Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

- About a hundred years ago, it seems, John Canemaker gave me some copies of models and drawings by Ward Kimball. I’m sure at least a couple of these have been published in some of John’s books. His book, Nine Old Men, includes many other beautiful Kimball drawings, and I’d suggest you look there for more Kimball inspiration.

I once posted a couple of these, and I like them a lot. I’m posting them again and adding a bunch more that weren’t included. Ward was a brilliant artist with a very active and excited intelligence. His material from the 50′s is just excellent, and it’s always worth a look.

During the making of “Peter Pan” Kimball illustrated how Frank Thomas, Ward, Milt Kahl, Marc Davis, Clarke Mallery (an Asst at the time) and Ollie Johnston would look as “Hook”.

When Ollie Wallace, a composer at the studio, went to hospital to have his appendix removed, Kimball made this card for Ollie. It was based on Rembrandt’s painting, “The Anatomy Lesson”. It got Wallace laughing so hard in the hospital that he burst his own stitches and had to have them re-sewn.

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- John Canemaker has loaned me so many excellent pieces that I’m almost embarrassed at how quickly they’ve been eaten up by this blog. Many of them deserve as much attention as I can give.

Consequently, over the next few Fridays I’m going to re-post some of these gems. Let’s start with the wizard’s duel from Sword In The Stone. Here are some sketches Bill Peet did on yellow foolscap. I originally posted them in two days’ worth of blogging, since it took a while to scan them all.

Here they are condensed into one:

- The stag, young Bambi, hears something. He grows alert; then jumps. This is a fine piece animated by Milt Kahl. The drawing is brilliant, as usual, with fine acting in the animation. I had a bit of trouble properly registering the piece; it wasn’t easy, and I’m sorry it isn’t tighter, but it’s close.

This is the final piece from the flipbook that came with the initial publication of the Frank Thomas/Ollie Johnston book, Bambi: The Story and the Film.

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- This is the completion of Ross Care‘s article on the musical score for Bambi published in The Quarterly Journal of The Library of Congress, Spring 1983 issue.

This article is an extensive examination of the music for a film that has fewer than 100 words of dialogue heard on its soundtrack. The score was integral to the film and pushes it forward with delicacy and poetry. It’s a beautiful and powerful score and was nominated in 1942 for the Academy Award. The song, “Love Is A Song” was also nominated.

Many thanks to Ross for allowing me to post this. You should go to his site to read other writings he’s done on filmmusic.

The article gets into the details in this part. So much the better if you can read music.

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Article: Copyright © 1983 Ross B. Care

- I first met Ross Care years ago. He had scored the music to one of John Canemaker‘s early short films, The Wizard’s Son. I was impressed, and since I was looking for a composer for the first film of my new company, Byron Blackbear & The Scientific Method, I asked Ross for his help. He did a great job with little time and less money.

It was only a short time later, that I learned that Ross was an animation music historian. Somehow, we worked together in setting up a program for ASIFA East in which the conductor for Bambi, Alexander Steinert, took the stage with Ross to analyze the music for that film. I had a 16mm print of the film, and we watched about half of it. It was one of those memorable ASIFA meetings, that stay with you forever.

A year or two later, Ross had written an extensive article on Bambi’s music for The Quarterly Journal of The Library of Congress, the Spring 1983 edition. I just recently ran into the article on my shelves, and after getting Ross’ permission, I’m posting that article here. It’s 22 pages long, so I’ll have to post it in two parts.

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_________________________________________________To be completed Thursday.

Article: Copyright © 1983 Ross B. Care

- I have a few really down and dirty older xeroxed copies of layouts for some Fantasia scenes. Without defining what they are, I thought I’d just post them and let you figure them out. When I have the folder info, I post that as well so you can see who did what.

I follow the LO’s of each scene with frame grabs from that scene.

___Falling flowers land on water. Unfortunately, a small part of the
midsection for this drawing is missing. The xeroxes, of course,
are all large and reconstructing them was a bit complex.

The BG layout is below.

(Click any image to enlarge.)

These two drawings represent twirling blossoms as well as
the perspective planning for them and the background for the scene.

The following two long pans show a background of leaves and the
progression of Faeries that sparkle around those leaves.

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Zeus

Clouds open

Zeus steps out of a silhouette.

Zeus in closer shot

The BG layout

- Here’s another of the animated bits from the flipbook that came with the Frank Thomas/Ollie Johnston book, Bambi: The Story and the Film. It’s peculiar that they selected this sequence to put into a flipbook since it doesn’t quite work. Obvously they don’t use all of the animation drawings for the flipbook, and they’ve washed over the short holds that are in the animation. There are lots of interesting poses, though.

The piece was animated by Ollie Johnston.

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- Among the brilliant scenes in Dumbo is one that usually is overlooked in all the animation books. Yet, to me it separates this film from other Disney films, except, perhaps, Pinocchio. The tent building scenes are a brilliant mix of solid animation, excellent (and quietly hidden) effects, strong music and perfect screen direction. The sequence works extremely well on its own, but it works even better as a significant part of the film as a whole.

I sincerely doubt that Walt could have been in the studio when the sequence was built. Certainly, this espouses the Socialist politiical views of many of the strikers and one wonders what Walt thought of it. Presumably, because it has been developed as such an integral part of the film, the underlying political current of the sequence could hardly be lost, but it’s hard to miss the overall feel of it. Perhaps I’m completely wrong, and the feel of the piece can just be chalked up to a product of the period.

I would love to hear what other, more informed historians have to say about it.

Here, are frame grabs detailing the sequence.

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– Retta Scott has been fascinating to me from the earliest days in my interest in animation. I believe it was on a “Disneyland” when I first heard her name. Back then the research readily available to me was not great. Bob Thomas’ book The Art of Animation listed her as an animator on Bambi. It doesn’t even give her credit for Fantasia, despite her principal work on the Pastoral sequence. Nor does it mention her work on Dumbo, The Wind In the Willows or The Ruluctant Dragon.

She was layed off at Disney’s when they hit a slump in 1941 but came back to do a number of Little Golden Books for Disney. The most famous of her books was her version of Cinderella, one which was so successful that it remains in print today as a Little Golden Book. She was an animator on Plague Dogs.

When asked why females weren’t animators at the studio, the Nine Old Men who traveled the circuit, back in the 1970′s, often mentioned her. They usually also said that she was one of the most forceful artists at the studio, but her timing always needed some help (meaning from a man.)

Ms. Scott was known predominantly for her animation in Bambi. Specifically, she’s credited with the sequence where the hunter’s dogs chase Faline to the cliff wall and Bambi is forced to fight them off. The scene is beautifully staged and, indeed, is forceful in its violent, yet smooth, movement.

Ms. Scott died in 1990.

Continuing with prior posts featuring some of the sketch work from this film, I feature some of the original work from this sequence. Many of these drawings are storyboard pieces and are not actually the work of Ms. Scott. However, they certainly inspired what she would animate.

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_________These, above, are two frame grabs from the sequence.

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The dogs corner and chase Faline up a rock wall where she tries to stave off the violence of the attacking dogs. She remains there until Bambi comes to save her, fighting off the dogs.

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_____Though most of the drawings above aren’t the work of Retta Scott, this one is.

- Dumbo is certainly one of my favorite Disney features if not THE favorite. Naturally, the “Baby Mine” sequence is a highlight. The sequence is so tender and fine-tuned to appear straightforward and simple. This, of course, is the heart of excellence. It seems simple and doesn’t call attention to itself.

This is a storyboard composed of LO drawings from the opening of that sequence. They appear to be BG layouts with drawings of the characters cut out and pasted in place.

It’s not really a storyboard, and I’ve always wondered what purpose such boards served to the Disney machine back in the Golden Age.

Below is the board as it stands in the photograph.

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Here is the same photographed board, split up so that I can post it in larger size. I’ve also interspersed frame grabs from the actual sequence for comparison.