Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

- Yesterday, I offered some illustrations by Bill Peet done for a Little Golden Book – excuse me, Golden Story Book.

There are some 126 pages (almost the size of a novel) and an illustration on most of them. These are all spot illustrations done in ink with confident watercolor coloring.

In some odd ways, these illustrations remind me of those for Mike Mulligan and His Steamshovel. Yes, they’re very different – very different. But the feel of them all adds up to something very homespun and similar. Perhaps it’s the coloring process that’s done it, a very washed out look. Despite the fact that these are four color illustrations and those in Mike mulligan are two color.

(Click any image to enlarge.)

More to come next week.

- If the Little Golden Books had ever published a novel, this is it. So Dear To My Heart is an encapsulation of the film by Helen Palmer with illustrations by Bill Peet “adapted from the film.”

This collectible item comes from the amazing John Canemaker collection, and I thank him for the loan.

The pictures are mostly small spot illustrations done in ink and watercolor. They’re very simple and give a good indication of Bill Peet’s future books (though he often used pencil for that and allowed the scumbled pencil to add texture.)

Here are the first 20 illustrations (more to come in a future post); there are many. One illustration per page with 125 pages.

(Click any image to enlarge.)

To be continued

-i Here’s what for me was a real treat to scan and post. I had some limited access to actual drawings by Bill Tytla of the Devil from Fantasia’s Night on Bald Mountain sequence.
The drawings are mostly roughs by Tytla, and they give a good sample of what his actual work looked like.

I don’t need to write about it; let me just give you these mages.

A good example of a Tytla drawing.

Here’s the clean up of the same drawing.

Later in the same scene.

Some Tytla sketches.

Animation roughs don’t get any more beautiful than this.

A side-peg pan.

Rough heads.

Art. What else need be said?
The individual drawings are stunning, and they’re
in service to a brilliantly acted sequence.
It will never get better.

- Here are a couple of drawings by Bill Tytla done for Snow White. They’re, all three, beautiful drawings, and I enjoy looking at them. They’re worth posting.

A wonderful drawing of Grumpy warning Snow White to look out for strangers.

Dopey blows water out his ears.

Here’s a link to another post I did on this.

- The BAFTAs were doled out last night. Slumdog Mullinaire won everything it was eligible for. Fortunately it wasn’t in the Short animation category. That was won by WALLACE AND GROMIT: A MATTER OF LOAF AND DEATH – Steve Pegram, Nick Park, Bob Baker.
Wall-E beat out Persepolis and Waltz with Bashir (great nominees) for Best Feature.

(Click any image to enlarge.)

Here’s a recap of a couple of past posts I’d made showing one of my favorite sequences in animation – Dumbo’s bath and play with his mother.

- Thanks to a loan from John Canemaker, I can continue posting some of the brilliant storyboard work of Bill Peet. The guy was a masterful artist. Every panel gives so much inspiration and information to the animators, directors and artists who’ll follow up on his work.

This is the sequence from Dumbo wherein baby Dumbo plays around the feet of his mother. Brilliantly animated by Bill Tytla, this sequence is one of the greatest ever animated. No rotoscoping, no MoCap. Just brilliant artists collaborating with perfect timing, perfect structure, perfect everything. Tytla said he watched his young son at home to learn how to animate Dumbo. Bill Peet told Mike Barrier that he was a big fan of circuses, so he was delighted to be working on this piece. Both used their excitement and enthusiasm to bring something brilliant to the screen, and it stands as a masterpiece of the medium.

Of this sequence and Tytla’s animation, Mike Barrier says in Hollywood Cartoons, “What might otherwise be mere cuteness acquires poignance because it is always shaded by a parent’s knowledge of pain and risk. If Dumbo “acted” more, he would almost certainly be a less successful character—’cuter,’ probably, in the cookie-cutter manner of so many other animated characters, but far more superficial.”

I had to take the one very long photstat and reconfigure it in photoshop so that you could enlarge these frames to see them well. I tried to keep the feel of these drawings pinned to that board in tact.

(Click any image to enlarge.)

Bill Peet at his desk on Dumbo.

Here are frame grabs from the very same sequence of the film showing how closely the cuts were followed. Even in stills the sequence is stunning.

(Click any image to enlarge.)

This film is a gem.
The dvd also has one of my favorite commentary tracks throughout.
John Canemaker, by himself, talking about the film. It’s great.

- Yesterday I posted a reconstructed board for the sequence eliminated from Fantasia. Baby Ballet was to be set to Chopin’s Berceuse.

Sylvia Moberly-Holland was the principal designer of this piece and Mary Blair worked with her in many of the pastel images on the board. Here are some of those same images in color. I’ve lifted them from the Fantasia “Legacy” dvd and offer them to complete the post. Not all of these color images made it to the board I posted.

(Click any image to enlarge.)

It turns out that it is a small world after all.

The Baby Ballet, set to the music of “Berceuse” by Chopin was to be a segment for Fantasia when they were originally putting the feature together. One of those rotating sequneces that were being planned, such as the Clair d’Lune sequence. The Baby Ballet never made it much further than the storyboards and some small design work.

You can see a similar piece, Perambulator, on an earlier post of mine.

The piece was supervised by Sylvia Moberly-Holland with Mary Blair working under her.

What follows is the board constructed of several versions of the piece. I believe Mary Blair did the fully rendered images. The first version is the board as photographed, followed by my breakdown so that I can keep the images large.

(Click any image to enlarge.)

Here’s the breakdown.
11a

11b

11c

12a

12b

12c

13a

13b

14a

14b

15a

15b

21a

21b

22a

22b

23a

23b

24a

24b

25a

25b

31a

31b

32a

32b
33a

33b

34a

34b

Tomorrow, I’ll offer some color sketches.

- Last of the squirrel posts. Here are more frame grabs from Disney’s Sword In The Stone‘s squirrel sequence as an addition to Hans Perk‘s wonderful posting of the animators’ drafts from the film.

We pick up as Merlin (as squirrel) walks off in a huff followed by the granny squirrel. Wart falls.

Seq. 006 sc. 300: Animator: Frank Thomas

Seq. 006 sc. 300 (cont): Animator: Frank Thomas

Seq. 006 sc. 301: Animator: Hal King

Seq. 006 sc. 304: Animator: Hal King

Seq. 006 sc. 301.1: Animator: Hal King

Seq. 006 sc. 301.2: Animator: Hal King

Seq. 006 sc. 303.1: Animator: Hal King

Seq. 006 sc. 306: Animator: Hal King

Seq. 006 sc. 307: Animator: Hal King

Seq. 006 sc. 307.1: Animator: Hal King | Seq. 006 sc. 307.2: Animator: Hal King

Seq. 006 sc. 308: Animator: John Sibley

Seq. 006 sc. 309: Animator: Hal King

Seq. 006 sc. 310: Animator: Hal King

Seq. 006 sc. 311: Animator: John Sibley

Seq. 006 sc. 312: Animator: Hal King

Seq. 006 sc. 313: Animator: John Sibley | Seq. 006 sc. 314: Animator: John Sibley

Seq. 006 sc. 314.1: Animator: John Sibley

Seq. 006 sc. 314.2: Animator: Hal King & John Sibley

Seq. 006 sc. 317: Animator: John Sibley

Seq. 006 sc. 318: Animator: John Sibley

Seq. 006 sc. 318.2: Animator: Hal King | Seq. 006 sc. 318.1: Animator: Hal King

Seq. 006 sc. 319.1: Animator: John Sibley

Seq. 006 sc. 319.1 (cont): Animator: John Sibley

Seq. 006 sc. 320: Animator: John Lounsbery/John Sibley

Seq. 006 sc. 320 (cont): Animator: John Lounsbery/John Sibley

Seq. 006 sc. 321: Animator: Hal King

Seq. 006 sc. 322: Animator: Hal King

Seq. 006 sc. 322.1: Animator: Hal King

Seq. 006 sc. 323: Animator: Eric Larson

Seq. 006 sc. 323.1: Animator: Eric Larson

Seq. 006 sc. 323.3: Animator: Eric Larson

Seq. 006 sc. 323.2: Animator: Eric Larson

Seq. 006 sc. 324: Animator: Eric Larson

Seq. 006 sc. 324 (cont): Animator: Eric Larson

Seq. 006 sc. 325: Animator: Eric Larson

Seq. 006 sc. 326: Animator: Eric Larson

Seq. 006 sc. 327: Animator: Eric Larson | Seq. 006 sc. 328: Animator: Eric Larson

Seq. 006 sc. 329: Animator: Eric Larson

Seq. 006 sc. 330: Animator: Eric Larson

Seq. 006 sc. 331: Animator: Frank Thomas/Ollie Johnston

Seq. 006 sc. 331 (cont): Animator: Frank Thomas/Ollie Johnston

Seq. 006 sc. 332: Animator: Frank Thomas

Seq. 006 sc. 334: Animator: Frank Thomas/Ollie Johnston

Seq. 006 sc. 335: Animator: Frank Thomas | Seq. 006 sc. 336: Animator: Ollie Johnston

Seq. 006 sc. 337: Animator: Frank Thomas | Seq. 006 sc. 338: Animator: Ollie Johnston

Seq. 006 sc. 339: Animator: Frank Thomas

Seq. 006 sc. 340: Animator: Ollie Johnston

Seq. 006 sc. 342: Animator: Frank Thomas

Seq. 006 sc. 344: Animator: Hal Ambro

Seq. 006 sc. 345: Animator: Frank Thomas

Had this been my film, I probably would have ended on Merlin and Wart walking away and would have eliminated the last shot of the squirrel. The film’s not about her; it’s about Wart. I guess I’m not as sentimental.

- Here’s the fourth part of five breaking down the squirrel sequence from Disney’s Sword In The Stone. Thanks to Hans Perk for posting the drafts to this film enabling me to ID the scenes.

This is Frank Thomas land. “Zimpleton” comments on Hans’ blog that “Thomas did 489 feet and 7 frames of animation only interrupted by a 2 foot scene by John Lounsbery and he does an additional 63 feet and 7 frames at the end of the sequence.” Quite extraordinary.

(Click any image to enlarge.)

Seq. 006 sc. 67: Animator: Frank Thomas
The above two images are one pan broken in two.

Seq. 006 sc. 68: Animator: Frank Thomas

Seq. 006 sc. 69: Animator: Frank Thomas

Seq. 006 sc. 70: Animator: Frank Thomas

These scenes wherein the squirrels scamper around the moving branches is an
absolute pleasure for me. They really captured the essence of trees with some
of these scenes. I can’t think of any other animated film that does the same.

Seq. 006 sc. 71: Animator: Frank Thomas

Seq. 006 sc. 72: Animator: Frank Thomas

Seq. 006 sc. 73: Animator: Frank Thomas

Seq. 006 sc. 73 (cont): Animator: Frank Thomas

Seq. 006 sc. 74: Animator: Frank Thomas | Seq. 006 sc. 75: Animator: Frank Thomas

Seq. 006 sc. 76: Animator: Frank Thomas

Seq. 006 sc. 77: Animator: Frank Thomas

Seq. 006 sc. 78: Animator: Frank Thomas

Seq. 006 sc. 79: Animator: Frank Thomas

Seq. 006 sc. 80: Animator: Frank Thomas

I think Frank may have been caricaturing himself in some of these
Merlin/squirrel scenes. Certainly I think of him with the character.

Seq. 006 sc. 81: Animator: Frank Thomas | Seq. 006 sc. 82: Animator: Frank Thomas

Seq. 006 sc. 83: Animator: Frank Thomas | Seq. 006 sc. 84: Animator: Frank Thomas

Seq. 006 sc. 85: Animator: Frank Thomas

Take a closer look at the image in the upper right. They double exposed
a second head at about a 60% exposure to create a beautiful blur.
In computer land this probably would be a real blur.

Seq. 006 sc. 85 (cont): Animator: Frank Thomas

Seq. 006 sc. 86: Animator: Frank Thomas

Seq. 006 sc. 87: Animator: Frank Thomas

Seq. 006 sc. 88: Animator: Frank Thomas

Seq. 006 sc. 89: Animator: Frank Thomas

Seq. 006 sc. 90: Animator: Frank Thomas

Seq. 006 sc. 91: Animator: Frank Thomas

One final post to come.