Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

- Once again I have another Grim Natwick drawing of Betty Boop to showcase. As I indicated on past posts, Grim did a number of drawings of Betty in the early 70′s. These were given to people who met up with him and asked for a drawing. Done in advance, they were able to save Grim the chore of having to do a Betty on the spot.

More of them looked like this image than not. These were drawn by Grim in pencil and colored by him with markers and colored pencil. The animation paper has Oxberry holes. This would have to have been done in New York, since LA was working exclusively with Acme pegs in the 70′s. NY continued with Oxberry, some studios used Acme pegs and some others still used Signal Corps (which was a cross between the two.)

(Click image to enlarge to actual size 10.25 x 12.5)

– I was a bit surprised by the response I got for posting some frame grabs from Maurice Sendak‘s 1975 CBS special, Really Rosie. (See Part I here.) As I mentioned in that post, I was never drawn to this show and have had a hard time sitting through the whole thing. I do know, however, that it’s a very popular film, so I bow to the popularity. They certainly tried something different when they made it, and I’m glad to have seen it done.

Sendak got his feet wet in animation with this show, and I wish he’d done more. There were a few Weston Woods films adapting some of his books. Gene Deitch was the principal director on those. They’re a bit better than this show in their execution. Sendak’s style seems to invite an unfortunate flatness in the animation.

Since Chicken Soup With Rice is the most popular song, I’ve scanned some frames from that piece. It seems endless to me today, as it did when I first watched it. Even Carole King sounds as if she’s getting tired of singing it at one point. I would have hated to have had to plot out this song for the show. Every bit of creativity was necessary.

I apologize for the quality of some of these images. They come from a VHS tape which played at the SLP mode (meaning lowest quality). It was hard to keep images in focus. So here are the images I did get:

Rosie, voiced by Carole King, in the basement of the building (it’s now raining outside)
invites some of the kids to audition to perform this number. _

A child look-a-like for the baker from Sendak’s book, In The Night Kitchen, gets the
lead – though Rosie really holds onto the lead in all of the songs._

_
They all rally around a cup into which soup is poured. Good thing it’s not hot, or the song might have ended with this scene after they were all scalded.
Not even a warning telling kids not to try this out at home. Those wacky 70′s!_

Ice skating leads to the kids dressed as snowmen carrying birthday cake._

And blowing out candles leads to blowing away doors, spilling soup, and blowing one
of the kids into the air._

Then we’re floating across the world (really a stage back-drop) in a plane made out of
the tea cup – or should I say soup cup._

Landing on an elephant, where all the other kids join in just as the elephant sprays them
all with chicken soup. _

Now a child, dressed like a bird, stirs the cup-o-soup under a starry wreath.
(Let my freak flag fly.)_

Pan down to another tier of the tureen where more children dressed as birds sing their hearts out._

Queen Rosie waters the “flower” children with chicken soup._

And they all dive into the clear cup of soup._

Another cup of soup, a breakaway cup – a prop for the production these kids are staging
in their minds – gets stirred.
Too often, it seems to me, the crocodile character is looking straight on at the camera.
It’s an awful pose to draw and always looks ugly. Never do it – always give a 3/4 or
side view on a face. _

_
See how much better that croc character looks here._

_
Now we’re dancing around a cemetery.
I think a Halloween soup is the order of the moment._

A whale bursts chicken soup with rice – as might be expected._

Then, trying to get in all of the holidays, a boy changes into a Christmas Tree. This was done several times by Sendak. His beautiful Christmas card that included this piece was animated by Ed Smith as part of R.O. Blechman‘s PBS show, Simple Gifts. It’s a mag-
nificent bit of animation. I’ll scan it soon for you. Great watercolors by Sara Cologero._

Now the kids are dressed like ornaments for that tree._

Rosie’s star ornament turns into a star abstraction_

Which, when finally lit, gives us the elaborate set for their song._

Rosie takes a bow._

– The Pastoral sequence from Fantasia is definitely not a favorite of mine. I have a lot of problems with it that it’s best not to start a critique. However, these days – there being so much bad art-in-animation – it’s like saying it’s my least favorite Rembrandt.

Just the same, I’ll still say the sensibility offers everything I dislike about Disney.

In the past couple of weeks, I’ve been posting artwork from the Deems Taylor book, Fantasia. This is pretty much a storybook for all the sequences from Fantasia. It was published in 1940 by Simon & Schuster.

Here are the illustrations for the sequence featuring the Pastoral by Beethoven.

(Click any image to enlarge.)

__

Another drawing of these very cute characters, but I think this one is really
well done, trading in a lot of the cuteness for artistry.

__Bacchus. Ward Kimball animated a lot of this character and did a good job of it.
__I think it’s probably the best animation in the sequence.

__These look like Kimball’s drawings from the sequence.

__
_____Thor. I’m glad the final didn’t look like this.

__The animation drawing of Zeus is attractive. The character was nicely done.

This color sketch of Zeus is quite different though it gives a good sense of what they were looking for in the sequence.

__More Moore? I think so.

__This image appears in quite a few places representing the sequence.

__This, I think, is a nice, rough drawing.

- On a couple of the past recent Saturdays, I’ve posted some drawings that Grim Natwick did back in the early 70′s. Since he was often requested to draw Betty Boop, who was experiencing a renaissance of her own in the 70′s, he decided to do a number of drawings in advance. These were usually colored with markers or colored pencil.

Then he hired a local New York inker to make a couple of cels for him. Stephen Worth pointed out last week that Duane Crowther’s studio did some of the same for him in LA. All those in my collection were done by an inker I know who completed the cels and placed the construction paper behind them. Grim, then, signed these cels with a Sharpie.

Regardless, these were all handed out to press people interviewing him to save him the task of trying to make a good drawing on the spot. I have a bunch of them, and I’m posting them as they come.

Stephen Worth spoke of a naked Betty in the batch, so I’ll post that today. As a matter of fact, these are the only two cels I have. The rest are drawings on paper done in what is recognizably Grim’s hand.

- The New York Times has taken their extra charges off their NYTimes Select pages so, readers no longer have to pay to read Frank Rich or Maureen Dowd or Tom Friedman on line.

This means that it’s also free to view the animated spots by
Jeff Scher.

If you haven’t been able to view these spots previously, go there now for your own mini film festival.
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- Fantasia continues. Or at least my posts of art cribbed from the Simon & Schuster 1940 book by Deems Taylor, “Fantasia.”
Though I’m not the biggest Fantasia fan, I have to admit that I like looking at these pictures on my site.

Today I’m putting up the images in the book from The Nutcracker Suite. Not all of them are inspired, but they’re all worth it for the one of the milkweeds falling among the autumn colored leaves.

(Click any image to enlarge.)

- I have a few Betty Boop drawings Grim Natwick had done in the mid Seventies. When he achieved a small bit of fame for animating this character, he was besieged with requests for drawings. He did a number of drawings to give to interviewers. These included some cels that he actually had inked and painted. Not all of these drawings and cels were handed out. Not all of them were good.

Until I run out of these drawings, I thought I’d post some of them, one a week. Maybe soon they’ll do a Betty dvd comparable to what they’ve done with Popeye and keeping her front and center might encourage someone. Here’s the earliest of the drawings I have, and I think it’s a good one.

(Click image to enlarge.)

James Stevenson has another of his wonderful op-ed commentaries in the NYTimes today. Take a look; this guy is one of my favorite writers/cartoonists/artists around. I love his work.

– Continuing to post some of the sketches from the Deems Taylor Fantasia book published by Simon & Schuster in 1940, I want to put the focus on the sketches from Night On Bald Mountain. It’s obvious that these are all paintings by Kay Nielsen. His style is uniquely distinctive.

The artwork is beautiful and powerful in its own oddly delicate way. The style became a bit more circular in the hands of Bill Tytla, but it never lost the power of its origins. It just became more emotional.

Hans Perk at A Film LA descibes the exhibit at the GL. Holtegaard museum near Copenhagen. Some of the Nielsen art for this sequence was displayed.

Here, then, are some of these images:

(Click any image to enlarge.)

– I thought I’d scan some of the drawings from the Deems Taylor Fantasia book published in 1940.

This is basically a storybook of the film with a lot of beautiful illustrations from the artwork done for the film. The only other Disney feature that I can think of which has a similar type book, richly and beautifully produced, is a limited edition American Express edition of Snow White produced for the fiftieth anniversary.

I assume many of these illustrations were on the dvds as part of the extras, but I haven’t attempted to find out.

I’ve scanned the images illustrating The Dance of the Hours segment and have eliminated the text and illustrative borders to put a complete focus on the sketches. If anyone knows who did the art, please don’t hesitate to share the information.

(Click any image to enlarge.)

- Here are some basic character models by Tom Johnson for Miceniks (1960), a Harvey “Modern Madcap” cartoon. It was directed by Seymour Kneitel and animated by Johnson and Bill Henning.

These drawings were folded in three and were probably mailed by Johnson from his home. He does ask Kneitel to mail the changes back to him. Obviously, the days of the free lance animator had started by 1959.

(Click on any image you’d like to enlarge.)

This scale chart overlaps the models “Beatnik 1,2 & 3″ for size comparison. The end result would look something like this:

In Feb 2006 I posted a 1939 bio of Tom Johnson from the Fleischer Animated News. This gives an indication of his importance to that studio. Since I’m posting some of his artwork, I thought it’d be appropriate to rerun this piece about the artist.

__

- Aside from the usual models that came my way on Raggedy Ann and Andy: A Musical Adventure, I was privy to a lot of private notes, cartoons and comments by some of the upper echelon, and I have all the production charts and drafts (which I’ll spare you) so that I can verify any info I’m sharing. I’ve chosen a couple of items to post today just as curiosity pieces.

Part of my job on the film was overseeing special effects (shadows, stars, etc.).
Dick gave an improvised storyboard, during one of our meetings, in which he detailed
all the combination live action/animation shots. Listed to receive this item are Al Rezek,
our camera supervisor, and Cosmo Anzilotti, the Asst. Director of the film.

About six months into animation, crisis mode started to set into the production. It was w a y behind schedule, and they were constantly searching for ways to move things along. At one point it was decided that more clarification was essential so that everyone would share in the same knowledge. Dick Williams prepared the following document to define what the animators would be doing for the remainder of the project.

Needless to say things changed from this plan.

The animators listed in order are:
Tissa David, Art Babbitt, Spencer Peel, Hal Ambro, Charlie Downs, Gerry Chiniquy, John Kimball, Warren Batchelder, Tom Roth, Dick Williams, Emery Hawkins, John Bruno, Gerry Potterton, Crystal Russell, George Bakes, Willis Pyle, Doug Crane, Jack Schnerk, Corny Cole, Grim Natwick, Cosmo Anzilotti, and Art Vitello.

Not listed here is Irv Spence who did quite a bit of animation.

Grim Natwick wrote a note to Dick a couple of months after the start of animation commenting on some of the animation problems he saw. It was done very large on
16 fld animation paper. (Grim always seemed to write LARGE.)

Grim’s note ends with a personal comment to Tissa David. A note from mentor to student.
It just goes to show you can always get animation lessons no matter how old or important you are.
Stay humble.

Happy Birthday, George Herriman