Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

- Here’s the first part of a scene Tissa David animated for the Hubley feature EVERYBODY RIDES THE CAROUSEL. The baby is one year old and mother puts him down in front of the lit birthday cake. She tries to fix his tie, but he’ll have none of it. I have the mother drawings that follow this, but I’m missing the baby. So I’ll let it end at this point.

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The following is a QT of the entire scene with all the drawings included.
Since I didn’t have exposure sheets, I calculated everything on threes
since Tissa did a lot of her Hubley work on threes.
I don’t know if there were any holds, but I doubt it.

- Today we continue with the Action Analysis notes from the lectures given at the Disney studio by instructor, Don Graham. The lectures, at this point, were generally built around film sequences that were screened. Oftentimes they were past Disney films, other times they were live action sequences from other studios. In this lecture, they were scenes from the Clark Gable feature, San Francisco. (This can be rented from Netflix or other distributors or can be often seen on TCM.)

The animation personnel who attended and participated included: Izzy Klein, Joe Magro, Jacques Roberts, Jimmie Culhane, Bill Tytla, Eddie Strickland, Bill Shull Moe Gollub (misspelled as Gallub) and Bernie Wolfe.

Cover

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- Not every animated film is good, nor do they have good animation. But there’s usually a preponderance of workmanlike animation done for these films. Tubby the Tuba is a dog that was produced by my alma mater, New York Institute of Technology. Alexander Schure was the head of the school, and he brought it from Manhattan to Old Westbury, Long Island. He was an animation buff and wanted to be the next Walt Disney. He used his money to build an animation studio working out of his college. The studio ran through a number of heads from Sam Singer (Courageous Cat) to Alexander Schure, himself. Johnny Gentilella ultimately became the director of the project. The film took a couple of years to make with a lot of “B” animators, many of them culled from Los Angeles.

A footnote on the school was that Schure ultimately invested in some early computer animation, and though he was determined to compete with Saturday morning, limited animation quality via the computer, he financed some of the future cgi developers for animation including Ed Catmull, Ed Emschwiller and Alvy Ray Smith.

Ed DeMattia was an animator on Tubby the Tuba who did a number of scenes. I pulled one of them to give an idea of his animation. It’s surely not something worthy of study.
Since some of the drawings are just mouths calling for TraceBacks, I don’t post most of those.

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The following is a QT of the entire scene with all the drawings included.
Since I didn’t have exposure sheets, I calculated everything on twos but
since there were only every other drawing most of the action is on fours here.

- Here is yet more of the Action Analysis class notes transcribed at the Disney studio in this lesson wherein they study clips from several films including a Laurel & Hardy short and a Charlie Chaplin short. If you can get your hands on either (Netflix might have them) it’ll help you to understand the talk.

Participants include: Teacher, Don Graham, animators, Izzy Klein, Joe Magro, either Jacques or Bill Roberts and Stan Quackenbush, storyman Chuck Couch, and BG artist, Dick Anthony.

The complete body of these notes really works as a masterclass in animation for those who are interested and take the time to read them.

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- I have a few Terrytoon Bgs and thought I’d post them today. They come from a number of different shorts from the late ’30s. If you have any idea of titles, please don’t hesitate to leave a note.

I have to say that I really am in awe of the watercolor and/or tempera painting abilities of the artists. They’re quite attractive in person. I must say that they stand up well against some of the other studio work I’ve seen. There were a couple of second rate watercolors done for some MGM Tex Avery shorts I’d seen only yesterday. I wouldn’t expect Terrytoons to be better, but they are.

Enjoy.

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This Bg is from “The Three Bears” (1939)

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Possibly “When Knights Were Bold.”

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This is from “The Glass Slipper” Oct. 7, 1938

- As we all know, Don Graham conducted night classes at the Disney Studio between 1936 and 1938. They usually revolved around a particular theme and used clips from appropriate movies, whether Chaplin or Disney’s own shorts.

In this particular Action Analysis lesson, te use of secondary motions was discussed, and clips from “Country Cousin” were screened and commented on. The participants include Izzy Klein, Joe Magro, Don Williams, Jack Hannah Dave Hilberman, Bill Tytla, Shamus Culhane, Chuck Couch, Dick Anthony and Don Strickland.

Many of the lecture series were posted on Hans Perk‘s enormously helpful site, A Film LA. As a matter of fact, you can find the previous lecture on “Primary Actions” here.

The cover of the lesson.

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- Here are some preliminary drawings from Cinderella. These are pictures of the mice, the cat, the dog, the Prince and the horse. Sorry the low res of some of the images doesn’t allow me to get large enough – particularly with regard to the model sheets.

After viewing these models, take a look at the animator drafts whch are being posted by Hans Perk on his commendable site, A Film LA.

- More images collected from Cinderella. But first, let me start with this email my sister, Pat, sent me. She’s always sending
me funny email jokes, and this one seemed to come at just the right time – in time for this post. It just reads:

The Prince and Cinderella is one thing but the two sisters’ dresses. That’s where this comparison takes the cake.
Anyway, I thought you might enjoy it if you haven’t already seen this.

Now, onto more Cinderella art. This all started with Hans Perk‘s wonderful blog, A Film LA and the Cinderella drafts he’s posting. Take a look. They’re a treasure (as is everything Hans posts.)

We start with a couple of finished BGs and move onto to models and designs for Cinderella’s room, house, and castle.

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The Stepmother

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The Stepsisters

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- I continue, here, with more images from Cinderella.

I think of this series of posts as an outgrowth of the Cinderella drafts Hans Perk is posting on his excellent blog, A Film LA. Check them out if you haven’t already.

Many of the following drawings are better drawn than some of those in the first post. Others almost look as though they’re frame grabs rather than the preliminary sketches (See #9 & 10) they are. I hope you enjoy them. If you know who did any of the art, don’t hesitate to let us all know.

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I just read a great little quote by Wilfred Jackson in Didier Ghez‘ book Walt’s People Vol. 6. I thought I’d share it. It comes from an interview with Jackson by Steve Hulett:

Pinocchio was the last picture I worked on that was done so strictly under Walt’s guidance. All during the thirties it was that way. Then he backed off and began throwing more responsibility to the rest of us. He figured we should know our business well enough to help him make pictures instead of being extra fingers on his hand.

And it’s my personal opinion that this accounts a great deal for some of the difference that you see in the spirit and the heart that you see in the pictures during the thirties. That gradually, it got a little less evident until it got to the point, in my estimation, where the Disney pictures became superb technically, but a little lacking in a joyous creative spirit you’ll find in those early pictures. As time went on, it was more and more diluted by the influence of others . . .

- Cinderella art. I’ve taken a lot of drawings that I could find from an old DVD and from some books and have put them all together in a jamboree of images making up a couple of posts. The occasion for this, to me, is to celebrate the drafts recently posted by Hans Perk on his resourceful site, A Film LA. This is all leading up to something. I don’t want to do: a mosaic of the film. I am not that in love with the movie to do all that work, but perhaps I’ll do a variation of the form, created by Mark Mayerson.

The artists of these sketches are nameless. None of the art was identified, so I send it out that way. The Mary Blair images are obvous, and though there’s a preponderance of Blair artwork for this film, I”ve tried to limit her a bit. I did devote a lot of space to her artwork in past posts. You can find more of her Cinderella images here.

For now here are some images of the character, Cinderella.

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