Michael Sporn Animation - Splog

Ferdinand Horvath was a Hungarian book illustrator, who was born in 1891 and died of a stroke in 1973. From 1934-1937, he worked at the Disney Studios in multifarious positions doing everything from painting backgrounds and doing layouts to constructing three dimensional models to designing characters and gags for over fifty Silly Symphonies and Mickey Mouse shorts.

Prior to working at Disney, he labored at Paul Terry’s studio on the “Aesop’s Fables” series. Once he left Disney, he designed models and layouts for “Scrappy,” “Krazy Kat” on shorts for Columbia/Screen Gems. In 1940, he sculpted puppets for George Pal’s Puppetoons.

He was a versatile artist whose work was an inspiration for many Disney artists. The following booklet was published by Graphis Gallery and put together by Bruce Hamilton. The opening material explains itself.

Bill Peckmann sent me scans of these pages, and I thank him for keeping Horvath alive.

Front cover of the catalogue.

The back cover.

1 2
This gives information on what appears on the two covers.

3 4

5

6

7

8

9

10 11

12 13

14

15

16

17

18

19 20

21

- For It’s A Small World for the Pepsi pavilion at the 1964 NY World’s Fair, Mary Blair produced a lot of preliminary designs. All of them glisten like little gems. Last week I posted art for the larger part of the pavilion; this week we go into the smaller interior parts. All of it is beautiful

These scans were all taken from the featured book, The Colors of Mary Blair.
Of course, there’s also John Canemaker’s excellent book, The Art and Flair of Mary Blair.

1
(Click any image to enlarge.)

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

- Back to Mary Blair’s great work. We move from the film work she did for Disney to the art work she did in designing It’s A Small World for the Pepsi pavilion at the 1964 NY World’s Fair. There’s so much artwork for this that I’m going to have to break it into two posts.

Here’s my selection for the first group:

1
The artist at work.

2
An architectural drawing of the site.

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

- Jack Sidebotham passed away on Sunday. Bill Peckmann received the following message from George Newall, the co-creator of Schoolhouse Rock:

Sad news. Jack died last night. Evidently he and Dick Lord were having lunch when Jack complained that he thought he was having a heart attack. As it turned out, it was an aneurism. The good news is that he was in no pain and conversing with the doctor when suddenly he just wasn’t “there” anymore.

Yesterday, Jack’s niece, Kimberly Sidebotham Lennert, left this comment on my blog: “My uncle was a terrific cartoonist and had a great wit about him. I kept a box of all the little notes and drawings he sent to me. He could say a lot with a few lines and a few words. ”

In his memory, I’ve chosen to repeat his book on Cartooning done in the 70s. Jack worked at a number of advertising agencies and had a lot to do with the Piels Brothers campaign and Scholastic Rock. He also was the agency producer for the famous Jello Chinese Baby ad done by Ray Patin Prods.

For this “Art of” book, he brings back the Piels Brothers without their great voices, comedians Bob and Ray, to escort the reader through a few lessons in cartooning and a sample of a number of different jobs in the field.

I think the book was originally published by Grumbacher, along with several others on art and painting techniques, to compete with the cheap and successful books published Walter T. Foster. They were all sold in art stores for very little money, and if you hit on a Preston Blair book, you’d found gold.

12
(Click any image to enlarge.)

34

56

78

910

1112

1314

1516

1718

1920

2122

2324

2526

2728

29
.

The book’s back cover

- The last of the full length animated features that Mary Blair helped to design was Peter Pan. Her artwork for this film is stunning, and fortunately it’s been published in many places.

Of course, there’s John Canemaker’s excellent book, The Art and Flair of Mary Blair.
Then there’s the Little Golden Book of Peter Pan, .
These scans were all taken from the featured book, The Colors of Mary Blair

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

- Alice. More pictures from the Japanese book, The Colors of Mary Blair. There are lots of pictures from this book that I’m not posting; I’d urge you all to buy it.

The three key feature films that were influenced by Mary Blair are Cinderella, Alice In Wonderland and Peter Pan. There’s a wealth of model drawings from each of these three available in various books. John Canemaker’s brilliant work, The Art and Flair of Mary Blair, pulls all three together into one chapter and handles them beautifully.
Each of the films has a companion storybook that is illustrated with Mary Blair’s models. Peter Pan, Alice In Wonderland, Cinderella.

These Alice drawings are overexposed, but I picked a bunch I like.

(Click any image to enlarge.)

3

4

5

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

This continues my series of color stills from some of the beautiful work in the exquisite Japanese book on Mary Blair, The Colors of Mary Blair. If you have the resources to buy this book, you should.

- The big three for Mary Blair, as a designer of Disney animation, were Cinderella, Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan. We’ll spend all of this post on Cinderella. Many of these illustrations made it into John Canemaker’s invaluable book, The Art and Flair of Mary Blair. Others have made it into a Cinderella storybook with text by Cynthia Ryant. Still others appear only in this Japanese edition.

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16 17

18 19

20
A couple of Marc Davis models.

21

22

23

24

25

- With this post, I’m concluding the material loaned to me by Bill Peckmann of Rowland Wilson’s sterling artwork for Hercules. I started this post last week, and you can go back there to see other character designs.

These watercolors are less character designs than they are inspirational pieces. They are inspirational. How stunning this art. I would have loved seeing something like this on the screen rather than Gerald Scarfe’s. But that’s just me.

As with some of the last posts, I’m showing the larger piece (and they are large) and then going in for some tighter blowups.

1
(Click any image to enlarge.)

1A

2

Typed beneath this image:
HERC AND PHIL ADDRESS ZEUS ON MT. OLYMPUS
The realm of the gods is in the sky. The landscape is made of sky imagery -
the classic buildings, the trees, the hills are the colors of rainbows, thunderheads,
lightning, rain, hail and stars. Trees have tops made of clouds and trunks of rain
or lightning. Buildings evolve out of mist as do the gods themselves.
The gods can be large or human scale as needed.

In mythology, Zeus changed himself into a swan, a bull, a cloud,
and even a shower of gold.

Everything is as changeable and colorful as a sunset.

2A

2B

3
Hercules and the Hydra.

3A

4
Typed below this image:

THE HOME OF THE GODS.

A skyscape. Trees, mountains and waterfalls appear and dissolve away.
We can see shapes in the clouds - temples and statues.
Lightning flashes and stars gleam in unexpected places.
The whole skyscape is slowly drifting.

4A

4B

5
This ain’t heaven.

5A

5B

5C

6
This one looks almost as though it were painted
on black velvet - appropriately enough.

6A

6B

6C

- Here’s Hercules. The last two weeks I posted some wonderful watercolor sketches, preliminary art for The Hunchback of Notre Dame from the great cartoonist, Rowland B. Wilson. (see: Part 1, Part 2)

Here for the first of two parts are some drawings by Rowland for Hercules. This entry includes character sketches for characters that developed into something completely different, or didn’t end up in the film at all.

Once again, I must express my debt of gratitude to the generosity of Bill Peckmann for lending me the art to post here. Thank you, Bill.

1
Megara

2
Hades - version 1

3
Hades - version 2

4
Hades - version 3

5
Death

6
Pegasus

7
Centaurs 1

8
Centaurs 2

9
Titans 1

10
Titans 2

11
Titans 3

12
Titans 4

Next week, the last of these beautiful watercolor sketches.

- I’ve recently featured a number of illustration pieces by Wallace Tripp and have frequently expressed my feeling that he should have been desigining for animation. His style seems so ideal for the medium. Well, thank heavens, I’m apparently not the only one who thought so.

Bill Peckmann sends me a copy of a letter he received from Mr. Tripp which states that the accompanying artwork was designed for Richard Purdum’s British studio. The dragons are a delight.

1 2
(Click any image to enlarge.)

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

The following sketch and the character closeups are obviously
for something completely different:

1

2

3

4

5