Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

- Concluding what I started yesterday, here are the pages of what must be a book that was prepared by Bill Peet. Susie the Little Blue Coupe. I don’t know if it was ever published (there was a Little Golden Book, but this is not it), but, obviously, it became the animated short completed at Disney in 1951.

The plan for this book is excellent, and gives a good indication of the great books Mr. Peet would do after leaving animation. Many thanks to John Canemaker for the loan of this rare material; it makes an unusal post.

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Next week I’ll post Bill Peet’s storyboard for the film.

– Well, here we have an oddity to add to the Bill Peet playbook. Susie the Blue Coupe was a short written by Peet and animated as a Disney short released in 1951.

Obviously Peet had planned this as a children’s book. For quite some time he wanted to separate from Disney, and he saw children’s books as a way out. He writes about _______ Don’t you love the title Auto ___ Biography !
Lambert the Sheepish Lion
in his autobiography. Apparently, though, Susie was another attempt by him to move out.

Here’s the mock up for a book by Bill Peet. I don’t know if the book came before the board or the board before the book. Again, this comes from the collection of John Canemaker as does the storyboard from the film which I’ll post next week. Thank you, John, many times over.

Animators included Ollie Johnston, Cliff Nordberg, Hal King and Bob Carlson with backgrounds by Ralph Hulett. Clyde Geronomi directed it.

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(To be concluded tomorrow.)
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The video is available all over the internet. You can watch it currently on YouTube or buy the dvd at Amazon.

- This past week, I featured a bunch of the Bill Peet drawings which are located on a dvd copy of The Sword and the Stone. There are also quite a few photos on the disc. Here are some I thought interesting. None of the people are identified in these photos, and I recognize too few of them.

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_________________Here’s Bill Peet at the storyboard he drew.

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______________Bill Peet (left) and Woolie Reitherman work with the actors.
______________Karl Swensen (Merlin) is far right next to Woolie. I think that’s
______________Barbara Wentworth (Mim) talking to Peet.

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_______A Bg LO artist (anyone recognize her? Sylvia Cobb, perhaps?) at work.

___________________________The final BG.

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(Amid Amidi posted this in the comments section:The left hand photo below the painted bg is in Blast 9. I don’t have a copy handy but the two guys sitting are Woolie Reitherman and John Sibley. I think the two guys on the left are Basil Davidovich and Don Griffith but I don’t remember. If anybody has the issue, perhaps they can post the correct idents.)

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______________The Multiplane camera with only a couple of levels in use.

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______________The horizontal Multiplane camera and the final scene.

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___________Left: cameramen shoot at the Multiplane Camera.
_____________________Right: Jim MacDonald creates a sound effect.

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_______Xeroxing a drawing onto cel. This is not something often photographed.

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________A Painter and a Checker in action (Sorry, I don’t know their names.)

- Dick Lundy has always been an animator whose work I’ve enjoyed. I have some drawings that were prepared for publication (for some book or other) featuring my favorite Donald Duck.

In this scene from Mickey’s Grand Opera (1936), Donald has just swallowed a frog which is bounding up and down and taking Donald with him. On a separate level, Pluto, who has been chasing the frog, barks.

I’ll soon post some more from this film with Donald preparing to perform.

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- There’s no need to tell LA animation enthusiasts that this Friday the 35th annual Annie Awards will take place. I hope all who plan to attend will have a good time. The rest of us will check in tomorrow to find out who won.

I have this old poster from the 3rd Annie Award celebration. It took place back in 1974.

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As you may have noticed it was signed by four animation stars. I presume there must have been a number of these posters signed, and I don’t know how many still have copies. Just the same it’s a fun piece to have.

Friz Freleng and Tex Avery signed the top of the poster.

Chuck Jones and Art Babbitt signed the bottom. (I’m not quite sure how Art Babbitt fit into this group, but it’s great to have his signature there.)

– I’d also like to congratulate my friend, John Canemaker on having won the Winsor McCay Award which has been presented annually since 1972. How appropriate that he’s written the definitive book on McCay and now he wins the award named for the father of animation. It’s a fitting tribute, indeed. Congratulations also to the other two Winsor McCay award winners, Glen Keane and John Kricfalusi.

Speaking of John Kricfalusi, his blog features the first of a number of articles Milt Gray will write with John about Bob Clampett. This should be an exciting series of posts worth looking out for. Milt worked for years with Michael Barrier conducting many of the interviews gathered for Mike’s book, The Hollywood Cartoon.

- A film I always thought somewhat under rated is Disney’s The Sword In The Stone. The background art is sensational, and several sequences are brilliantly animated.

Bill Peet‘s adaptation from TH White‘s book, The Once and Future King, loses some of its poetry in the adaptation, but the book’s storyline features a lot of rambling making it hard to construct a screen story. I’ve watched this film quite a few times over the years, and somehow it always gives me a bit of a charge that comes with many of the older classics.

The extras on the dvd seems to consist predominantly of storyboard drawings by Bill Peet. So why not show them off? There’s no continuity to attend to, hence the images are gathered in small clusters. The sequence everyone jumps to analyze and discuss is the Wizard Duel between Merlin and Madame Mim (animated by Milt Kahl.) Consequently, a lot of the drawings on the dvd come from this sequence. I, personally, would have loved seeing some of the squirrel section. I found it quite moving and full of real character stuff. It would be nice to see how Peet developed this.

There’s no hint of a continuity on the dvd, but I’ve heard that the storyboard drawings in the vault are just placed in manilla envelopes with no suggestion of an order. It would make sense that they’ve just plopped these images on the dvd as they have with no order, details or related information.

_______Here’s a creature that never made it to the battle of the wizards.

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___________Another fantastic creature that didn’t make it into the film.

I’m not sure if this drawing is also from the duel. Or was it another sequence where Wart becomes an animal – cut out of the film?

This looks like it may have been planned as a home for Merlin. Did it inspire anything for The Rescuers?

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___________It’s magic !

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Here are a couple of models Peet obviously did –
_______________________probably more for himself than anything.

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– The one of the “Nine Old Men” who generally seems to be left out of the starllight is Les Clark. At least, it seems that way to me.

He started as an assistant to Ub Iwerks (inbetweening Steamboat Willie) ang did his first animation on The Skeleton Dance. (A skeleton plays the xylophone-like ribcage of another skeleton.) He brought the lessons he learned from Ub to the rest of his animation. He became the Mickey expert (animating the mouse in The Band Concert). He animated Snow White dancing with the dwarves, scenes of Pinocchio, himself, as well as the little train in the Baia sequence of The Three Caballeros.

John Canemaker has a nice chapter on him in his book, Nine Old Men & The Art of Animation. (I cribbed the image above from that book.)
Perhaps Didier Ghez will uncover some excellent interview for an upcoming edition of his fine series of books, Walt’s People.

Here’s a series of drawings from The Country Cousin where a mouse devours a piece of cheese.

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- These are the four models for The Little Whirlwind. They were drawn by Freddie Moore. I’d posted one of them in the past and was asked if I had the rest of them, so it doesn’t hurt to post them again. They were xeroxed copies of copies, and they’ve faded over the years. I had to do some reconstruction and work to get them presentable.

Mark Mayerson posted all four on his blog back in June/2006, and he did a mosaic of the film then, as well. Hans Perk posted the drafts on his site, also in June/2006.

The cartoon is on the Mickey Mouse In Living Color (Vol.2) dvd.

______________ This model sheet was posted previously with a number
__________________________ of drawings by Ward Kimball.

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______________ I had to add this sheet. Some of the poses are nice,
____________________ and obviously I like the early Mickey.
______________ This looks like it might have been for print – not animation.

– Following up yesterday’s posting, here’s the last of the phographed storyboards loaned to me by John Canemaker. It was a board done by Bill Peet and Bill Cottrell. Since Cottrell, Disney’s brother-in-law, didn’t draw, he undoubtedly did a script adaptation from the Virginia Lee Burton book.

Don’t forget to look at John Canemaker ‘s book The Art and Flair of Mary Blair. This book goes well into the design of this film with lots of illustrations.

Here are links to the other 4 parts of this
Little House storyboard fiesta:
______Part 1 ______Part 2 ______Part 3 ______Part 4

This is the 5th photo of the storyboard as it stands. To allow you to see the images larger, I’ve split the board up into sections.

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- As I noted, when I first started posting these storyboards by Bill Peet, which were loaned to me by John Canemaker, there are a total of five oversized photographs. I’ve displayed and broken down three of them in the past weeks.

This is the fourth, and possibly the largest of the boards. It seems to be a reworking of the entire film. There may be a bit of repetition from other boards.

The fifth, and final, board is the conclusion of this version. I’ll try to post it tomorrow. (It takes a lot of time to break it down so that you can see the images slightly larger.)

This is the full storyboard. You’ll see below that I’ve broken up so that it enlarges a bit more than this original.

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