Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

- Howard Beckerman brought a DVD of his home movies of he ASIFA East Animation Festival of 1980. (Actually, I think there are two separate years on this video. People are wearing different clothes in the latter half. However, I can’t be sure.) These are the faces of the crowd who came to those wine and cheese gatherings before the awards. Now, you have sandwiches, wine, beer and soda AFTER the awards. It’s still the place to see a large group of the animation cognoscenti in NY.

I’ve tried to identify as many people as I can and have printed out some stills to do just that. Here are some people to look for.

(L) Candy Kugel / (R) John Canemaker

(L) Russell Calabrese / (R) George Griffin

(L) Carol Millican (center) / (R) John Gati

(L) Tissa David / (R) Sam Magdoff

(L) Nancy Beiman & Dean Yeagle / (R) me, Michael Sporn

(L) Iris Beckerman / (R) Iris Beckerman

(L) Lu Guarnier / (R) Harriette Rauh (right side)

(L) Charles Samu / (R) Will Friedwald & Jerry Beck

(L) Iris Beckerman & Prescott Wright / (R) Sam Magdoff & Irra (Duga) Verbitsky

(L) Francis Lee / (R) Dick Rauh

(L) Don Duga / (R) Joey Ahlbum & Jerry Beck

(L) Dick Rauh / (R) Irwin Lapointe (center w/tie)

(L) Jane Aaron / (R) Charles Samu

(L) Dick Rauh – Pres / Prescott Wright – Guest Speaker

(L) Joey Ahlbum / (R) David Ehrlich & Joey Ahlbum, Chas & Kathy Samu (behind David)

David Ehrlich

Here’s the silent video of the Festival celebrities.
See if you can identify any of those I missed
(and let us know in the comments.)

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- Jake Friedman has a blog that’s nothing short of sensational. His entire focus is on the history of Art Babbitt, making the blog’s title, The Art Babbitt Blog, quite appropriate. Having spent some time with Babbitt, it’s interesting to see the picture of the man on this blog.

The material is very meticulous, but there are some really precious pieces on display. I particularly like the drawings displayed from the silent Terry cartoon, “Scene 30″ of the Terrytoon short Chop Suey.

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Edgar Allan Poe had two great loves in his life. The first woman, Elmira, was engaged to marry him when he was a student at the University of Virginia. She ultimately sent him a “Dear John” letter when her parents forbade her to marry someone whose station in life was lower than hers.

Shortly thereafter he’d been forced to leave the University for lack of funds. His stepfather, John Allan, refused to give him more money, and Poe left the school penniless.

He soon learned that his Aunt in Virginia had also been evicted from their home with her 13 year old daughter, Poe’s cousin, Virginia. Edgar suggested that the three of them share an apartment and thus make it easier to finance their living quarters. To do so, and to not be scrutinized by society, Poe married Virginia, his 13 year old cousin. It would have been scandalous had he not. He immediately fell in love with her and saw her as the love of his life. Most Poe historians believe, however, that they did not consummate their marriage.

A singer, Virginia ultimately died, at the age of 21, after a vocal problem led to pneumonia. Her illness stretched out for a long time because they did not have money to care for her properly. This led to guilt and anger for poor Edgar who could not help his love, and it’s when he did turn to alcohol. However, he gave it up after his wife’s death and stayed sober the rest of his life. Virginia was the Annabel Lee of the famous poem he’d written after her death.

Several years later, he learned that his original love, Elmira, had recently been left a widow when her husband had died. Poe and Elmira reunited and were engaged to marry when he suffered the curiously peculiar death that he did.

It’s my thesis, in the film we’re trying to finance, that Poe’s problem was not alcohol or drugs (this was a negative slur invented by his biographer, Rufus Wilmot Griswold). The real difficulty throughout Poe’s life was poverty. He did everything possible to resolve this, but did not succeed, even unto his death at age 40. On the very day of his death he was to travel to Philadelphia (he’d just bought the tickets) where he was to meet Muddy, his Aunt. He was to start a new literary journal, and they were meeting to obtain financing that she had arranged. Something happened before he got onto the train, and he was found delirious, in a near coma, outside a tavern, wearing someone else’s clothes. He was placed in a pauper’s hospital and died three days later.

Indiegogo is the site we’re using to try to raise capital to finance a trailer for the film in the final style of the movie. This will help sales. We’re within inches of a sale to a cable station for the US Broadcast which will hopefully give us traction to make other sales. Come hell or high water, I’m going to see this film finished.

If you can take a look at the Indiegogo site and leave a comment of support, even if you can’t donate any money. That alone will give encouragement for us to go on. And tell your friends, especially those you think can contribute $15 or more.

– A peculiar alignment of the stars completed this week with the sad passing of Buzz Potamkin. His was the third key death to have happened within the past six months. Designer, Hal Silvermintz, and animator, Vince Cafarelli, also died this year, and they
were all key partners in the animation studio, Perpetual Motion Pictures. That studio rose from the noted studio of the ’60s, Stars and Stripes Productions, Inc. Buzz and Hal left Stars & Stripes joining forces in 1968 and moving on to open Perpetual. They were subsequently joined by Vinny.

Perpetual was one of the solid commercial companies in NY during the 70s and early 80s producing many key commercials of the time including the Hawaiian Punch spots and many MTV pieces. In fact, they designed the MTV spaceman logo. They also did several half-hour shows for TV including The Berenstain Bears.

In 1981 Hal Silvermintz and Hal Hoffer formed their own studio leaving Buzz and Vinny to regroup as Buzzco Productions. Eventually, Buzz left for California leaving Vinny Cafarelli and Candy Kugel ownership of Buzzco, which is still in operation.

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ASIFA East Fest

- Last Sunday night, ASIFA East celebrated with its awards program, its Festival. As usual, it was an overlong program that came in a bit over 2 hrs. 15 mins. There were’t many films I was taken with. Here are some mental notes I made during the show:

The Girl and the Fox by Base 14/Tyler J. Kupferer was the film that won an excellence in Design award. I thought it had the best animation of the program and would have given it that award as well. This is the film that stayed with me.

Car Crash Opera by Skip Battaglia won the award for best soundtrack, which was fitting, but it also should have won Best in Show and Best in Experimental Films. It’s an excellent film.

I always enjoy the Rauch Brothers‘ films. Theirs are richly animated and complex films. However, I would like to see them do something other than the Storycorps work. Their films are sophisticated enough that I’d like to see what steps they’d take next.

I also enjoyed Steve Subotnick’s latest film, Two. Probably the only really experimental of those that won an award in that category.

Taxonomy by Karen Aqua is a beautiful film, and it’s sad to note that it’ll be the last of her films.

I like Stephen Neary’s work and was glad to see his latest, Dr. Breakfast. But I found it somewhat derivative; a bit of John Kricfalusi was in there. It was still funny with some good animation.

I thought Pete List did a great job with Mo Willems’ children’s book, Don’t Let the Pigeon Stay Up Late. I was watching the iintricate camera moves pretty closely; very sophisticated stuff.

A History of Animation by Morgan Miller was just vulgarity for the sake of vulgarity. I saw it on-line and didn’t make it past the two minute mark. Here I had to watch it all. I guess it was “hip” but my older mindset only saw a poorly drawn film (which was the point, I guess) with sophomoric humor. I’m tired of this phase and am only looking for quality.

If I had been in charge of the Festival, I would have eliminated the Music Video category. None of them were more than ordinary; there wasn’t a “Best.”

I was also surprised that Bill Plympton’s bastardization of Winsor McCay’s The Flying House didn’t win any awards.

After the program we went to the fifth floor where there was a reception. Lots of sandwiches & salad and beer & soda. By 11pm, we’d about had it and skipped out of the late night gathering at Fiddlesticks Pub in the West Village. I was glad to finally be home though I wondered what I’d missed at the after party.

If any of you have thoughts about the ASIFA Evening, I’d be glad to hear your comments.

Here’s a list of all the winners.

BEST IN SHOW
John and Joe
StoryCorps/Rauch Brothers

Honorable Mention – Reddish Brown and Blueish Green
Samantha Gurry

- Well, we’re up and running.

The POE Project has resettled at the Indiegogo site and can be reached here. Things will be a bit different this time. Basically, for the moment, it looks similar to the old Kickstarter piece.

However, we intend to make changes in the coming days and weeks to keep the site active.

- I plan on posting some videos, talking about the film in progress.
- I intend to inform you about some funding that’s in discussion.
- I’ve already set up a Facebook page for POE, to work in conjunction with my Poestory site. Both of these link to the Indiegogo page.
- More pictures will continue to be posted in the coming weeks for the sites.
- Finally, every Sunday, during the Indiegogo process, I’ll write about Edgar Allan Poe, the person, and his small family.

Photo by Steve Fisher

- Tomorrow, we will be opening our new Indiegogo page reintroducing the Poe Project to you. We’ll start with much the same offering we did for the Kickstarter run. However for the length of time this is up, we’ll be writing about the film and Edgar Allan Poe on our site on Sundays. Our goal is about half of what we aimed for last time, but we’re encouraged that we’ll be able to get there this time and will be working on POE soon.

- The Raven makes its way into theaters this week, and I saw it last Tuesday. This is a film starring John Cusack as Edgar Allan Poe. He’s pulled into service consulting with the police on a serial murderer’s killing of numerous people using ideas copied from Poe’s own stories. If Poe wants to save his young fiancée, he has to work hard at producing several new stories built on ideas he gets from the work of the killer. The flilm is ridiculous and tries to be a variant of the Robert Downey jr. Sherlock Holmes movies. Action, action, action with erroneous snippets about Poe and his life.

The film starts with an inaccuracy and goes wildly from there. The title card reads that Poe was found dying on a park bench. In fact, he was found acting wildly outside of a tavern known as Gunner’s Hall or Ryan’s Tavern. With this false premise the film is allowed to end with E.A.Poe dying, in the fresh snow, on a park bench, alone. In fact, he died another four days later after being placed in a pauper’s hospital where he wasn’t allowed visitors.

I noticed the Rotten Tomatoes average of 20% positive reviews for this film. Not good at all, but I’d expect that’s accurate.

The death of Poe has become a real mystery thanks to the poor reporting of his biographer, Rufus Wilmot Griswold. He had published a couple of Poe’s poems, received a very negative review from Poe, and the two became strong rivals. Griswold later published the first biography of Poe picturing him as a depraved drunkard and a drug-addicted madman. Despite objections from those who knew the truth, this negativ image of Poe remains even to this film in 2012.

Poe spent the evening of his death having dinner with three friends, during which he did not drink alcohol. He then went to the train station where he bought a ticket for a later train to Philadelphia, which he was to catch that evening. From this point to that, when he was found delirious on the streets outside Gunner’s Hall, there is nothing known for sure.

- On the Academy’s double bill with The Raven was the new Aardman animated feature, The Pirates: Band of Misfits. The film is well executed; the models are attractive, the detail in the sets is exceptional, and the animation is first rate (although there was something odd going on at times which made me wonder if they’d shot it at the European gauge of 25 fps.). Just the same, it was nice to see 3D puppets as opposed to 3D cgi. The look of this film was so much better than the slick Arthur’s Christmas. One can only hope that Aardman sticks to what they do best – stop motion.

The film is funny. In fact, that was a bit of a complaint I had. It was gag, gag, gag, so that you end up laughing fewer and fewer times. Yet, the big story was inconsequential and felt, to me, as though it had no real drive. The film revolves around the “Pirate Captain” (that’s his name) who wants to win the “Pirate of the Year” award and has to meet a self-imposed challenge to win the award. (Sort of like wanting to win an “Oscar” and making a film with that goal in mind.) This makes for too small a story to keep me captivated, and I felt outside the film for the entire time watching. I checked my watch often enough for this 90 minute movie. Essentially, I found the film is OK, but not necessary. Not quite as strong as Chicken Run.

Tomorrow, April 29th, Sunday 7pm, ASIFA-East presents
The 43rd ASIFA-East Animation Awards

The Awards will be presented, followed by a free food & drink reception.

Again, the admission is FREE! And it’s open to all!

The New School
Tishman Auditorium
66 W. 12th Street
(bet. 5th/6th Aves)
NYC

- Adam Abraham is the author of the new and brilliant book, When Magoo Flew, the history of UPA. He wrote me to introduce his new site, also named When Magoo Flew. The site acts as an archive of his UPA research material, and it’s a new an attractive addition to the animation net. I’ve added a link to my blogroll on the right.

RIchard O’Connor of Ace and Son sent me this link to a film they just completed and which debuted this week at the Tribeca Film Festival. Richard wrote this about the animation:

It was an interesting project and we were pretty much given a video edit of the talking head footage and left to our devices to make it work. There was a need to have a “historical” look countered with the need for fluidity/looseness and I think we came up with a good middle ground. Everything is painted on paper with the line on a separate level (I wanted to do it all on one piece of paper but we ran out of Ingram bond and the cheap stuff caused horrible bleeding AND Cartoon Colour took a month to get us another shipment). You can see where sometimes the tracebacks aren’t there for the paint level.

The coloring looks more like marker on cel, to me, than color on paper. Quite a difficult look to pull off. I’d be curious to see what it looks like on the big screen.

An ArtsEngine, Inc. Production
EDITED BY – Gabriel Rhodes
MUSIC COMPOSED BY – John Kimbrough
ANIMATION BY – Ace & Son Moving Picture Company
ANIMATION DIRECTOR – Richard O’Connor
DESIGN/LEAD ANIMATOR – Kelsey Stark
ADDITIONAL ANIMATION – Liesje Kraai
PRODUCTION ARTIST – Dee Mackey
CAMERA – William Rexer II
SOUND – John Zecca
RESEARCHER – Danielle Varga
PRODUCTION ASSISTANT – Justine Pierce
SPECIAL THANKS – Kwame Anthony Appiah

- I handed a “Forward-to-the-new-address-card” to the Post Office and knew it would take weeks to get my mail. Well, surprise! Surprise! It took exactly one day. And it keeps on coming. Who says you can’t trust the post office?

In honor of the noble institution, I’ve decided to repost this 2009 group of pictures of mailboxes. It seems a bit fitting.
Mailboxes, both brown and and blue, they exist in droves holding onto the snailmail still out there. One might wonder how many more postage rate increases it can withstand before we depend allmost exclusively on internet communication.

These days many of the boxes have been decorated with graffiti of different sorts. All of it seems to be some kinda message to the world.
Nice and clean with dozens of coats of paint

Given that it’s probably a federal offense, one would expect such graffiti to be limited. But I’d say that that’s not the case.

I can remember walking down the street with John Leguizamo and his director David Bar Katz as he was about to open in Freak on Broadway. Al around town his face was stenciled on sidewalks and walls promoting the show.

We passed a mailbox and John saw his image/ad. He got upset. He knew that it was a federal offense to mark up the mailbox and he asked his director to see if he could look into stopping such practices. The show opened and I suspect there was no such inquisition from the feds.

(Click any image you want to enlarge.)

One graffiti writer wanted the world to know that “Papa Loves Baby”

It certainly got the point across to “Baby”.

.

“Faro” is someone who’s been out there for quite awhile.
(S)he doesn’t just cover mailboxes. Subway walls and posters
are also fair game for this scribbler.

They can get pretty gritty.

or some get newly painted with just a touch of pink.

Sometimes they come in pairs – brown or blue.

or threes. (newly painted)

Unfortunately, clean up painting things don’t get much better. Splotchy coats
of paint that don’t match the undercoat don’t always improve things.
It’s exhausting when you think about it.

These last two photos are by Steve Fisher,
a better eye for the humorous than I.

- Our new Indiegogo campaign for the Poe Project will be up and running this coming week. (Just when you thought you were done with that!) Of course we’ll be shouting the news as loud as we can, so you’ll know when. I just want to add a video of me talking about the film, and it’ll be ready for prime time.

- There is a nice collection of photographs on display at the Fleischer Family website. For the most part, these are photos that haven’t been seen, predominantly of Max, that will certainly be of interest to any Fleischer fan.

However if it’s artwork you want to see, I suggest you look at Ryan & Stephanie Englade‘s Fleischer site. He has quite a collect of Fleischer art on display (though there are plenty of rare and precious Disney pieces toward the end of the scroll.)

Here’s an original Popeye B&W cel from the Englade site.
You can see that the Bg is done in sepias while the
Ink & Pt of the cel is done in cold greys.
It all comes out B&W&grey on film.

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- After I’d completed work on Raggedy Ann & Andy, I found myself an “Assistant Director” on R.O. Blechman’s hour PBS show, Simple Gifts. This was a compilation of six short pieces about Christmas. Each had a different designer: Maurice Sendak, Seymour Chwast, Charles B. Slackman, James McMullan, Blechman and Fontaine Fox’s Toonerville Trolley.

However, before Bob could raise the money for the show, I was pulled into working on a stack of commercials where I acted more as producer and all around artist (inker, painter, assistant animator, animator, movieola operator, etc.) Here’s a commercial from that period that I did with think it was 1978(?). I just found it on YouTube. (It’s a pretty dark version of the spot.) Ed Smith animated the Van Gogh & Modigliani and Tissa David did Michelangelo & Picasso. Sara Calogero did the painting and I did all the rest of the production art. I also represented the studio on the live action to make sure it would work with the animation.

I received the request to post this piece for the Giraf Animation Festival in Calgary, Canada. Why not? Often, it’s a festival like this that can find some of the gems that otherwise wouldn’t be seen.

GIRAF Animation Festival

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS

Deadline: August 1, 2012

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

- On Monday, April 30, 2012 at 8:30 PM, Beyond Enchantment: The Imaginary Voyages of Maureen Selwood be screened at The Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater (Redcat), 631 West 2nd Street, LA.

From the program:

“Selwood grapples with notions of dislocation, grief and loss…The result is indeed akin to poetry, in its piercing sadness that is at once palpable and ephemeral.” Holly Willis

Maureen Selwood’s animations take us into the strange, beautiful, and sometimes terrifying lands of the mind. For her first solo show at REDCAT, she presents a selection of more recent pieces including the premiere of A Modern Convenience (2012), in which the machine becomes a substitute for intimacy against the backdrop of Niagara Falls. The piece will be accompanied by live performance. In Hail Mary (1998) a centuries old prayer morphs into a humorous black and white memoir. The expressively rendered Drawing Lessons (2006) sublimates a meditation on drawing and nature. I Started Early (2007), based on a poem by Emily Dickinson, explores sexual awakening. As You Desire Me (2009), the single-channel version of an installation inspired by her residence at the American Academy in Rome at the beginning of the Iraq War, confronts sorrow and catastrophe. The program concludes with the hallucinogenic trip of How Much Better if Plymouth Rock Had Landed on the Pilgrims (2009), and Mistaken Identity (2001), Selwood’s alluring deconstruction of 1955 noir classic Kiss Me Deadly.

A looped silent version of Rules of the Universe (2009, QT Digital) will be projected on the wall over the exit to the parking lot.

Maureen Selwood will present, in person, a selection of recent films and works with live performance.

The premiere of A Modern Convenience with a live performance by Archie Carey and Odeya Nini.

Mistaken Identity will also be performed with a live performance by Clarissa Romano and The Cathlene Pineda Trio.

As promised, I’m reminding you that Chris Sullivan’s Independenty produced feature Consuming Spirits is premiering at the Tribeca Film Festival this week.

The times for the screenings are:
_____Mon 4/23 6:00PM Clearview Cinemas Chelsea 7
_____Tue 4/24 4:00PM AMC Loews Village 7 – 2
_____Wed 4/25 7:00PM Clearview Cinemas Chelsea 5

- Finally, Tom Hachtman‘s great comic strip is back on sale. Gertrude’s Follies has been reprinted and is once again on sale at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Buy it, you won’t be disappointed if you love great comic strips.

- For so many years I’ve known Howard and Iris Beckerman as the couple who had their own studio, did a few commercials a year and usually had a personal film in the ASIFA East Festival each year. They always seemed to be doing what I hoped for my future, a world of animation – a world of Independence. In the recent past, Iris disappeared from the pair. She was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s Disease and needed help from a facility. Howard became more of a single at animation events, but he bore the pain of Iris’ illness well. He didn’t let on that there was any challenge in his life.

Iris died last Sunday, April 8th. She will be missed. Our thoughts are with Howard and their family, and all best wishes for them. There’s a wonderful obituary by Bill Lorenzo on the ASIFAEast site.

- There have been a couple of good comments on the UPA videos since last week.
Mark Mayerson writes intelligently, as usual, about the bad cartoons on the 3 disc set. There’s a lot to say about them, and Mark cogently puts it all together.
Thad Komorowski also has some smart things to say on his blog. I don’t completely agree with some of his comments, but that’s irrelevant.

I just gave Tissa David a copy of the three disc set, and I’m looking to hear her comments. She probably hasn’t seen such good prints since they were originally screened in theaters. She’s also almost too candid in her thoughts about things she doesn’t like (maybe that’s where I got the bad habit of saying what I think without sparing the hurt.) When I get her comments, I’ll share them.

I hope to soon be doing some frame grab breakdowns of some of the films in the pack. I’ll enjoy studying them that way – especially the bad ones. It’ll be fun studying some of the Paul Julian backgrounds.

- David Levy sent me an email packed with information. The most immediately important concerns his short film, Turning the Corner, which is playing at the Tribeca Film Festival in NY. It’s part of a program called “Shorts in Competition” and is listed as a “documentary.” The film, if you haven’t seen it is about David’s father’s difficulty and path to get into Cooper U-nion School of Art. The film has a unique style combined with the typical looseness that is part of his approach. It’s a good film.

The times for the screenings are:
_____Fri 4/20 6:00PM AMC Loews Village 7 – 1
_____Sat 4/21 11:59PM AMC Loews Village 7 – 1
_____Mon 4/23 2:30PM AMC Loews Village 7 – 3
_____Sun 4/29 7:30PM Tribeca Cinemas Theater

Naturally, the film has its own Facebook page.

David also shared some personal information. I don’t think he’d mind my sharing the good news:

I think I’m done for blogging for the time being. I feel like I’ve said everything I wanted to and it’s not giving me pleasure to keep up with it anymore.

After five years and a good run, I closed out my home studio recently because I took an exec job at Disney. I’m the animation manager for their apps and ebooks. It’s really been a great opportunity, and forces me to stay relevant in producing animation for the newest media devices and platforms. Floyd Norman just contacted our group to rave about our Jungle Book app. That made us all really proud. I’m gonna have lots of travel to California, but my main job is based in White Plains. The long commute made me have to give up freelancing and teaching, but it feels like the right time to do so.

David, who was a smart, affable and organized President of ASIFA East for quite some time, has the good will and interest of all of us in the animation community on the East Coast. I’m sure we all wish him the best of luck in his transition to Disney and the “E” world.

This also gives me an opportunity of stating, once again, the Chicago filmmaker Chris Sullivan has his Independenty produced feature Consuming Spirits premiering at the Tribeca Film Festival.

The Festival catalogue states:

Nearly 15 years in the making, Chris Sullivan’s Consuming Spirits is a meticulously constructed tour de force of experimental animation. . . The pacing of Consuming Spirits unfolds in a slow, deliberate fashion, akin to the work of such independent filmmakers as Dennis Potter, Terence Davies, Robert Altman, and John Cassavetes. Like these live-action filmmakers, every frame of Sullivan’s animation film is crafted with attention to intricate detail. The accumulation of these images builds to a great atmospheric effect, achieved through an adroit combination of inventive set design, ever-shifting visual perspectives, fluid camera movements, a vivid color palette, and a haunting music track. Sullivan succeeds in creating, with great artistry, a hermetic, self-contained world emanating from his own unique and vivid imagination.

“Dennis Potter, Terence Davies, Robert Altman, and John Cassavetes” That’s a specific breed of filmmaker they’re comparing him to. This film should be good. I’ve seen about a half hour of it and enjoyed what I saw quite a bit.

The times for the screenings are:
_____Mon 4/23 6:00PM Clearview Cinemas Chelsea 7
_____Tue 4/24 4:00PM AMC Loews Village 7 – 2
_____Wed 4/25 7:00PM Clearview Cinemas Chelsea 5

- I’ve grown to love Gene Deitch‘s weekly posts to his website. They’re all stories focussing on a particular artist or person he worked with usually reporting the making of some film or project. Many of them are my heroes like Jiri Trnka and John Hubley.

This week he talks about working with Crockett Johnson on Harold and the Purple Crayon. I’ve been a fan of Johnson’s work since I was a child. I’d already animated The Carrot Seed for HBO years ago when I’d pitched adapting Barnaby as a series. It just so happens that Sony was also pitching Harold and the Purple Crayon as a series at the same time. Guess which series they went for. However, they demanded that I represent HBO as a pair of eyes to keep abreast of what Sony was up to. So, I entered as a consultant (I can’t remember what my official title was on the films.) It meant that they sent me a lot of artwork and I say yes or no. I think my biggest contribution was in bringing Van Dyke Parks to the show as the composer of the many songs as well as the score for the series.

Needless to say, I never got to meet Crockett Johnson; he died in 1975. But it was fun to read Gene Deitch‘s report on making shorts of Harold for Weston Woods and his working with the author. As I say, these are all great stories worth reading.

- The Polish electronic jazz group Baaba will perform live to a selection of Polish classic animated films. The program includes Academy Award-winner Zbigniew Rybczynski‘s New Book, auteur Walerian Borowczyk & Jan Lenica‘s Banner of Youth, Miroslaw Kijowicz‘s Cages (Grand Prix at Annency, 1967), as well as the visually innovative Stairs by Stanislaw Schabenbeck and Chair by Daniel Szczechura.This compilation offers a chance to see examples of “The Polish School of Animation.”

Apr 18, 7 pm
NEW YORK – Part of UNSOUND Festival
BAMcinématek
ANIMATORS
30 Lafayette Avenue, Brooklyn NY 11217
Tel 718-636-4100
Tickets: $15 general public, $10 members

Apr 27, 7 pm & 8:30 pm
DETROIT
Detroit Institute of Arts
BAABA
5200 Woodward Ave, Detroit, MI 48202
Tel 313-833-7900
Tickets: Free with museum admission.
$8 Adults, $6 Seniors, $5 Youth (6-17).
Free for children, members and Detroit residents.

Apr 29, 8 pm
LOS ANGELES – The Cinefamily
ANIMATION BREAKDOWN: Masters of Polish Animation
611 N. Fairfax Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90036
Tel 323-655-2510
Tickets: $14 / Free for members

- It’s a week later, and the move out of the Bedford Street studio is done. Most of the furniture, artwork and computers have been put in storage. It was a big decision to have made and done quickly and expeditiously. It was also a touch traumatic. Giving up the space wasn’t easy. I’d been thinking of doing it for the past year, and the inevitable had to happen. I realized that only a couple of weeks ago.

So now I’m working out of my home and will also be occupying a desk alongside Candy Kugel at her company Buzzco; she’s given me access to her facilities. That will get me out of my house and make my days a bit more interesting. Lest there be any doubt, Michael Sporn Animation, Inc. still exists, and in fact we’re currently working on a spot for AARP with Bob Blechman. That’ll be done in the next week. Matt Clinton is doing his part out of Michigan, while I work in the City.

A couple of big thank you’s for the move have to go out to two great friends. The move could not have happened without the back breaking work of Stephen MacQuignon. What a guy he is; I just can’t say enough about him. Bridget Thorne was also essential in getting it going and boxing up so many damn books. She was the vision behind the move. Of course, Heidi Stallings, my wife, was there all the way with me making sure I didn’t push too hard. Thank you to all three of them.

- I’m haven’t surrendered to Kickstarter after not reaching the enormously high goal I’d set for myself. I’m hoping to start anew in the next week or so, but this time I’ll be using Indiegogo. It seems much more reasonable in the way they’re set up. Of course, I’ll reach out and let you know when I’ve got it going. I want to get started on POE‘s opening and have been working by myself, for now, on that. Any moneys I can generate through such a device would be glorious.

- Gene Deitch on his site, gene deitch credits, has an absolutely great piece about Morton Schindel. Schindel was the smart entrepreneur who set up Weston Woods in the 1950s, and he deserves more attention in the business. His company has thrived for more than fifty years doing quiet films based on well-known children’s books. Deitch got a firm foothold of a customer with Weston Woods, and I got my real start as a studio with a couple of films from the Schindel, and the guy who actually runs the production now, Paul Gagne.

I knew that the early WW films were shown on Captain Kangaroo, but I wasn’t aware that Gene Deitch was responsible for that happening. It’s a good little piece of history worth reading.

-With the recent introduction of their new cable channel, Disney Junior, Disney has been screening a number of the early animated features on the channel. I happened to catch Bambi yesterday. Of course, it’d have been easy for me to just put in the DVD, but somehow accidentally coming upon the film makes it hard to pass up. Considering how immersed I’ve been in the UPA films and the Miyazaki canon, it always brings you back to ground zero when you see one of these early Disney masterpieces. They can’t be beat. Bambi, in particular challenges any notions of modern art with Tyrus Wong‘s stunning Backgrounds and design. The Bgs turn almost abstract at times. When the deer on the meadow are running away, for fear of man, the animals turn wildly brilliant colors. It caught my eye the first time I saw the film, as a child, and I still look for it.

The beauty of some of the animation cannot be challenged, and the airbrushed coloring is stunning. Looking at some of the simple and direct multiplane setups one can only sit in awe. There’s a bit of randomness that has to take over with the multiplane camera, and that brings a touch of life to these camera moves. A good example is the very last scene of the “April Showers” sequence with the camera making a very slight move down and a pull out to reveal Bambi and his mother in the larger forest. The out of focus elements shift to in-focus, and it’s beatuiful. Even watching this film with the advanced use of the computer to composite such films today, the production work can’t be beaten or matched.

We’ll never see the likes of the pre-1942 films again. Snow White, Pinocchio, Bambi, Fantasia and even Dumbo are in a class of their own and will never be matched again. And here they are running on Disney Junior, the toddler’s channel. It’s always good to go back to these films to get a good sense of animation-history reality.

- It was a kick to do the Kickstarter campaign trying to raise some funds for POE. No luck in the end (I obviously set my aims too high), but plenty of eye opening support from everyone in the animation community. It certainly was encouraging and more than a little heartwarming.

From the center of my being, let me say a loud Thank You to all out there; I am blessed. And you people are all wonderful.

I’m not sure if and how I’d do it again (though a lot of people are encouraging me to start again immediately); it’s a bit stressful in the end. Certainly, I’d work with one of the non-Kickstarter programs where the goal wouldn’t force the cut off. Just the same, it all took a bit of a toll. However, before the week is out I’ll get into it.

Again, many thanks.

- Now another piece of news. I’m not going out of business.

I am closing the doors on my studio space, but we’re just downsizing. The projects I’ve been doing have shown me that I don’t need quite as much space to work since what I have been doing is to work on my own or in collaboration with Matt Clinton, who is in Michigan. I have work coming up, but I’ll be doing it alone. I don’t need 5000 extra feet of space and five desks and computers.

After thirty two years, I’m going to go a bit more virtual. I’ll have the computer out of the home, and I’ll take Candy Kugel‘s incredibly generous offer to do some of the work out of her space, Buzzco. It’ll be fun to be around a good friend during the weekdays, and I’ll continue the way most of the world seems to be operating.

Of course, when the funding for POEor something large does come through, I’ll rebuild and open new doors. That actually may be sooner rather than later, but for now, my studio’s address will be my home address.

- There’s an interesting, and very independent feature film about to open at the Tribeca Film Festival. Chris Sullivan is an animator workig out of Chicago who is completely independent, and has been working on his film for years. Consuming Spirits is truly multi-media. It jumps from 2D cel animation, to cut-out animation, to clay animation. It breathlessy gliedes from one form to another in a seamless way. The film deserves to be seen on the big screen, and I encourage you to catch it during the Tribeca Fest. I’ve seen about a half hour of the film and look forward to seeing it all together and complete.

1st Screening: Monday, 4/23, 6pm. Clearview Chelsea Cinemas.
2nd Screening: Tuesday, 4/24, 4pm. AMC Loews Village 7.
3rd Screening: Wednesday, 4/25, 7pm. Clearview Chelsea Cinemas.

From the Tribeca program:

Nearly 15 years in the making, Chris Sullivan’s Consuming Spirits is a meticulously constructed tour de force of experimental animation. Shooting frame by frame in 16mm, Sullivan seamlessly blends together a range of techniques into a distinct, signature visual style. In the process, he constructs a hypnotic, layered narrative, a suspenseful gothic tale that tracks the intertwined lives of three kindred spirits working at a local newspaper in a Midwestern rust belt town.

I’ll give more of a reminder when the time gets closer.

- I had intended to write extensively about UPA. The new book, When Magoo Flew by Adam Abraham and the accompanying DVDs, the Jolly Frolics, from TCM. These are just the most brilliant thing to happen to animation history this year. I’m slowly savoring the material and haven’t quite finished it. When I do I’ll write a full review.

However, I can guarantee you that my reviews for both are positive, and if I were you, I’d buy either and both right away.