering the studio and bringing their talents to the work, and they started making a serious attempt to improve the work.

Iwerks stopped animating and stopped trying to improve the character animation. Instead, he tried to improve the camera – actually developing the mulitplane camera in his own studio. Animation, under Iwerks, didn’t develop.

The book by Leslie Iwerks & John Kenworthy, The Hand Behind The Mouse, gives some solid information that wasn’t previously published and puts a lot of material into perspective.
Now we have Walt Before Mickey: Disney’s Early Years 1919-1928. by Tim Susanin. This is a thoroughly researched and reliably accurate book which gives a good account of Iwerks’ contribution up to and including Plane Crazy.

- Following up yesterday’s post of Walt Kelly’s Animal Comics, we have more of his covers for Walt Disney’s Comics and Stories. Not all of these were done by Kelly, but most are. These came fresh off of Bill Peckmann‘s hot scanner, and I thank him for sharing his amazing archive with us.

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by Walt Kelly

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by Carl Barks

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by Walt Kelly

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by Walt Kelly

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by Walt Kelly

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by Walt Kelly

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by Walt Kelly

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by Walt Kelly

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by Walt Kelly

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by Walt Kelly

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by Walt Kelly

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by Carl Buettner

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by Carl Buettner

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by Carl Buettner

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Pencils: Walt Kelly, Inking: Carl Buettner(?)

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Pencils: Walt Kelly, Inking: Carl Buettner(?)

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by Carl Barks

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by Carl Barks

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by Carl Barks

- Bill Peckmann sent scans of an incredible comic. It’s an early issue of Animal Comics (June/July 1947) with Walt Kelly‘s Pogo making an early appearance. The bulk of the magazine is the Pogo story, however there are a couple of other short pieces. We have doubt that Kelly did these other strips, (Jigger, Chuck Wagon Charley, Uncle Wiggily, and Rover), so if anyone out there knows, please drop a comment. Other than that, all I can say is enjoy and thank you Mr. Peckmann.

comic cover

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Jigger was done by the great John Stanley
of “Little Lulu” fame.

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