Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

- Tom Hachtman, who you may remember is the friend who does Gertrude’s Follies and sometimes contributes to this Splog, (see this post about that) and his wife, Joey Hachtman, who you’ll remember has a business painting murals on the big houses at the Jersey Shore. (See this post as an example.) That’s where they live, in a house at the Jersey Shore. Point Pleasant is just a little bit of paradise with one of the rowdiest boardwalks at the shore. It’s a fun place, at least when the weather’s warm enough.

Well, Tom took some pictures. Sandy visited the shore a few weeks back, and things have been a bit different. They still don’t have heat or electric. So here’s the first of some photos of their back yard.

1
Some of the boardwalk on Atlantic Avenue.

2
A bench from the boardwalk.

3
Boardwalk booth.

4
Copters all day long.

5
Our house with the peak – looking west on Forman Avenue.

6
Our street, after Sandy, looking West.

7
White fence shows high water mark.

8
No parking today.
A parking pay station.

9
Northern NJ clean-up crew – did the basement.

10
Seton Hall’s Sigma Pi boys – cleaned out the garage.
(They found a possum playing dead convincingly.)

11
Soggy collectibles.

12
Myrna and Joey on the porch.

13
No mini-golf today

14
Kitty and Olive stop by visiting Joey (right)

15
Debris in Rick’s driveway.

16
Our house after some housecleaning.

17
Across the street – high water mark on white fence.

And of course, turning to stored artwork that the family did over the many years, things weren’t so good.

18
Here’s Tom going through some of the debris
to find anything that can be saved.

19
Here are some of the comics that Joey had done cartoons for.
It’s doubtful that the issues can be replaced.

20
More of those comics. Do you hold onto them?

21
Here are some of the many cartoons she did for Screw Magazine.
Gone.

22
A cover for New York Magazine
that Tom had saved.
It was done by Bob Grossman a few years ago.

Tissa David Memorial

- We’ve planned a memorial for Tissa David that will take place in New York at the Academy Lighthouse Theater on Tuesday October 23rd at 7pm. The program will include five speakers and will have a fair share of clips from the many films Tissa animated. The studios that will be rimarily represented include: The Hubley Studio, Raggedy Ann & Andy, R.O.Blechman/The Ink Tank and Michael Sporn Animation.

The films will include: Eggs, Everybody Rides the Carousel, Cockaboody, Raggedy Ann & Andy, Candide, The Soldier’s Tale, The Red Shoes, Lyle Lyle Crocodile, The Marzipan Pig, The Dancing Frog and POE.

Where: Academy Lighthouse Theater, 111 East 59th Street, lower level
When: Tuesday, October 23rd, at 7PM

Photo by Mate HidvegiAdmission: free
Seating: first come, first served

___________

It’s been very interesting for me to prepare all this material for the program. As a matter of fact, just developing the program has been interesting.

In the last month or so, working out of Buzzco studio, I watched Candy Kugel and Rick Broas prepare the material for their ASIFA East program celebrating the work of Perpetual Motion Studios, a commercial animation studio where a number of people got their start. A lot of film had to be prepared for DVD projection and people had been organized to act as a panel where they would reminisce in front of the audience that came to see the show. Essentially, what Candy and Rick were doing was developing a theatrical program of mixed media which would celebrate this studio and hopefully entertain the audience that came to revisit the studio, one that meant a lot toone contingent of NY animation workers and was a curiosity for younger workers. The organizers of the event not only wanted to reunite with old friends, but they wanted to entertain an audience at the same time.

For me, it was quite informative watching all the work that went into the program as well as seeing the final results and assessing what, to my mind, worked or didn’t work.

Now I’m doing something similar. I’m working a lot of material from Tissa David‘s life into a program that will hopefully entertain an audience while impressing them with the enormous talents of the woman who’d so affected my life. In short, I’ve been trying to develop a mixed media theatrical event, but I’ve been hoping not to let Tissa down since this will be the final farewell to her for many of those who will come. Needless to say, it won’t be my final farewell to her. She’s been a great and close friend, an animation wizard and something of a cherished advisor on many things. She was always there to talk to, to share films with and to chat about animation as well as our lives. Her memory is more than alive in the front of my mind.

In short, I want to get this show right. That is, after all, what I am doing . . . putting on a show.

For the past week I’ve been working and reworking clips that’ll be screened, and going through many, many still photos of Tissa and her artifacts to prepare a little slide show that will get the crowd into the right mood as they enter the theater. Once you pick out the right pictures to present, there’s a delicate order to select them, tie them to a piece of music and try to create a short bit of a movie. Speaking of music, that alone is something difficult
Photo by Mate Hidvegi to select. Certainly, with Tissa,
it meant sticking to classical as opposed to
popular music. Even then, I knew she didn’t like Beethoven so I couldn’t use “Ode to Joy,” for example. (Wouldn’t that have made some kind of memorial song!) I listened to a lot of Kodaly and pulled back since I’m not crazy about his music, I didn’t want anything at all Romantic. I listened to a lot of music that I like. No, I’d be too tempted to pull something from John Adams or Phillip Glass’ catalog. That most definitely is not Tissa. Ultimately, I settled on Bach. I found a nice version of his prelude from Bach´s Cello Suite No. 1 as performed by Yo Yo Ma.

I want to offer a giveaway to the audience, a little program that they’ll have for review after they’ve left. The slide show has been completed (and I think successfully), and the decisions for all the cuts and clips have been made for the screening, and all the speakers have sent me their pieces on Tissa. Now I have to write a program and will have to get a couple hundred copies printed over the weekend.

All in all, it’s been a formidable month, this last one. A lot’s been done, and I’m looking forward to the event. I just worry a bit that now I’ll have to say goodbye to Tissa.

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Order of Merit to Tissa’s Sister

- On the 56th anniversary of the 1956 Hungarian revolution the memorial conference was held.

Yesterday, one of Tissa’s sisters, Szaniszla, was decorated with a very highly prestigious medal – Order of Merit of Hungary.

After the revolution in 1956, Szaniszla was jailed because she participated and supported the revolution.

(Tissa had escaped Hungary and fled, ultimately, to Paris some seven years earlier in 1949.)

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Why Obama Now

I saw this excellent piece of anmation on the Animation Guild Blog this past week, and I couldn’t help but pass it forward. Lucas Gray did a fine job of illustrating a talk by Barack Obama and executed it with style and intelligence. It’s a flash work that exploits the program for all it’s got. If John Sutherland were making films today, this is probably what they’d look like.

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Hans’ Dream

- Hans Bacher in a new post on his site, one1more2time3, is invading Eddie Fitzgerald territory with an imagined construction, a dream of the future from a child of the past if he had this present. A peculiar description, but it’s probably apt. Take a look for yourself.

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A Dancing Kickstarter

I received this note this week and found it interesting enough to post:

Hi Michael,

My name is Betsy Baytos and my colleagues, I am writing to see if you could kindly help post my Kickstarter Film project, on your site and blog. ‘

FUNNY FEET: The Art of Eccentric Dance‘

A brief introduction: A former Disney Feature Animator and Eccentric ‘comedic’ Dancer, my work now focuses on animation choreography (i.e.:’Emperor’s New Groove‘ & ‘Princess and the Frog‘). I have also performed as the Muppet Show’s ‘Betsy Bird’, teaching/lecturing Eccentric ‘character movement’ at Disney and Cal Arts animation classes, Oxford University’s ‘Fred Astaire Conference’,consulting for Cirque Du Soleil, Universal Studios Japan and the Ringling Bros. Alumni.

I have just launched a Kickstarter campaign to finance the completion of my film research, for a Documentary, ‘FUNNY FEET: The Art of Eccentric Dance‘, with over 45 celebrity filmed interviews:(i.e.: Red Skelton, Jerry Lewis, Dick Van Dyke, Shirley MacLaine, Mrs. Buster Keaton, Chuck Jones, Al Hirschfeld, Joe Grant, Ward Kimball, Joe Barbera, Frank & Ollie, Myron Waldman, Richard Fleischer and many more….) All with a focus on how eccentric dance inspired the visual arts and especially animation, as many of the great eccentric dancers were models for our most beloved cartoon characters. .

My entire research & film collection will be donated to the Motion Pic Academy of Arts & Science here, as a final home when all is said & done.

To see the Kickstarter proposal go here.


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NY – Comi Con – NY

Tom Hachtman is a good friend. I love his art work and have supported it from the time I first saw his comic strip, Gertrude’s Follies, in the SohoNews, an extant paper from the lower rungs of Manhattan’s coolest neighborhood. Tom and I spent a lot of time storyboarding a very low budget animated feature pulled from his strip. If nothing else it made me laugh for months while we were drawing it.

Well, Tom was at the NY version of the ComiCon held Oct. 11-14 at the Javits Center on NY’s far West side. Tom was promoting a couple of books Gertrude’s Follies, Fairly Grim Tales (which he illustrated). I’m pleased that Martin Kozlowski pushes to keep Tom published; obviously the man has good taste.

Tom wrote a funny account of his four days there:

I was there for all four days of the event that opened Thursday 10/11/12.
Directly across from us there was a booth promoting something called ‘The Mr. Gray show. They were showing (on a laptop) a pilot episode that included an interview with David Lynch where he talks about his Jack Russell terrier Sparky. There is some ANIMATION at the beginning.

(LtoR) Salvina Vitali starring as Agent BJ, Mister Gray the alien puppet
from planet Zeb, the show’s creator Dusty Wright holding a drawing of
Gertrude and Alice meeting Mr. Gray, and, in the red hat, yours truly.

For four days I watched a parade of comic book fans in costumes depicting their favorite characters. I don’t know who these people are and I often don’t know who the character is they have dressed up as. Day four Larry pointed out an approaching Poison Ivy and said, “You must be tired – you don’t even look.”
Then along came Red Sonja to put me out of my misery – best shot of the day.

Since I love redheads I had my picture taken with Poison Ivy, Black Widow, Red Sonja and many more terrifying creatures I can not identify.

w/Poison Ivy

Red Sonja kills Jorz Strooly

“Fangs 4 D Memories”

Seriously

Anyone who bought a book got a drawing. Here are a few that I didn’t give away.

Gertrude and Alice at Comic Con dressed as Wonder Woman and Harley Quinn –
these were two very popular costumes at Comic Con.

Alice taking a photo of Gertrude with her iPhone –
both in Harley Quinn costumes.

Driving across America looking a little bit steampunk.

Indiegogo POE

- Our new Indiegogo campaign for the Poe Project will be up and running this coming week. (Just when you thought you were done with that!) Of course we’ll be shouting the news as loud as we can, so you’ll know when. I just want to add a video of me talking about the film, and it’ll be ready for prime time.

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The Fleischers

Max and Essie Fleischer at
Dick Fleischer’s house in LA, 1956.
on the Fleischer Studios site.

- There is a nice collection of photographs on display at the Fleischer Family website. For the most part, these are photos that haven’t been seen, predominantly of Max, that will certainly be of interest to any Fleischer fan.

However if it’s artwork you want to see, I suggest you look at Ryan & Stephanie Englade‘s Fleischer site. He has quite a collect of Fleischer art on display (though there are plenty of rare and precious Disney pieces toward the end of the scroll.)

Here’s an original Popeye B&W cel from the Englade site.
You can see that the Bg is done in sepias while the
Ink & Pt of the cel is done in cold greys.
It all comes out B&W&grey on film.

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Funk & Wagnell

- After I’d completed work on Raggedy Ann & Andy, I found myself an “Assistant Director” on R.O. Blechman’s hour PBS show, Simple Gifts. This was a compilation of six short pieces about Christmas. Each had a different designer: Maurice Sendak, Seymour Chwast, Charles B. Slackman, James McMullan, Blechman and Fontaine Fox’s Toonerville Trolley.

However, before Bob could raise the money for the show, I was pulled into working on a stack of commercials where I acted more as producer and all around artist (inker, painter, assistant animator, animator, movieola operator, etc.) Here’s a commercial from that period that I did with think it was 1978(?). I just found it on YouTube. (It’s a pretty dark version of the spot.) Ed Smith animated the Van Gogh & Modigliani and Tissa David did Michelangelo & Picasso. Sara Calogero did the painting and I did all the rest of the production art. I also represented the studio on the live action to make sure it would work with the animation.

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GIRAF Animation Festival

I received the request to post this piece for the Giraf Animation Festival in Calgary, Canada. Why not? Often, it’s a festival like this that can find some of the gems that otherwise wouldn’t be seen.

GIRAF Animation Festival

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS

Deadline: August 1, 2012

The 8th annual GIRAF (or the Giant Incandescent Resonating Animation Festival) is looking for Animation submissions, in all styles, genres, lengths, and mediums. Our programs are a strong eclectic mix of animation, representing the best of the medium from Claymation to CG.
We focus on presenting indie, experimental, and underground animations that push boundaries through new techniques, unique visions, and stimulating subject matter. Our 2011 program featured visiting artist David O’Reilly, and 3 of the 5 Academy Award nominees for Best Short Animation!

We DO NOT CHARGE A SUBMISSION FEE, and encourage short and feature length local, national, international, and student submissions.

Animators can submit online at: www.giraffest.ca

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Maureen Selwood

- On Monday, April 30, 2012 at 8:30 PM, Beyond Enchantment: The Imaginary Voyages of Maureen Selwood be screened at The Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater (Redcat), 631 West 2nd Street, LA.

From the program:

“Selwood grapples with notions of dislocation, grief and loss…The result is indeed akin to poetry, in its piercing sadness that is at once palpable and ephemeral.” Holly Willis

Maureen Selwood’s animations take us into the strange, beautiful, and sometimes terrifying lands of the mind. For her first solo show at REDCAT, she presents a selection of more recent pieces including the premiere of A Modern Convenience (2012), in which the machine becomes a substitute for intimacy against the backdrop of Niagara Falls. The piece will be accompanied by live performance. In Hail Mary (1998) a centuries old prayer morphs into a humorous black and white memoir. The expressively rendered Drawing Lessons (2006) sublimates a meditation on drawing and nature. I Started Early (2007), based on a poem by Emily Dickinson, explores sexual awakening. As You Desire Me (2009), the single-channel version of an installation inspired by her residence at the American Academy in Rome at the beginning of the Iraq War, confronts sorrow and catastrophe. The program concludes with the hallucinogenic trip of How Much Better if Plymouth Rock Had Landed on the Pilgrims (2009), and Mistaken Identity (2001), Selwood’s alluring deconstruction of 1955 noir classic Kiss Me Deadly.

A looped silent version of Rules of the Universe (2009, QT Digital) will be projected on the wall over the exit to the parking lot.

Maureen Selwood will present, in person, a selection of recent films and works with live performance.

The premiere of A Modern Convenience with a live performance by Archie Carey and Odeya Nini.

Mistaken Identity will also be performed with a live performance by Clarissa Romano and The Cathlene Pineda Trio.

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Consuming Spirits

As promised, I’m reminding you that Chris Sullivan’s Independenty produced feature Consuming Spirits is premiering at the Tribeca Film Festival this week.

The times for the screenings are:
_____Mon 4/23 6:00PM Clearview Cinemas Chelsea 7
_____Tue 4/24 4:00PM AMC Loews Village 7 – 2
_____Wed 4/25 7:00PM Clearview Cinemas Chelsea 5

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Gertrude’s Follies

- Finally, Tom Hachtman‘s great comic strip is back on sale. Gertrude’s Follies has been reprinted and is once again on sale at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Buy it, you won’t be disappointed if you love great comic strips.

- This past Thursday night, Paul and Sandra Fierlinger presented an hour’s worth of their latest project at Parson’s School. The film, Slocum at Sea with Himself, tells the story of the first person to have sailed SOLO around the world.

The film was a work in progress in every sense of the phrase. It started in full color, included scenes over final Bgs that weren’t colored and had other scenes that were pure pencil test. The sound was predominantly music composed and performed by the brilliant Shay Lynch. (You may know his music from the many films he did for Jeff Scher.) Yet, it all stood with a great dignity as a strong piece.

The film was full of potential to be even greater than their last feature, My Dog Tulip. Imagery was stunning and beautifully designed and animated (as usual from this team). It was a real treat seeing the work in progress, and it was easy to fill in the gaps. The movie takes place almost completely on water, and it’s amazing the effects they’ve achieved in animating such a difficult project. I was wholly taken by it.

As monumental as the screening was – truly inspirational, the talk Paul gave in advance was thought provoking. They are making the film with their own money and planning to release it online in short segments. All told the feed would take about six months to receive the entire feature. To buy these feeds, which will be built into a website that would constantly change for each segment, will cost about $30 in total. They’re hoping for a built-in audience of boaters and leisure craft enthusiasts around the world. Slocum is a well-known story to these folk, and the likelihood that they’d have interest in the subject is great.

Theirs is a provocative idea for distributing the film, and the business model Paul presented seemed original and probably a successful one. It will take some time before the feature is finished, but I’ll be watching closely to see how successful they’ll be. I’d bet on them, too.

There is no doubt of the love they’re pouring into this project. Take a look at these stills:

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- The Moon and the Son: An Imagined Conversation, John Canemaker’s animated short, is now available in a special edition DVD. This powerful and moving film, which has won both the Academy Award and the Emmy Award, explores the difficult emotional terrain of father/son relationships as seen through Canemaker’s own turbulent relationship with his father.

The Moon and the Son combines many different elements from John’s remembered versions of the facts, to the actual evidence of the life on screen: the trial transcripts, audio recordings, home movies, and photos. The original and stylized animation tells the true story of an Italian immigrant’s troubled life and the consequences of his actions on his family. The film features the voices of noted actors Eli Wallach and John Turturro in the roles of father and son.

The DVD includes the complete 28-minute film and the following bonus materials:
- A new documentary detailing the film’s creative evolution, influences and reception, with animation director/designer John Canemaker and producer Peggy Stern.
- The first rough cut (working title: “Confessions of my Father”) with original soundtrack
- A Photo gallery of production sketches, preliminary artwork and storyboards

I enjoyed thumbing through all the extras on this DVD. When the film was being made, John shared its progress with me at several stages. I’m intrigued with how much material was there in the development. As a long time friend with John, I felt I’d known some of the story over the years. But the film, and now the new material, give me larger insight to the full story. Spending time reading the storyboard (one of the extras) again – having seen the film several times – allowed me to see some of the background which shaped John’s quest to tell this story.

The DVD is available now on Amazon.

Some samples of the art work on the new disc.


A somewhat Feiffer-like page within the storyboard.

Smart sketches grow in color.

A very “Canemaker” sketch that reminds me a bit of a Picasso sketch.

There’s lots more on the DVD.

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- Tom Hachtman has seen an unusual turn with his Gertrude and Alice characters. You’ll remember that he’d developed a comic strip, Gertrude’s Follies, built around Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas. A friend and admirer of the strip, Hans Gallas, has written a children’s book around Tom’s characters, and Tom illustrated the book. Now that book’s been published, and can be purchased from their site. Gertrude and Alice and Fritz and Tom is a charming account of what happens when Gertrude and Alice have to take care of a couple of young boys during their stay in Paris.

Here are some of the book’s exuberant illustrations.

The book’s cover

And here are some of Tom’s original sketches for the book.

Original sketch for the cover.
Très different from the final.

A preliminary sketch for a lot of pages

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- Bill Benzon, on his blog New Savannah, has finally completed his treatise on Fantasia and has published it in a PDF form. You can download this here for a great read. 96 pages of intelligent discourse on the feature. This document contains his original, and shorter commentary on the Pastoral sequence. For his longer take on that sequence download this document.

With the opening of the Gertrude show in Washington D.C. at the National Portrait Gallery, I thought it worth celebrating our relationship with Tom Hachtman, the cartoonist who has developed the strip Gertrude and Alice and who has some pieces in this D.C. exhibit. Hence, I’m re-posting the tale of our animated journey.

- 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

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.
We did ultimately complete the short film, called “Pabs’ First Burger.”
Tom Hachtman did the backgrounds and Matthew Clinton did the animation.

Here’s a small QT view of that short:

- The totally-lacking-courage, Cartoon Network is finally realeasing the official DVD of the first season (mind you it’s only the first season) of John R. Dilworth‘s masterful series Courage the Cowardly Dog.

The DVD hits the stores on January 20, 2010 some 11 years after it was first aired. How embarrassing for a network that claims it has to move into live action to finally get strong. If they had taken advantage of the brilliant properties in their hands – all those under the original creative team – they might have been a bit more original, successful, and useful. Now it’s just a network without a real name.

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The Sundance Channel has released ANIMATION BIZARRO 2 – a collection of seven animated shorts made by some of the most provocative and unique Canadian animators/artists:

The press release states:

Each film was chosen for its diversity, quality and individuality. The episodes provide a range of color and bizarre visions of the world as depicted through a variety of animation styles including: cel, paper cut outs, stop motion and CGI. The films touch on a variety of moods (funny, touching and sardonic).

The series features the work of established veterans like Mad Magazine legends Al Jaffee and Sergio Aragones, and emerging animators like Brandon Blommaert and Sean Stoops. Their work, juxtaposed with our other featured artists like Robbie Conal, Steve Brodner and the emerging new stars of the Hot House program, really tells a bigger story of the progression of modern humor, cartooning, political satire and comedy in art. We think this will be
both fascinating and thoroughly entertaining for the diehard fans and
general audiences as well.

Following the launch, Sundance will add new videos, images and interviews to the Animation Bizarro site on each remaining Monday throughout the month, so please keep checking the site for additional content.

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- Bill Benzon continues his study of Nina Paley’s feature length film, Sita Sings the Blues. In his current essay on the blog New Savannah, he writes about Ritual in Sita Sings the Blues, Part 1.

It’s nice to see Nina’s film taken so seriously. It should outlive its shelf life.

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- Tom Hachtman’s Gertrude’s Follies got a nice writeup in The Comics Journal. That strip deserves all the attention it can muster. In my opinion, Tom’s the equivalent of a modern day Milt Gross, only he has received enough praise.

Here’s a recap of a post I did back in November 2006.

- 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

- Usually, I’m linking to articles I’ve found in the NYTimes. It’s strange to have the NY Times link to articles in my blog! That’s what happened yesterday when the Times Artsbeat column picked up my reprint of John Canemaker‘s Print magazine article about Finian’s Rainbow and wrote about it. Now that’s a kick for the day.

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Speaking of something sorta grandish, I forgot to mention that my studio passed its 30th Anniversary on February 15th. No wonder some of the paint is peeling; we’re getting grander by the day. We’ve done a lot of films in that time, though I wish there were a lot more.

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Tom Hachtman recently sent me a couple of brilliant drawings. You’ll remember that he and I were involved in trying to jump start an animated feature version of his comic strip Gertrude’s Follies. Either it was too daring for backers or I didn’t locate the right backers for an animated film about artists and their lesbian supporters.

At any rate, Tom had sent a drawing to the New Yorker (which has published some of his cartoons in the past) which ultimately rejected it. Their tough luck, my fortune.

Than there’s the image he sent a couple of weeks ago in the middle of the media’s scourge of Tiger Woods.

This was originally posted on NowWhatMedia.com where blog owner Martin Kozlowski colored the original B&W image after Tom made a couple of small alterations in cleaning up this drawing. It ended up looking like this:

I love the loose quality of the original picture, so I had to post it.

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- As you may have read, Sylvan Chomet‘s The Illusionist has been racking up glorious film reviews since it’s recent premiere in Berlin at the Berlinale. The Hollywood Reporter, though, wasn’t so kind in its review yesterday.

“. . . theatrical exposure outside Europe might be scant. Chomet’s name alone assures some level of distribution on several platforms, but buyers might be wary this time.”

“Tati never committed this downhearted tale to film, choosing instead to end his career with light, satirical fun.”

It does say of the film, “The real beauty of ‘Illusionist’ lies in its drawings. Chomet is a traditionalist here, insisting on hand drawings where 3D computer animation is all the rage in the animation world. The story moves from Paris to London to Scotland, and its cityscapes and landscapes are gorgeous. A final swirling crane shot of Edinburgh, where the camera seems to fly up and over the city, is sheer magic.”

It sounds glorious and beautiful, and I can’t wait. The one animated film worth following.

- Tom Hachtman, you’ll remember, is the cartoonist whose comic strip, Gertrude’s Follies, featured characters out the Americans and artists in Paris: Gertrude Stein, Pablo Picasso, Ernest Hemingway and others during the 20s – but set in modern day. The strip was a success, and I made a short or two out of it, trying to get interest in a feature.

Tom actually started to develop another strip. With this one he mined the Renaissance Masters, and that’s what he called the strip. Michelangelo, Leonardo, Raphael and all the other biggies are in there.

He did this strip in a notebook (with blue lines), and he gave me the book to post on this site – at my request, of course. So for the next few weeks, I’ll post all the double page panels done with India Ink and wash. At a good breaking point we’ll continue it next week.

Here they are, the Renaissance Masters:

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(Click any image to enlarge.)

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– The news that a McDonalds will be built within the Louvre is something of a shock to the system. For some reason, I would’ve thought this had happened years ago. Doing it now is somhow passé.

Last year we did a little short from the feature storyboard done a million years ago, based on Tom Hachtman’s comic strip Gertrude’s Follies. The segment involves Gertrude and Alice introducing Pabs (Picasso) to his first hamburger. Since our story takes place in Paris, they’re at a MacDonald’s within shooting distance of the Eiffel Tower. Had I known there would be a Mickey Dee in the Louvre, it would have been more appropriate to put it there.

Maybe we should redo the short.

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- Last week Amid Amidi started several threads of a conversation about te economics of posting films on line. This was followed up by Mark Mayerson on his blog, going into contracts with some depth.

This all followed some thoughts I’d been having about a short film we did in this studio last year. I entered it into one Festival and was soon rejected. Since then I’ve been sitting on it, debating how to exploit it.

It’s the film, discussed above, the pilot for the Gerturde’s Follies film. It was just a kick making it in the studio in between a couple of paying jobs. I wouldn’t mind doing more of them and might actually go ahead with that idea. But for now, I’m making the rash decision to post the film here and now. I’m only going to keep it up for a week or so, and then I’ll replace it with some stills. But for now I’ll forego Frederator’s $50 or Cartoon Brew’s $200.

An image from the cover of Tom’s book
collecting some of the Gertrude Strips. ________________
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- On the NYTimes website John Lasseter talks about the “digital archeology” behind adapting Toy Story and Toy Story 2 into 3D movies. He doesn’t really say much, but you can hear his voice saying it while looking at stills from both films. (For actual information, read the accompanying article.) Lasseter sounds tired and listless, as if he were in the middle of a junket and had repeated this material a hundred times that day.

This slide-show feature on the NYTimes site often has some interesting bits to show or explain. The slide sow for Shane Acker’s 9 offered some details about the production design for the film. Similarly, for Coraline, Henry Selick takes us on a tour of shooting 3D with puppet animation. He details the differences between the real and the “other” worlds of Coraline. Lots of stills of drawings, puppets, people in process and screen shots illustrate the excellent narrative. For Pixar’s Up, Pete Doctor takes us on a backstage tour of the character development behind the film. There are lots of models and early stills of artwork as they get to the characters. Each character also has its own sound cue. This is a sophisticated talk from Pixar, one wonders why so shoddy for the 3d re-releases.

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Daniel Thomas MacInnes writes on his The Ghibli Blog that Miyazaki is working on not one but two features: one for 2011, the other for 2013. Daniel doesn’t have titles or news about what the films are about, baut he does investigate the idea that two films would be so closely produced, back-to-back. Interesting if you’re a Miyazaki fan. ________________ .
The Shadows Dream is the latest Op Ed animation offered via the NY Times by Jeff Scher.

The intro on the Times site reads:
“Fall’s later sunrises bring longer shadows to the morning rush hour. On any particularly sunny morning, the shadows of people in the city seem to constitute a fleeting parallel universe at our feet.”

Jeff is really on to something with this piece, and I can imagine it going a lot further than it does here. I hope he continues with these experiments. Again, Shay Lynch’s music is exceptional. (I’m curious to hear the score he wrote for Paul Fierlinger’s feature.)