Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

– Back in 1985, master Russian director, Feodor Khitruk, escorted the brilliant animator/director, Yurij Norstein, on a trip to New York.
My friend, Charles Samu, who was playing host to them on the trip, asked if I’d like them to visit my studio. I suggested a breakfast meeting so that I could call in a couple of additional people who would like to attend. Specifically, I was thinking of Tissa David who was an enormous fan of Norstein’s film, Tale of Tales.

I must admit I was over the top since Norstein was nothing short of a hero to me. His film had completely changed my thoughts on animation and its importance in the world. I find his film the answer to anyone who questions whether animation can live up to what live action can do. The answer now is, YES. (Of course, I haven’t seen anything remotely comparable to this 1978 film since seeing it – despite the invention of the computer.)

In short, I think it’s a GREAT film of the highest order.

So they came, and here are some photos of the meeting.

My studio, at the time, was on 38th Street off Fifth Avenue. This is facing a windowed
wall we had that looked out onto the rear of the building. (You could see the Empire State Building from there.) The studio also had a large skylight overhead. Liz Seidman works to the Left and Greg Perler, my editor, works to the Right (far in front of Liz.)

Norstein (L) and Khitruk (R) arrived on time with Charles (taking the picture.)

We set a table full of lots of food, but I don’t think any of us were interested in eating.
L to R:Norstein, Khitruk, Tissa David, Greg Perler (standing in the back, editing), Lisa Crafts, me, Bridget Thorne (hands visible). Charles Samu sat opposite Lisa and took the pictures. Others were there but didn’t make Charles’ camera lens.

I had plenty of questions about Norstein’s style and production methods. He tried to respond, and Khitruk acted as the interpreter and had to draw his answer at one point.

I followed up by drawing my next question.

There was quite a conversation despite the fact that we were speaking two languages.
(And I don’t remember a word of what was said.)

Khitruk packs up as they prepare to leave.

Norstein and I exchanged little souvenirs of the meeting.

Tissa and I posed for a picture before the break up.

After everybody left, we got back to work. Bridget Thorne had to run an errand and
Liz Seidman & Mary Thorne went back to work on Lyle Lyle Crocodile.

I had an in-house meeting with Mark Sottnick (above), one of the producers of Santa Bear, which was also in production.

– The Seattle Times has an article which features the shop in Ratatouille which displays dead rats in their window. I was taken aback by the scene in the film and felt that it was too ridiculous an image to get us to believe that such a shop existed. Of course, I was wrong and here’s confirmation of that fact. Quite peculiar.

Still I wonder how many other people didn’t know about this window display, and whether one should put images of this kind into a film when you’re sure it’ll pull some of your audience out of the movie. There’s a fine line to draw when you’re trying to keep an audience involved in your film. Once they’ve looked at their watches or question the authenticity of a scene, you’ve lost them for a bit which might turn out to be for the rest of the movie.
Thanks to Upcoming Pixar for notice of this story.

For some reason, I’ve always been attracted to paper sculpture art. There have been a couple of examples of this medium done in animation. Immediately, a few films come to mind.
The best known is Symposium of Popular Song done by Bill Justice & Xavier Atencio. They use Ludwig Von Drake to string together a number of music videos done with paper constructions. I remember seeing this film on its first release. (It played in theaters locally with PT 109 starring Cliff Robertson.)

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Michel Ocelot, who has now grown to great heights directing animated features such as Kirikou or Azur et Asmar did a number of elaborate and beautiful cut-out animation films in his earlier years. You can see a clip from The Insensitive Princess on YouTube. His films were an outgrowth of Lotte Reininger‘s extraordinary work and, to some extent, his love of Yurij Norstein‘s work.

Megan Brain has two sites featuring her paper sculpture art, and it’s certainly beautiful. Her blog has more information; her website has more art. There’s also a good interview with Megan at the Character Design site. Her blog was once featured on Cartoon Brew back in 2006. The site and blog have both developed since then. It’s worth checking out (again if you haven’t been there in a while.)

Béatrice Coron is a french artist who specializes in paper sculpture and cutouts. She has a page of simple animations to watch. There’s also a wealth of information about cut out art on her site Eclectic Iconoclast. Plenty of good, interesting links.

Speaking of Michel Ocelot, this year, he’s directed a Bjork music video that combines silhouettes of people (made to look like Reininger characters) against cg abstractions. Have a look: