Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

Chico & Rita in NYC & LA

- Thanks to its Oscar nomination, Chico & Rita, the 2D Spanish, animated feature film will play in New York & Los Angeles. The distributor, G Kids, will bring the film to the Angelika Film Center starting Friday, February 10th for a week.

Directors Fernando Trueba & Javier Mariscal will be doing Q&A’s following the 7:40 PM shows Sat & Sun, Feb 11-12.

Angelika Film Center (18 W. Houston Street, 212-995-2570)
Friday, February 10, daily at 11:00, 1:10, 3:20, 5:30, and 7:40.

Screenings in Los Angeles will be Mon, Feb 6 at 2 PM (Linwood Dunn Theater), and Mon, Feb 13 at 9:20 PM (Samuel Goldwyn Theater). These are designated as Official Academy Screenings.

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Annies Live

- The Annie Awards will take place tonight, Saturday, in Los Angeles starting at 7pm (Pacific Time) which is 10pm (Eastern). The awards will be available on line via streaming through a number of different sites. These include: Animation Guild site, Hans Perk’s A Film LA, Tee Bosustow’s Animazing site, and of course Cartoon Brew. If one has problems, go to the next.

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- The brilliant abstract animator, Paul Glabicki, is going to have an exhibition of his art March 15 to April 14th. I’d encourage you all to see this show; his work is always smart, exciting and worth the little effort it would take. He’s also an East coast animator and deserves our support. Here is the press release for the exhibition:

Paul Glabicki
ORDER

We are pleased to announce Paul Glabicki’s second solo exhibition at the Kim Foster Gallery. His new ORDER series explores expressions of “order” as image, concept, construct, and language – and the organization and potential ambiguity of information, communication, and language within complex and concurrent data systems.

Each drawing begins with an Internet search of the word “order.” Hundreds of images, interpretations, demonstrations, and associations are generated by each search, arranged in a hierarchy of relevance determined by the search engine. Each search becomes increasingly customized to the searcher, often branching off into intricate or obscure expressions of the word, its multiple meanings, or practice (specific arrangement, sequence, command, rank, importance, by discipline.) Each drawing is a selection and orchestration of these hierarchies of order systems and applications, filtered through the artist’s response to the information collected in each search.
The process engages the artist’s own creative compulsion to organize and compose images. The first element of each drawing is deliberately placed at random, initiating a process of response, modification, and overlay. New imagery/data is added in a sequential chain, and in response to the placement of each previous element. Each drawing is rotated as new imagery and information is considered and assigned to the developing space; with its final viewing orientation established as the accumulated imagery satisfies the artist’s own personal impulse to impose “order” and closure – but only momentarily, until the process is carried on to the next piece.
Each drawing is a result of a chain of events, choices, and decisions generated by the initial, specific, finite fragment of data. The process plays with notions of causality, the desire/impulse to find, recognize or impose organization, response to (and interpretations of) vast sources of available data, and the complex interactions of image, language, communication and meaning in the representation of information.

The work of Paul Glabicki continues to be involved with time and sequence, and an obsessive process of evolving images and complex compositions generated by an intimate examination of a finite word or found object.

All of the imagery in his work is drawn by hand (Graphite Pencil, Prismacolor Pencil, Ink, and Acrylic on Paper.)

Paul Glabicki is best known for his experimental film animations that have appeared at major film festivals, as well as national and international museum exhibitions. His animation work in film has been carefully crafted by means of thousands of hand-drawn images on paper – each drawing representing both a frame of film and a unique complete work on paper. His film works have been widely screened at such prestigious sites as the New York Film Festival at Lincoln Center, the Cannes Film Festival, the Museum of Modern Art and Whitney Museum of Art in New York (Whitney Biennial), and the Venice Biennale. He has received numerous awards, grants, and fellowships, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the American Film Institute, and several grants from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts.

KIM FOSTER GALLERY
529 West 20th New York, NY 10011 212-229-0044
www.kimfostergallery.com
info@kimfostergallery.com

Paul Glabicki
ORDER
March 15 – April 14, 2012
( Tuesday – Saturday, 11 am to 6 pm)
Reception: Thursday, March 15, 6 to 8 pm

Just prior to the opening, I’ll remind you of the dates.

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Trnka Centennial

- Gene Deitch has hit another home run on his blog this week. He posts a piece about the great puppet animator and artist, Jiří Trnka. Deitch tells intimate stories that make me feel closer to the man, Trnka, than I’ve gotten from many other books about the master’s work. (Just look at the image to the left from Deitch’s site. We see not only that Trnka was left handed, but that he couldn’t stop smoking even in the middle of painting during a photo shoot!) We learn about an aborted collaboration between Deitch and Trnka and several of the drawings Trnka did are posted on the site.

Deitch also gives us a good report with photos on the recent memorial in Prague celebrating the 100th anniversary of Trnka’s birth. This is a fabulous read.

Of course, there are many other articles equally as good on this site. Another recent post is on the artist, Jiří Brdečka. He was just as great a force, in many ways, as was Trnka. This is a wonderful site and should be regularly followed.

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Robot Puppet Porn

Michael Sullivan photographed by Tom Hachtman

- Michael Sullivan is a New York animator/effects wizard/actor/artist who gets little attention.

He’s amassed years worth of puppets, dolls and small artifacts which he develops into his characters for the eccentric films he produces. Currently, he’s been making a film about robots – actually, a pornographic film about robots. This has been chronicled into a short film documentary that ran at the recently completed Sundance Film Festival. Titled, The Meaning of Robots, the doc is by filmmaker, Matt Lenski. There’s a trailer for the doc here and articles about the film here and here.
Watch part of Michael Sullivan’s work here.

Thanks to Tom Hachtman for the good word..

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- Finally, the news that Don Cornelius had died this week, as a result of suicide, made me want to take another look at the opening title animation to Soul Train. There are no good quality copies on YouTube, but I found this small sampling of the show and felt that something was better than nothing. The titles were produced by Jim Simon with his company, Wantu Animation. I think I remember Dan Haskett telling me that he had done some animation on it. He did do a lot of work for Jim Simon, so it’s likely. Regardless, the titles are worth a nod. I haven’t seen any other animation site point it out.

Jim Simon/Wantu Animation for Don Cornelius Productions

Mike Barrier, on his website, uses a photograph of Walt Disney talking in a corridor to Eric Larson to discuss the state of current day Disney. In the photo, both Walt and Eric are obviously tired at the end of a long and arduous day. Larson remembered, to Mike Barrier, that they were discussing the recently completed feature, Sleeping Beauty, and Walt surmised that at the current expense, he wouldn’t be able to continue to make animated features. That film had cost a bit more than four million dollars in 1958, a whopping sum. (Compare that to the $260 million Tangled cost in 2010.)

Mike Barrier‘s point in this article is that features, from that point on, took a slow dip in quality and never recovered. Mike says that he found a falseness setting in to the “sincerity” that Disney requested of his animators, with The Sword In the Stone and Jungle Book being virtually swallowed up by this false “sincerity”:

“I think the falseness I saw was rooted, paradoxically, in that Disney shibboleth ‘sincerity.’ As Walt used the term, during work on the first great features, it was the characters who were to be sincere, that is, to seem to move of their own volition. Over the years, sincerity came to be valued less in the characters than in their animators (and, at one step removed, their directors), until now we are supposed to admire animation because its practitioners—assuming a high level of technical skill—are conspicuously earnest, in a way that many of the great early Disney animators were not.”

I have to agree, for the most part, with this theory. I think it most obvious in the Jungle Book. With The Aristocats, to me, they’d sunk completely and hopelessly off the map. I’ve sat through this film at least half a dozen times and have not been able to stay awake throughout it. The film is not one of my favorites.

Mike Barrier takes The Sword In the Stone as the first full on example of this problem, whereas I love that film, though I admit that it has significant problems. I agree with him on the next one, The Jungle Book, but Andreas Deja would disagree heartily – it was this film that convinced him to become an animator.

I remember discussing Beauty and the Beast with John Canemaker and my saying that I had trouble enjoying it, finding an ugliness in most of the characters – those townspeople cannot be drawn more poorly. But then John asked me if I didn’t think that this would be a film that would encourage lots of young people to want to become animators just as we had been inspired by some of the films of the fifties. It was obvious that I had to agree immediately.

I recognize that The Sword In the Stone was right at the time that I was in love with most of the fare coming out of Disney’s studio, as a matter of fact out of most studios. 1001 Arabian Nights with Mr. Magoo was certainly an influence on me.

One of those commenting on Barrier’s column, Garry Apgar, points to Ichabod and Mr. Toad as one of the best of the Disney films, “I was enthralled by the magic of both, and to this day consider the Toad half of that combo picture, “pound for pound” . . . the greatest Disney cartoon ever. I still have the Giant Golden Book edition of that story.”

Personally, except for the ride of the Headless Horseman, I find very little inspiring in that feature. I’d guess that Mr. Apgar was influenced because he saw the film at a time when he was strongly influenced by it, just as I saw The Sword In the Stone at a susceptible time in my life. However, despite that, I have difficulty finding much bad in the film. Yes, I hear odd echos in some of the voice track; the music is completely anachronistic, and some of the animation is not up to the work of the past. I’ll even say that I have a major problem with the wizards’ duel in that the mad Madame Mim is introduced late in the film just for the sake of the set piece, the duel. She’s then dismissed. I have always found that a wart in the storytelling. Somehow the late introduction of the squirrel females doesn’t bother me. Perhaps because they’re squirrels.

Basically, I’m saying that we’re all affected by our influences – not necessarily the quality of the actual film. Those who have seen The Aristocats at a vulnerable time in their lives, probably like that movie, and I can’t really fault them though I know it’s not a benchmark in Disney animation, and, in fact, is definitive proof of Barrier’s theory about the false “sincerity” in the animators’ work and, more to the point, the director’s work. (I can remember Ken Anderson, Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston talking about the disco-lights used in the jazz-in-the-attic section of the film. Woolie Reitherman could not be coaxed out of the 70s effect despite the fact that it was already dated when the film was released.)

But back to the comments section of Mike Barrier’s site. Jim Korkis was surprised while teaching Animation History to a number of young interns at the Disney studio. “They had no acquaintance with any silent animated cartoons that were the foundation nor any of Walt’s competitors in the Thirties and Forties like Paul Terry, Warner Brothers, MGM and others. Even as the class approached the beginning of computer animation, they had no clue how and why computer animation developed.”

This has become the state of the world. It’s not only animation. Just focusing on the Arts, I see it everywhere.
- There’s no knowledge of Vaudeville among the young performers and creators trying to sell their wares to theatrical shows. When Stephen Sondheim, Charles Strouse and John Kander die so will the history of the theater.
- I wonder how many architecture students have read Ayn Rand’s “The Fountainhead.” Certainly not for the confused libertarian views, but for the threat of two different architectural forces that dominated the world in the early Twentieth Century.
- How many Fine Artists explore early Renaissance Art, except within their Art History classes? Do they question why and how Daumier painted as he did? What about Turner, do they understand what he was trying to do? Or David? This is our history; it’s the foundation of the future. Only by going through his apprenticeship to Thomas Hart Benton could Pollock paint his splatter paintings.

Animation students should do more than study scenes that have already been animated. By limiting yourself to how Milt Kahl or Tex Avery did something, you’ve eliminated the world. This is what you’re caricaturing in your animation, I should think. Regurgitated Jim Tyer is not only not art but it’s not Jim Tyer. And it’s not good. Art Babbitt, while at the Disney studio, took piano lessons and dance lessons knowing that it would help his animation, and undoubtedly it did. It’s more important to take those dance lessons (and more fun, too) than it is to study all of Tytla’s scenes.

I’m not saying that animators shouldn’t study past animation, but what I am saying is that it’s the world outside your body that is shaping any artistry within you. Imitating Chuck Jones’ blinks won’t help you other than knowing that Jones did it that way.

Learn about your business, but also learn about the world. That’s the only way you can relate to how your character should think and emote. All of the Disney drawings on this site and other ones really won’t help you figure out YOUR character’s development. Only you can do that.

- This was a pretty quiet week, except for Tuesday. That was the day the Oscar nominations were revealed. I don’t think I’ve been as happy with the overall nominations since the year Doctor DeSoto got nominated. Since I’ve been a member in New York, I’ve always felt that our voice was barely heard in the Hollywood awarding of the prizes. My vote always felt like a little guppy in the salmon swim upstream. This year I feel well represented.

I had hoped that one of the French and Spanish 2D features would be nominated against the blockbuster boys club of Spielberg, Dreamworks & Disney. I was adamantly against TINTIN (first) because it was a MoCap film and (second) because it was a bad movie with a poorly realized script. This was the last thing I’d have expected from Spielberg. I’d have preferred the bad, limited animation of the TV series with a good script. And whatta you know! TINTIN and Pixar didn’t get nominated. And, even better, not one of the two foreign features but both of them got into the competition. How happy could I be?!

The same was true of the short films. The best of the Short list was nominated. I really believe that. If I had to pick five shorts from the mixed bag of films we saw, I’d have chosen four of these five. And the fifth is technically superb however trite the script. I couldn’t be more pleased.

As I said, this extends to all of the films. I’d have chosen eight of the nominated nine films for Best Picture. I know my favorite doesn’t have a shot at it, but I’m happy it got recognized.

Now to see all the docs and foreign films to vote on them. If any compare to THE SEPARATION, I’ll really be very satisfied with this year’s crop of films.

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Nominations for the Cesars, the French version of the Oscars, came out this week. For Best Animated Film (they combine shorts with features for this category) the five nominees are:
- LE CHAT DU RABBIN (THE RABBI’S CAT) by Joann Sfar, Antoine Delesvaux, a 2D animated feature.
- LE CIRQUE (THE CIRCUS) by Nicolas Brault, a painterly animated short from the NFB.
- LA QUEUE DE LA SOURIS (THE MOUSE’S TALE) by Benjamin Renner
- LE TABLEAU, a 2D short. (THE PAINTING) by Jean-François Laguionie, a 2D feature from the award winning animator.
- UN MONSTRE À PARIS (A MONSTER IN PARIS) by Bibo Bergeron, a cgi feature.

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By the way, the one film that seems to be swooping it up in this Awards season is the animated short, A Morning Stroll by Grant Orchard and . This film is the only one that was nominated by the BAFTAs but also the Oscars. It won prizes at Annecy, Bradford, and Brooklyn. Congratulations to Studio AKA, director Grant Orchard and producer, Sue Goffe. I’ve seen it half a dozen times so far and could probably sit through as many again.

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For those of you in NY who’d like to get a look at the Oscar nominated feature, Chico and Rita, it will be screened on Tuesday, February 21st, at the Jacob Burns Film Center.

Designed by Javier Mariscal and directed by Fernando Trueba (Belle Epoque) the story tells a love story about a Cuban piano player and his love of a beautiful singer with an extraordinary voice. The film features a luscious track of Cuban jazz as well as classics from Woody Herman, Dizzy Gillespie, and Charlie Parker.

The Jacob Burns Film Center
364 Manville Road map
Pleasantville, NY
www.burnsfilmcenter.org

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Coming March 26th & 27th the IFC Center will present An Evening with Don Hertzfeldt

Acclaimed animator Don Hertzfeldt will appear in person to present his most recent film together with a selection of his award-winning earlier shorts Monday.

March 26, 2012 at 7:00pm! It’s Such a Beautiful Day, makes its exclusive regional premiere at IFC Center. This is the third and final chapter in a trilogy about a mysterious man named Bill. The entire trilogy will be screened together for the first time on new 35mm prints, followed by a live Q&A with Hertzfeldt

Mon, Mar 26 at: 7:00 PM and 9:30 PM
Tue, Mar 27 at: 7:00 PM

Tickets for this special event are $17.50 general admission, $15.50 seniors, $13.50 IFC Center members

The IFC Center
323 Sixth Avenue, NYC
www.ifccenter.com

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- A favored blog read this week came on Cartoon Brew. Amid Amidi posted Steven Colbert‘s interview with Maurice Sendak. The second part is the better one, when Sendak starts singing. It’s a real laugh out loud. Go here to watch them.

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- The post that stirred me most was on Mike Barrier‘s site. Actually, something in the comments on that post got me thinking, particularly Jim Korkis‘ note and Don Benson‘s followup. I haven’t quite yet formed my thoughts, so I won’t respond until another time, but you should go and read the post and the comments. There’s some real conversation happening there.

- I must say I was happy with a couple of the posts this past week. The John Wilson piece on Monday can only be bettered by this coming Monday’s piece on Irma La Douce. On Tuesday, the 1953 magazine article on Geoffrey Martin‘s designs for Animal Farm made for an excellent piece. Many thanks to Chris Rushworth for that. I also have wanted to combine all four of the walk cycles from 101 Dalmatians and have thought about it for over a year. I’m glad I finally got around to doing it. And, naturally, the fine posts from Bill Peckmann‘s collection rounded out the week. So, in all, I was pleased with what I got to post. Sorry to boast, just thinking aloud. It’s day to day here, so I’m often surprised with what shows up.

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BAFTAs

The BAFTA nominations were revealed on Tuesday morning. The award for Best Animated Short includes the following three nominees:

Abuelas (Grandmothers) by Afarin Eghbal, Kasia Malipan & Francesca Gardiner is a mixed-media short.

Bobby Yeah by Robert Morgan is a stop motion animation film that looks like it came out of the hands of David Lynch.

A Morning Stroll by Grant Orchard & Sue Goffe is a film that’s been out there for a bit, seen at many film festivals and on the Oscar short list. (This is the film I like most.)

Congratulations to all the film makers.

The BAFTA nominees for Animated Feature include: TINTIN, ARTHUR CHRISTMAS and RANGO. Let’s hope for RANGO to win, but I expect the Brits to give it to ARTHUR CHRISTMAS. (Please, not TINTIN!)

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NAACP Nomination

- Speaking of nominations, I learned on Thursday that I was nominated for an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Children’s Program. My show, I CAN BE PRESIDENT, was nominated. This is big for me, and I’d love to win it.The show had such a low budget and was such a problematic schedule that it was a terror to get through production. I’m pleased it came out so well. Congratulations also to the guys that helped make it: Matt Clinton, Katrina Gregorius, and Christine O’Neill.

Outstanding Children’s Program
A.N.T. Farm – Disney Channel
Dora the Explorer – Nickelodeon
Go, Diego! Go! – Nickelodeon
I Can Be President: A Kid’s-Eye View – HBO
My Family Tree – Disney Channel

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Mars Needs Moms

- The Oscar watch was down to the last (and I do mean the last) animated feature. MARS NEEDS MOMS was better than Hoodwinked and Chipwrecked, and I also think it was better than TINTIN – another MoCap film. Simon Wells directed MARS, and his work is reliably stable. (He directed PRINCE OF EGYPT, BALTO and WE”RE BACK.) He and Wendy Wells also wrote the script from Berkeley Breathed’s book. Like TINTIN, the film had a breakneck pace, but unlike TINTIN it didn’t ignore some of the basic rules of cinema. No annoying swooping spins around the characters, with an endlessly moving camera; it also didn’t feature lots of busy work (as if to prove it was animated)l nor did it have a breathless pace (as if to create Action! Adventure! and Tedium!). No, unlike TINTIN, MARS NEEDS MOMS was more craftily observant of the audience’s reaction. It knew when to stop the action, then go back to the danger. It knew when to add humor instead of just running, running, running.

However, like TINTIN the dead eyes were hard to get into, and the graphics were horrible to look at. Sure, it’s MoCap and tied to the live action, but does it have to have a faux-realistic look to it? Couldn’t it have been more cartoon? (Couldn’t TINTIN have been flattened to look like the comic strip, despite the MoCap?) The lead boy looked to have 5 o’clock shadow on his face in all the scenes on Earth.

The filmmakers want it to be called animation, but under the end credits they include footage of all the live actors doing key lines and being shot with all the tennis balls and helmets. Maybe it should have been live action with just the martians and sets done with MoCap. The film didn’t work, but it worked better than the Spielberg’s animation effort, TINTIN. Unfortunately, it won’t get an Oscar nomination or a Golden GLobe, like TINTIN. Neither film deserves one.

In voting for this award, I sat through:
PUSS IN BOOTS,
CARS 2,
RIO,
WINNIE THE POOH,
TINTIN,
HOODWINKED TWO,
HAPPY FEET 2,
RANGO,
ALVIN & THE CHIPMUNKS: CHIPWRECKED,
WRINKLES,
A CAT IN PARIS,
CHICO & RITA,
ARTHUR CHRISTMAS,
KUNG FU PANDA 2,
ALOIS NEBEL,
GNOMEO & JULIET and
MARS NEEDS MOMS.

The only one I couldn’t sit through to the end was HOODWINKED.
It was worth it to see CHICO & RITA, A CAT IN PARIS and even WRINKLES.
I also didn’t mind RANGO, KUNG FU PANDA and HAPPY FEET 2.
None of them compared to Sylvain Chomet’s THE ILLUSIONIST.

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Gene & Zdenka

- Gene Deitch has added two pieces to his blog, his first arrival in Czechoslovakia being met by “Lulka” the emissary from the Czech studio. Then the second post details the meeting with Zdenka, who soon became the love of his life and his wife.
They’re both warm and wonderful reads.

The surprise and the gem of the Zdenka piece is a long video (scroll all the way down) which gives the history of their studio and their relationship. It’s quite a sweet film that’s well worth watching to see if only to see what changes the animated studio has undergone in the years that Mr. Deitch has been in charge. You also get to feel more at home with this great animation director and almost feel as though you know him by the end of it. It’s a really good piece that I don’t think you’ll regret viewing. (I was surprised at how quickly the one hour video downloaded.)

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- John Dilworth reported this week that his last film, Bunny Bashing, is now available on YouTube. So I’ve embedded it, above.

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And here’s an interesting use of animation in this video designed to
inform Liberals why they shouldn’t despair over the work by Obama –
which, in fact, is remarkably good despite the unyielding criticism
from the Left and the Right.

Found on Andrew Sullivan’s site, The Daily Beast.

- The movies are running down, and things are getting quieter for Oscar voters. Our ballots are due next Monday. These are for only the one category – Best Picture. We choose our favorites in order of choice. Then there’ll be a complicated calculation of the votes to come up with the 5 to 10 top pictures. There were only three films to see this past week – all animated.

Tuesday
Winnie the Pooh – I went into this film fully anticipating something excellent. The reviews I’d scanned were positive, and some of my favorite animators were back doing a 2D film for Walt Disney Studios.
I’m confident Walt would not have been happy. I’m also sure that the Nine Old Men would have gone into retirement rather than work on this film. Don’t get me wrong, the graphics are as brilliant as you might expect. The animation is never less than fine and often brilliant. The backgrounds are at least as good as any of the Winnie the Pooh series done by Disney. The voices are surprisingly adept at recapturing and reworking the sounds of the past films.

It’s the story that’s god awful. The writers talk down to the two year olds in the audience and make all of the characters seem challenged, to say the least. They don’t come off as children but all sound and act simple minded and totally unbelievable. (I wonder in retrospect if ANY words are spelled correctly in this film.) The movie was certainly a challenge to sit through at the very long and tedious one hour, eight minute length.

It really got me angry. Is Disney so incapable of writing a workable script for animation? It would seem so. And given the horrible story of Cars 2, John Lasseter has his name and approval on two of the worst written films of the year. It’s a shame. I know these comments will make some of my friends in animation angry, but you have to recognize how poor the material is in this film. A relatively low budget and tight schedule for studio animation is no excuse. It would have been better to have a good script and still pictures. Go back and look again at the wonderful first Winnie the Pooh from Disney. Then look at the Russian Winnie the Pooh by Fyodor Khitruk . Look at any of Norstein’s brilliant stories such as Hedgehog in the Fog. (I could easily name a hundred better films for this age group.)

To say the least, I was disappointed.

The second animated feature that night was scheduled to be The Smurfs, but it was disqualified by the Academy for not having enough animation in it.

Thursday
Kung Fu Panda 2 – This, obviously, is a reworking/sequel to the original film, Kung Fu Panda (1) and an outgrowth of that film which is also, now, a Nickelodeon tv series. Lotsa money here, and the film did well. The primary point of publicity I’ve read for this film is that the director, Jennifer Yuh Nelson, is now the director who’s garnered the highest gross box office of any female. A dubious accomplishment from my vantage point, but it is something to tout, I suppose. The thing is she did a great job as director of the film.

It’s not quite as special as the first film, but it’s sure darned entertaining, and there’s quite a few nicely animated scenes. It’s obvious that they’ve gone to great length to add a lot to the Angelina Jolie character so that they could maximize the voice. (No doubt there was rewriting to do once she took a look at the script.) Dustin Hoffman’s character takes a beating, getting quite a bit less of a part. The film gets a bit too Kung Fu for my taste with more than a few wildly active sequences that you have to tread through, but overall it’s miles above Puss In Boots.

Wrinkles – This is a Spanish animated feature adapted from Paco Roca’s graphic novel. Stylistically, to me, it was very ordinary. Nothing to write home about, and the animation was TV lite – very limited in an H&B way. I can’t remember one good walk cycle in the entire film.

However, the writing was extraordinary. Despite the limited graphics, you really fall for the two lead guys in this show so that you really care about them. The Spanish voice overs were very effective and all of the characters were believably acted. This film should be seen if you get the chance. It’s an intelligent and adult film.

As a matter of fact, this is the opposite of Winnie the Pooh. It has a great script with poor animation whereas WTP has very bad script with nice animation. I prefer Wrinkles and wonder if I can ever make it through Pooh again.

- Only one film left to see, on Tuesday, Mars Needs Moms. Looking forward to it. I do generally like Simon Wells‘ work; he was an “additional story artist” on Kung Fu Panda 2.

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- Last week, you’ll remember, I wrote about going to the memorial party for Vince Cafarelli, who passed away in December. Candy Kugel and others at Buzzco teamed to make a video of the event as well as photos taken at the party. It raced through Facebook this week, but I thought I’d post it here for anyone who’s missed it. (I rarely go to Facebook, so I seem to be missing out on a lot of things and assume there must be others like me.) To see the stills alone, they’re also on Facebook with IDs.

I have to say, I’m a bit disappointed with the lack of commentary on Vince’s passing on ASIFA East‘s multiple sites. Their newsletter went out this week – no mention. It took me a bit of searching to find a reposting of this video on their Facebook page. They sent me a dozen notices about their auction to raise money for the organization, but when a member (who’s been a member since its first day) dies, there’s barely a notice. We have to honor some of those who served on the front line and shaped the history of NY animation, instead they’re virtually ignored. There aren’t too many of the originals with us anymore, and I’d like to hear more about them, too. ASIFA East posts plenty of interviews with people who have been in the business for a year or two, yet nothing about the founders of the feast: Ed Smith or Tissa David or Vinnie Bell or Phil Kimmelman or Bill Peckmann or Bill Feigenbaum or some others out there.

By the way, ASIFA Hollywood has already contacted Candy to get information about Vinnie for their Day of Remembrance coming at the end of February.

Forgive me, I’m just ranting, and I shouldn’t be taken seriously. It just doesn’t seem like the ASIFA East I used to know.

Maybe I’ll start interviewing some of those people for this blog. What the hell. Gotta get their thoughts and a bit of their history SOON.

This past week

- Today’s the day we vote on the short list of the short films to select the nominees. They will be screening the live action shorts from 10am to 1pm. This will be followed by a lunch break, then the animated shorts for another two hours. I’ve seen and remember all the animated shorts, and, in fact, have already voted on this short list. So I’ll skip that second screening. (Two of the best of these shorts are on line. Cartoon Brew has put up Dimanche and Wild Life. There’s a trailer for a third, A Morning Stroll. All of the others are films I’ve seen a couple of times and have no favorites. (But have dislikes.) I wouldn’t mind if any of the three won the big award and hope all three are nominated.)

Tonight, Heidi and I will go to the annual After New Year’s party of one her theatrical friends. Lots of great Broadway people will be there.

- I’ve seen plenty of movies this week. We’re coming to the near-end of the animated features.
Tuesday we saw Alois Nebel, a film from the Czech Republic about a Polish station master at a small town train station circa 1989. Smuggled Russian alcohol, a murder and lots of atmosphere fill this film. The plot isn’t the clearest, but there’s atmosphere to spare. The animation is tightly rotoscoped and looks like a cross between Waking Life and Waltz with Bashir. Lots and lots of vehicles mix with live action smoke and dust helps add to that atmosphere. The film is essentially a high contrast black and white Eastern European movie.

Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked. I’ll say this, I was able to sit all the way through the film though I kept asking myself why. The film is obviously designed for the five year old girls out there. I’m not sure the audience goes far beyond that. I was entertained watching the poor live action performances as they stared just off while talking to the animated characters. Never a winning eye contact is made. Half the time I couldn’t understand what the chipmunks were saying in their too-sped-up voices. By the way, why hire celebrities like Amy Poehler, Anna Faris or Christina Applegate if you’re going to speed up their voices to an unintelligible sound so that they all sound alike?

On Wednesday it was back to live action:
WE is the first film directed by Madonna. It’s about two love affairs one between between King Edward VIII and American divorcée Wallis Simpson. (If you remember the movie The King’s Speech. His brother who left the throne to marry an American – the American was Wallis Simpson, and she’s the focus of this movie.) It’s also about the affair of a married woman with a Russian security guard. The two stories interrelate, and they both relate to Madonna’s life. The public attention keeps her down on the farm. The movie got too precious, and audience members laughed at points when they should have been upset.

Sherlock Holmes 2 has gotten even flashier that the first film. It didn’t help. The film became monotonous in its loud dissonant attack on the senses. All climax; no movie. I walked out 2/3 of the way through it.

On Thursday there were two animated features:
Chico and Rita is a Spanish animated jazz love story about a jazz pianist and a singer. It’s drawn in a rotoscoped loose line style with lots of evocative backgrounds copied off some beautifully detailed archival photographs. (Many remind me of Johnny Vita’s fine backgrounds for Fritz the Cat.) The film is lovely and touching. It was very nice to see a truly adult feature film with large adult themes (as opposed to something calling itself “adult” and vying for the 14 year old boy’s attention.) One of the better films in this competition.

Cars 2; I’d already seen this film and hope to not sit through it again. (See Sherlock Holmes, above, for the review.) The first Cars started loud and stayed there. This one doesn’t have any of the character development or quiet moments of the first film. A failure in my book.

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- Now let’s talk about something worth viewing. I was always a fan of Saul Bass‘ incredible title design. Once I saw some of the Hitchcock designs he created, I was sold and did everything to see anything he did. But then I kept looking and found another designer whose work I felt closer to. Dan Perri has had a very long and brilliant career designing some of the greatest title sequences that are somewhat less flashy than Bass’ work, but every bit as notable for their designs. His titles don’t get the same attention given to Saul Bass, but they’re every bit as deserving.

Perri designed: Bull Durham, Midnight Run, Wall Street, Raising Arizona, Blood Simple, Star Wars, Caddyshack, The Exorcist, In the Valley of Elah and MANY others. He designed many Scorcese films such as Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, After Hours, King of Comedy and The Gangs of New York. As a matter of fact, I was disappointed when Scorcese left Dan Perri to work with Saul Bass on Casino, The Age of Innocence and two others. (Randy Balsmeyer designed the credits for Hugo.)

This past week I found a site for the man’s work, and spent a good hour there looking at many a title sequence. DanPerri.com is a site you have to visit if you have any interest at all in the form. Unfortunately, they don’t give complete sequences, but you can find them on the site, ArtoftheTitle.com. There, you can see Days of Heaven, Mulholland Drive, Raging Bull, and many others worth searching for.

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- Screen writer, Irv Bauer, has produced a DVD on the hows of writing a screenplay. Mr. Bauer was one of the writers on the John Dilworth series, Courage the Cowardly Dog. The 4 DVD set can be purchased from Amazon.

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- The New York Times hasn’t been remiss in noticing the Ghibli Studio retrospective at the IFC Center. They’ve reviewed two of the films that opened in NY for the first time. Porco Rosso got a love letter of a review from Jeanette Catsoulis on Dec 22nd and Pom Poco received a relatively positive notice with a few darting barbs in the review by Andy Webster.

There are capsule reviews and star ratings for all of the films in the program.

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- Last night, Friday, Buzzco hosted a memorial gathering in honor of animator, Vinnie Cafarelli, who died this past December 3rd. It was a sad and moving event, but it was wonderful that Vinnie had brought together some of the older animators to mix with younger.

Candy Kugel had set up a computer running videos of a number of pieces Vinnie had animated, another screen had home movies running, and another table had a book of great photos. (Including several of Vinnie in Cuba with Pablo Ferro posing with some rebels hoisting rifles.)

Bill Feigenbaum, Amid Amidi, Cottie Kilbanks, George Griffin, Arnie Levin, Lee Corey, Larry Ruppel, Ray Kosarin, John Dilworth, Ken Kimmelman, John Canemaker, Vinnie Bell, Debbie Solomon, Howard Beckerman, J.J. Sedelmeir, Tony Eastman, Doug Crane, Richard O’Connor and many others attended. (I apologize if I didn’t post your name; there just were too many for me to I.D.) It was an important event. I kept thinking Vinnie would have loved it.

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- The genius of an illustrator, Ronald Searle died this past week. It was upsetting on many levels. He was involved in many animated pieces. I grew up with his art all around me. His artwork was seemingly everywhere in the early 70s, from books to cartoons to New Yorker covers to ads to movie titles such as Scrooge, the Albert Finney musical, or Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines. Fortunately, he leaves his art behind, but it’s a disappointment to know that Mr. Searle is no longer there. (May I advise you to go to Matt Jones’ tribute of a site, Perpetua, for wonderful pieces about Mr. Searle.)

Last May we posted artwork for the Dave Hilberman directed film, Energetically Yours. You can find those preserved cels here. They were contributed by Hilberman’s son, Dan.

I’d also posted some cartoons from a collection book by Searle titled The Female Approach. Tomorrow, in a small memorium for Mr. Searle, I’ll post more cartoons from that book.

More Linkage

Two weeks ago I listed some links I visit weekly, if not daily. There are more that I’d like to add to that list. I don’t think less of any of these links, it’s just that I didn’t want that last post to be too long. The following are not personal art blogs; they update their material frequently, and it’s usually informative on some level.

Andreas Deja‘s site, Deja View, has one of the most valuable animation links on the internet. He posts only impeccably beautiful Disney art from his collection. The images are always iconic and beautiful, and I find myself coming back to revisit the same posts over and over again. If you don’t know this site, go now and make up for lost time.

Hans Bacher‘s site, One1more2time3′s Weblog, is just about the most attractive site out there. Hans was an art director for Disney having great influence on a number of important animated features including Mulan and Beauty and the Beast. Not only does Hans share artwork from those films, but he offers images from many other influential studios and artists such as Richard Williams, Heinz Edelmann, and Zagreb Film. There are reconstructed backgrounds culled from frame grabs as well as Hans’ own beautiful art. I love this site.

Gene Deitch tells stories. He’s a master who has walked through some of the most important history of animation. His site, Gene Deitch Credits, gives a personal view of many key people not usually discussed in animation history books. Jim Tyer, Phil Scheib, Duane Crowther, Jam Handy, Bob Kurtz and Eli Bauer share space with John Hubley, Jules Feiffer and Ralph Bakshi. It’s a principal stop for any animation addict.

If you’re a fan of Hanna-Barbera‘s early work, Yowp! is the site for you. The shared material, here, is endlessly revealing: layouts, animation, music cues, newspaper clippings. It goes on and features something new just about every day. I love this site since finding only a few months ago. After all, I was really coming into my own at about the time H&B broke through with Huckleberry Hound and the Flintstones. Their work had a major influence on me. This site helps fill a missing need within me – all that great Ed Benedict design, all that beautiful brushwork inking.

Animondays is David Levy‘s blog originally built for ASIFA East when David was their President. He continues on the site with fine interviews of people like Linda Simensky, PES and Rob Renzetti. He also writes fine essays which usually offer a levelheaded view of the business of animation. As its title suggests, the blog changes every Monday morning, so it’s worth the visit once a week.

Mark Sonntag always has great and rare material on his blog, Tagtoonz. The material usually pertains to early Disney, and, as a result, it’s usually a lot of fun. Comic strips, posters and photos are always originals and just about impossible to see elsewhere.

What About Thad? from Thad Komorowski changes infrequently, but the material presented is usually top notch. Posts of hard-to-see movies or comic strips are certainly well worth the visit, but he also gives strong analysis of some of the less noticed animators (such as Alex Lovy). I can’t tell you how often I’ve returned back just to revisit his posting of Lovy’s drawings from Ace In the Hole. The material is often esoteric, but the information is important.

There are also a few sites I enjoy visiting for their frame grabs or mosaics (many built on Hans Perk‘s drafts found at A Film LA.) Among these my favorites are:

Kevin Langley‘s Cartoons, Model Sheets and Stuff,
Sanek‘s More Mosaics and Stuff, and
Stephen Hartley‘s Likely Looney, Mostly Merrie and, his less frequently updated, Blabbing on Arts and Culture.

Finally, the last site usually has little to do with animation even though it’s written by one of our key animation people. And it’s as eccentric as you might expect.

Tom Sito‘s site, Tom’s Blog, is a daily history lesson in the making. Tom gives an account of things that have happened in history on the day you’re checking in. What happened at Wounded Knee? The Howdy Doody Show premiered. When was Emperor Quang Tung of Vietnam crowned? I love such information. I can store it or forget it, but I enjoy reading it. Updates come every day with a quiz to start you off.

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The Week

It’s always quiet this week between Christmas and New Year’s. I’ve been waiting for some word from several clients, and I can’t even reach them this week. As expected, I might add. Hopefully, the holidays won’t extend too far into 2012.

Movies have also been quiet. I did get to a screening of Bridesmaids on Wednesday. The film was better than I expected. I’ve never been very hot on Kristen Wiig. I thought her writing was fine, but the performance was a little bit shy and reserved. This is her usual; she never goes that extra beat needed for the type characters she plays. It becomes obvious the second Melissa McCarthy steps on screen. She steals the movie easily acting very natural in overdrive-mode. I laughed aloud with almost every scene she has on screen (except the last with a joke I don’t think worked for her character.) I’ll be interested to see if McCarthy gets an Oscar nod for Best Supporting Actress. The Actor/voters usually are reserved with nominations to comedians. It was a good movie, not a great one.

Next week there are four animated features to view:
on Tuesday: ALOIS NEBEL and ALVIN & THE CHIPMUNKS : CHIPWRECKED
on Thursday: CHICO & RITA and CARS 2

ALOIS NEBEL looks to be MoCap with flat 2D-like animation.
ALVIN got good reviews and looks as horrible as I’d expect.
CHICO & RITA looks rotoscoped and interesting.
CARS 2 I’ve already seen and hated. It’s a bad movie.

Also on Wednesday they’re screening: W.E. and SHERLOCK HOLMES: A GAME OF SHADOWS.

W.E. is the Madonna-directed film about Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson.
SHERLOCK HOLMES 2 looks even worse than the first one. A violent, loud race to the end credits.

Last night, Heidi and I went to see the play THE ROAD TO MECCA starring Rosemary Harris, Carla Gugino and Jim Dale. The tickets were gratis since Heidi works for the Roundabout Theater Company. I love Carla Gugino and Jim Dale’s work, so was pleased to see them in the show. Rosemary Harris was also impeccable. It was a great show, and the actors have only been doing it for two weeks. Wait till it opens! Beautiful set, great lighting and fabulous acting in a classic play. What more could you want.

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A Cartoon

Having rushed out the animated Christmas Card over the course of a weekend, I couldn’t help but wonder why I wasn’t doing more of that same thing. Making short animated bits – that could maybe be tied together – over the rest of the year. It was a lot of fun doing it, and couldn’t possibly be a waste of time doing more. The only problem is, naturally, writing them so that they wouldn’t be a total waste of time. Who wants to see more bad animation out there? It’s something I have to think about, really. It was a lot of fun doing the one short; it cost me nothing more than my time and energy.

I think of this often when I visit Yoni Goodman‘s site. He does a lot of short animation exercises and posts them frequently. His work is exceptional, too. Take a look at the recent anti-cholera film he did; it’s a really fine piece of work, but those tests are what really get my blood roiling.

- One of my favorites of my films is The Hunting of the Snark. I adapted this from Lewis Carroll’s poem. It was an enigma to the audience when it was first published – Carroll refused to explain its meaning, and it’s an enigma now.

I remember screening it with an audience of fifth graders – about 200 of them along with a number of their parents. The program, in Chicago, was part of a retrospective of some of the children’s films I’d done at the time. I made the decision to show the Snark, even though I wasn’t sure the audience would sit still for it.

The response was amazing. The adults, during the Q&A period, had a lot of questions. The kids had no problems. When, finally, one parent asked me what it was supposed to mean, I decided to turn it around. I asked if one of the kids could answer the question. A lot of kids raised their hands, and the first one gave me the appropriate answer.
A bunch of guys go hunting for a monster________This is how the map was illustrated by
that’ll make them disappear, and one of_________the original illustrator, Henry Holiday.
them catches it. For all intent and purposes
that IS what it’s about.

I love showing this film as part of my programs. It’s easy for me to discuss, and I’m proud of it. I don’t think most animators like it, but that doesn’t bother me.

During the story there’s one key part that all illustrators love to illustrate.

“Other maps are such shapes, with their islands and capes!
But we’ve got our brave Captain to thank:
(So the crew would protest) “that he’s bought us the best–
A perfect and absolute blank!”

_
A blank page! What could be easier to illustrate? A couple of illustrators have cheated such as this map found on line:

_

Figure One: Bellman’s Blank Ocean Chart _
Barry Smith at the University of Buffalo dept of Philosophy uses this map – a blank slate – to treat it as a map of heaven. Carroll was an Evangelical minister, but I’m confident this is not what he had in mind when he conjured up the lines in the poem.
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Mehendra Singh has a website which is slowly illustrating the entire poem. His illustration for this passage appears to the right. This is part of his comment accompanying the illustration.

Yet another shameless Magritte pastiche, and not the last one to grace these pages, I’ll wager. Shameless — the 10th Muse of Protosurrealism!

Even more shameless — this insistence that the crew of the HMS Snark use the French language for navigational purposes when it is clearly evident to anyone who has ever been lost at sea that English is the natural language of confusion. This is easily verified. Stand on a streetcorner in any francophone city and ask a stranger: where am I? If necessary, pull at shirtsleeves and wave your arms, speak very slowly while pronouncing every phoneme at the utmost decibel level.

Singh has a curious and interesting site in its own right.
Let me encourage you to check it out for all the original illustration on it.
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_

This is how Quentin Blake chose to illustrate it in his version. Since he obviously was nervous about just showing the blank map, he illustrated the Bellman holding it.
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This is Ralph Steadman’s version. He went for the gold and just showed the map.
Yet, it’s still, obviously, a Steadman.______________
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This is how I chose to depict it in my film. Showing hands and table behind it,
gave me the opportunity of trucking in to white to transition to the next scene –
an image of the sea, itself.

Doug H. in Australia responded to the material, above, with an e-mail full of other wonderful illustrations of the same part of the poem. I’d like to post some of these illustrations with many thanks to Doug. With respect to all of the illustrators, about half of whom
are unfamiliar names to me. They merit a good look.

___ Just scroll down. Click any image to enlarge a bit.)
1 2
______1. Frank Hinder (1989)_______________________2. Harold Jones (1975)
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__ 3.__ 4.
______3. Michael Capozzola (2005)_________________4. Kelly Oechsli (1966)

5.
5. John Lord (2006)

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6._________________________________7.

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______6. Max Ernst ((1950) _______________________7. Jonathan Dixon (1992)

8.
8. Helen Oxenbury (1970)

Tintin

A number of movies premiered this past week and I got to see a lot of them. So let me give you brief comments about what I did see. But first a film I saw a few weeks back opened on Tuesday this week and didn’t get the rave reviews that were expected. Tintin shows up at the Rotten Tomatoes tomatometer with a 76% from critic notices. The papers in NY weren’t kind. However, Manohla Dargis in the NYTimes saw the exact film I did, and I’d like to share the last three paragraphs from her review, summing it up:

Drawn in a simple, elegant style known as clear line, Hergé’s Tintin has a spherical head, a stub nose and black ovals for eyes. His half-circle brows sit on his face like accent marks and, with his red-smudged cheeks and beads of sweat that invariably pop off his head, give Tintin surprising expressivity.

The simplicity is as crucial to the comic’s power as is Hergé’s ability to turn a recognizable world into bold lines and blots of color. It’s a face that looks like a mask, one readers can slip on as they rush through the story or leisurely turn the page. And it’s a face that, along with Tintin’s asexuality and lack of a family, makes him into a marvelous blank, an avatar for armchair adventurers.

Like the screen Tintin, the movie proves less than inviting because it’s been so wildly overworked: there is hardly a moment of downtime, a chance to catch your breath or contemplate the tension between the animated Expressionism and the photo-realist flourishes. Relax, you think, as Tintin and the story rush off again, as if Mr. Spielberg were afraid of losing us with European-style longueurs. Bore us? He’s Steven Spielberg! This lack of modulation grows tedious, which is too bad because, as always with him, there are interludes of cinematic delight, when his visual imagination (like the transition in which Tintin and Haddock seem to appear in a puddle someone steps in) and his Spielbergian playfulness get the better of his insistence on bludgeoning us with technique.

Graphically, it isn’t the MoCap that bothers me so much as the unattractive half-drawn, half-photorealist style. Are they not able to flatten out the art, using the MoCap, to simulate the actual look of the comic strip? I don’t know, but I’d be curious to know. The problem in this film is the story: rush, rush, rush, scream, make a lot of noise and end it. That’s not a movie. It’s the Mummy formula – or for that matter Sherlock Holmes. Cheap and uninventive.

Movies

Now to the films I saw this week:

Two more of the animated features list passed on by.
1. A Cat in Paris. This film was great. Beautiful to see such excellent graphic design done so well. The story was exceptional and the film, in French, was one of the better animated features I’ve seen this year. The animation wasn’t always the best character animation, but no film these days offers that. It was always fluid and well drawn.

2. Hoodwinked Too. Trash. I couldn’t get out of it fast enough. The non-stop violence was supposed to be funny, and it was just pathetic. I stayed to the exact half-point and left, disgusted. The worst animated feature seen thus far.

3. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. This was a nasty crime film based on the novel of the same name. David Fincher (Zodiac, Se7en) is up to his usual smutty stuff. As a director, he’s good enough to keep you watching, but cheap enough to make you want to leave. The film plays like a film defending the rights of women, but it felt awfully misogynist to me. The acting by Rooney Mara is worth the ride.

4. We Bought a Zoo. A sweet, light entertainment with the heart of a RomCom and completely dependent on Matt Damon to bring most of the personality to the film with his performance. He does. The other performers, including Scarlett Johansson, help. The film would have been better with a bit more darkness in it. The music was good, and the film would have worked as well on DVD.

5. A Separation. This was the best movie this week. An Iranian film about a failing marriage involving an Alzheimer father, a really poor caretaker whose daughter and husband don’t help the situation, a daughter caught up in the middle of the parents’ squabble, and the morality behind a situation that arises involving the civil courts. Ultimately, it all boils down to a father/husband whose arrogant stubborn way stops him from telling his wife that he loves her and would like her not to abandon him and their daughter. It’s a real story, told matter-of-factly with a lot of heart but no melodrama.

6. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. This was a heart-breaking film about a teenager whose father dies in the 9/11 World Trade Center disaster. The very smart boy finds a key with the word “Black” on its envelope, and he decides to search all the families in NY with the surname “Black”. He feels this will unlock the key to understanding why his father died and will, at the least, extend the father’s life for however long the search will take. The boy has Asperger’s syndrome, so he has a method. The film is a bit too manipulative for my taste, but the actors are all brilliant (particularly Max Von Sydow who doesn’t talk in the film). It should definitely be seen, but prepare for a few tears along the way.

No more movies until after Christmas.

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The Films of Michael Sporn

- Network Awesome is an amazing site that offers more and more films (including very many animated films) for viewing. Most are from the archives of YouTube, but Network Awesome has collected them and intelligently written about them. (Included in the site is a magazine.) The Films of Michael Sporn has just turned up on the site, and you may want to check it out for a collected number of shorts that have been present on YouTube but not very public.

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A Wedding

- Congratulations to Bill Plympton and Sandrine Flament. They were married yesterday. It’s big news because Bill has a reputation for being NY animation’s inveterate bachelor. I hope they have a long, happy marriage.

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Linkage

There were a lot of links that didn’t make it to my blog last week. I do intend to continue that, probably next Saturday. I have more I want to pass on detailing my weekly travels around the internet. Sorry I couldn’t get them all into the one post.

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A Funeral

- Yesterday, Václav Havel was buried. Gene Deitch sent an email about the funeral. It hasn’t yet gone up on his site, so let me post the email:

Today was the state funeral for Václav Havel. During these days of mourning, six black horses drew the same coffin-bearing carriage through the streets of Prague, that 74 years ago carried the body of Czechoslovakia’s first president, Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk.

Václav Havel was surely the only person in history who, within just a couple of years, was the president of three separate nations, each with its separate constitution, currency and postage stamps!

Havel was the last president of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic, the only president of the short-lived Czech & Slovak Federative Republic, and the first president of the present Czech Republic!

Watching it all, Zdenka and I were transported back 22 years when we stood in the throngs, jingling our keys as he spoke to us all, proclaiming the end of the long dark night of Soviet imposed dictatorship.

Today, most of the world‘s leaders are here to pay homage to the man who was the symbol of the end of the long dark night of the totalitarian régime in this country, when the “Velvet Revolution“ concept of 1989 was spreading throughout the countries of central and eastern Europe.

Now we can expect that soon the Prague Airport at RuzynÄ› will be renamed “The Vacláv Havel International Airport,” and that almost every town in the Czech Republic, and perhaps many throughout the world, will have streets, squares, libraries, cultural centers, universities, named for him, and surely statues and postage stamps of him will proliferate! He will be long be remembered as writer, dramatist, dreamer, activist, and ultimately three times president, who restored the good name and worldwide prestige of this little country.

I’m attaching here one of our treasures, a signed note of thanks to Zdenka, for the original piece of Japanese calligraphy which we brought from San Francisco and which Zdenka and I sent to him. Havel typically signed his name with a green pen, adding a little red heart, that became his symbol.

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A Christmas Card

- Tom Hachtman sent me a bunch of tries at his Christmas Card featuring Gertrude, Alice and Pabs. I was going to select one and feature itl then I was going to aim for a couple of them. I’ve decided, finally, to post them all. Here they are:

Nativity Eight | Nativity Eleven

Nativity Fifteen Nativity Five

Nativity Four | Nativity Fourteen

Nativity Nine | Nativity Seven

Nativity Six | Nativity Ten

Nativity Thirteen | Nativity Three

Nativity Twelve | Nativity Two

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Another Christmas Card

- This is the first year I’ve done an animated card. I admit to not liking the medium. There’s something about a mailed hard copy of a Christmas Card that’s nice, but seeing Richard O’Connor‘s Ace and Son animated card convinced me to try my hand at it. The art and animation took me a couple of days to do it (by myself), and it’s more a compromise than a great piece. But I’m not embarrassed by it. At least it’s different. I sent it out to a lot of friends but have decided to embed it here in case you haven’t seen it (or among the few who were unable to get the link to work).

Merry Christmas

- Howard Beckerman‘s book, Animation: The Whole Story, published in 2003 by Allworth Press, comes close to being the book as described in the title. There’s an extensive history of animation, followed by a guide to animation production, followed by an analysis of the Business side of animation, and ending with exercises and a list of available resources (including schools, studio addresses, places to buy equipment and animation publications.) That’s a lot of book for the price.

This is definitely a down and dirty book, just the facts ma’m, nothing but the facts, and for that I am grateful. There are no pretensions; in ways it reminds me of the Lutz animation book. The material is straightforward, and the presentation is complete. The illustrations throughout are done by Mr. Beckerman, himself, and the material is just about all-encompassing. I would use it as a classroom text were I teaching first level animation, and I’m sure there are many teachers who already do this.

There’s a lot of handy information in here, sort of an all-purpose guide to animation. It’s a bit like one of those tool boxes that have every sort of wrench in it, so that you’re always prepared. There are directions for setting up a director’s workbook, how to do a storyboard, even a guide for properly flipping paper-drawn animation. There is an explanation of a field guide, frame to footage counters, information on how to build a drawing table light box, and even an explanation of exposure sheets – showing how to fill them out. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a book that transposes the meter on a metronome to frame counts. This has always been information handed down from one animator to another. Books don’t include it. This one does. This is incredibly useful for any animator looking to animate to a beat, and all animators SHOULD be doing that.

Howard Beckerman has been teaching animation and the history of animation in New York at the School of Visual Arts and Parson’s School of Design for a very long time. He’s also a professional having directed, designed and animated for many companies, including Paramount, as well as for his own company. He’s done many short films as well as written hundreds of articles for film and animation magazines. He knows his stuff.

This, to me, is most evident in the first half of the book, the history of animation section. This is a no-nonsense guide to the history from the beginning days right through the book’s publication date – 2003. In 85 pages he covers more material than many other elaborate and celebrated books. And the amazing thing is that it’s all accurate and correct material. I don’t think I’ve ever covered so much history – and it’s WORLD HISTORY – in so short a read. Yet it feels like nothing is left out. This is quite a feat. For my money. this is the absolute strength of the book.

The weakness is one you can probably guess at from the descriptions I’ve already given. The book came out in 2003, and quite a bit has changed. There’s virtually no reason anymore to read about the Oxberry camera and how it works. The same could be said of the inking and painting of cels or even field guides and exposure sheets. Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s absolutely vital for everyone in the business to know this information, but I know it’s not part of the job anymore. Today’s book would be more about the computer: Flash and AfterEffects, Toon Boom Studio and FlipBook. The book is peppered with
caricatures of key people.
Perhaps someday there’ll be a new edition with more of that information. Although to be frank, there are hundreds
of books telling how to use the software. There are a lot of young kids making their animated films in Flash and calling themselves animators. Perhaps if they read this book, as it is, they’d have a bit more of a grasp as to what an animator does.

There’s so much in this book, I wholeheartedly recommend it if you’re looking for a great “how to” book. Even if you’re not, that history of animation section is world class.

Here are a few of the many illustrations in the book:

1. Building a lightbox - – - – - 2. Flipping and Rolling Animation

3. Walk cycles - – - – - – - – - 4. How to Ink & Paint cels

5. The director’s Workbook

It’s a practical little book, and is well worth checking out. (There are copies on Amazon that are incredibly inexpensive!)