Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

There are a lot of sites I’ve enjoyed visiting regularly. Unfortunately, many of these same sites/blogs freeze for many months at a time or fall by the wayside as the creator gets too busy to regularly contribute any more to the blog, or finds out how long it takes to keep it running, or gets disinterested after the sheen has worn off. For whatever reason, many excellent sites go untouched for many months or even longer.

I thought I’d write about a few of them and express my thoughts about a couple of them.

Reconstructed bg from Lady and the Tramp

Animation Backgrounds For years, Rob Richards worked on this site which featured only reconstructed backgrounds made from multiple frame grabs taken off DVDs. Characters were eliminated and camera moves were taken into consideration in these reconstructions. It takes a certain artistry just to be able to do this, and hours go into the making. In 2010 Richards, who writes several other blogs, decided to stop work on this one. It was our loss, but at least the blog and all the work that went into making it remains up there for us to view.

Animondays David Levy has moved on to a more complicated job and had to let his writing blog posts go. His weekly posts were well received. He has a straightforward and earnest style of writing, and it was much appreciated on this regularly written blog. It echoed the feel of his fine books and often acted as an extension to some of them even printing some of the interviews he’d recorded for those very books. He also acted as a good voice for NY animation. When he moved on to a new job, he simply posted a “Gone Fishin’” notice, and that was the end of this blog. It was sad, but we all understood that David ws moving on to something bigger, and we wished him well.

Animation Who and Where was one of my favorite blogs. The depth of some of the strongest animation history on the net was enormous. It was all the work of Joe Campana.

His post Ghosts of the Charles Mintz Studio really got to me, and I returned to visit this same post many times to reread it. He shows how several photos of the staff were taken outside the building’s structure. He’d celebrated the centenary irthdays of many of the animation legends: Joe Grant, Dick Lundy, Roy Williams, and Fred Moore. As a matter of fact, the last post for Fred Moore’s 100th birthday reads:”I have a great post coming, but it will appear here soon…” That was the last we’d heard of this blog on Sept. 7, 211. Almost a year ago. I still return to see if there are any updates.

September 15th, 2009
Happy 68th birthday, Yuriy Norshteyn!

from niffiwan’s site, Animatsaya in English

Animatsiya in English was a favored site of mine which I visited regularly. This was a way to really be able to delve into Russian animation. Many fine examples, both historic and current, were often displayed and analyzed on this blog. Many YouTube versions of Russian films were given English subtitles, and this opened a world for Westerners. However when a company called Funtik decided to claim the copyright ownership to many of those films and pulled them from the internet it destroyed years of work by niffiwan. Animatsiya in English bogged down to a halt. Niffiwan’s last post came September 18th, 2011. When you go to the home page of the blog, you’ll see a detailed explanation for the removal of the videos. There are still many videos worth seeing on the site, however when you go there you’ll find that a good number of them now give you the message: This Video Has Been Removed by the User. That’s unfortunate, but it’s still worth scouting for the excellent films still available on this site.

Blather from Brooklyn actually carries the full title: Blather from Brooklyn: Life in New York City by a Resident of Beautiful Brooklyn. Needless to say, this is not an animation related blog. But it is a wonderful journal of events in New York City, and I love reading it. Many fabulous street festivals (complete with numerous great photos), lots of found signs and notices, and even a trip to see The View (live). The site gives you advice on: Where to eat, How to get around, Where to shop, and where to go when ou hit Brooklyn. This is another great site that hasn’t posted since Nv 5, 2011, almost a year ago. Again, I continually return to see if there are any updates. (The site is hosted by “Annulla” which happens to be the title of autobiographies and a play by the playwright, Emily Mann. One suspects it might be Ms. Mann who wrote this blog.)

I love Bob Jaques‘ site Popeye for Animators. There are so many good posts here that I find myself sometimes coming back just to reread some of the oldies. It’s all about Popeye, as you may have guessed, and the love of animation is apparent in every post Bob posts. This infectious feeling can easily be pulled out of the Fleischer films, and Bob can do that with the best of them. Unfortunately, his last posting was in February of this year. I have no doubt that this site is still very much alive, but I’m sometimes impatient.

At first I was going to hold this post off for a while and make it much longer. There are about a half dozen other sites I thought of mentioning but decided not to. There’s material for another post, and I’ll hold it for a while.

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