Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

- Let’s continue with some more Ollie Johnston animation from Bambi. These drawings were selected to illustrate one of the books by Johnston & Thomas. I’m not sure they were ever used, but here they are, just the same. The work’s too beautiful to ignore.

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There’s some real life in this character. This last part has smaller drawings, so I assume there’s a cut in there.

Back to Bambi.

Here are some animation bits by Ollie Johnston. They were prepared, I believe, for a book. I don’t know if they made it. If they did, this is another variation.

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Ollie’s point in highlighting this bit is all about the staging of the action. But the action, itself, is pretty damn great.

What a film! You can’t study it enough.

- Last week I presented the first of three photographed storyboards from the Disney feature, Alice In Wonderland. This is a sequence where Alice meets up with the rabbit at his house, eats a cookie and grows larger than the house. It’s an excellent adaptation of the sequence from the original Carroll book, and gives that extraordinary image of the cottage with two enormous feet protruding.

There was a live-action star-studded Alice on tv this weekend which tried hard to create some magic. I watched this sequence from the story and found it quite lacking in comparison to what they did here. As might have been expected.

I offer the board in its full size. Then I edit the rows into sections so that I can post them as large as possible. Thanks to the loan from John Canemaker these boards are a treasure to view.

(Click any image to enlarge.)

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- Yesterday, I started posting this Disney children’s book, The Runaway Lamb. It was adapted from the Live Action feature (with a short animated sequence), So Dear To My Heart.

It’s not quite as strong a film as was Song of the South, but it still retains a sweetness that makes it worth sitting through. The animation wasan’t quite an equal to the earlier film with its great Joel Chandler Harris characters, but it holds up with the animation of many of the compilation features of the time.

One of the more interesting aspects of the film is the credit for the animated sequence, story treatment is credited to “William Peed” which was, of course, Bill Peet’s actual name.

Here’s the remainder of the book, loaned to us by John Canemaker. My thanks to John.

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(The book’s back cover.)

- So Dear To My Heart was Disney’s second try at a live action feature, following Song of the South. Like the earlier film, they employed the same two children, Bobby Driscoll and Luana Patten, and told a story around them and their pet lamb. There was a sweet animated sequence which was directed by Ham Luske. Mary Blair, John Hench and Dicke Kelsey designed it. Animation Department
Les Clark, Milt Kahl, Hal King, Eric Larson, John Lounsbery, Don Lusk, and Marvin Woodward were credited as animators.

Here’s a book that built on the film’s characters. It’s done in a style somewhat similar to the animated sequence in the film. The book is illustrated by Julius Svendsen, who became an animator at the studio, working in films from Melody (1953) to Robin Hood (1973). He also did a nunber of comic book illustration for Disney in the late 50′s and 60′s, working with Floyd Gottfredson.

The drawings in this book are excellent; strong poses with fine watercolored backgrounds. It’s similar to but totally different from the Little Golden Books that were being done at the same time.

The book comes from John Canemaker‘s collection, so I want to thank him for allowing me to post the pictures. A lot of scanning’s involved, so I have to break it into two posts to give you the full book.

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____________Look for the conclusion tomorrow.

- Here, as promised, is the first stat of the Alice In Wonderland storyboard.
The Mad Tea Party – “A Very Merry Unbirthday”
This comes from the archives of John Canemaker ‘s collection, and I am grateful for the loan.

I don’t know who the artist is, (John and I guessed at Joe Rinaldi) though it’s dated 1949.

As with past boards, I post the original stat here, and then follow up by breaking the very long columns into two or three, thus allowing me to post it larger for easier viewing. This is the original:

(Click any image to enlarge.)

And here are the breakdowns:

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John has given me more boards from Alice. One for her talk with the flowers “All In A Golden Afternoon” and Alice in the Rabbit’s house – growing larger.
I’ll post these on future posts in the next week or so.

- Reading palms can probably tell you a lot about people.
LIFE Magazine, back in Dec 13, 1937, decided to see what they could learn from the palms of a number of celebrated people.
_________________Let’s see what they had to say about Walt Disney‘s palms.

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________This is the full layout of the piece. I’ve split it for better sightseeing, below.

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Yet again, this magazine article came courtesy of John Canemaker and his invaluable collection. Many thanks to John.

- Speaking of good palms, let me promote the gallery opening and congratulate my good friend, Lew Achenbach.

His show “Spirit Animals, Contained Chaos and Actuality” will run from June 13th through June 27th. There’s an opening reception on Friday June 13th from 5-8pm.
The website is here.

The show is located:
Upstairs in the Historic Temple Theare Building
at 628-632 Centre Street
Ashland, Pennsylvania

The art, like the artist, is certainly going to be modern.

– Here is a preliminary storyboard done by Bill Peet of the Wizard’s Duel from Disney’s Sword In The Stone. It’s another gem on loan from John Canemaker, and is a companion to the piece I posted last Friday by Peet. The oddity of this board is that it’s dated April 1949. (The numbers at the bottom of the board clearly read “449.”) I didn’t have any clue that this film was in development that early. The book was published in 1938, so it’s quite feasible.

If that date is accurate, it’s amazing how close the characters stay to their final models. This could easily be explained with the heightened us of xerography in animation after 1958. Post 101 Dalmatians, this loose style was easy to translate into animation, and Ken Andersen was easily able to adapt to this style by Bill Peet that all of the animators in the studio loved.

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Note in row 2 how the spider turns into the tiger’s face; it’s a graphic turn. This never would have made it to the final in a Disney film, and it didn’t.

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I love how extra drawings which have been pulled make it to the bottom of the second board.

- I always thought Disney’s The Sword In The Stone a somewhat underrated film. The background art is sensational, and several sequences are brilliantly animated.

Bill Peet‘s adaptation from TH White‘s book, The Once and Future King, loses some of its poetry in the adaptation, but the book’s storyline features a lot of rambling making it hard to construct a screen story. I’ve watched this film quite a few times over the years, and somehow it always gives me a bit of a charge that comes with many of the older classics.

The extras on the dvd seems to consist predominantly of storyboard drawings by Bill Peet. So why not show them off? There’s no continuity to attend to, hence the images are gathered in small clusters. The sequence everyone jumps to analyze and discuss is the Wizard Duel between Merlin and Madame Mim (animated by Milt Kahl.) Consequently, a lot of the drawings on the dvd come from this sequence. I, personally, would have loved seeing some of the squirrel section. I found it quite moving and full of real character stuff. It would be nice to see how Peet developed this.

There’s no hint of a continuity on the dvd, but I’ve heard that the storyboard drawings in the vault are just placed in manilla envelopes with no suggestion of an order. It would make sense that they’ve just plopped these images on the dvd as they have with no order, details or related information.

_______Here’s a creature that never made it to the battle of the wizards.

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___________Another fantastic creature that didn’t make it into the film.

I’m not sure if this drawing is also from the duel. Or was it another sequence where Wart becomes an animal – cut out of the film?

This looks like it may have been planned as a home for Merlin. Did it inspire anything for The Rescuers?

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___________It’s magic !

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Here are a couple of models Peet obviously did –
_______________________probably more for himself than anything.

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- I’m going to put together a couple of posts on Disney’s Alice In Wonderland, and I think this LIFE Magazine article from June 18, 1951 is an excellent place to start.

It’s interesting that they call the article, “Alice In Disneyland.” This is one of the first references to “Disneyland” that I’ve noticed. There was a TV show done for ABC, “One Hour In Wonderland,” a 1951 Christmas show which promoted the heck out of the movie. Kathryn Beaumont, dressed as Alice, got to parade around with lots of kids. This show probably served as the prototype for the “Disneyland” TV series, but made no reference to the name of the future theme park.

This article comes from John Canemaker‘s the collection, and I have to thank him for his contribution, _____(click any image to enlarge.)
yet again.

I’ve chosen to leave any periferal ads in there, for context and amusement.

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- Usually the gag cartoons done in a studio don’t stand the test of time. No one can figure out what half of them mean – never mind what the gag is. However, sometimes they come off still funny.

After posting the Ward Kimball models, yesterday, I thought it might not be a bad time to post these images I have all on one pretty small photostat. I can hardly identify half of the people caricatured, but I’ll let you know what I can figure out.

This collage was done by Ward Kimball pasting photos and caricatures into the heads of the characters of the film. Ollie Johnston with a cigar in his mouth and Ward as the “Lost Boy” in “Michael’s” hands.
The image is long (above and below) so I split it in half to make it easier to enlarge; the right half is below.

(L) A surreal image out of Ward Kimball’s hands. Who knows what it meant?
(R) Ward stands off to the side (arms crossed) watching others laugh at one of his gag cartoons.

I have a couple hundred of these cartoons from “Raggedy Ann”. Someday when I get them out of storage I’ll try to remember what they mean and post some of them.