Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

- Back in the late ’70s, there was a local newspaper that competed with the Village Voice for the alternative audience. The Soho News was smaller and thinner, but had its own treasures. Some good writing and listings, and many excellent alternative comic strips. (Bill Plympton had a weekly strip in this paper before he started animating.)

I fell in love with one comic strip called Gertrude’s Follies to the point where I waited each week for the new issue and the new strip to hit to market. It was about Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas and all the crazies that came into their lives – particularly Picasso, Hemingway and other iconic art types. It didn’t matter that Matisse and Capote didn’t meet; they were both available for the strip – as was everyone else.

Finally, after enjoying it for so long, I decided to locate the cartoonist behind it, and see whether he was interested in developing a storyboard and script for a feature. Maybe we could get some low-budget financing.

Tom Hachtman was the cartoonist, and he was a brilliant artist. His wife, Joey Epstein, was another fine artist. The two entered my life at this point, and some interesting things developed.

Gertrude’s Follies was an ongoing project. Tom worked with Maxine Fisher, who has been my writing partner through all the years of my studio. The two of them developed a couple of themes from the mass of strips that had been done and started to weave a storyboard. Tom left 4 or 5 panels of each 6 panel page empty, and I constructed and reconstructed story around them. Sometimes I would draw more material, sometimes I would take some away. It was real fun.

The Soho News folded, and no one really picked up the strip. It ran for a short time in The Advocate. Tom was able to publish a collected book (see the cover above.) You can still locate a rare copy on line.

Some newer, color copies of the strip can be found on line here.
Tom also does some political cartoons for the site here.

The movie never went into production. I couldn’t raise the funds – my inexperience. We did make one short segment – a two minute piece that was the most hilarious strip. Sheldon Cohen, an animator I met at the Ottawa 76 festival, came to NY when I offered him a job on Raggedy Ann. Sheldon, ultimately, did a number of films for the National Film Board which you can watch on-line if you click on his name.

Sheldon animated this particularly funny strip. It took a while for him to animate it, and by the time he was finished, the feature had died and I had lost some interest. Years later I inked and painted it and had it shot. The short piece was never finished, though I still think about doing that.

Aside from Gertrude, both Tom & Joey worked on a number of my films and still infrequently do. The two have painted many murals on the Jersey Coast, where they currently live. Tom has been a political cartoonist for the NY Daily News, has done lots of airbrush work for Bob Blechman when the Ink Tank was in operation. He also has done quite a few cartoons for The New Yorker magazine.

Here are a few of the strips to give you the flavor. Perhaps next week I’ll give a sample of our storyboard, comparing it with some of the actual strips. Enjoy.

1 2
(Click on any image to enlarge so that you can read the strips.)

3 4

5 6

We worked up a storyboard and script for a feature. It was a bit of a rush since I found the distributor of a low budget comedy film who asked for something similar in animation. I thought we could get him interested. I wanted to strike while the iron was hot. The guy didn’t get it, thought it wasn’t funny, didn’t even understand it. His company folded six months later. A one hit wonder.

We tried to stay close to many of the strips and found a direction.
Here are two weeklies from the strip.

(Click on any image to enlarge.)

The equivalent part of the storyboard follows. To give a short syopsis of the story thus far:

Trying to be somewhat current, we built the story around an upcoming, all-encompassing exhibit Picasso was going to have at the Museum of Modern Art. At the same time, Gertrude had just sent off a big book to her agent in NY. A party was in order, and we join them in this section of the storyboard as they prepare for the party. There’s a guided tour going on at the house as they prepare, and Hemingway arrives early.
(This is about 20 mins into the film.)

– Back when I was a kid, sleeping in the same room with my two brothers, we had on the wall a number of Disney characters.

These weren’t painted on the walls, they were some kind of pressed cardboard, about 3/4″
thick, cutout characters. They were brilliant, though. The grouping of cutouts, hung like picture frames, using nails, painted little scenes. Cinderella in her coach with all of the horses and coachmen, Dumbo flying with Timothy below him, or the Three Little Pigs and their varied houses with a lurking wolf. (The image to the left was found on line, but it’s not as well drawn as the images I saw daily back in the early 60′s.)

I recently received some pictures sent by Tom Hachtman. You may remember that he, the cartoonist friend who draws Gertrude’s Follies, works with his wife, Joey Epstein, as part of a group which paints murals on walls for people who commission such things. (See posts 1 or 2.)

Obviously, they’ve been hired to put a little Disney on a couple of walls. Tom sent me photos of the end results, and I’m inclined, obviously, to share them.

This is a long way from the pressed cardboard characters that floated over my bed. Times have changed – only a bit, though. This very same Bambi setup was one of the cardboard setups I looked at daily. A good image is a good image.

I think this is the first time I’ve seen the Fox and the Hound mixing with 101 Dalmatians
with Lady & the Tramp. A doggy park on the wall.

_____________(click any image to enlarge.)

- Artist and friend, Adrian Urquidez, pointed me to some older images of park benches. “Why park benches?” you ask. You may remember that I posted an entire group of photos of NY benches. He thought I’d find these illustrations of interest. I did and still do, and I thought it time to share. Here are some park benches of the past – they’re probably still in use in NYC parks.

These benches are found in Union Square, the park at 14th Street and Park Avenue. My post featured benches about 9 blocks away at Madison Square Park.

I think Adrian may have noticed that these benches also had dividers. I’d commented that I thought they were adding dividers to the new benches to stop vagrants from stretching out and sleeping on them.

There are no benches in this picture, but Adrian sent it, and why not include it?

- In the past, I’ve posted a number of photos from my friend, Steve Fisher. He’d sent me many other stills, but I never found the proper time or place to post them. So, this one fills the bill. The photos are too great to not share. Thanks Steve.

It kinda looks to me like a camel got stuck up in a tree.

One might wonder if there were elephants set free in Woodlawn Cemetery.

Balto? I don’t think so.

Another monumental shepherd.

No leash policy.

- I recently received this email from my friend, Tom Hachtman (the cartoonist who draws Gertrude’s Follies, a strip I’ve featured):

Joey has taken over Three Designing Women. She employs two women and me.

“Three Designing Women. Who’s this guy?”
“Oh, that’s my husband Tom.”
I do get tired of hearing this.
This mural painting is a phenomena.

Joey just lined up some work in Florida. If I can find Joey’s folders, I will try to e-mail some recent work to you.

love,t

Joey, of course, is Tom’s wife. I’ve featured their mural work before, but thought it time for an update. Here are the photos sent me. The comments are Tom’s descriptions.

________(Click any image to enlarge.)

________These are bedrooms in Highland Park, NJ.

________They wanted the bed to look like a fort in the forest.

________The aquarium room

________Joey wanted the aquarium room to feel like you were inside a fish tank –
________I painted this boy on the ceiling feeding his fish.

________Sometimes I think the details are so beautiful – Chris painted these birds.

Take a look at the Three Designing Women site.

- Nina Paley was invited to premiere her feature length hand drawn feature, Sita Sings the Blues, at the Berlinale, the 58th International Berlin Film Festival.
What an accomplishment!
And as if that weren’t enough, the film won a special notice citation from the festival.

The festival announcement
reads like this:

Berlinale 2008:

The members of the Youth Jury in the Generation 14plus include:
Roman Akbar
Zadora Enste
Hans Hirsch
Nora Kubach
Zoё Martin
Linda Moog
Lavan Vasuthevan

A special mention goes to
Sita sings the Blues by Nina Paley (USA)
Certain stories can be re-told forever, even over thousands of years. This
innovative and unique film has impressed us with its boundless creativity and
irresistible charm.

Congratulations and kudos to Nina for this extraordinary achievement. I’m really pleased and proud for her accomplishment.

- Tom Hachtman came by the studio to show off a new book. New Yorker cartoonist, Sid Harris has edited a the book, 101 Funny Things about Global Warming.

This is a collection of cartoons by different cartoonists who have something to say about the subject. People like Ben Katchor, Lee Lorenz, Gahan Wilson, and Tom Hachtman have some hilarious entries here. Tom did two Gertrude’s Follies strips. Here’s one of them.

(Click any image to enlarge.)

- On Wednesday, I saw Sunday In The Park with George. Despite having an animator for a director, or maybe because of it, I didn’t like the show. Actually, I love the show – it’s probably my favorite theatrical piece. But I didn’t like this version of the show. It was heartless and wholly unemotional. Since all the reviews were absolutely glowing throwing the term “Art” around a lot, I feel like something of a curmudgeon. Who cares; I know what I saw and didn’t see.

I haven’t had time to sort out my thoughts, but I’ll try to give a full account of it tomorrow and let you know how the animation helped kill it. I also have an interview with the animator-turned-director I’ll post.

The show opened last night, so the reviews are printed in the papers today.
Here’s Ben Brantley‘s glowing review in the NYTimes.
Here’s Joe Dziemianowicz‘ glowing review in The NYDaily News.
Here’s Linda Winer‘s review for Newsday and the Associated Press.

- Christmas is in the past, and the decorations are long gone.
Every year I save all the original cards and a couple of others I enjoy.
My favorite original card this year came from Tom Hachtman.

Tom wrote me about the development of this card:
– I sat down at the kitchen table to do cards with my niece April Centrone. She is a brilliant and somewhat demented artist. I gave her the Christ child from the creche and she began to draw – legs, body, hands and then, unhappy with the results, tossed it aside. I picked it up from there and put the baby in Santa’s lap.
The artwork was a collaboration. I wanted to clarify.
(Click any image to enlarge.)
____
- Marjane Satrapi received her best animated feature award this week from the NY Film
____Critics by saying, “In France, they always call the New York critics tough bastards. So
____thank you, my bastard friends.”

____It’d be nice to hear what she might say if she wins an Oscar. She’ll get my vote.

- The Pirate VeggieTale Movie got the reviews it deserved. The Village Voice’s Ed
____Gonzalez called it, “Humorless, incoherent, and ugly as sin…”
____I was going to attach an image from the film, but I couldn’t sink that low.
____However, I must say I prefer the Veggietales images to those from any of the Shreks.

- I love the gag cartoons that Stephen Worth has posted on the ASIFA Hollywood
____Animation Archive side. They’re from UPA New York, and they comment on
____Lu Guarnier’s having the only window in the studio. The studio was divided into stall-
____like cubicles. (At least, this is Tissa David’s description.)
____What fascinates me is that these cartoons were saved for the past fifty years! They’re
____absolutely worth it, but how much of the important art is gone, yet these inside-gags
____are still extant and in good shape.

____By the way, a comment from his niece Pat, reminded me that Lu had told me about
____his first name – that his father named him “Lucifer, the light bearer” because he would
____someday lead the world out of its darkness. He wasn’t named after Lucifer, the devil.
____This also had me wondering about the middle initial “B”. Lu wouldn’t tell me
____what it stood for and left me guessing whether it was for “Beelzebub.”

- Speaking of Stephen Worth, I’ve been entertained by the back and forth discussion
____between Michael Barrier and Stephen Worth regarding the history of story/script
____development at animation studios. Worth says that prior to 101 Dalmatians, all scripts
____for animation were done by storyboard artists. Mike Barrier (having viewed the
____evidence) states the obvious – scripts did exist as far back as the silent Disney days.

____I’ve seen enough of these scripts to know that Barrier is correct. The script for
____Brotherhood of Man was published in the 1945 Hollywood Quarterly, for pete’s
____sake. Hubley, Phil Eastman and Ring Lardner did this script in advance of
____any storyboard work, which Hubley, ultimately, did. I saw parts of that storyboard as
____well. I believe it’s now in the MoMA archives.

____Scripts did exist. Just look in the Merritt and Kaufamn book, Walt In Wonderland.
____Pg 102 has a verbal scene-by-scene breakdown with a follow-up board for the Oswald
____cartoon, Africa Before Dark. That’s 1929.
____I think in this argument, Stephen Worth is just fighting the hard fight to protect the
____claims of John Krisfalusi that only storyboarded scripts are good for animated films.
____The argument is not worth much more of a comment. The comments on Cartoon
____Brew have gotten beside the point.
____Barrier offers us a page of a Cinderella treatment & a Fleischer Koko silent film.
____There’s also another page of a Superman script on Thad Komorowski ‘s site
____contibuted by Bob Jaques.
____Need anyone offer more?

- Speaking of Mike Barrier, his comments about Hanna/Barbera, their shorts and Jerry
____Beck’s recent book, The Hanna-Barbera Treasury, are quite astute.
____His commments have also provoked some serious thoughts from Mark Mayerson
____about the subject. Mark comments, “There is no question that the animation industry
____suffered a major blow with the death of theatrical shorts and the rise of television. It
____took the industry more than 25 years to recover from that blow. Hanna and Barbera
____had no part in that recovery and if anything, they probably delayed it.”

____I certainly agree, but I’m more bitter. I don’t think there was ever a recovery from
____H&B’s handiwork. They put the animation industry in the gutter, and it hasn’t
____stepped out except for a few individual steps by others. A film like Persepolis suffers
____from the residue of Hanna Barbera’s flattening of animation. UPA introduced limited
____animation; H&B flattened it out.

_

- There’s another great Tom Hachtman image on the Kaliyuga Theater site for Al Carmines‘s play, In Circles about Getrude Stein. Tom, of course, draws the Gertrude’s Follies comic strip. This watercolor was done for Carmines. Tom sent it to me, and how could I pass up posting it?

I’m almost tempted to buy a ticket to the show.

_

-
_

– Having finished a bunch of work for Between The Lions, the PBS show out of WGBH (a greater client can’t be found), we’ve met with a quiet period.
To keep busy we’ve started production on a short segment of the Gertrude’s Follies storyboard feature done years ago.

To see the history of this project go here and here.

What this has done is forced me to push cartoonist Tom Hachtman back to work on the strip. I need some new dialogue written between Gertrude and Alice, and I’d like him to do the backgrounds (only a couple are needed.) He’s a great watercolorist and airbrush artist – the real thing, not computer.
Of course, I prefer the watercolor painting, but I’ll take whatever he’d like to do. It’s his strip and his characters; that’s his decision.
Anyway, I got this card (to the left) from Tom. It thanks me for getting him back to Gertrude. (It’s my treat; the characters are so much fun drawing.)

Matthew Clinton has finished his first draft of animating the piece that’s about 2 minutes in length. Paul Carrillo has already edited up a hilarious first cut soundtrack of effects and music. All we need is the finishing parts.

It’s funny. That’s what counts.

I’m reluctant to post the strip it’s based on
(I don’t want to give up the joke, though it really doesn’t matter). It’s about Pabs eating his first hamburger – just in case any of you have seen it. (I just had a flash thinking how horrible this would have looked if we’d done it in Flash. Sends a chill through me.)
(Click images to enlarge.)

I just received in the mail a copy of the program from the Seattle Children’s Film Festival that was held in January of this year. They’d done a two program retrospective of some of our films. It was a kick having someone ask for the program; it was fun knowing that our films stay alive.

The program was enough of a success that the curator of that festival has just sent an email sayng that she is curating . . .

“. . . the second annual REDCAT International Children’s Film Festival at REDCAT (Roy and Edna Disney Calarts Theatre) in Los Angeles. The festival will be comprised of a selection of the best of Cinema K: Children’s Film Festival Seattle and additional new programs.

I would like to include one of the retrospective programs we showed at Northwest Film Forum: Dr. DeSoto, The Red Shoes, Abel’s Island, and The Man Who Walked Between the Towers.”

Of course, this will be an honor, so our program will be presented at that festival in June. When I have the dates, I’ll pass them along.

All these retrospectives popping up! (There was one in Philadelphia recently, another in North Carolina, and a very big one which will be in NYC this Fall – we’ll talk about it when it gets closer.) I’m starting to feel old, but I’m loving it. (The Seattle program
from last January.)

- In the past two weeks I highlighted the Gertrude’s Follies work and the artist behind it, Tom Hachtman. He and his wife, Joey Epstein, have been doing Trompe L’oeil murals in the area of the (New) Jersey Shore, where they live.

Since I’ve recently been showing Tom’s artwork, I thought it might be fun to show off some photos of the work he, Joey and two other women – Katie Mae and Christine Myshka. Tom’s caricature (Anime style) of the three women appears to the left. Joey on the left, Katie Mott center and Christine on the right.
(Click on any image to enlarge.)

As you can see, they put these murals up in the homes of local people who are looking to decorate their rooms.

1 2
Imagine the surprise of people who try to read one of the books in this library in Colt’s Neck N.J. – “the children’s office.”

3 4
3. One for the Mets fan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4. One for the Yankees fan.

5 6
5. This is the mural for a kitchen.
6. Painting for a Bagel Shop.

Times Square at a specific point in the memory of the client.

-Back to Gertrude’s Follies, the film.

I talked last week about my excitement over the comic strip by Tom Hachtman, Gertrude’s Follies. We worked up a storyboard and script for a feature. It was a bit of a rush since I found the distributor of a low budget comedy film who asked for something similar in animation. I thought we could get him interested. I wanted to strike while the iron was hot. The guy didn’t get it, thought it wasn’t funny, didn’t even understand it. His company folded six months later. A one hit wonder.

We tried to stay close to many of the strips and found a direction.
Here are two weeklies from the strip.

(Click on any image to enlarge.)

The equivalent part of the storyboard follows. To give a short syopsis of the story thus far:

Trying to be somewhat current, we built the story around an upcoming, all-encompassing exhibit Picasso was going to have at the Museum of Modern Art. At the same time, Gertrude had just sent off a big book to her agent in NY. A party was in order, and we join them in this section of the storyboard as they prepare for the party. There’s a guided tour going on at the house as they prepare, and Hemingway arrives early.
(This is about 20 mins into the film.)

- Back in the late ’70s, there was a local newspaper that competed with the Village Voice for the alternative audience. The Soho News was smaller and thinner, but had its own treasures. Some good writing and listings, and many excellent alternative comic strips. (Bill Plympton had a weekly strip in this paper before he started animating.)

I fell in love with one comic strip called Gertrude’s Follies to the point where I waited each week for the new issue and the new strip to hit to market. It was about Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas and all the crazies that came into their lives – particularly Picasso, Hemingway and other iconic art types. It didn’t matter that Matisse and Capote didn’t meet; they were both available for the strip – as was everyone else.

Finally, after enjoying it for so long, I decided to locate the cartoonist behind it, and see whether he was interested in developing a storyboard and script for a feature. Maybe we could get some low-budget financing.

Tom Hachtman was the cartoonist, and he was a brilliant artist. His wife, Joey Epstein, was another fine artist. The two entered my life at this point, and some interesting things developed.

Gertrude’s Follies was an ongoing project. Tom worked with Maxine Fisher, who has been my writing partner through all the years of my studio. The two of them developed a couple of themes from the mass of strips that had been done and started to weave a storyboard. Tom left 4 or 5 panels of each 6 panel page empty, and I constructed and reconstructed story around them. Sometimes I would draw more material, sometimes I would take some away. It was real fun.

The Soho News folded, and no one really picked up the strip. It ran for a short time in The Advocate. Tom was able to publish a collected book (see the cover above.) You can still locate a rare copy on line.

Some newer, color copies of the strip can be found on line here.
Tom also does some political cartoons for the site here.

The movie never went into production. I couldn’t raise the funds – my inexperience. We did make one short segment – a two minute piece that was the most hilarious strip. Sheldon Cohen, an animator I met at the Ottawa 76 festival, came to NY when I offered him a job on Raggedy Ann. Sheldon, ultimately, did a number of films for the National Film Board which you can watch on-line if you click on his name.

Sheldon animated this particularly funny strip. It took a while for him to animate it, and by the time he was finished, the feature had died and I had lost some interest. Years later I inked and painted it and had it shot. The short piece was never finished, though I still think about doing that.

Tom also recently gave me a funny strip about Pablo Picasso sculpture for which I’ve finished a storyboard and animatic. Hopefully, I’ll get the energy to animate it.

Aside from Gertrude, both Tom & Joey worked on a number of my films and still infrequently do. The two have painted many murals on the Jersey Coast, where they currently live. Tom has been a political cartoonist for the NY Daily News, has done lots of airbrush work for Bob Blechman when the Ink Tank was in operation. He also has done quite a few cartoons for The New Yorker magazine.

Here are a few of the strips to give you the flavor. Perhaps next week I’ll give a sample of our storyboard, comparing it with some of the actual strips. Enjoy.

1 2
(Click on any image to enlarge so that you can read the strips.)

3 4

5 6