Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

- Earlier this week, I posted John Canemaker ‘s loan of a couple of storyboards by Bill Peet from Bill Cottrell’s script for The Little House. This was adapted from the children’s book by Virgina Lee Burton.

Today I’ve got a fifth board. I’m not sure it’s storyboard; the images look a bit more like background layouts. Perhaps it’s something in between the two. I’m not even sure the drawings are by Bill Peet.

This is the actual board. However, I’m posting it as I did the others in pieces so that it can best be enlarged for good viewing.

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- Mary Blair was the dominating design force on this film, and her work stands out vigorously.

John’s exceptional book, The Art and Flair of Mary Blair includes a number of key pieces of art for this short. I think it might be remiss for me not to post them alongside these storyboards to see how Peet and Blair worked together. With thanks and apologies to John and his excellent book, here are the color scans.
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(Click any image to enlarge.)

- John Canemaker loaned me these boards by Bill Peet for the short, The Little House.

These storyboards are five dense pages.
The photo images on them are small, so I had to break them apart and reassemble them so that you’d be able to enlarge them enough to study.

They’re an excellent example of an extraordinary story artist developing a pre-existing story, the children’s book by Virginia Lee Burton (who also wrote Mike Mulligan and His Steamshovel.)

This is the first of these five pages. It’ll take a few posts to get them all in.

This is the full first board as it looks before I cut it apart. The image is small and I cut it up and reassembled it. The blue nunbers below the panels represent the row of images displayed.

Page 1 – 1a____ You’ll have to click images to enlarge them enough to view them properly.

Page 1 – 1b

Page 1 – 2a

Page 1 – 2b

Page 1 – 3a

Page 1 – 3b

Page 1 -4a

Page 1 – 4b

Page 1 – 5a

Page 1 – 5b

Page 1 – 6a

Page 1 – 6b

Page 1 – 7a

Page 1 – 7b

Page 1 – 8a

Page 1 – 8b

The following are three images from the dvd extas to give an indication of color.

More tomorrow.

– This is the second of two posts on the Bill Peet storyboards for the Disney film, Ben and Me. This section, loaned to me by John Canemaker, comes in a xeroxed form – lots of grays – and taped together in a long sheet. I’ve split it up a bit to make it easier to post. I’ve also worked with it a bit to make it more visible thanks to Photoshop.

Bill Peet offered great drawings in his storyboards, and I’m sure he brought a lot of inspiration to the animators.

This is an excedingly long pan (30 inches), and is almost invisible in this minimal thumbnail. Rather than break it up into shorter bits, I’m posting it as is and hope it won’t be too much of a problem for you to follow in its enlarged state. You have to click on it to see it.

The image below is a recreation of this pan from the final film done using multiple frame grabs.

(Click any image to enlarge.)

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There’s an excellent article about the making of Ben and Me by Wade Sampson at Jim Hill Media. It gives quite a bit of information about this odd short and is well worth reading as a companion to these boards.

- Before going directly into The second installment of The Wind In The Willows storyboard, I’d like to say a couple of words about the passing of Kurt Vonnegut. It was a bit of a surprise.

My lawyer was the representative of Mr. Vonnegut and I heard that he was a collector of owl drawings. I had illustrated a book by John Gardner, Gudgekin the Thistle Girl, and the fairy tale featured a witch who changed into an owl. I was asked to trade the original illustration for a signed copy of one of Mr. Vonnegut’s books. Needless to say, I jumped at it. His autographed copy was a cartoon for me in the frontispiece of the book. Unfortunately, the book is in storage or I’d post the image.

I met Kurt Vonnegut a couple of years later and we had a very nice conversation. I’m sad to hear of his accident and the complications that ensued, and I’m even sadder to hear of his death. My condolences to his family and friends and to the world who is now deprived of his intellignece.

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- Here are the next three pages of The Wind In The Willows board. As suggested by Michael Barrier in the comment section of part 1. this board was probably assembled to produce a preliminary Leika reel. The giveaway is the lack of dialogue and commentary underneath the drawings. The assembly was made to be photographed.

Fortunate for us it worked its way out of Disney, past many years and many owners into the hands of John Canemaker, who has loaned them to me. There’s some great drawing here.

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(Click any image to enlarge for viewing.)

5

6

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Speaking of Mike Barrier he has some excellent commentary on “Who Killed Cock Robin?” the Silly Symphony short. Mike suggests, appropriately that all the divers elements floating out there – storyboards, drafts, production charts, etc. – can give us a view of a film’s making only when they’re culled together and viewed as a whole. This is what he’s trying to do with the one short. Lots of scouting is necessary to get a bigger picture, otherwise they’re just drawings that don’t tell the larger story.