Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

- Continuing with yesterday’s post on the end of Sleeping Beauty. I’ve decided to get the frame grabs for the sequence and post them as well. I thought the comparison of board to actual film interesting.
__________

These images come from the “Special Edition” of the dvd, not the “Platinum Edition” now on the market. Using Hans Perk‘s posts of the drafts for these scenes, I was able to identify the animators’ names. (Trust me, I’m nopt trying to compete with Mark Mayerson‘s brilliant “Mosaics”. This is too hard; I have no intention of keeping it up.)

sc 82 (L) Milt Kahl – sc 82.1 (R) Frank Thomas

sc 82.2 (L) Kahl & Thomas – sc 82.3 (R) George Nicholas & Jerry Hathcock

sc 82.4 (L) Nicholas – sc 82.5 (R) Nicholas & Hathcock

Nicholas & Hathcock (L) sc 82.6

Nicholas & Hathcock (L) sc 83

sc 84 (L) Ken Hultgren – sc 85 (R) Nicholas & Hathcock

sc 87 (L) Nicholas & Sibley – sc 88 (R) Nicholas & Hathcock

(L) Nicholas & Hathcock – sc 89.1 (R) Hultgren

sc 89 (L) Nicholas & Hathcock – sc 91 (R) Hathcock

sc 91 (L) Hathcock – sc 92 (R) SA sc 49 seq 8

sc 95 (L) Hathcock – sc 93 (R) Hathcock

sc 96 (L) Hathcock – sc 97 (R) Dan MacManus

(L) MacManus – sc 97.2 (R) Hathcock

sc 98 (L) Hathcock – sc 99 (R) Sibley

sc 100 MacManus

sc 100.1 (L) Hathcock – sc 101 (R) Les Clark & Fred Kopietz

sc 102 (L) Hultgren & Kopietz – sc 104 (R) Hathcock

sc 107 (L) Hathcock – sc 108 (R) Hultgren

(L) Hutlgren – sc 109 (R) Hathcock

sc 110 (L) Ollie Johnston & Blaine Gibson – sc 110.1 (R) Gibson

sc 110.2 (L) Johnston – sc 110.3 (R) Johnston & Gibson

sc 110.4 (L) Johnston – sc 111 (R) Johnston & Gibson

sc 112 Johnston & Gibson

sc 112 (cont) Johnston & Gibson

- To continue my attempt to keep up with the invaluable drafts that Hans Perk has been posting on his blog, I have some more storyboards to offer. John Canemaker has loaned me the final sequences of the film detailing the dragon fight and climax of the film. It’ll take a couple of weeks to post them all, so let’s get started.

We’re not sure exactly who did the artwork, but there’s a good chance it’s Ken Anderson‘s work. As with past boards, I’ll post the whole photograph as is, then take it apart row by row so that you can enlarge them as much as possible. Here’s the storyboard sequence #18 from Sleeping Beauty.

(Click any image to enlarge.)

1a

1b

2a

2b

3a

3b

4a

4b

5a

5b

6a

6b

7

- I’m trying to coordinate with Hans Perk‘s posting of the drafts to Sleeping Beauty by offering as much material as I can locate on the film. It’s leading to some odd discoveries. (Just today, Hans offers the drafts to the cake baking sequence.)

Here’s one of those galleys given me many years ago by John Canemaker. It was a way of showing off material available. Perhaps some of it has been published in some book or other. I don’t think it all has gone out, though.

This is the development of the three fairies, Fauna, Flora and Merryweather. You’ll see they took some wacky turns on the way to the end. I believe these were drawn by Tom Oreb, Bill Peet, Ward kimball, Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston.

This is the full photo which comes in at 24×40 inches.

(Click any image to enlarge.)

I believe this is by Kimball.

Probably Bill Peet’s storyboard characters.

No idea who did this.

This looks a bit like Frank Thomas’ line, though the characters don’t look like his.

An Ollie Johnston self-portrait?

Now they’re coming together.

Almost complete.

Frank Thomas animation.

More Thomas animation.

Some beautiful poses.

I have a couple of animation drawings from this film from the “Skumps” sequence. I’ll post those when Hans hits that part of the film with his drafts. This movie is a great one.

If you’re in LA, go see it in Technirama on July 16th. Academy Screening.

- The Alice In Wonderland dvd contains a storyboard sequence of Alice daydreaming in the park. This sequence didn’t make it to the film (for good reason), but they’ve re-assembled it for the dvd. I’ve taken some frame grabs to show off the drawings. They’re on screen for such a short time.

My favorite’s the last.

(Click any image to enlarge.)__________

- An interesting aspect of Disney’s Alice In Wonderland, deserves some attention, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone write about it.

Once Alice is in Wonderland, she immediately comes upon the woods, and from there she steps in and out of the woods to meet up with new crazies and her peculiar adventures. The effects department was used to signal this move in and out of the dark world of wonderland. She constantly steps in and out of shadows.

This, as anyone who did animation in the pre-computer age, knows that it was a complication to add shadows. Not only the shadows under the characters but the shadows over and around the characters. It meant filming the scenes twice, just for the shadows. Since the camera, during the filming of Alice, was not computerized this double shooting had to be done by hand VERY CAREFULLY. Every frame had to exactly match.

Hence, this was an important part of the design. The directors and Disney took these shadows seriously; after all they cost twice as much – just to photograph. Never mind animating them, coloring them or planning them.

I’ve put together a number of frame grabs which illustrate the move into or out of shadows, and I’d like to share them.

Here, Alice steps out of a shadow for the first time, and meets up with
Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum. They’re partially covered, themselves, by shadow.
This variant of the shadow is a hard line of darkness that moves over her.

(Click any image to enlarge.)

Soon, Alice moves toward the Duchess’ house. We cut from her
standing dark in shadow, to her walking in a brighter light.

As she moves toward the Caterpillar, Alice is covered with shrubbery and shadow.
She is next seen struggling through the foliage to talk to the Caterpillar, in full light.

This variant of the shadow is a total shift in color as her entire body moves into darkness.
It was done by dissolving one Alice into another – meaning the cels were painted twice.

In the woods, Alice walks into and out of and into shadows.

She slowly moves toward the Cheshire Cat who directs her to the tea party.
As she does she moves from shadow and cuts into light as she appears at the gate.

This is a particularly nice effect wherein the entire area gets spotlighted -
led by the character. The area outside of the spot darkens slowly and beautifully.

Once leaving the tea party, she wanders around the Tulgey Wood trying to find any direction. Shadows aplenty as she moves endlessly through the woods.

Alice moves into and out of shadow via dissolves.

Alice passes by many crazy characters, going in and out of darkness.

Just prior to meeting up with the Cheshire Cat, and has an extended conversation
which just about ends her stay in the woods.

Finally, Alice steps into the Cheshire Cat’s tree and
into the light of the maze of cards to meet the Red Queen.

- Hans Perk has chosen to post the drafts to Sleeping Beauty in response to the upcoming Academy screening (in LA) of the feature film which is in response to the reissue of the video with new special additions. I thought this a good excuse to bring back these older posts:

– I’ve enjoyed sharing some of the animation drawings I own via this site, and I hope to keep doing it. The drawings, to me, are so valuable in that they reveal the personality of the animators, even more than the finished films.

I have a bunch of copies of drawings by Frank Thomas from Sleeping Beauty. It’s the sequence in which the three fairies, within the hidden cabin in the forest, use magic to create a dress for Aurora.

Below, on the right, are some of the roughs from this scene. On the left are the final cleanups.
_

_____________(Click on any image to enlarge.)

- These are frame grabs from the very same scene in the cottage featuring the Frank Thomas drawings posted above.

Frank Thomas often complained about Eyvind Earle‘s color design. He disliked the fact that Merryweather had a black bodice. He was especially peeved over this sequence, and I heard him talk about it at least three times. He felt this anchored her too much to the ground and weighed her down. I’m not sure I agree with him; I think the character moves beautifully and retains the weightlessness he sought.

There rwas quite a bit of friction between Eyvind Earle, who seemed to be Disney’s star on that film, and the animators who felt ignored.

- Rico LeBrun, an established Italian artist, was employed at the Disney studio in the late ’30s to help teach the studio’s artists to learn how to draw animals. Bambi was in process, and Disney knew that he had to train his artists to reach to a new level.

In his preparation for the job, LeBrun created a book of some 50 or so pages of the skeletal system of deer for the artists to use as reference in learning to manipulate the animal characters. His art was copied onto animation paper with typed notes added.

Sky-David had contacted me after a recent item I had posted about the drawings on Bambi. Sky told me that he had a copy of all of the pages of LeBrun’s study. He shared it with me and I posted the first 18 pages several weeks back. (Here’s part 1.) This is a second installment, thanks to Sky’s generosity, for those who’d like to see them.

18
________(Click any image to enlarge.)

19

2021

2223

24

2526

27

2829

30

3132

33

I’ll post the remaining 16 drawings soon.

- Let’s imagine.

Mary Blair is the most brilliant of all the color stylists to have worked at the Disney studio during its heyday. Among the photographed storyboards loaned me by John Canemaker was this board of Mary Blair images. The only problem is that it’s B&W. So, we have to imagine the array of greens and blues and yellows the designer would have used for this very colorful sequence.

This is the board in it’s entirety. Now, to split it up so you can look at the images a bit more closely.

1a
_____To enlarge any of the images, click on them.

Here’s an image from Canemaker’s book, The Art and Flair of Mary Blair. I just wanted to remind you of how these other images probably look in color.

- This is the third photo of the board for Alice In Wonderland. Once again, I think it was drawn by Joe Rinaldi. I have no evidence to prove otherwise, and that guess makes the most sense to me at the moment.

As with past posts, I show the storyboard photo as is, then reproduce it one section at a time so that I can enlarge it to the largest size.

____________(Click any image to enlarge.)

1a

1b

2a

2b

3a

3b

4a

4b

5

At the base of the storyboard are these two Mary Blair images. I did a bit of a search (and I do mean “a bit”), and I wasn’t able to find color reproductions of these two pictures. So I’m posting them as they appear in this photo. They’re a bit blown out in the photo in hand, so I did a little work in photoshop to pull out a bit more of the grays.

There is another photo which includes a bunch more of Mary Blair’s designs for Alice. I’ll post that soon (though I also have to search to see if any of those are printed in color elsewhere.)