Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

- 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.

- 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.)

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.

- 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.

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.

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