Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

- Phil Duncan was a mainstay of the Hubley animators in all the time I was there.

You could tell who Hubley’s favorite animators by the frequency in which he doled out sequences to them. Whereas Tissa David or Bill Littlejohn or Barrie Nelson would have been asked to animate entire shorts by themselves, someone like Phil Duncan would get whole sequences to animate. At the same time, John so depended on Phil and trusted what he did.

There were never pencil tests at the Hubley studio. Only one instance of it do I remember, and that was on the Art Babbitt mime scenes from Carousel. As I said once before, I remember John running out to get me asking if I’d like to see animation as good as I’d ever see. We then watched the PT over and over together. Ultimately John took Art’s animation on twos and had me put it on four frame dissolves to get more screen time out of it. A budget was a budget and you had to make the most out of the excellence you had in your hand.

But as I mentioned yesterday, Phil would animate on odd numbers expecting the even numbers to be inbetweened. Most times, John asked me to reexpose the scene on fours and not do the inbetweens. Of course, Phil was aware this would happen and had planned on it.

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Here is a walk cycle (and more) by Phil Duncan from Of Men and Demons, which was nominated for the Oscar in 1969. The full scene includes the three demons walking and then flying up to their cave.

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(Click any image to enlarge to full animation paper view.)

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The rest of the scene breaks out of the walk cycle. I
enlarged the frames to accomodate the remainder of the action.

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“Demon” walk cycle from Of Men and Demons
On threes at 24FPS
Click left side of the black bar to play.
Right side to watch single frame.

- If I had to choose who was my favorite animator, I’d have a tough time. Equal credit would probably have to go to three different people: Bobe Cannon, Tissa David and Bill Tytla. Jim Tyer and Ed Smith would fall just a smidgen below these three, for me. But there are none like them all, as far as I’m concerned.

I’ve posted a lot of drawings from Tissa and Bill Tytla, but have very few drawings by Bobe Cannon (nor have I seen many published anywhere.)

Here is a walk cycle from the beginning of Hubley’s monumental short, Moonbird. The odd numbers are extremes by Cannon, and the inbetweens (even numbers) were done by Ed Smith. Three different sized papers were used for this, and you can view them full sized if you click the thumbnails.

You’ll notice there’s paint all over the drawings. The ink & paint involved tracing the drawing, then using oil paints to cover all of the clear area in black. Some of that paint seeped onto the originals. In one drawing even to coloring the hat accidentally.

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(Click any image to enlarge.)

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“Marky” walk cycle from Moonbird
On twos at 24FPS
Click left side of the black bar to play.
Right side to watch single frame.

There’s a lot more to this scene including several variants on the walk.
At some future time, I’ll add the other drawings to show off the entire scene.

- Wifle Piffle was a character that the Fleischer studio tried to develop out of the Betty Boop series. The first appearance was in a Screen Song: I Feel Like A Feather In The Breeze released in 1936. He appears as a waiter in the opening. The animation of the character was by Tom Johnson (as was this model sheet.)

Two follow-up films were made with this side character in Betty Boop shorts.
The first, released in February 1937, was Whoops! I’m A Cowboy, and the second, in March 1937, The Hot Air Salesman. The opening scene features an expensive multiplane shot behind him.

He seems to have been an Egghead type character whose sole character trait was a silly walk. Needless to say, they couldn’t find a joh for him.

The model sheet for the character was an 18 drawing walk cycle with a bit of a turnaround. Crosshairs keep the character in registration; only a couple of the pages were punched.

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Wiffle Piffle walk cycle
On ones at 24FPS
Click left side of black bar to play.
Right side to watch single frame.

- Last week I posted some animation drawings done by Grim Natwick which he animated in a spot for Mountain Dew. The drawings I posted were actually the assistant’s drawings done by Tissa David. The spot was produced by Robert Lawrence Productions.

This is another run cycle from that same film. Again, all of the drawings, here, are Tissa’s clean-ups.

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(Click any image to enlarge to actual animation sized drawing.)

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You’ll note that the character leaves the ground for 1/3 of the spot.
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He actually comes down in the crossing position rather than the
classically designed walk where the head moves up.

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Tissa’s tnedency is to have the crossing position the lowest in the cycle.
The character bears the weight of his walk with feet solidly on ground.

Run Cycle
On ones at 24FPS
Click left side of black bar to play.
Right side to watch single frame.

– One of the best exercises I ever received, when I was starting out in animation, came from someone I respected and whose work I truly admired. Jack Schnerk advised me to animate a character walking in a circle.

He felt that a walk cycle was one of the hardest things to learn, and by animating that character in a circle it meant keeping the character solid while moving it 360º. Try it; it isn’t easy (unless, presumably, your working in cgi.)

Note: the photo of Jack Schnerk comes from Amid Amidi’s Cartoon Modern site; it’s part of a UPA group photo.

After posting all that material about Max Fleischer yesterday, what better example of a character moving in a circle can I find than Popeye. This is from the film Hello, How Am I? where we get two Popeyes for the price of one.

Here’s the title card and a frame grab from the actual scene.

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(Click any image to enlarge.)

Here are frame grabs of the actual walk.

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Popeye walks in a circle.

Today’s Wall Street Journal includes an excellent piece by John Canemaker about Ollie Johnston.

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- I’ve been enjoying analyzing the walk cycles in 101 Dalmatians. I particularly liked the last one I posted “girl with french poodle.”
Here’s the young child with her puppy. She not only walks, but she licks her lollipop. The pup is just an absolute innocent. It’s another great walk by Blaine Gibson.

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_______(Click any image to enlarge.)

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The “little girl with puppy” walks on ones.

The piece, in the film, includes a zoom into the cycle. I’ve tried to adjust for it but don’t think I was wholly successful. There’s a marginal enlargement of the drawings as it goes on – noticeable only in motion. It’s actually interesting in the walk.

- Continuing with my exploration and breakdown of the walk cycles which appear at the start of Disney’s 101 Dalmatians, I have scene 21 “French girl walks French poodle” animated by Blaine Gibson. It employs the same BG as scene 14, the art student (posted Apr 3), but it extends, beyond what we’ve seen before, to include a telephone booth.

______________(Click any image to enlarge.)

This is a slightly faster walk than others, and I’ve been able to grab all of the drawings. It’s animated on “ones.”

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The “French girl” walks her French poodle on “ones.”

This walk is an absolute gem !

Once again, check out Hans Perk‘s excellent site A Film LA to get the drafts for this film to be able to identify who was behind what. Then go to see Mark Mayerson‘s arduously constructed and informative mosaics as well as his detailed commentary about the film and its animators.

Check out Floyd Norman‘s story about Blaine Gibson on Jim Hill Media.

- I’ve taken the dvd and made a high def high res QT and put it through AfterEffects. I was able to pull every frame. The 3:2 pull down gave every fifth frame as a dupe of frame 5. This allowed the piece to expand to 30fps.

Here then is what the cycle should look like:

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The “Buxom Girl and Bulldog” walk on ones.

WHAT A DIFFERENCE !

- When I was young, as I’ve pointed out many times, there were few books available about animation and as few illustrations and photos which ellicited the art of animation. Hence, it was always a treat when a Disney feature was released. The adjoining publicity would provide a trove of publicity material, some worth saving. An encyclopedia my parents bought at about the time of release of 101 Dalmations included several key images of Pongo running. One of those photos of many cels overlayed to detail the cycle. I loved that picture and frequently looked at that encyclopedia under “Cartoons, Animated” to study the photo of the cels.

At the very beginning of 101 Dalmatians, Pongo looks out onto the street to search for a good mate for both himself and Roger, his owner. At this point we’re treated to a number of walk cycles that I think are brilliant. A number of women are perfectly matched to the dogs that they walk.

Now with DVDs available to us, we can see that the characters originated in the storyboard drawings, and we can study these walk cycles. I’m determined to take these animated bits apart to watch them a bit closer.

The first of these is the “girl art student” as described in the drafts (which can be found on Hans Perks’ excellent site A Film LA.) Oddly, from my very first viewing of this film back in 1961, I identified her as a “beatnick,” which was the fashionable joke back then. Now I find out she was an “art student.” I guess that makes sense.

Here’s the pan BG that this scene employs.

________________(Click any image to enlarge.)

And here is the walk cycle animated by Frank Thomas and Blaine Gibson.
Gibson handled the following scene which pans across the bodies of the pair as they walk.

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The “Art student” walks her dog on threes.

Animation note: The two separate feet are divided by a short space. The left foot is on one plane, and the right foot is on another. This is a BASIC precept for animators to follow, and it’s something that is not appearing in a lot of the recent walk cycles I’ve been seeing. It’s annoying.

- Back in October 2006, I posted this piece about John & Faith Hubley‘s short film Upkeep which includes an excellent walk cycle by Tissa David. I’ll try to post the storyboard for this film next week, if I can locate it.

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– Back in 1973, the Hubleys produced Upkeep, a short film for IBM. It chronicled the history of the service repairman in a light hearted way. Actually an industrial, it was treated like a personal film. (There’s a thin line between some of their industrials and their personal films.) Of Men and Demons was done for IBM though they considered it a personal film; it instructed in the positive aspects of the binary code and was nominated for an Oscar.
___ (John & Faith Hubley with
___composer, Benny Carter)

Tissa David did the lion’s share of the animation for Upkeep. Phil Duncan, Lu Guarnier and Jack Schnerk were the other key animators on it. Helen Komar and I assisted all of them, and I inked the whole film. Gen Hirsch and I colored it. John did all the Bg’s.

The initial animation on the service man was done by Phil Duncan. Tissa had to pick up the character, and she found the walk Phil had done so funny that she kept it throughout the film adding shades and tones to it as she thought appropriate.

The art was inked with a sharpie, bled with thinner, then colored with magic markers. Each drawing was then cut out and pasted to cels. Hubley’s Bg’s followed the same style: sharpie on board, washed & bled with thinner, added watercolor washes.

Posted below are the drawings for that 18 drawing walk cycle.

___(Click any image to enlarge them.)

Walk cycle on twos.