Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

Ignacio Carlos Ochoa is an animator in Argentina. (Check out his site; his work is extremely good.) He recently wrote to tell me that he found a book at his mother’s house – El Sastrecillo Valiente/The Brave Little Tailor. (Oddly enough, I had just begun scanning the Frank Thomas scene from this film that started posting last Monday.)

Ignacio sent scans of the book, and it appears to be the Spanish edition of the Whitman book, originally published in English in 1939. He guessses this edition to date from the 50′s and published by PEUSER LTD. (“On the back cover is writed ‘Peuser Ltd.’ in a very small size.”) At the first page we can read that the book was printed by “Librería Hachette” .

I’m grateful to Iganacio for sending these great scans, and I hope you like the book:

(Click any image to enlarge.)

- Last week we had the Donald Models. Actually that was the second edition of Donald models, I’ve posted. The other was a while back – back in July 2009, there was the lecture notes written of the after-hours class held in the ’30s.

As I stated, last week, this post is dedicated to model sheets of Donald that are tied to specific films he was in. I love them all. They come from several periods of Disney shorts and Donalds. The first is from my favorite period for Donald, and I’m sorry he had to change from this guy; I love him. But I also love the Mickey of that period – 1931-32.

In the end we get into the TV Donald – but not too much.

Anyway, enough gab.

Love this character.

Hawaiian Holiday – Sept 24, 1937

Donald’s Ostrich – Dec 10, 1937

Master of the Hounds
retitled The Fox Hunt – July 29 1938

The Hockey Champ – Apr 28, 1939

Officer Duck – October 10, 1939

Donald’s Dog Laundry – April 5 1940

Donald’s Date
retitled Mr. Duck Steps Out – June 7 1940

The Fire Chief – Dec 13 1940

Just heads. This is getting to be late-period Donald.

Here we have one from Steel and America (1964)
an Industrial done for the U.S.Steel Corporation.

Finally, I had to have a Von Drake in the bunch.

Many thanks to the gracious Bill Peckmann for the loan of this material to post. His collection of model sheets is amazing.

- The recent comments on Michael Barrier‘s post about the Dumbo Roll-a-book prompted Milt Gray to tell of his creating a homemade version of the device, which is well described in Barrier’s article.

Of course, any kid of the ’50s knows this device well. I’d made them hundreds of times, and, in fact, found that by drawing the pictures I could make my own “films” for the homemade Roll-A-Book. Getting an opaque projector meant that these rolls of picture stories could be projected, and that’s just what we, my brothers and sisters, did daily. Every night one or more of us always had some kind of funny home-drawn cartoon story to project – one image at a time. And they went on for hours – large rolls of pictures.

When I went to work for the Hubleys, I became the Letterman guy. After working on a couple of seasons of Letterman animated cartoons, John got a gig to draw comic strips for The Electric Company Magazine. That meant I was doing the strips which were adapted from the shorts as they aired in the series.

I designed these strips as mini-movies advising kids to create home-theaters essentially Roll-A-Book devices. (See sample illustration above.)

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(Click any image to enlarge.)

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- I’ve spent a lot of time the past few Mondays posting models of Mickey Mouse. It’s only fair to move onto Donald Duck. Here are a lot of good models, mostly from the ’30s.

I follow this first group with some really clean models designed for publishing. I think you’ll see how heartfelt the first batch are compared to the second group done in the ’50s.

You can also see an earlier post I did of the Disney lecture on Donald and how to draw him.

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The following are designed for publishing, not animation:

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Next week I’ll follow with a number of models from specific films, all of which are gems.

I have to thank the inestimable courtesy of Bill Peckmann for the loan of these sheets. I am deeply grateful.

- Don Marquis‘ book, Archy and Mehitabel, garnered fame quickly and not least because of the extraordinary illustrations of George Herriman, the creator of Krazy Kat.

The first book was published in 1927 and others followed in 1933 and 1935. It wasn’t until the third book that Herriman took over the characters created by Marquis in his book of short stories, developed mostly, in poetry. An on-again off-again love affair, the story had two principal characters: a cat, Mehitabel, and Archy, cockroach. (You can read these poems on line here.)

In 1953, writer Joe Darion along with composer George Kleinsinger (the creator of Tubby the Tuba) created a musical theater piece. Tenor Jonathan Anderson played Archy and soprano Mignon Dunn was Mehitabel. At about the same time a recording of the showtunes was recorded with Carol Channing as Mehitabel and Eddie Bracken as Archy. The record was a success.

With the help of the young writer, Mel Brooks, they were able to get their show to Broadway in 1957, but it was now named Shinbone Alley. After 49 performances, the show closed, but the original cast album was recorded that same year. The songs stayed in the permanent repetoire of Carol Channing and Eartha Kitt.

In 1971, John Wilson directed an animated feature starring the voices of Channing and Brackett and using the songs from the musical. The love affair between Archy and Mehitabel was penned by Archy, the cockroach; his poems tell their story.

The film suffers from its music. The songs are simple and sound as if they’re written for children, but the lyrics pull from the poems which are definitely designed for adults. It gets a bit confusing, as a result, and is a bit picaresque; the poems are short and illustrating them in animation would take more adaptation than seen here.

John Wilson had developed his studio, Fine Arts Films, on the back of the weekly, animated, music videos he did for The Sonny and Cher Show, an enormous hit in the early 70s.

These music videos were loose designs animated quickly and lively around the songs Sonny & Cher would schedule each week. There would always be one or two of these pieces, and they were highlights in the weekly one-hour musical/variety program.

The graphics of Shinbone Alley aren’t too far from these Sonny & Cher videos. Loose design and animation with a design style not too far from the Fred Wolf’s made-for-ABC feature, The Point. This was the first feature made for television and featured the songs and story of Harry Nilsson, although Shinbone Alley featured a wilder color pallette.

Jules Engel, Corny Cole and Sam Cornell all worked in design on the film. The long list of animators included Barrie Nelson, John Sparey, Spencer Peel, Eddie Rehberg and Jim Hiltz. Mark Kausler was an assistant on the show.

The film wasn’t an enormous success, but that was probably explained much by the limited distribution and the poor marketing of the film.

The Jacob Burns Film Center will host Shinbone Alley on Tuesday Feb. 16th. The screening will be at 5:30 & 7:25 pm.

Here are some frame grabs from the first 1/4 of the film:

We’re introduced to Archy right off the bat as he
flies out of the river onto the dock. He realizes that he,
the poet, tried to kill himself and was sent back as a cockroach.

He soon finds a typewriter and goes straight back to work.

Mehitabel is a performer – with Carol Channing’s voice.

The two meet cute.

She has another boyfriend, voiced by Alan Reed,
who is also the voice of Fred Flintstone.

A song video takes us outside.

pan down.

Another music video brings us into Peter Max’s style.

Life in Shinbone Alley.

- Last week I posted the model sheet for scene 22 of The Symphony Hour. This week I have scene 48. I’ve also broken down the drawings and made a QT comparison between the final film and these extremes from scene animated by Marvin Woodward. I hope it’s useful to some of you.

The model sheets come from the gracious courtesy of Bill Peckmann. Many thanks to him.

As with last week’s post, first the full model sheet then a breakdown.

(Click any image to enlarge.)

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910

1112

1314

1516

1718

1920

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The following QT movie was timed to match the extremes in the
animation. Until any pose appeared in color, I held the image just
prior for the number of frames to cover the missing inbtws.
It’s a large QT so may take time to load.

Click left side of the black bar to play.
Right side to watch single frame.

For further study take a look at Mark Mayerson‘s Mosaic and comments on this film.

- As I’ve said in the past, I just love model sheets. And here are a stash of them on loan from Bill Peckmann‘s collection. Some good, some not-so-good, and some great.
Let’s start off with something great.

Bert and Harry Piels in a photostat
from the UPA studio.

Here’s a head model for the Piels brothers
drawn in red colerase on animation bond.

Here’s a B&W fading photostat of an announcement
for the Gerald McBoing Boing Show direct from UPA.

The following are some models from Chuck Jones’ not-so-good tv film
A Connecticut Rabbit in King Arthur’s Court.

Bugs

Daffy

Elmer

Yosemite Sam

Here’s a HAPPY NEW YEAR card from 1978.

Finally the bottom of the barrel of a couple of models
from Chuck Jones’ RAGGEDY ANN & ANDY in
The Great Christmas Caper.

The characters never looked worse.

In his later years, Chuck reworked the WB characters into something
godawful, and here he takes Raggedy Ann and Andy way over that
cute/corny/ugly line. Too bad he didn’t pull Corny Cole into it.

- Last week I posted the model sheet for scene 10 of The Symphony Hour. This week I have scene 22. I’ve also broken down the drawings and made a QT comparison between the final film and these extremes by Les Clark. It’s a short scene, but there’re a lot of dynamics in it.

The model sheets come from the gracious courtesy of Bill Peckmann. Many thanks to him.

As with last week’s post, first the full model sheet then a breakdown.

(Click any image to enlarge.)

12

34

56

78

910

The QT shows that the first images of the scene have change
a bit. Mickey’s right hand is different. It changed to something
more dynamic. The scene feels as though it cuts short, except
that it’s matching the track and works with sound. Since the
sound comes in with the head of the next scene, I left it out and
held the last drawing a beat longer than called for.

Click left side of the black bar to play.
Right side to watch single frame.

For further study take a look at Mark Mayerson‘s Mosaic and comments on this film.

- A second model sheet of Minnie shows the animation breakdown for scene 57 from the film, The Little Whirlwind. The scene was animated by Ward Kimball and Reuben Timmins (effx).

Here’s the full model sheet. Note that some of the drawings are out of order (row 2 should be row 3.)

(Click any image to enlarge.)

Here’s a breakdown of those same drawings enlarged for viewing.

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34

56

78

910

1112

1314

1516

1718

1920

2122

2324

2526

2728

2930

3132

33

The Following QT movie is exposed on
twos since I have nothing to go by, I just let it play itself.

Click left side of the black bar to play.
Right side to watch single frame.

Thanks to Bill Peckmann for the generous loan of this model sheet.

– Here is the third and final part of this scene from The Jungle Book in which Kaa, the snake, tries to capture Mowgli, the boy.

Dale Oliver (1919-2003) was Frank Thomas‘s assistant for twenty years. His generosity was responsible ultimately for getting these drawings to John Canemaker who has, once again, kindly lent them to me to post on this site. I thought it nice that one of the brilliant Disney assistant animators deserved a small token of positive appreciation for all his extraordinary work on so many of those wonderful scenes.

You can find the first two parts of the scene by going to these links:
Part 1
Part 2

As with last week, we pick up with the last drawing from that part – #69.

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The Following QT movie is of the complete scene.

Click left side of the black bar to play.
Right side to watch single frame.