Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

- Another marked day. Today, of course, is Walt’s birthday. As a result, I’m posting one of my favorite, treasured drawings. It’s an Ub Iwerks drawing from Plane Crazy. I know it’s Ub’s drawing since he drew every frame of that film – chained to his desk in a locked room, so that no one would know what was going on. I bought the drawing during Raggedy Ann. Animator – soon to become special effects wizard, John Bruno offered to sell it to me when he learned how interested I was. I jumped, I love it.

(Click image to see the full drawing.)

Wouldn’t it be nice if, somehow, the Disney company actually commented on their founder’s anniversary? Won’t happen.

- It’s also the anniversary of this blog. We’re into our third year. It feels like five. This blog has become part of my life, and I enjoy it. It’s borne me above and through some low animation points in those past coupla years. A voice allowed me to get it out of my system.

- Today’s also the date the judge promised to sentence OJ Simpson. I suppose we’ll be hearing about that later today. A diversion, just in time for the weekend.

- Lately, I find myself unable to get enough Bambi.

I’ve gone back through all the deer skeletal drawings by Rico Le Brun which were sent to me by Sky David. Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.

I look and look again at the wonderful posts on Hans Bacher‘s site. To see some of these go: here, here, here, here and here.

The more I look, the more I want to see. So I went to the recent dvd release and found the following sketches and BG paintings among the Extras. I post them in no particular order, but they should be seen.

(Click any image to enlarge slightly.)

It’s just stunning. What else can I say?

- Recently, I saw a small part of Aladdin on television. A large part of the Genie’s song reminded me of Pink Elephants from Dumbo. I thought then, that I should post anew the models/sketches and drawings from that sequence. It originally was broken in two parts when it saw daylight here in 2007. I’ve combined there into one.

Once again, thanks to John Canemaker, I have several photo images to display. Some frame grabs accompany the piece.

These are rather small images, so by cutting up the large boards and reassembling them I can post them at a higher resolution, making them better seen when clicking each image. It’ll take two days to post them all, so this will be continued later this week.

I’ve interspersed some frame grabs fromt the sequence to give an idea of the coloring.

(Click any image to enlarge.)

The following images were in the gallery part of the dvd. These are the color versions of some of the images above.

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- Here are the last of the color stats of art from Toot Whistle Plunk & Boom. They were loaned me by John Canemaker to whom I’m enormously grateful.

As with past posts, I’ve interspersed some frame grabs from the film to show what the final designs looked like for comparison’s sake.

(Click any image to enlarge.)

Ward Jenkins has many more frame grabs from the entire film on his site.

Mickey’s Good Deed is one of my all-time favorite Mickey mouse cartoons. So much so that when Hans Perk posted the drafts on his site, A FILM LA, and knowing that it’d be unlikely that Mark Mayerson would do one of his famous Mosaics for this film, I did it. Yesterday being the “Official” of birthday Mickey, I’ve decided to add a bit about this short.

(Go here to see the animator breakdown for it.)

I recently found the extras on the Disney Treasures: Mickey Mouse in B&W vol 2.

How can I resist sharing what they include as extra on this dvd!

Since the frame grabs reveal material so small, I’ve actually enlarged them all (with some deterioration) so they’d be legible. Sorry.
I’ve also included frame grabs from the final scenes with animators’ IDs for those scenes.

(Click any image to enlarge slightly.)

Here are three Bg’s from the film:

You can watch a YouTube copy of the film here.

- Continuing with the enormous group of color stats of art from Toot Whistle Plunk & Boom, I have two more posts to offer. Today’s group gets a little more into true storyboard form. Amid Amidi has identified many of the B&W sketches as the work of Tom Oreb, and they show off his vibrant lines and strong sense of design.

As with other posts, I’ve added frame grabs for comparison.

All of these are from the collection of John Canemaker to whom I’m enormously grateful, just for seeing them nevermind posting them.

Here we go:

(Click any image to enlarge.)

One more post will follow, next week.

- One of the great sequences in film, nevermind animation, is the forest fire in Bambi.

Here is storyboard sketch for the sequence.

Here are four backgrounds straight from John Canemaker‘s book, Treasures of Disney Animation Art. These four are all accredited to John Hubley.

(Click any image to enlarge.)

Here are frame grabs from a couple of the scenes:

When the stag comes to save Bambi, lying on the forest floor – “Get up, Bambi. Get up! – the two scenes were made more dynamic by a special shoot wherein a strong light on a dimmer was set behind the background. As Bambi tried to lift himself, the light was slowly turned on lighting up the front of the scene as well.

Check out Hans Bacher‘s incredible sight for background reconstructions from this film. There’s a wealth of art in this movie. Two recent backgrounds shots that he’s posted are relevant to this sequence.

- Last week, I posted the first installment of this series of storyboard art from Toot Whistle Plunk & Boom. Here’s the second installment of these photostats loaned to me by John Canemaker.

I might also note that a number of these were posted by Amid Amidi on his site, Cartoon Modern back in Jan, 2007. Those are worth posting again, and others haven’t been posted before.

When some of the images are close, I’ve tried to give frame grabs that match. Ward Jenkins has many frame grabs from the entire film on his site.

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(Click any image to enlarge.)

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To me, this frame grab captures the spirit but loses some of the art.

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This is a very interesting choice. The original is beautiful, and this is too.

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Owl plays all of the instruments at the film’s start.
This is a good representation.

The remainder of these images will be posted next week.

- This is a later storyboard for Toot Whistle Plunk & Boom. Last week I posted an earlier board (pt 1 & pt 2), and the focus, here, is a bit different. This is called “Meet the Instruments” for a reason.

There’s not much indication of the film that will actually grow out of this and is closer to the story artwork I started posting last week and will continue with plenty more later this week.

This comes from the collection of John Canemaker, many thanks to him.

Here’s the entire board (it’s considerably shorter) in three stats:

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(Click any image to enlarge.)

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And here’s the board broken down to allow for enlarging it:

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- For Halloween, we’re all posting relevant material to the “holiday.” I have a lot of artwork from the Hubley short, EGGS, which was wholly animated by Tissa David.

One of the two characters starring in the short is a skeleton, symbolic of death and destruction. The other is a nymph, who represents fertility. The show is basically about the complications overpopulation has presented to the world.

I thought it appropriate for today to post some of the drawings and models for the death character. The images displayed are cropped from the full animation sheets; when you click these displayed it’ll enlarge to the full page. Here they are.

The first model of the character came close to the final.
This is a drawing by John Hubley.

He soon solidified in this model by Hubley.

Tissa David finally worked out some of the problems for herself
and created this working model sheet.

Here’s a beautiful working drawing by Tissa as
she started to pose out the scenes.

Tissa’s roughs are deceptively simple but convey so much. These drawings
are for her eyes only, usually, she’ll clean it up somewhat for animation.

Unfortunately the dvd is a bit soft partially because of the nature of the
underlit final artwork. Perhaps someday there’ll be a better digital transfer.

Fertility is oozing sexuality in every drawing. This is part of the
same scene as she converses with death about the human race.

Here’s a YouTube interview with John & Faith Hubley done in 1973. They discuss Eggs and Voyage to Next.

Here’s EGGS on YouTube in a contrasty but sharp copy.