Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

- As you know, I am an enormous fan of Errol Le Cain’s work. I’ve been posting quite a few of his illustrations for children’s books. (You can see the past posts, if you’re interested, here.)

Today, I’m showcasing a book written by Naomi Lewis from a story by E. Nesbit.
The book was adapted to a film on the BBC, narrated by Nigel Havers. She also adapted The Snow Queen which Le Cain illustrated.

The book contains 30 pages, and every page includes an illustration. I’ve decided to break this into two parts since I don’t want to post tiny thumbnails of the pictures.

I’m not highlighting the text; you’ll have to buy the book for that. I am posting all the great illustrations and hope you enjoy them as much as I do.

__ 1
(Click any image to enlarge.)

2 3

4 5

6 7

8 9

1011

1213

14

15

To be concluded tomorrow

- I’ve done a number of postings of Errol Le Cain‘s marvelous illustrations and hope to continue to do more. Of course, I’ve had a distinct interest in his artwork since I first saw him in the original BBC documentary on Richard Williams’ studio at One Soho Square. The show highlighted the short film, The Sailor and the Devil, which Williams used to train Le Cain in the art of animation. The first book I saw by Le Cain, Thron Rose, hooked me, and I became a collector.

I have a peculiar book, I’d like ot share with you now. Crisis at Crabtree tells the story of the village of Crabtree, due to be demolished. All of the houses detail their histories before they are to go. Only Norman, the medieval farmhouse is slated to be protected.

This book was written by Sally Miles and illustrated by Le Cain. The illustrations, as you’ll see here, are Easter egg gems.

Crisis at Crabtree was published in association with the National Trust.
Here are the illustrations:

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Front Cover & Back Cover

1
(Click any image to enlarge.)

2 3

4

5

6 7

8

9 10

11

12

13 14

1516

17

Dedication page

- The book by Matthew Price, The Christmas Stockings, is a fun book for kids with large illustrations by Errol Le Cain. Santa has trouble getting around an apartment building in the city, so you have to help him locate a number of doors and windows, which cut out and open, so that he can move from apartment to apartment delivering his goodies.

It’s not a book that I ever loved, but it’s certainly part of the canon. The style is less like the irridescent watercolors of his other books, and more like a cartoon book done with a mix of watercolors and colored pencils.

Each page is a double page spread, so that there are fewer individual illustrations and big is the byword. Not as delicate as some of the others but still it’s the work of an artist.

More to the point, it’s specifically a Christmas book, and when more appropriate to attend to it than now. So here are several of its double page spreads.

Inside front cover; Santa arrives._______(Click any image to enlarge.)

Pages 2-3___Santa arrives on the rooftop.

Pages 4-5___Once inside, he tries to move down the building’s floors, but needs the reader to help him find an exit. There’s a hidden door under the airplane that opens.

Pages 8-9___The door marked “Exit” opens.

Pages 12-13___The door in front of Santa opens.

Pages 16-17___The window opens allowing Santa to escape.

Inside the back cover sits one of the best illustrations in the book.___

As you know, I’ve posted a number of his other books, and you can click any of these links to find those posts.

____Puffin Books_______ ________________Mr. Mistoffelees
____The Snow Queen_______________-____Aladdin
____Growltiger_________________________Thorn Rose
____Pied Piper of Hamelin_______________12 Dancing Princesses
____Have You Seen My Sister____________Hiawatha’s Childhood
_________Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum
____

– Recently, I posted artwork from the first half of Errol LeCain‘s book illustrations for Mr. Mistoffelees with Mungojerrie and Rumpeltealzer. These are two of the poems by T.S. Eliot from his Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats .

Of course, these poems became the source for the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical, CATS. The poems were turned into songs by Lloyd Webber and director, Trevor Nunn.
(Sadly, Universal and Spielberg have tied up the rights to this project which seems to be dead. It was once on the road to becoming an animated feature with a script by esteemed playwright, Tom Stoppard. Lloyd Webber would like to go forward with the film, but it’s held up by the new rights holders.

(Once again, let me point you to some of the preliminary art from that aborted film on Hans Bacher‘s older, yet brilliant Animation Treasure I site. More here.)

Here are the illustrations for Mungojerry and Rumpleteazer by the brilliant Errol Le Cain.

(Click any image to enlarge.)

Other posts I’ve made featuring Le Cain’s artwork:

Go to Mr. Mistoffelees

____Puffin Books
____Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum
____The Snow Queen_______________-____Aladdin
____Growltiger_________________________Thorn Rose
____Pied Piper of Hamelin_______________12 Dancing Princesses
____Have You Seen My Sister____________Hiawatha’s Childhood

– Continuing my neverending homage to Errol Le Cain, I present here his illustrations for the first half of the book, Mr. Mistoffelees with Mungojerrie and Rumpelteazer. We’ll save the Mungojerrie and Rumpelteazer part for another time.

This story is part of the Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats by T.S. Eliot.

That was, of course, the source material on which Webber and Nunn based their show CATS. These images are so attractive and stylish, I was quite curious to know whether Andrew Lloyd Webber had seen the books. Especially when he was about to put CATS onto the screen as an animated film.

(You can see some of the preliminary art from that aborted film on Hans Bacher‘s older, yet brilliant site. More here.)

Here are the illustrations by Le Cain:

________ (Click any image you’d like to enlarge.)

_____________Mr. Mistoffelees
___________You ought to know Mr. Mistoffelees !
___________The Original Conjuring Cat -
___________(There can be no doubt about that).
___________Please listen to me and don’t scoff All his
___________Inventions are off his own bat.

- TCM aired A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum the other night. This is a great theatrical show and a mediocre movie. Despite the great cast, the brilliant people working behind the scenes (from Tony Walton‘s sets and costumes to Nicholas Roeg‘s extraordinary photography; from the incredible song score by Stephen Sondheim to Ken Thorne‘s excellent incidental music), somehow it all doesn’t really work.

However, animation enthusiasts would be primarily interested in the animated credit sequence by Richard Williams‘ fine animation. This was a sequence that brought Williams out of the cartoon world and into the more serious fold. Suddenly, his studio grew up.

Since we didn’t get to see his brilliant ads in the US, we had to seek out his title work. Credit sequences for future films such as The Charge of the Light Brigade, The Pink Panther sequels and What’s New Pussycat easily demonstrated how he really lifted his studio into the big time.

I’ve made frame grabs of the sequence from my recording, and thought I’d post them for your amusement.
______________________________________(Images enlarge slightly by clicking them.)

The sequence starts at the end of the film. Buster Keaton runs on a circular treadmill, and dissolves to an animated version of himself.

He grows in the frames as some large-sized flies enter from the left.

Cut out to see a small Buster disappearing. The camera whips across to a picture of fruit. The flies zip over there and eat the picture. (This image of fruit was very dark on screen.)

A fly lands on the nose of a CU caricature of Zero Mostel. His eyes cross watching the fly.

Flies land on Phil Silvers’ bald head and march across.

Buster runs across a painted frieze on the way to a series of inlayed boxes.

Zip to the second box credits Michael Crawford. Pan to the third box which features Jack Gilford’s name.

Dick talked with me about this scene in the film. He felt that to create realistic
characters in animation one had to slow everything down. He did it with dissolves.
It’s a technique he came back to often, quite noticeably in The Charge of
the Light Brigade.

A fly crawls up a column.

Errol LeCain’s art seems to be featured in this elaborate scene. The entire group – top
and (upside down) bottom – dance.

An animated version of Zero Mostel chases a female through and across a painted wall moving into and across the cracks.

The cornucopia of fruit starts in full color but goes to B&W before it’s done, in honor of the great cinematographer.

A very large cast of shilhouettes runs around this credit for Ken Thorne. There is no cycle here. This is a Dick Williams piece, so they’re all fresh drawings. They turn into flies for the next credit.

A Roman version of an Escher wall painting animates, confusing the fly trying to walk across.

The animated Buster Keaton runs toward us on one side
and away from us on the other side.

For the editor’s credit, a female looks at herself in a mirror. A hand comes in and clips off her pony-tail.

A slew of credits rots in one spot. This falls off revealing the choreographers’ names.

I’m always fascinated by the credit the designer gives himself. No sign of anyone else
who worked on this sequence. Titles have changed since then.

This is the first time I remember seeing letters from the type of one card falling down to match letters from the next card.

This card, the least significant one, comes back several times.
Of course it’s overanimated though it looks like a cycle.

The camera moves in on a fly crossing a checker board.

That legal card, again.

Truck in on the copyright card.

The legalese changes as the MPAA card is lifted.

Truck out from “End” past “The End” to reveal several more boxes.

Finally, the MGM lion roars.

– I need not tell you that I’m a fan of the work of Errol LeCain. I have a good collection of his illustrated books.

To remind you, he’s the artist who led the design and stylization of the BG’s for Dick Williams’ Cobbler and the Thief feature. He worked at Dick’s Soho Square studio until his death. Something in his style always held me captive. I suspect this is what initially drew me to Richard Williams‘ work.

I’ve gotten my hands on this 1976 “Puffin’s Pleasure” book. It’s sort of a sampler of piece by the artists and writers who’ve done many of Puffin’s books. (Puffin is the children’s book division of Penguin Books.)

Within this book, Errol LeCain has a three page spread. The first image below covers the first page of his piece. This is all the text the article gives us.

I’ve done a number of posts featuring LeCain’s art.
You can view them here:

____The Snow Queen_______________-____Aladdin
____Growltiger_________________________Thorn Rose
____Pied Piper of Hamelin_______________12 Dancing Princesses
____Have You Seen My Sister____________Hiawatha’s Childhood

- Just for my own amusement here are a couple of setups from Dick Williams’ film,
The Cobbler and the Thief. Errol LeCain did the backgrounds.

Thanks to Garrett Gilchrist for these images.______

If you haven’t seen Jaime Weinman‘s article on Ed Benedict (actually Amid Amidi’s Animation Blast article with some stills added), check it out.

– I continue here to post some of the illustrations from another book by Errol LeCain.

Errol was a longtime artist at Dick Williams’ Soho studio. He was the force behind the design and backgrounds of Dick’s endless feature film, The Cobbler and the Thief. When I first saw a BBC documentary about Dick’s work in the early 70′s, I was hooked on his films and his ambitions and his love of animation. The shorts I saw by Dick, including Love Me Love Me Love Me, only increased that excitement. In the BBC doc, there Dick talked about Errol LeCain as someone he’d taken under his wing and had him do the brunt of the work on the short film, The Sailor and the Devil. The short clip from this film made me a LeCain fan, and I started collecting his books.

In 1959, Columbia pictures released an animated feature of The Snow Queen. This was a reworked Russian animated film – interestingly enough, Dave Fleischer gets the credit for the reworking. The film was voiced by Tommy Kirk and Sandra Dee, and it came to me at a very impressionable age. Sleeping Beauty had taken hold of me, and 101 Dalmatians was on its way. I fell in love with this beautiful Russian film – even in the reworked version.

When LeCain’s book was released, I scarfed it up. I wasn’t disappointed by the stunning illustrations. About half of them follow:

(Click any image to enlarge.)

– After thinking about Dick Williams‘ Thief and the Cobbler feature, I can’t help but be brought back to Errol Le Cain. Of course, there isn’t much of his art from the feature available for viewing. The best we can do is to look at his illustration work again. Here, I’m posting several of the images from his adaptation of Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp.

(Click any image to enlarge.)

The daring and invention in images like these makes me wonder why animated films are so obvious in their choices. Is it just that we expect the general public not to appreciate good ideas and imagery, or do we actually think the clichés we’re producing are good? Le Cain‘s backgrounds for Dick Williams were just as original, and in a way Le Cain became to Dick what John McGrew was to Chuck Jones.

The Disney Aladdin was about Robin Williams more than it was about telling the story from the Arabian Nights. The final film was a successful amalgam of reworked Warner Bros. and Disneyesque schmaltz. The design was attractive cartoon; they weren’t trying to do more than that, and it worked. The film was successful.

I just would like to see someone reach a bit higher. These illustrations get me excited about the possibilities of animation, yet animation does that so rarely.

- As you probably know by now, I am an ardent fan of Errol Le Cain‘s artwork. He was a key to the design style of Richard Williams’ Cobbler and the Thief and he was involved in the Williams Soho studio from its earliest days.

He was also the illustrator of many children’s books. In the past, I’ve given samples of a number of his books and I still have a few more.

Two of his last books were illustrated adaptations of poems from T.S. Eliot‘s Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats. This is the same material that inspired Andrew Lloyd Webber & Trevor Nunn to write Cats, the Broadway musical.

Cats had its own history as an animated feature, and it currently rests in the hands of Universal Pictures, which owns the rights and has no plans of committing to production. (Perhaps, with Chris Meladandri moving to setup a studio at Universal will change that. See LA Times article.)
Tom Stoppard wrote the last of the scripts for that film. You can get a glimpse of what this film might have looked like from an entry on Hans Bacher‘s site.

Last week a new and useful website was launched to feature Le Cain‘s illustration work.

Here are a sampling of the illustrations from one of the two Le Cain books adapting Cats.

(Click on any image to enlarge.)