Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

- When I was young I was into puppets. All kinds of puppets. I made puppets, all different type of puppet. Marionettes were made of wood and string or muslin and string. Hand puppets were made of muslin and other types of cloth. I never really went into sock puppets; they were too easy. But I did buy puppets. There was a whole line of marionettes made of a wood-like resin of the Disney characters I had the Tramp and Lady. I had Mickey Mouse and Donald. I had a puppet theater in the back yard, and the kids of the neighborhood would pay to see shows I put on with a couple of siblings. The candy counter made a lot more money for us.

Even more interested in animation, I spent most of my time trying to teach myself everything about film. Naturally, puppet animation was something I worked a lot. It’d take time to animate drawings and then more time to color them and shoot them. It was faster to animate puppets. Once you had the model, you could just keep going. I have all this 8mm film of different types of puppets animated. For some reason a “Twist-o-flex” Goofy running from a Lionel train chasing him down a track stands out. It was fun.

I was in love with Georg Pal‘s films and watched all that I could get my eyes on. I watched a lot of European animation on some of NY’s local channels. They’d infrequently have stop-motion Eastern European films. Once in a while some local channel wold run Lou Bunin‘s feature, Alice in Wonderland, or I remember watching Jiri Trnka‘s feature version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Richard Burton narrated it and did all the voices. That Sunday afternoon was heaven. I’m not sure if it was the film or the fact that I had some alone time in my house. (When you have a family of seven, you appreciate those quiet moments.) It didn’t take much for me to become a fan of Trnka’s work; his work sang to me. The more I looked into it, the greater he became.

This was just when Jim Henson was breaking on the scene. The muppets didn’t exist yet. I give this all as introduction to what this past week has meant to me. It was a week of puppet animation in New York.

Monday night, the Museum of Modern Art had a screening of Lou Bunin‘s 1950 feature film, Alice in Wonderland. Heidi and I went to the screening that had about half of the seats filled. I’d forgotten that the film was shot in AnscoColor. This was post WWII, and England didn’t have access to the three strip Technicolor. The film was limited to red and green colors, so everything looked chartreuse or orange. In other words, ugly.
The brown mixture grew more and more annoying as the 90 minute feature progressed. The costumes were designed to exploit the two strip color hues, and this might have been a mistake. Alice was dressed in a chartreuse and orange dress, and she might have stood out more attractively had she been wearing white. In fact, the film looks much better when shown in B&W.

The state of puppet animation wasn’t quite so sophisticated in 1950, at least as it would seem from this feature. Many clunky character moves revealed the budget constraints of the film. The magic and grace of the George Pal shorts felt missed on Lou Bunin’s film, but there, again, the disparity of the budgets had to have been noticed.

I briefly met and worked with Lou Bunin in the early days of my career. John Gati, a stop motion animator in New York hired me to work on a Care Free Sugarless Gum commercial. Care Free and Trident gums undressed and jumped onto a scale with Care Free weighing more for your money. It took a week to do the 20 secs. of animation in the spot. But just as we were completing animation, we learned that Trident had changed their packaging, and we had to redo the entire spot. At the end of the second week, and the second version of the spot, we learned that Care Free would update their packaging, as well, and we had to do the spot a third time. One week’s work stretched to three, but the work was getting redundant and irritating.

In the middle of that third week, Lou Bunin moved into a corner of the studio. I learned that he was doing a test spot. He was doing a version of the Lucky Charms elf as a puppet and animating it. The puppet was a beauty, and I convinced Lou to allow me to work for him (for free) to assist in the spot. I enjoyed myself for a few more days, and got to meet the man who’d made the only stop motion animated feature.

A news item during the making of Lou Bunin’s Alice.

- Just 12 hours later, at 10am on Tuesday, there was a Press showing of the Quay Brothers exhibit at MoMA. I was invited, and I took the opportunity to see the show with the fewest numbers of people who would gather around the smallish artwork. They told us where to go in the Museum (which had another hour before opening) and left us on our own. I went back in the evening to the opening party. Go here to read my review.

I reviewed this in detail this past Thursday. The show was exhilarating for me. Since getting the first taste of the Quay brothers back in 1980 when I saw their early film Nocturna Artificialia at the Ottawa Animation Festival. A good half of the audience didn’t know what to make of the movie and were impatient. The other half were completely taken by the film and knew it was one of the best of the films we’d seen. The jury at that festival deservedly gave top prize to Tale of Tales. That was the same year that Yurij Norshtein took the world with his masterwork of a film. Indeed, Tale of Tales was (and still is) a greater film than Nocturna Artificialia. (Interesting that Tale of Tales is a cut out animation film – essentially also stop motion.)

Of course, the brothers Quay are more than stop-motion filmmakers. They’ve done live action as well as documentary films; they’ve designed theater sets and books and record albums. The Blood Sweat and Tears first album cover is theirs. They were asked to design the cover without heads on the musician’s bodies. According to the brothers, the record company didn’t trust them to do the heads correctly; so the producers pasted hi-contrast images on the heads of the bodies, and they didn’t match the graphics the brothers had done. (Actually, the story isn’t properly told on the museum’s wall note; they make it sound as if the brothers had decided to leave the musicians headless, and the record company had to correct the situation. At the very least, it’s ambiguous and led to someone questioning the brothers during the museum’s Q&A.)

- Then there’s ParaNorman. This film is scheduled to open next week. It’s a stop-motion animated feature from Laika, the company that backed Henry Selick in the making of Coraline. They got rid of Mr. Selick, and made a follow-up feature about zombies called ParaNorman. I’m scheduled to see that film tomorrow morning in an industry screening. In fact, I’ve been asked to lead the talkback, a Q&A with the directors: Chris Butler and Sam Fell. Mr. Butler had been the storyboard supervisor on Coraline, and Mr. Fell had been a director of the cgi features, Flushed Away, the first non-puppet feature from Aardman, & The Tale of Despereaux.

I’ll report on the event and review that film on Tuesday.

By the way, when I last spoke to them yesterday, I was told there’d be some extra seats. So if you’d like to see ParaNorman on Sunday at a 10am show try going to this link: ParaNorman. Note that they say that RSVPing doesn’t necessarily guarantee a seat. At the moment, I know there are seats available; hopefully everyone will be able to get in.

RSVPs.
SUNDAY, AUGUST 12TH
10:00 AM
AMC Loews Kips Bay 15
570 Second Avenue (@ East 32nd Street)

The NYTimes today has an article about ParaNorman and puppet animation.

Gene Deitch‘s birthday was this week (he likes to point out that his birthday was 8/8 (August 8th when he turned 88.) He’s still keeping the blog up and he’s writing a new book. (If you haven’t read his book, How to Succeed in Animation, on AWN, go get it now – it’s free.

There are a couple of key things about puppet animation on his site, Roll the Credits. The information about his firendship with Jiri Trnka is worth the price of admission.It’s just great reading with lots of key photos.

Gene also has a video tour of the Kratky Puppet Studio, a walk-through with Bretislav Pojar. This is a handy llittle treasure of a video. Thanks to Gene from all of us who love puppet animation.

- Jack Schnerk‘s daughter, Mary Schnerk Lincoln, has put three of her father’s commercial sample reels onto YouTube .
Just last week I found myself using one of those reels to showcase a Rowland Wilson designed commercial done for Phil Kimmelman & Ass. Seeing that reel again, brought me back to the other two reels on YouTube, and the great work animated by Jack. There are a number of well-known and collector’s item commercials in these reels. Included are spots designed by the likes of Gahan Wilson, Tomi Ungerer, Charles Saxon and, of course, Rowland Wilson.

Jack Schnerk was a great animator who deserves considerably more attention. He was a strong influence on me in the first eight years of my career and taught me quite a few large principles about the business. He also told me a few stories of his work as an assistant at Disney’s on Bambi and Dumbo as well as the great times animating at UPA and the difficulties of animating at Shamus Culhane’s studio. Actually, he didn’t tell me about his problems with Shamus; another animator did. Jack complained about the business, but never about how he was treated.

He did have an exercise which he thought was important for an animator to pass. He suggested you animate a character walking in a 360° circle away from and back toward the camera. This is a tough test of mechanical ability, and Jack is right; it’s tough and can prove your mettel. (Milt Gray does just that with his somewhat vulgar character, Viagri, but the animation is impeccable. Milt’s a first rate animator.)

I wish I had more samples of the many scenes Jack animated that I assisted. He worked in a very distinct style – I don’t think I’ve seen anyone else ever draw that way. Somehow, the very rough drawings weren’t hard to clean up, and, though he worked very rough, he didn’t leave the bulk of the work for the people following him. He was concerned about the timing and did every drawing he needed to make sure that timing worked. Most of the time we worked together, he had no chance to see pencil tests. Only on Raggedy Ann did he have that luxury, yet he was always taking a chance on the scene, pushing to some new way of doing it. I think of all those Hubley scenes that went to color art, yet Jack had done some daring moves that could have made some of the scenes go bust. None ever did.

I met Jack at the Hubley studio, then again when I worked for Phil Kimmelman. At Raggedy Ann, I dropped Jack’s name as often as I could until Dick Williams finally saw him, and brought him on board. There was no doubt he would, Jack was that gifted. At least once a week at Raggedy Ann, Jack would give me some original piece of advice, and the more I followed it, the better my work grew. Something as simple as draw rough. I’d been an assistant too long, and my clean line would assure that my animation would never move out of those lines.

Jack Schnerk animated the French trapper sequence. There was such a rush
on the scene that I remember Jack bringing it in saying he hoped it would work.

Jack had a dark side, that I appreciated, but he also brought a lightness and individual sensibility to the work he did. He took chances in his animation and timing and sometimes failed but usually succeeded with them. That’s more than I’ll say for most of the animators I’ve met in the business.

See

Jack Schnerk sample reel 1.

Jack Schnerk Sample reel 2.

Jack Schnerk Sample reel 3.

Though not always the best quality, you can also watch a few of the longer, famous short films Jack animated on:

Gerald McBoing Boing by Bobe Cannon. Jack told me that this includes the first scene he ever animated, even though he didn’t get credit. He did Gerald running alongside the train (starts at 4:41)
Tender Game by John & Faith Hubley
Really Rosie directed by Maurice Sendak
A Nose by Mordi Gerstein
The Violinist by Ernie Pintoff
Give Me Liberty by Ralph Bakshi is one of many bad shorts done for Terrrytoons at the end when Bakshi was in charge.

After reading this post today, Bill Peckmann sent the following note:

Hi Michael,

Your post today on Jack was just wonderful!

When I broke into the business in 1962 at Elektra Films, Jack’s room was the one they put me into. It was pure heaven! As a super, wet behind the ears novice, to be in the same room with someone that had ACTUALLY worked at Disney and UPA, you gotta be kiddin’!

My luck held out further because I assisted/followed up Jack (at Focus and PK&A) on all of the print cartoonist/designer spots you mentioned today. I would have done that work without pay! The combination of Rowland and Jack on a job, I still need smelling salts.

As when we all worked on Rowland’s spots, where I did those caricatures of Jack, ‘Sounds of Focusville’ and ‘Kimmelman of the Klondike’, I also did this caricature (attached) in Gahan’s style of Jack when we worked on ‘Carter Hall, Pipe Tobacco’ together.

I will pull together Xerox copies, pencils and stats of the art of Gahan, Bob Weber, who ever I can lay my hands on, etc. of the spots that Jack animated plus a JS rough or two.

We can look forward to more of Jack Schnerk next week, thanks to Bill’s collection.

- Fraser MacLean, the author of the brilliant and beautifully illustrated book, Setting the Scene: The Art & Evolution of Animation Layout, contacted me a couple of weeks ago to introduce me to a young animator from Nairobi called Daniel Muli. Daniel is currently in New York for a short visit – he’s also a musician recording with his group – and Fraser was hoping to set up a meeting.

I’ve decided to give you a bit of that letter from Fraser and Daniel for you to get an idea of what was happening in Africa.

Daniel writes:

“The Kenyan animation industry… It’s not the most active, sadly. It’s still in those early stages where everyone who’s trying to make it work is a crazy enthusiast, so I guess it makes for cool vibes when people get together, you get a lot of people trading information and stuff they’ve been watching, comic books they’ve been reading or whatever. Manga/anime’s pretty popular. And there’s a lot of people experimenting with what African art would be like translated into the animation medium.

I guess another reason you find that most of the animators working right now are coming from a fan perspective is because the schools here are kind of uninspiring. I taught a couple of classes at one of them when I was in uni, and it was a difficult situation, the facilities, and students who were sent there more because they didn’t have much else to do rather than because they like the work… It was kind of exhausting. But the college I was at did a short intense course in collaboration with Truemax, a European 3D animation school, which seems to have gone well. (That was after I left.) There aren’t big employers of animators at the moment; the first and biggest so far was the Tinga Tinga Tales project that was done with Disney and the BBC.

See episodes of Tinga Tinga Tales here.

Fraser Maclean continues writing:

Since that project wrapped, all the animators kind of just went back into the random freelance lifestyle. Some of them find less work in animation and more in design and advertising, or such things. I guess the best thing would be if we had more projects that were based here, and were a bit more sustainable, and I’m sure that’ll happen soon, but so far the attempts to start something, from u-nions to big film projects, are brought down by infighting and politics or whatever…

Does all this sound bleak?”

I did get to meet with Daniel this past week, and “bleak” is certainly not the word. We talked a bit about New York, a bit about Kenya. We met at Candy Kugel’s studio, Buzzco, and their EMMY on display got Daniel to tell me about Well Told Story a project he was involved with which won the first International EMMY for Africa. Much of his free-lance stories sound very much like freelancing in New York. In ways, animation is probably he same the world over.

Daniel Muli has made the most of his two week stay in New York recording for several days and performing for others. He’d also spoken at Bard College and today, Saturday, at 3pm he’ll perform in Central Park as part of their Summer Stage series. I’m looking to go and listen to his music. If it’s at all as vibrant as he, it’ll make for a great show.

Here are two of the creative (and community) projects that Daniel is currently involved in: go here and here.

Summer Stage
Saturday, August 4, 2012 | 3 p.m.
Amadou & Mariam / Theophilus London / Just a Band
Presented in Association with: Museum for African Art
Free!

SummerStage is located at Rumsey Playfield near the 5th Avenue and 69th Street entrance to Central Park.

Take a look at Just a Band‘s music video samples below:

- Toys In the Attic is a multimedia animated film combining 3D stop motion, 2D animation, pixillation and live action. The film stars the voices of Forest Whitaker, Joan Cusack and Cary Elwes in their English language version. The film was directed by Jiri Barta, who is sometimes called the Tim Burton of the Czech Republic. The English version is being released to theaters on September 7th.

However, if you want to see the film sooner than that, it’s playing as part of the International Children’s Film Festival. That will take place on:
Saturday & Sunday, August 25-26, 11:00am
at the IFC Center.

May I also remind you that Cat in Paris (the Oscar nominated 2D animated feature from France) continues to play at the Cinema Village on 12th St & University Pl. This film has been playing in NY for three consecutive months. The film’s only an hour long, but it’s good. Go here for the schedule.
By the way Brave is also playing at the theater, and I’m not sure if it’s on the same bill – one price for both films. From the schedule it looks like it is.

Toys In the Attic is another of many 3D stop motion films being released this year, including one from Tim Burton, the American Tim Burton. That one is Frankenweenie. Paranormal will be released within the next month. That’s a big budget stop motion feature that comes from Laika, the Oregon company that financed Henry Selick‘s last film, Coraline. They apparently felt they could get along well without Mr. Selick. It’ll be curious to see what they do without him: it’ll be fun to see if they did.

Lou Bunin behind the camera on Alice

- A 3D puppet animated feature from 1950 will have it’s last theatrical showing of the season this coming week. The Museum of Modern Art is screening Lou Bunin‘s Alice in Wonderland this Monday at 8pm. This film gave Disney agita when it was released at the very same time as his Alice feature. He tried to stop the American release of Bunin’s film, but lost that contention.

I previously wrote about this Bunin film here and here and here and included the NYTimes press clipping about the Disney vs Bunin trial.

- DreamWorks Animation has announced its release calendar through 2014, setting dates for seven animated features.

Madagascar 3 opened on June 8
Rise of the Guardians will open in theaters Nov. 21, 2012.
The Croods goes out on March 1, 2013.
Turbo bows on June 7, 2013.
Me and My Shadow, combining traditional animation with CGI, opens Nov. 8, 2013.
Mr. Peabody & Sherman goes out in theaters March 21, 2014.
How To Train Your Dragon 2 opens June 20, 2014.

- Richard O’Connor (Ace and Son) directed me to a gallery showing in New York currently on display. Suzan Pitt‘s film, Asparagus is on display at the Harris Lieberman gallery at 508 West 26th Street, in Chelsea, through Aug. 17th. It’s quite amazing that a 33 year old film is still circling the art galleries and getting the lead attention in the NYTimes art reviews. Congratulations to Suzan Pitt, proof positive that animation can be art.

- Richard also noted that Natalie Djurberg has a show at the New Museum.
Art News reports: The Swedish artist Nathalie Djurberg works with animation films which are inhabited by clay figures in a strange universe. The short films are often no longer than five minutes but they manage however to tell stories about the human condition mixed both with black humour and seriousness.
Art and animation mix in NYC.

- A couple of weeks ago a small article in the NYTImes (July 10th, to be exact) reported with this headline: Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art Says That’s All, Folks – for Now. The article read; “The MoCCA, in SoHo, announced, without elaboration, on its Web site on Monday that it was closing its “physical location,” effective immediately.”
It continued: “’Plans are afoot to continue MoCCA in a new and exciting incarnation,’ according to a statement on the Web site.”

Then yesterday I received an email from MoCCA. This one stated: The Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art (MoCCA) and the Society of Illustrators have announced plans for MoCCA to transfer its assets to the Society, creating a single cultural institution supporting and celebrating illustration, comics, and animation. This will give MoCCA a long-desired street-level location, in the Society’s building at 128 E. 63rd Street.

So there you have it; life goes on.

I’d received a note from Fraser MacLean this week. He’s the author of the brilliant and beautifully illustrated book, Setting the Scene: The Art & Evolution of Animation Layout. It was odd that I’d just been talking about his book when I’d heard from him. This got me to think that I might post a reminder of a couple of the excellent books that were released this year. I’d reviewed a number of them, and would like to keep them at the front of your mind, so to speak. Here are three easy picks to tell you about.

Setting the Scene: The Art & Evolution of Animation Layout is a book about Animation layout, obviously, and it belongs on every bookshelf of those who work in the medium or are interested in it. I guarantee your first visit to this book, though, will be your ogling the incredible illustrations. They’re just wonderful. From 101 Dalmatians to the Cobbler and the Thief, from Pixar to Dreamworks. It’s an attractive book.

The book covers layout from the point of traditional 2D animation, preparing for the camera, as well as for the computer. It also covers the Layout of animation for cgi films. (See my full review here.)

At the top of the list this year would have to be Adam Abraham‘s fine book, When Magoo Flew: the Rise and Fall of Animation Studio UPA. It is a gem. This is an intensely researched book about the studio that changed the direction of animation in the late 40s.

The book is a very political one, or at least it’s about the politics of the studio that grew out of the Disney strike and pushed on through the McCarthy hearings with their hot design influences. The politics also refers to the ins and outs of the studio, whether it’s John Hubley not liking Herb Klynn’s artwork or Jack Heiter losing his job for refusing to listen to Jules Engel‘s thoughts on color.

There’s a lot in this book and it’s a treasure for anyone interested in that studio or those people. It also helps that a brand-spanking-new DVD was released at the same time with many of the important films from the studio. Jolly Frolics, the UPA Collection. We’re still waiting for the Magoo Theatrical Films to be released, as promised, on DVD. Mr. Magoo:Theatrical Collection

This book also has a companion website, When Magoo Flew, hosted by the book’s author Adam Abraham. There’s material there which you won’t find in the book. (Se my fuller review here.)

The third book I’ll mention here, is a big, lavish, picture book. Two Guys Named Joe: Master Animation Storytellers Joe Grant and Joe Ranft is the story of two story writers and artists working at opposite ends of the Disney Studio, and it was released almost a year ago today.

Joe Grant was one of the old timers who made it through the Golden Age in the 30s & 40s as well as the Golden Age in the 80s. He was a force in the studio, and brought some real art and artistry to the characters and designs he helped develop. Joe Ranft was a youngster who helped put Pixar on the map. His expertise in developing and telling stories made the early cgi features all that they were.

John Canemaker pulls their two stories together and showcases their lives and studio experiences to give an interesting viewpoint of the Disney studio. This is an unusual but excellent book, and in case it’s fallen off your radar, I might suggest you take another look if you don’t own the book. It’s a worthwhile volume to enter any animation collection. (View my full review here.)

On his blog, the New Savannah, Bill Benzon has focused in on Disney’s Dumbo and his in depth analysis features quite a few blogposts. Hearty reading for those of you who’d like to see more about this Disney great. (I sometimes think Bill is writing specifically for me; I love it.)

Dennis Hermanson of Hillsborough, NC sent me a video that he thought I should post on the site. This is not really my kind of video. It’s trying to be Pixar and does a good job of it, but it doesn’t do anything to get me excited about animation. But I can see that it would excite others, so I decided to post it here, just the same. I hope you enjoy it.

MTV is offering something called MTV’s Retro Mania. But I come a bit late because it’s ending its Summer run with the return of Daria this next week. Some of their favorite Episodes from the New York produced show, Daria, will air Monday, July 30 until August 3, 2012 from 9:00am to 12:00pm.

If you miss that, you can go to the MTV website and watch episodes on line. Daria.

There was a time, I think, when this show was cool. I guess I have to catch up; I still haven’t made it through a show. I did root for the show to do well in that a lot of people who had left my studio went on to do work on the series.

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.

Two people who I respected enormously died this past week. They’d both touched my life, however briefly, and I had to comment on them.

I worked with Celeste Holm when she did a VO narration for me for a five picture set I did for the United Nations.
Ms. Holm was a star, one of the big ones from the era just before mine. My mother was very impressed that I was meeting her (so was I.) Take a look at her NYTimes Obituary for information about her great Oscar-winning career.

Things started off a little rocky when she arrived late with the UN representative who went to meet her and accompany her to the studio. There was some difficulty
with traffic. I had no problem with the late start, but my recording engineer – who had never heard of Celeste Holm – asked, “Is this the talent?” as she entered the room.

There was a long introductory narration for her to read, and I suggested we try going through it once so she would get familiar with it. Ms. Holm read it with many halts and huffs and stops and starts. But her expressions were basically right on the mark. I asked her for another take. With that she said she’d worked with William Wyler on her first film, and she’d done her first scene, she felt, perfectly. However, he continued asking for take after take finally ending with take 100. He used the first take. I listened and understood she wanted to read it only the one time. I responded by saying that William Wyler deserved 100 takes, but would it be possible for me to just get two? She did it perfectly on the second take. (It WAS a hard read, written by someone at the UN, not a script writer.)

By the way, I’ve never been able to find any film she did with Wyler, yet I’m sure he’s the director she’d named.

Richard Zanuck is a producer whose work I followed for ages. From Jaws to Driving Miss Daisy; Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid to Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland he was my idea of the consummate producer. Someone who put good films together and nurtured great talent.

At one screening, I recognized him sitting in the row behind me at the Academy theater and cautiously approached to say hello. After that brief meeting we always said casual greetings whenever we saw each other. I’ll miss seeing him in the world and so will Hollywood.

I was completely under the spell of Emily Hubley’s latest film and/or, a 5½ min short poetic meditation on creativity. The film plays in a semi-abstract mode as it animates from scene to scene always moving in beautifully colorful transitions. The music, while always melodic, doesn’t hit on a theme until the old piano kicks in behind the finalized work of art. A coda of sweet animation playing out on the blank slate we’d seen at the film’s start. This is a wonderful movie with constantly repeating images and symbols. The voices change from male to female – before the idea gels and after, while a muse (female) whispers to the artist. I sat through the film three times, and it continued to grow with each viewing, and I’m sure it’ll get bigger the next time I see it.

Look for this movie on the festival circuit. It’s one of Emily’s finest, a fully developed, visually exciting movie.

music – Yo La Tengo
voices – Kevin Corrigan, Emily Hubley and Tiprin Manday
compositing – Jeremiah Dickey
sound design – Eliza Paley

This past week was a good one for movies, from my point of view. I saw what I thought were three of the best so far. Two docs and one French.

The French film, on Tuesday, was Farewell My Queen by Benoît Jacquot. It was the story of Marie Antoinette in the last days before the storming of the Bastille, as told by a young woman servant who acted as a “reader.” She read to her Queen and, therefore, had limited access to Royalty with a bit of knowledge about the politics surrounding both the King and Queen. The film was quite entertaining, seriously thoughtful about the period and certainly more illuminating than a couple of other recent films about the subject. Well acted, directed and scripted (an adaptation of the book by Chantal Thomas.

Thursday night the Academy offered a documentary double feature. I didn’t really feel up to going but pushed myself and was glad I did.

The Queen of Versailles by Lauren Greenfield told the story of a billionaire couple as they attempt to build the largest private home in the world. Construction of the private home is just a symbol for the problems this couple face as they build their house on sticks assembled on easy money with loose mortgages which collapsed with the recession in 2008. All their money collapses as well and while the husband tries to regroup the wife, acting as if she understands, continues to spend wildly and unnecessarily. The husband who works, as he says, 24/7 to rebuild his company – which is also his private funds. It’s a struggle, and the film – which starts out like a reality TV show – turns into serious questions about affluence and waste. It’s a wonderful film.

Ai WeiWei: Never Sorry is a film by Alison Klayman which focuses on the Chinese artist/activist and dissident. The film offers a sympathetic but rounded picture of this admirable artist. The artist is all about communication, and his primary theme is about the political situation within his own country. His work is well known internationally (probably more so outside of China), and we get a very intimate portrait of the man, his work and his views. While being thoroughly informative, the film reveals a lot about the society in Beijing and we get to see how changes have developed quietly over the years. Ai WeiWei, himself, says that his not being imprisoned is enough of a proof that things are changing. (He does disappear for months and is obviously affected by the arrest once he’s been released – it takes him a number of months before going back to his constant twittering.) The film could have gone much deeper than it does, but the filmmaker is obviously trying to tell the story to an audience who doesn’t know who Ai WeiWei is. It’s a primer, and a bigger film is deserving, but we do get into the human side of the artist, which is well appreciated.

I’d heartily recommend all three films to anyone looking for something intelligent and adult. They’re all three very different from each other and offer what ever mood you’re looking for at the theater. Unless, of course, you yearn for Batman rising again.

Something has hapened to animation in the past few years. The budgets keep getting lower and lower and lower. Clients have no qualms about asking you to produce a project for free. Another, producing a series of short films, asks you to do a five minute film for $2000. That’s $400 for a minute of film. And the worst part is that you not only think hard about taking it (if you don’t), but you try to calculate how much more work you’ll get from the same producer when you do a brilliant film for them.

Naturally enough, after you’ve done the job you don’t get more from them, and you have to wonder why they don’t love you any more – even though you’ve done a great job.

It’s a horrible situation we’re in. The small studios are being squeezed to death by these low budget backers and times are getting tougher.

Richard O’Connor, at his site Ace & Son, starts a dialogue about this state of affairs. Worth the read, worth adding to the commentary.

- Politics is starting to heat up, and I’m in heaven. I’ve got the Yankees doing great and have watched Mitt Romney on the run this past week. He’s pouting that the President hasn’t been fair when his campaign suggested that Romney may have committed a felony. Those papers said he was with Bain Capitol through 2001, and Romney said he was only the President, CEO and head of the company. He wasn’t running it for the last two of those years. Hard to imagine someone who was President, CEO and Head of the company but who had nothing to do with the company. He may have been flying East for two years to attend Board Meetings, but he wasn’t involved. This Presidential season is going to be a good one.

Images © 2012, Center for Visual Music
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- This past Wednesday I went to the Whitney Museum for the installation celebration of the show Oskar Fischinger’s Raumlichtkunst (Space Light Art – A Film Environment). This is a recreation of a multiple screen film event that Fischinger developed in Germany in 1926, where it was first shown. It was recently restored by the Center for Visual Music in Los Angeles with Cindy Keefer acting as curator of the piece. Barbara Fischinger, the daughter of Oskar and Elfriede, was in attendance for the opening.

The exhibit features three full sized screens of abstract animation playing side by side by side. There are multiple media being utilized in the animation, and they all move with their own life. There is traditional cel animation, wax cutting, cut out animation and all done in multiple runs through the camera using bi-pack. The three films are looped, but they are not synchronized so that every showing is different. Working with Fischinger’s original 1920s nitrate film, the Center for Visual Music restored the 35mm film via traditional photochemical processes, then transferred them to HD, digitally restored the color, and mounted this 3 screen recreation. The music playing includes a piece by Varese and two by John Cage.

The film is screened in a small screening room with plenty of standing room and a long bench in the rear. Heidi and I had met John Canemaker and Joe Kennedy at the event, and we went in together. There were one or two people standing and about four on the bench. Just enough room for Heidi and me to squeeze onto the bench, and the woman next to me got up and left. This led to the others on the bench leaving. It left John, Joe, Heidi and me alone in the room sitting. A private screening. We were able to talk about the film as it ran and enjoyed discussing animation stuff (Ones or Fours; bi-pack; reuse working with the negative etc.) Of course, it didn’t take long for the room to take on many more people, and we quieted down. We sat through the whole thing at least twice, then went out to talk with Cindy Keefer once we saw here.

In these days when experimental film usually means representational pseudo-surrealist exercises, it’s nice to see true experimental animation. Thoughts of Hans Richter, Walter Ruttman, Viking Eggeling and other great experimenal filmmakers from the 20s in Germany run through your head and create a real desire to see more of it.

Cindy Keefer and the Center for Visual Music has to be commended for the restoration of thispiece. It feels every bit a part of the 21st Century even though it was created more than 80 years ago. It’s very much in keeping with other exhibits currently on view at the Whitney.

You can purchase some of Fischinger’s work on line – here.
And, by all means, if you’re in New York get to the Whitney to see this film. It will be there until October 28th.

- The next night, Thursday, I saw the latest installment of Ice Age in 3D. Talk about wanting experimental films back again. As a matter of fact, I really didn’t want to go to it, but went just the same. The crowd at the Academy screening room totalled no more than 10 people, maybe 4 members, 3 of us animators. (Where were the other dozen animation members?) I walked out of Ice Age 3 so expected I might do the same this time around. The story on that one was dreadful.

All the same, this film. Ice Age 4, was actually modestly entertaining with a hit and miss script loaded with many bad jokes. All of the film’s humor (except for the annoying Scrat character) were verbal jokes – not quite what I’d aim for in animation. There were spurts of good animation and excellent performances by some of the voice actors. Others like Ray Romano, Queen Latifah and Denis Leary aren’t actors, so the performances we get are not very good. John Leguizamo and Wanda Sykes are good, but Peter Dinklage gives the film’s best performance. As a matter of fact, whoever animated his character, the Pirate leader, does the film’s best animation as well. It made the film worth watching.

I’ve always liked the art direction of Blue Sky so had no problem settling in to that world, and John Powell‘s music was, as expected, first rate and professional. However, I do somehow wish that the Blue Sky films had more of a sense of lyricism, a tighter synch with the musical score. They never seem to quite get that part of the animation world, a part that can be the magic in a film if it’s done well.

I thought this was worth seeing, but not worth rushing to. It’s probably the same review I’d give Madagascar 3 if I’d seen it, and I’ll see it toward the end of the year when the Academy gets around to screening all the animated features for us.

The NYTimes starts with an extremely positive review, but that’s for a Simpsons short that plays with Ice Age 4. Then it turns quite negative with A.O. Scott‘s review disliking the feature.

“They come close to inspiring a new theory of prehistoric extinction: All those species clearly died from the hot air that gathered in the atmosphere as a result of their inability to shut up for even a minute.
“It may be too much to expect novelty — then again, why shouldn’t we? — but a little more conviction might be nice. “Continental Drift,” like its predecessors, is much too friendly to dislike, and its vision of interspecies multiculturalism is generous and appealing.”

And Elizabeth Weitzman in the NYDaily News also is down on the film:

Something has surely gone wrong when there is not a single moment in “Ice Age: Continental Drift” that equals the four-minute “Simpsons” short that precedes it.

Likewise Kyle Smith‘s negative review in the NYPost:

The best part of “Ice Age 4” happens before it begins, with a funny five-minute short featuring the Simpsons.

- When you’re making a film called POE, people tend to give you Poe stuff. My sister, a while back, gave me the stamp pictured above when the US Post Office released it. I just thought I’d share it with you.

In the meantime we’re working away at the opening. I’ve finally got a storyboard I like and we’re now finishing off the animatic and will begin animating it very soon. It’s got a tight deadline since we’d like to have it ready to go to Toronto to try selling at the film festival in September.

Mike Barrier gives us the second part of the Phil Monroe interview. A solid read. He also reviews Brave. Some things are worth waiting for.

- The GIRAF Animation Festival has a final call out for submissions. The deadline for submission is August 1, 2012. I was curious about the Festival and when they asked that I try to help get the word out, I thought why not. I like that it’s in Calgary. Wasn’t that the place where they shot all those SCTV shows?

So here’s the info from their email:

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

Museum Animation Programs

- The museums in New York are offering a number of important animation programs this summer. Now through October 28th the Whitney Museum is showing Oskar Fischinger: Space Light Art—A Film Environment. This was a multiple screen program he had devised in 1926 called Raumlichtkunst. It included 3 35mm films that were projected simultaneously. It has now been transferred to high definition video and is projected in a loop, so that it is constantly running for the museum’s audience. The film was recently restored by the Center for Visual Music in Los Angeles. From the museum’s posting it says: “Radical in format, its display of abstract shapes and colors produces, according to Fischinger, ‘an intoxication by light from a thousand sources.’”

The Quay Brothers at work

Meanwhile the Museum of Modern Art is having a gallery exhibition of the Quay Brothers‘ work. The brothers, originally from Philadelphia, have settled in London where for the past 30 years they created avant garde stop motion films. They’ve worked as illustrators, stage designers, and filmmakers. The installation showcases all of their work and features a series of “dormitoriums,” miniature décors created for their stop-motion films.There will also be a complete retrospective of their work including their early work, graphic design, calligraphic work, and works on paper. Their films include a complete retrospective of all the puppet films, as well as the student and live action films.
The program will rum from August 11th through January 7, 2013.
I’ll try to keep you posted on the upcoming film programs as they approach.

Also at the MoMA, Tues July 31st at 6PM and Mon August 6th at 8PM, Lou Bunin‘s version of Alice in Wonderland will be screened. The film is rarely screened theatrically and hard to find in DVD. While in production, Disney did everything possible to stop it from going forward, trying to take it to court. Both this Alice and Disney’s ultmately opened within months of each other. When it opened in England in 1950 the British censors objected to a caricature of Queen Victoria, and the film wasn’t released in England until 1985.

Jeff Scher continues to produce rich, abstract animated films. His latest is a music video for his “favorite new band.” I’ve embedded the film, below. Take a look.

- I received a note from Jossie Malis about a series he’s been creating called Bendito Machine. In his words:

Bendito Machine is a show which reflects on the innocence of a small, naive and clumsy species that cannot live without their machines, and which is guided by enlightened greedy bastards, who believe they have the answer to everything.

I was intrigued enough to go to his website and search out the films. There are four of them; they’ve just completed the last of the four. You can watch them all on line (here). They’re quite attractive pieces each about 5 – 10 minutes in length, and they’re all silhouette films. The filmmaking group is, naturally enough, a small one with obvious dedication to the work. It is quite attractive, and I encourage you to take a look.

They’ve recently started a Kickstarter campaign in hopes of raising money to do more of them; I think it’s a worthwhile project. Take a look at the films and consider for yourself whether it’s worth contributing – even as little as $1.

There are a couple of other nice reads out on the internet this week:

Traditional Animation features a good interview with Producer, Gary Goldman, on the 30th anniversary of The Secret of Nimh. The interview reviews all the elements that combined to create the studio and pull this first feature film together. This is a good site and worth visiting (and I don’t say that just because it includes an interview with me in its backlog.) There are many parts from news to forums to interviews.

Mike Barrier has a fine piece on the Harman-Ising cartoon, The Milky Way (the first non-Disney cartoon to win an Oscar). It features some beautiful preproduction artwork from the film.
Of course, on Mike’s site there’s also the great interview with Warner Bros animator, Phil Monroe. In case you haven’t yet read it, you should. Certainly if you have even the slightest interest in animation history.

Bill Benzon, in his very detailed and analytical way, takes on the script of Disney’s Dumbo on his blog, New Savannah. Anything Dumbo is worth reading, especially if it’s written by someone as erudite as Mr. Benzon.

One of those blogs that sits out there forever and has become a valuable piece of real estate for those, like I, who keep coming back to it is the Al Eugster Blog. Mark Mayerson set up this wonderful blog which honors a fine animator. There are many photos of Mr. Eugster in the many positions and studios he animated for. Pictures of the Ub Iwerks studio (Iwerks pitching horseshoes), the Disney Studio in 1935, the Fleischer Studio, or the pictures I sought out this week, the Gifford Studio in NYC. Many thanks to Mark for this hidden treasure as well as for his not-so-hidden treasure, his current blog, Mayerson on Animation. That site is a must-check daily.

Finally, what happens when you’re an artist and your email address has been pillaged by some idiot and all your “friends” on your mailing list have been contacted and told that you’ve been robbed in Spain and left penniless, so please send money? Well, if you’re Gene Deitch, you send out the following note to all on your mailing list who may have been approached:

- Back in February, I got a real kick when I found out that I’d won the NAACP Award for Outstanding Children’s Programming for my show, I Can Be President. HBO told me that they would get my award and send it to me. Great to have a big-sized advocate.

This past Monday, I suddenly remembered that award and emailed HBO about it. I wondered where it stood. They found it at HBO and said they’d send it to me. Since I live about a dozen blocks from HBO, I planned to pick it up, myself, from HBO. They said it might be better if I let them deliver it.

Turns out that the award weighs a ton, and is pretty big. I’ve taken a couple of pictures of the prize and am posting them here. I couldn’t be prouder. Yet, again I thank the artists that worked with me to get out this film: Matt Clinton and Katrina Gregorius. I also thank Christine O’Neill who did all the behind-the-scenes work to make the production possible.

- Congratulations to Emily Hubley who was just voted in as a member of the MP Academy. Another New Yorker in the group! If you ask me, it’s been a long time coming. She’s been making films longer than many of the other members, and is such a serious and devoted
animation artist. She’ll be a credit to the group.

I like the fact that there seems to be a large number of strong animated features coming out this year. Brave is the formidable release this year, and I expect it’ll be hard for other films to beat it. Madagascar 3 has gotten such positive attention that I’m almost encouraged to see it, myself. Ice Age 23 will be out mid July. Just in puppet animation we have Frankenweenie, ParaNorman, and Hotel Transylvania; all of which feature monsters. And there are many more a comin’ It’s a big year for animation.

Epic looks like the most interesting of them all, though shades of Arietty overshadow it for me. (Actually, Arietty has been my favorite release of this year.) Epic will be released by Fox in 2013. Maybe that’ll be a big year, too.

- Bill Benzon has another excellent article on his site, New Savannah. This time he discusses the “metaphysical implications of animation as a medium, specifically, animation as opposed to live action film-making.” It’s a good read about animated elephants, particularly those in Dumbo.

- And speaking of Miyazaki, the new movie, Beasts of the Southern Wild, features a few scenes right out of Princess Monokone. There’s a slew of enormous wild boar with tusks and temperament that torment the lead character, Hush Puppy. The confrontation scenes at the end of the film have almost as strong emotional weight and power as Miyazaki has brought to them, even though this seems to be live action (with cgi help). A.O.Scott of the Times said that “Beasts of the Southern Wild is a work of magic realism and, to some extent, an exercise in wishful thinking.” It’s a raw version of Terrence Malick, but that could just be the immaturity of the filmmaker. This is his first movie, and he’s only 29. But then his brilliant star is just six years old, and she gives the year’s best performance so far.

This was certainly the movie of the week, far better than To Rome With Love (even though I’m a Woody Allen junkie.) This film seemed miscast, poorly acted (Penelope Cruz just is wrong for the part and not trying to act in it) and sloppily written. I haven’t seen Ted, but I’ve enjoyed the trailers I’ve seen. I’d expect the worst from Seth MacFarlane, though I usually laugh at some of his stupid jokes. He’s, at least, sweeter than Adam Sandler.

There is another animated feature currently playing in New York. The Korean film, King of Pigs, will play at the Korean Film Festival at the Walter Reade theater in Lincoln Center Saturday & Sunday July 7th & 8th. The film has been compared to Lord of the Flies.

The film and the Festival were reviewed well in the NYTimes yesterday. There are also another two animated korean features in the Festival. There are also Asura Thursday, July 12th and Gyo Saturday, July 14th. Go to the schedule to read more about these films or to buy tickets in advance.

I posted this in the summer of 2008. I’ve ganged two parts together to make one read.

- Back in 1976, I was working on John Hubley‘s Bicentennial flm, PEOPLE PEOPLE PEOPLE. This was a short film, four minutes long, that had about a million scenes. It told the history of the US (from the standpoint of populating and overpopulating) beginning 17760 BC and ending in 1976 AD.

It started with some lengthy scenes. As the film moved on, the cuts came faster, until they hit about 6 frames apiece toward the film’s end. The final scene, from space, was the longest in the film.

There were no characters that appeared in any more than one scene. That meant that with each scene, there were new setups, new characters, new colors, new everything. As a result, it took much longer than other films and was a difficult one to pull off. But like all other Hubley efforts, it was fun. Tissa David, Jack Schnerk, Lu Guarnier, Phil Duncan and Bill Littlejohn animated it. I colored about 2/3 of the film and animated at least a dozen or two scenes (some really were only 6 frames – like that auto shot posted). I also assisted/inbetweened all of the animators.

Swedes cut down all the trees in PEOPLE PEOPLE PEOPLE.

The studio, at the time, was buzzing because John and Faith had just sold a dream project to CBS. EVERYBODY RIDES THE CCAROUSEL was an adaptation of Erik Erikson‘ 1956 book, Eight Stages of Development. Erikson was a psychologist who theorized that man goes through eight stages of development from birth to death, and he proceeds to break them down. The Hubleys took this book and broke these eight stages into horses on a carousel.
The three half hour Special shows for CBS would be about these carousel horses and the ride.

Each of the stages would be broken into two different subsets, and these would be depicted through stories which were roughly developed visually by John and Faith. Once the funding started to tricle in (about $450,000 for all three shows) they would cast their many actors and have them improvise in the recording studios to the storyboarded set pieces.

While those recordings progressed, the small studio staff was busied in completing animation, artwork and rendering of PEOPLE PEOPLE PEOPLE.

The man on the moon and the Irish immigrants.

Jack Schnerk animated the French trapper sequence. There was such a rush
on the scene that I remember Jack bringing it in saying he hoped it would work.

He’d done two drawings of snow for the blizzard. Both wildly different from each other.
He asked me to ink them, then flop the drawings and ink them again.
He’d exposed the four drawings on fours. He also had the trapper with
snowshoes walking on fours. He felt it would help us feel a struggle in his
walking through the snowstorm. He felt the fours might add weight.
The scene worked beautifully, and was excellent the first time out.
Not quite the way they’d have done it at Disney. Tricks of the trade.

Tissa animated a majority of the film. The ending, the man going to the moon to escape
the overpopulated earth was hers. I have the drawings somewhere and will post some of them soon.

– We started slowly on Everybody Rides the Carousel. There was a six month schedule for about 72 mins of animation. Three half-hour original tv shows for CBS about 24 mins each. They’d air in the late summer of 1975 just prior to the start of the new tv season. Each show would air a day apart from the others – three nights in a row.

John and Faith spent a lot of time – a lot of time – at RCA studios on 45th Street. (It’s
____ The carousel was bottom lit & became soft focus.____-_ now an IRS office.) They recorded many of the voices playing the numerous parts in their show. I tried to time meeting them there a couple of times hoping to meet some of the actors (I particularly wanted to see Jack Gilford in action. He was doing an hilarious part with his wife, playing a couple of cranky old people in a diner.) It didn’t work out that way, but I did see the facility and heard parts in process.

The key staff working IN the studio (not counting animators who would, for the most part, work freelance) included Ida Greenberg. Ida was a brilliant checker / coordinator who’d started back in the Florida days of the Fleischer studio. (She told me a few great stories about Gulliver’s Travels.) Ida was a great woman, with the thickest New Yowk accent, who never seemed to buckle under pressure. I grew very close to her. I tried after that to have Ida everywhere I worked. She led Raggedy Ann’s I&Pt and R.O.Blechman’s special.

Kate Wodell was a student of the Hubleys at Yale. She was a talented artist who’d moved into production during the making of Cockaboody and continued on staff there. Sometimes she colored, sometimes she animated, sometimes she did whatever was necessary. This was exactly how I moved into the studio and loved the experience. She worked with Faith for many years after John died.

Earl James was an animator who’d worked in the backroom of many NY studios from Paramount to Terrytoons to NY Institute of Technology. He also had done some comic strip work.

Earl was given the carousel to animate. This came from a couple of elaborate drawings John did. Earl worked 16 fld. using a 96 drawing cycle. It gave us a lot of opportunity to move in tight or stay wide. However, it was a nightmare that took forever. Joe Gray was hired to assist Earl. (Joe started during the Terrytoons strike and never left. Many of those who knew him as a “scab” never forgave him and had only horrid things to say about him to me some thirty years later. He was a lifetime assistant like a handful of other noted names in NY.)

This scene moved so slowly through production that I kept jumping in to assist as well. I was a fast assistant, but that carousel slowed even me down. 8 horses moved in perspective in a circle; there were 96 different rotating views of all the horses. I’d guess the scene took about 10 weeks to complete.

I was also doing layout and animation of a lot of connecting scenes throughout the production. These were scenes that would have to blend from one animator to another, or John had decided to go in tight for a closeup. In one case with Art Babbitt’s mime character, I was asked to change it from two’s to four’s with a dissolve technique John taught me (he said they’d used it on Fantasia.)

There were four people in my room, Earl, Joe, me and Mark Hubley. He worked alongside me for most of the film. He colored artwork given him by Ida, who was working in the larger room next door. Mark and I had a good releationship going back the many years I worked there. He joined the studio once he completed college. Emily Hubley worked alongside Kate and Ida.

Two younger, more experimental animators were brought in by John. Adam Beckett had made a name for himself with the films he was doing at CalArts.
Fred Burns was doing some incredible work at UCLA. They both were very different and added their unique touch.

___________ Adam Beckett’s scenes included these two surreal images.

Adam did a scene a couple of scenes wherein office furniture floated about in a very complicated surreal cycle. Fred did this amazing scene of a roller coaster from the POV of the rider. He and I worked together a number of times after that, and we’ve stayed friends.

______________ Fred did this very elaborate sexual roller coaster.

I hope to have more to say about some of these films I worked on.