Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

– Miyazaki‘s Ponyo is about to arrive on our shores. Delight of delight, I even saw a tv ad for it last night. Maybe, this time, Disney will support it; there have been rumors.

This week’s New York Magazine has a review that was heaven sent. The reviewer, David Edelstein, goes beyond the kiddie-fare surface to talk about animation itself:

Nothing in Miyazaki’s universe ever stops transforming: There are spirits tucked away, ready to turn what you think you see—the visible world—into something else. Miyazaki proves why two-dimensional hand-drawn animation will always be more thrilling than 3-D: It doesn’t need to pretend to be bound by the laws of physics. The borders between flesh and spirit are infinitely porous.

Wha! Somebody gets it?! Let me repeat Edelstein’s last sentence: It doesn’t need to pretend to be bound by the laws of physics. The borders between flesh and spirit are infinitely porous.
All the cgi supporters should take note. There’s nothing wrong with your medium. It’s just that the limited imaginations displayed so far have styled the medium to little more than viewmaster puppets acting in a puppet universe. The sense of caricature is limited to the mundane in that view. Wall E trying to create his own universe out of the junk of the past. It has to go beyond that to be more. There have been hints of the glory, but so far things haven’t gone far beyond Toy Story.

The key word, to me, in Miyazaki’s universe is “Spirituality.”

Here’s more of the review:

Even with its radiant colors and Joe Hisaishi’s score, a lush mixture of Snow White, Wagner, and Shostakovich, Ponyo could be insipid. Its magic comes from someplace deeper. We constantly see movies that contradict their own messages—celebrations of mavericks that are slavishly formulaic, testaments to selfless love suffused with snobbery and narcissism. But when Miyazaki makes films that decry the threat to the natural world, every molecule onscreen resonates with that belief—a belief that dissolves the boundaries between form and content.

- Today in an article in the Daily News, there’s a wonderful quote from Miyazaki:

“The world might be going toward high tech, but I would like to have [my animation company] Studio Ghibli to be like a wooden boat that journeys with sails,” he told The News through a translator.

“Of course, we can sink. I don’t know if we’re very strong, and we’re not confident about the future.”

I guess I’m happy to be in a rowboat not far from his sailboat still perplexed by the use of the tool that is cgi but content to have enough to do, myself. I will have to buy the new book by the Mr. Miyazaki, Starting Point. The man, obviously, has something to say.

- Laura‘s all over the place.

Over at Comicrazys, they’ve posted a handful of comic strips by Pat Sullivan.
That is to say that, like Felix the Cat, this strip, Laura, was actually done by the well disguised Otto Messmer in 1931.

Back then, a principal strip would have a short strip either at the top of the bottom of the page. Laura was the strip that ran just above the Felix the cat strip. The two, together, would fill a color Sunday page.
found via Mike Lynch Cartoons
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Additionally, Comicrazys posted some 22 color copies of the strip in August 2008.

There are also more strips to be found at the ASIFA Hollywood Animation Archives which were posted in 2007. These include the Felix the cat strips; the entire pages are posted.

Amid Amidi has outdone himself writing an extraordinary post which celebrates the life of designer Victor Haboush. It’s one of the best recent posts on Cartoon Brew, and I’d encourage you to take the read if you haven’t yet had the opportunity.

Haboush was a remarkable designer and his contribution to animation – not to mention Disney animation – was enormous. He knew how to create a piece of art for animation without placing it in your face or calling attention to itself.

- On Monday, August 17, at 8 p.m, the West Coast branch of the Motion Picture Academy will present a salute to Adam Beckett at the Linwood Dunn Theater in Hollywood.

Beckett died in 1979 at the age of 29. He had already done a number of independent and surreal animated films prior to working in the industry as a Special Effects artist. His theatrical work includes films such as Star Wars and Piranha.

Hosted by effects artist Richard Winn Taylor and Beckett biographer Pamela Turner it will include screenings of six Beckett films, in addition to an onstage panel discussion with his colleagues and friends. Scheduled guests include Oscar-winning visual effects artists David Berry and Richard Edlund, animator Chris Cassady, and filmmakers Beth Block, Roberta Friedman and Pat O’Neill. The films to be shown include: The Beckett films to be screened are Dear Janice (1972, top photo), Heavy-Light (1973), Evolution of the Red Star (1973), Flesh Flows (1974), Sausage City (1974) and Kitsch in Synch (1975).

My only real contact with Adam, personally, came back in 1976 while working for the Hubleys on Everybody Rides the Carousel. John Hubley was keen on using a couple of young firebrands in the film for a couple of short sequences. Adam was one of these artists who did, I think, four scenes. I inked and colored his animation – all surreal scenes of desks and other office equipment floating about in a long complex cycle. I spoke with Adam on the phone once about the fielding of the scene; it was a short conversation though I do count it as a sort-of meeting.

I was a bigger fan of the the other Independent artist who worked on the film. Fred Burns, whose work was unfamiliar to me, did a knockout seqeunce on the roller coaster of relationships. An animated POV shot of a roller coaster ride. Great stuff.

This past weekend, Dina Babbitt, the former wife of Art Babbitt passed away.

She was a holocaust survivor and was actively trying to push the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and State Museum to return some of the paintings she did in the concentration camp.

There was a 2007 interview with Ms. Babbitt which has been posted on YouTube. I’ve linked to her obituary in the NYTimes.

Karl Cohen has an extensive article in AWN about the William Kentridge exhibit currently touring. The show which opened at the The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art will move to NY at the The Museum of Modern Art, Feb. 28 -May 17, 2010.

There’s a recent weekly piece in the NYTimes that Bob Blechman is illustrating, Ed Smith is animating and my studio has been compositing.
The Puppy Diaries by Jill Abramson is the series and
part 1 is here,
part 2 is here.

Animated illustrations: how can the newsprint issue compete with that?

- Time for me to promote me.

If you’d like to see some of my 1/2 hr. shows on HBO, you can go HERE for the schedule. They play weekly and the schedule changes every month.
Note this month on Saturday, Aug 22nd, HBO is screening a bunch of them back to back.
However if you’d like to buy the DVD’s here’s some info:

Here are the cheapest prices I found on line for buying some of the films I’ve done:

Amazon is selling the boxed set of my films for $44.99. You’d be better off go directly to the distributor, First Run Features. They’re selling it for $37.46.
However some of Amazon’s sellers offer it for $29.72 on up thru $49.95 for a “collectible” edition (whatever that is.) There’s about 6 hours of program on this collection, not counting the Extras.



Scholastic/Weston Woods charges the outrageous price of $59.95 for a dvd of The Man Who Walked Between the Towers. However, I believe that’s the teachers’ price. You can get it for as low as $8.13 from Amazon.

As it turns out, this exorbitant price is what Scholastic charges for all of my films. The only good bit about their website is that you can watch video clips of some of the films I did for them.
The Man WHo Walked Between the Towers
Doctor DeSoto
Jazztime
Max’s Christmas
Leo the Late Bloomer
What’s Under My Bed
Yo? Yes!

YouTube has a number of my shorter flms available for viewing. The quality of all of these available is pathetic.

The music video I did for the group Liquid Liquid is there. It was an experiment in video editing.
I financed it and got it on a couple of national programs at the time. I was trying to use the music to say something about the little bits of random violence we all go through on a day-to-day basis.
I did this in 1983.

Designer Richard McGuire was the bass player for the group. He seemed to be the only one in the group who was interested in the video. The group broke up shortly thereafter, though their devotees stayed loyal following everything about them.

A number of Sesame Street spots are there. Maxine Fisher wrote them all. I did about forty spots for them:
Crocodile Smiles – an operatic spoof on dental care
The Curious Cat features music by Jeremy Steig, son of William. We had a great relationship until his wife and he started writing obscene letters threatening me. They wanted more money for Abel’s Island‘s score, though they agreed on a price I paid them. Ultimately, I left them behind and hired a new composer.
Plan Plan Plan features a great song with music by Ernest Troost. He and I did many of my early films together.
Chicken Crossing was one of my earliest Sesame Street spots. It’s also one of my favorites. Harrison Fisher did the great score.
I did a number of Bellhop bits for Sesame Street. Steve Dovas did the animation for all 20 of them. Some of them are viewable here:
#2, #8, #10, #12, #14, #16, #18, #20

- There’s an extensive review of the music for the Disney animated features, from Dumbo on up through the Fifties. The article was written by Ross Care who is a composer and a film music historian specializing in animation. This was originally written for Cinemascore and can be found on their site – here.

The article gives reports on the music of composers Oliver Wallace, Paul Smith, Ed Plumb and Charles Wolcott. It talks about Dumbo and the post Dumbo features: Victory Through Air Power, Saludos Amigos, and The Three Caballeros. Make Mine Music, Melody Time, Song Of The South, So Dear To My Heart, Fun And Fancy Free, Ichabod And Mr. Toad as well as Cinderella, Peter Pan and Alice in Wonderland.

If you have any interest in the history of film music, particularly applicable to the Disney films, this is worth reading.

- Here’s a review of the film music of UPA written back in the Fifties for Films In Review magazine. I don’t have the exact date of this article I’d saved for the past thirty years.

1 2
(Click any image to enlarge.)

- This morning in New York, Tomm Moore’s The Secret of Kells will be playing the first of two shows at the IFC Center. The second show is tomorrow, Sunday, at 11am. (Reserve a ticket for that show here.) I intend to be at the screening this morning and maybe later in the day I’ll add some comments to this post about my thoughts on the film. I’m hoping it’ll be good, though I have to admit that I have some trepidations with the character design. A bit too cute for my taste, but I can’t judge until I properly see the film. The overall production design looks impressive.

You can read the NYTimes review here. They’ve given the task to a second-string reviewer and treat it as a children’s film despite how positive the review is. At least the paper gave it some attention.

For now, I’ve noticed that a picture book of the film is available. On the site, they’ve given a couple of the double page spreads to check out. I’ve copied them below to give you an idea of this book, which looks as impressive as the film.

The book sells at this site for £12.99 (about $25.00); the same book on Amazon is selling for $125.00. They’ve also posted the trailer for the film at the book’s site, so it’s worth a visit.

(Click any image to enlarge.)

There are a couple of pieces worth checking on line, if you haven’t already seen them.

- Ward Jenkins has an extraordinary 2 part interview with Jon Graboff the son of illustrator/designer Abe Graboff.

Part 1
Part 2

Ward, who has obviously taken a lot of inspiration from Abe Graboff and his many children’s books, asks insightful questions and posts lots of material to give you a good overall view of the masterful work. Everything from samples of the many books to the opening titles to The Danny Kaye Show. Ward makes a strong case for this work and helps to keep it alive.

- Ward Jenkins, on his blog, also introduced me to a wonderful site, Terrible Yellow Eyes. Cory Godbey has created a home for a lot of art inspired by the primal children’s book, by Maurice Sendak, Where the Wild Things Are. Many works are posted by many and varied artists (including Ward Jenkins) who have been invited to post something. Take a look at some of this artwork; many are beautiful. The range of styles is wide, but there being one source of inspiration it’s nice to see what people do with it. Some are clever, some are brilliant. It brought me back to the original which didn’t inspire me as much as Mickey in the Night Kitchen did. Maybe it’s generational.

The inimitable Hans Bacher on his brilliant site, posts about Errol LeCain‘s work with Richard Williams on the film The Sailor and the Devil. This film is just impossible to see these days, so it’s wonderful to view frame grabs, courtesy of Hans, from the short. Unfortunately, of course, the still pictures don’t capture the beautiful rhythms of the film. As a Le Cain fanatic, however, it’s wonderful to have this much. Many thanks to Hans for all the pleasure, inspiration and instruction he gives me with his site.

Of course, if you don’t go to this site regularly, you’re missing real treasures. Just this week, aside from The Sailor and the Devil, Hans focused on the real locations of Pinocchio and Williams daredevil animated feat, the Jovan commercial. So much gold to view.

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Stephen Worth on the Asifa Hollywood Animation Archive has posted some excellent and early artwork by Ray Patterson from the Mintz Studio. There’s a wealth of material here and some fine drawing.

I have a real love of the early material from animation’s beginning. I don’t know what it is, but I can’t get enough. Simply charming.

- Finally, there’s an article in today’s New York Times about a Wall Street analyst who apologizes for predicting that UP would not be a financial success.

“The recent success of Pixar’s ‘Up’ (well ahead of our forecasts) has renewed investor confidence in Disney’s creative capabilities,” he added. “Up” has so far sold $265.9 million in tickets in North America and $35.4 million overseas, where it has only begun to arrive in theaters.

However, he still recommended selling the company’s stock, saying he believed the next 12 to 18 months would be “substantially more difficult for Disney than investors are currently anticipating.”

Perhaps he’ll be wrong about that as well.

- The internet has been overrun with images from Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland, now in production. Lots of Victorian inspired, detailed photos of stars dressed like characters from the film. I’ve pulled a few of them and am posting them here.

Alice has been a problem project which so many studios, artists and filmmakers have attempted to tackle. None have been very successful. The 1933 Norman McLeod version was one of the first and one of the better versions. Edward Everett Horton, Sterling Holloway and Richard Arlen give Charlotte Henry enormous support in this interesting albeit very stagey version.

Disney’s animated feature is probably one of the best known of the films. It’s good in its own rite, but hardly captures the imagination of the Lewis Carroll book or the Tenniel illustrations.

Lou Bunin‘s version is very studied and lacking in much of the drama and whimsy of the story. As a matter of fact, that’s the problem with most of the versions. The story is somewhat like Candide in that it is picaresque in its adventures and becomes hard to dramatize. Burton’s an accomplished filmmaker, but his recent films have begun to look alike. Sweeney Todd doesn’t have the depth that it might have. A lot went into trying to captures Sondheim’s brilliant score, but that came at the expense of the story, itself, which became too much of a surface event.

Regardless, the pictures have had their effect in that it’s made me curious to see what he’ll do with the book.

Here’s a short commentary by Wolcott Gibbs I found in the July 16, 1938 issue of The New Yorker magazine:

We are one Walt Disney’s warmest admirers, but we can’t approve of his notion of making an animated cartoon out of “Alice in Wonderland,” Mr. Disney says that if he ever does make the picture, he proposes to follow the Tenniel illustrations, at least in spirit.

We don’t think this is going to work. Tenniel drew with a fine line, in enormous detail; the movies call for simple, conventionalized figures. The result would be that; Alice would look like Snow White (and probably talk like an elocution school) and a lot of nice, middle-aged people would get apoplexy.

Even harder than reconciling the styles of drawing, we think, would be the problem of adjusting Lewis Carroll’s humor to an audience of a hundred million people, many of whom consider Joe E. Brown the nation’s foremost comic. We don’t like to think of the things that would have to be done to make Alice a box-office success. We don’t want to see the Frog-Footman swallow a cake of soap and hiccough bubbles, or to hear “Jabberwocky” set to swing.

As a matter of fact, we never want to see Alice move or talk at all, and we don’t really believe that Mr. Disney, a modest man, wants to make her, either.

To celebrate July 4th I’d like to post a couple of pictures by friend, Steve Fisher. These two shots of the sky were taken this past week. Every day we’ve had torrents of rain and thuderstorms pelting us with a lot of water. After one evening’s sky show, the setting sun mixed with the clouds to give us a very odd sunset. Steve captured it in these photos. (The cameramen of the NYYankee game were equally inspired and kept showing the sky.) Nature’s enough for me for July 4th.

(Click any image to enlarge.)

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A good friend has some real film (and I do mean film) equipment he’d like to pass on to a good home. I told him that I’d post his offer:

7/1/09
ANIMATOR SEEKS LOVING HOME FOR OLD MACHINES
Because I now exclusively use digital acquisition I offer this equipment to the right party, free, with the condition that you take it all and have a plan for using it that doesn’t include selling or scrapping it, at least not right away.

These machines served me well as an independent animator and commercial producer from the early 1970s up to the new millennium when I began using a still camera on a copystand.

INVENTORY

1. One Bell & Howell 2709 35mm cine camera. Both Acme and Oxberry cameras were based on the shuttle on the 2709 because of its superior stationary registration pin system. The original model can be found at film museums,

The camera was modified to down-shoot by removing the turret, beefing up the precision rackover plate including a stationary Nikon lens mount (I used a 55mm micro-Nikkor, not included), and motorizing the take-up and supply pulleys. The camera has a reticle on the access door which allows one to view through the lens or project an accurate guide onto a flat field with the included prism/light-source unit. The variable shutter is controlled by a large gauge to make fades. An A/C stop-motion motor with frame counter runs at 3 exposures (1/4, ½, one second) forward and reverse. Includes two standard 35mm ________An example of this camera
magazines and one dual chamber bi-pack
magazine (made out of wood; it will need some modification for film take-up).
All controls for shutter and focus are totally manual.

This camera is NOT for purists who get all sentimental over the authentic hand-cranked camera that became the “standard” for Hollywood features in the silent era. True, there is a hole for the crank handle, but the chopped off turret radically alters the appearance of the all-aluminum body. The modification for animation may have been done during WWII for the Army Signal Corps which produced many films in Brooklyn using equipment that later ended up in animation studios around the city.

2. A second Bell & Howell 2709 35mm cine camera. Modified generally the same as the first camera except it has a 16mm shuttle and the take-up tension is supplied by the camera with the original springbelt loop, not independent motors. This is a newer camera built I would guess after WWII. Includes one magazine.

Both cameras are interchangeable. They fit on the rackover plate on the same pilot pins; use the same light for their respective field reticles; use the same stop-motion motor.

The cameras and animation stand (which I donated long ago) were used by the Bray Studio located in the Film Center Building on 9th Ave. Historians know that the original cartoon studio, founded by John Randolph Bray in 1910, is where the Fleischer brothers and so many other pioneers started out. By 1972 they were using an Oxberry to make training films for the military. I bought the lot for $2500 and installed it in a loft in Chinatown. During the next twenty years the stand was used by a wide swath of animators — David Ehrlich, Bill Plympton, Anthony McCall, Lee Savage, to name a few — and was pictured in Kit Laybourne’s classic “The Animation Book.” (Three Rivers Press, 1998)

3. Moviola 35mm picture, 1-35mm magnetic sound. This is a classic compact green upright editing machine in very good running condition with new belts.

4. Moviola 4 gang synchronizer (2-35mm, 2-16mm), one sound head with squawk box.

5. Seimens 16mm interlock field projector with variable speed motor and 3 sound options: optical, magnetic stripe and magnetic full coat interlocked. 1000’ reel.

6. Revere 16mm silent projector with variable speed motor. Very good condition.

7. Maier-Hancock 16-35mm hot splicer. Very good condition.

The ideal destination for this trove (“hoard”?) would be a mad scientist-tinker-animation nut who is unaffected by the current relentless stampede toward the latest digital gadget or paradigm shift, or a collective of makers who see it as colossal kinetic sculpture, or working parts of a totally devolved studio producing films the old fashioned way for projection at the local cinema.

If you’re interested please contact me: gg@geogrif.com and use “2709” as the subject

- Back in March, I posted some thoughts about exposure sheets and the seeming loss of this tool in animation production. I posted a letter from Kayvon Darabi-Fard in England and tried to respond with some information about the X-sheets and their purpose. The post brought a lot of attention and many comments, and I was pleased with myself for writing about what was becoming a disappearing artifact in animation production.

Then this weekend I’d received another letter from Kayvon:

After your initial post, my lecturer began reminiscing with the dope sheet’s he’d experienced during his time at the Don Bluth Studios in Ireland. Soon after, he then ran an extended class for the first year students of the degree to re-establish and emphasize the ________ECA Prods had probably the
importance of the dope sheet, even in such an _________biggest sheets I’ve seen.
educative environment. ______________________ECA was George Cannata’s company.

So under the over head projector he went,
going from keys, to timing charts, to a fully doped and annotated X-sheet, complimented by a lifting exercise!

Contrary to a tutors reaction to the letter I sent to you;- “You cannot ‘make’ a student use a dope sheet.”

Only now our course leader insists that the Dope sheet is mandatory within the production process’ expected of us as directors during our final year before graduating.

Needless to say, my ego’s gone our of whack with such a pleasant letter to receive. It’s great to see that some small tool of our industry is being taught even to this small sample. I’m delighted, naturally, to have had a small part in it.

exposure sheets from:
(L) UPA NY in the 50′s
(No dial numbers! Extra work for the cameraman)
(R) Stars & Stripes Productions Forever Inc.
a high profile company headed by Vincent Cafferelli in the 60-70′s.

- Janeann Dill has assembled and released through the Iota Center a DVD collection of the works of Jules Engel vol I.

This first volume of Engel’s selected animation work offers fifteen of his films ranging from one of his earliest experimental works (Carnival, 1963) to one of his last (The Toy Shop, 1998). Arranged chronologically, the collection offers one view of the artist’s progression over almost four decades. Also included is an excerpt from Jules Engel: An Artist For All Seasons, a documentary from Janeann Dill, Ph.D, containing rare footage of his artwork and interviews.

You can view a sample of Engle’s work on the dvd here.
You can view a small clip from Janeann Dill’s documentary included as an extra on the dvd here.
Here’s the Facebook page devoted to Engel.
Here’s another web page devoted to Engel’s work.

- Chris Rushworth is an avid fan of halas & Batchelor’s Animal Farm. His collection of cels and artwork and other materials for this film is astounding, and he displays them all on his site, Animalfarmworld. As a fan of the film, myself, I can’t help but salivate over some of his materials. Currently, he’s posting some beautiful statuettes that were made at the time of the film. He posts many of these Goebel figurines on a special page. Take a look, if you have any interest.

This is one of the many stills Chris Rushworth posts from his collection.

This is a cel I have in my collection. I also have the drawing for the scene.
I’d love to know who did the animation for it.
Does anyone have the drafts for the film?

- Stuart Bury, an animation student at the Kansas City Art Institute, wrote me and asked that I look at a five min. puppet animated film, Dried Up, a short he made with two other students, Isaiah Powers and Jeremy Casper.

“’Dried Up’ is the story of a quiet old man who, surrounded by desolation and apathy, perseveres to remain true to the nature of his own beliefs and character. He toils daily to forge a last ditch effort to bring hope and life to a faithless, drought ridden old town. ”

The film is quite professional and deserves a look. I’m pleased to see that there’s gold in Kansas City.
_____Stuart Bury

Take a look for yourself. It’s worth the five minutes.

- There’s the opportunity for New Yorkers to see the feature, The Secret of Kells, upcoming to the IFC Center.
There will be two shows:
Sat July 18 at 11:00am
Sun July 19 at 11:00am.

You can reserve your tickets here.