Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

– AWN currently has on its site an excellent Joe Strike interview with Jack Zander about his career.

Since the Popeye dvd is ready to hit the market (check out the beautiful frame grabs Jerry Beck has posted on Cartoon Brew), I thought this might be a good time for me to post some of the drawings I have from what is probably the last piece of animation Jack did professtionally.

This is from a Tang commercial done at Zander’s Animation Parlour. Instead of doling out the animation, Jack was intrigued with the idea of animating the character. He hadn’t animated Popeye before. (Note, Zander’s Animation Parlour had co-produced The Man Who Hated Laughter for Hal Seeger and King Feature‘s, but Jack hadn’t animated on that Special. So he gave himself the job. Jim Logan, the assistant on the job, gave me the extremes. Here are some from one of the scenes. I’ll post Olive (also in this scene) at another time.

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(Click any image to enlarge.)

71 74
Do you think the assistant asked for a straight on model of Popeye’s face to do the inbetweens?

77 81

85 91
I think Jack might have been a bit out of practice when he did this spot. It looks a bit stiff.

By the way, this drawing is an example of how Jack drew
Popeye, straight on. I’m not sure anyone else used this pose.

- So here we have the last of the elements from the Fantasia Leica reel. I have these on loan fom John Canemaker, and it’s great to see what they look like.

The strips I’m posting today seem to be bits and pieces that have, for the most part, been removed from the Nutcracker Suite sequence. Enjoy.

(As always click any image to enlarge a bit.)
B
A. The first of these pieces might seem familiar to those of you who’ve seen the Robert Feild book, The Art of Walt Disney. It resembles the Ballet of Falling Leaves seen on pg. 190. The Feild book puts this cut sequence in Bambi, but this similar scene is obviously in Fantasia, and cut out (note that it’s been “X-ed” out on the film) from that film as well. For those unfamiliar with the Feild book, I’m posting this page below.
B. & C. These frames are part of the Milkweed Dance.

The Falling leaves in the Feild book.

C/DE
C, D. & E. are all part of a dance of snowflakes.

Thanks again to John Canemaker for this revealing footage.

– Here, I continue my posting of the illustrations from a version of George Orwell’s novel, Animal Farm. The drawings are credited to “Joy Batchelor” and “John Halas.” It’s probable that Joy Batchelor did illustrate the book, but I haven’t found evidence as yet. On my last post, Rudy Agresta thought that he remembered Vivien Bachelor discussing her mother’s illustrating it in the book Halas & Batchelor Cartoons. I haven’t found that passage.
_______(Click any image to enlarge.)

The animated film was produced by Louis D. Rochemont Associates in 1955 at a studio they set up in Stroud, Gloustershire in England. The studio was formerly the home of the Anson-Dyer company and GB Animation wherein ex-Disney veteran, David Hand, made his short films for Rank.

We left off the story with Boxer, the horse, setting an example for the other animals.

The pigs move into the farmer’s house and become little more than a replacement for “man”.

Many animals take the lead of Boxer and try to do their share, while the pigs fight for the lazy leadership.

The pigs push Boxer to the limits and use the dogs as their personal guards and force their will on the others.

Boxer grows ill as the pigs grow lazier.

The lazy pigs celebrate their success. Animals hear gossip about the humans planning a charge to take back the farm.

The weakened Boxer, no longer useful to the pigs, is sold for glue.

Eventually the humans return, and in some eyes of the animals they blend with the pigs.
The line illustrations do a nice job of representing the film. They’re also quite consistent.

With all the articles and discussions of Ratatouille, there’s an interesting article in today’s NYDaily News by theater critic, Joe Dziemianowicz. He talks about the recent popularity of the dish, ratatouille.

- Here’s the fourth part of the Fantasia Leica Reel posted courtesy of John Canemaker‘s loan. Here we have the “Milkweed Ballet” an appearance by the “Frost Fairies” and the “Snowflake Fairies.”

(As always, click any image to enlarge.)
1 2

3 4

5 6

There’s one more post to this series. I have a couple of pages of scraps and bits and pieces which I’ll put all together in the next and last one.

- When the film Animal Farm was released, a tie-in book was published which republished George Orwell‘s novel with line drawings from the film by “Joy Batchelor and John Halas.” I somehow doubt they did the illustrations, but obviously one person within the studio did do the work. It has the look of a single hand.

There are some 35 spot illustrations, so to showcase them all I’ve decided to break this up into two separate postings. Part II will be up next week.
Here’s the first group:

This is the book’s dustcover._________________________ (Click any image to enlarge.)

This is the double/title page.

Each chapter has its own heading, and there are usually one to two stills within the body of each chapter.

Some of the illustrations, like this one, spread across two pages under the type.

For those of you unfamiliar with this story, it tells the tale of a farm wherein the animals are mistreated.

Under the guidance of the pigs, the animals take over the farm and create an animal collective.

However, the pigs grow lazy and do less of the work as they take charge of the others.

They eat more than their share of the food and mistreat the animals who do the greatest amount of work.

As animals begin to die under the guidance of the lazy pigs, there is some grumbling among the masses.

The pigs dominate and rule with a heavy hand.

Boxer, the horse, is the figure of strength and symbolically the real leader of the animals.

You can watch Animal Farm on YouTube by going here.

- Continuing with the LEICA reel from Fantasia‘s Nutcracker Suite, here’s an altered version of the sequence I posted last Friday, (go here to view it). This has some new drawings added and some others excluded. It makes for an interesting comparison to see how it’s changed.

As I’ve stated before, many thanks to John Canemaker for lending me this valuable and interesting material.

So back we go to Tchaikovsky:

A B
(Click any image to enlarge.)

C D

EF

Once again, to get a more elaborate understanding of Leica reel creations go to Hans Perk‘s site, A Film LA. You should be going there regardless; it’s a great site.

- This continues my posting of the Fantasia Leica reel materials that John Canemaker has loaned me. The remainder of the stats are of the Nutcracker Suite, and some are duplications which show some changes in the material. (I’ll post all of them.)

Some of these images have appeared in books by John. (Check out his book Before the Animation Begins.)

I like the fact that they keep fade outs/in in the images.

(Once again, to get a more elaborate understanding of Leica reel creations go to Hans Perk‘s site, A Film LA. here.)

Onto Tchaikovsky, Leopold, if you’re ready:

2a 2b
(Click on any image to enlarge.)

2c 2d

2e

- Once again, John Canemaker offered, and I jumped.

From his collection we have some of the Leica reels for Fantasia. The Leica reel was virtually a slide show that timed out the drawings to the soundtrack. It gave an inexpensive indication of the film’s timings, and it could be easily adjusted for further screenings.
(To get a more complete explanation of Leica reel projections Hans Perk on his site, A Film LA, has an excellent post about this – here.)

(Click on any image to enlarge.)

There are quite a few pages of these, so it’ll take a couple of weeks before I’ll be able to post them all. (They also take a lot of time to scan and prepare for posting.) They’re all equally beautiful.

Many of the sections loaned me by John are from the Nutcracker section. However, I’m going to start with this section from the Pastoral symphony. The drawings are by James Bodrero. I start with this section because I wanted to give an indication of what the actual drawings look like, and John had this one from this sequence (not used in this version of the animatic), and I’m posting it to the left.

1A 1B

1C 1D

1E 1F

LeBrun did many drawings and studies for Bambi’s animators.

A few months ago I bought a model sheet from Bambi which he had drawn. It analyzed a deer’s skeletal system for the animators. Here’s the model sheet posted below.

I’m also posting another that LeBrun did which was printed in Robert Feild‘s 1940 book, The Art of Walt Disney.

The Rico LeBrun model sheet printed onto a 16 field sheet of Disney animation paper.

The Rico LeBrun model sheet that was published in the Robert Feild book.

(Click either image to enlarge.)

- Here are some bits and pieces of memorabilia I have in collection. (Boy do I own a bunch of crap!) However, maybe altogether it makes for an interesting post.

- First up in this UPA week is a piece of stationery from the UPA studio. The oddity of it is that the paper is not 8½ x 11 but 8½ x 14. To make it a bit more interesting, that’s a UPA ballpoint pen atop the paper. (Yellow!)

- John Hubley was an extraordinary artist. Every drawing he made, had three dimensions (no matter how flat the image was supposed to be.) His simplest sketch had such depth. Naturally, he was an amazing painter as well. His oil paintings were a bit impressionist/a bit surrealist/all original. He seemed somewhat inspired by Chagall.

John and Faith would both go to their respective studios every day to oil paint before they came into work. They usually arrived in the animation studio between 9:30-10:00 am. That means they were in there painting early. They took art seriously.

Here’s an invitation to an art exhibit held at Yale, where John & Faith taught. (The original was B&W; the painting was in color.)

- Finally, another invitation, this one for the “World Preview” of Ragggedy Ann & Andy. The character drawing was done by Dan Haskett and was the poster image for the feature film. Perhaps I’ll post some Raggedy art later this week.

There was some question as to who owned the rights to this film when, a year or so ago, Greg Ford was putting together a program of musical animated films for Lincoln Center. Greg couldn’t track down who would give proper permission for screening of a 35mm scope print. I wish someone would get it together.

Richard Horner was one of the producers representing Bobbs Merrill. He was originally a theatrical producer with an extensive and prestigious background who moved onto this film to produce.
He and I had a couple of meetings a few years before he died. He was producing some videos (pre-dvd) showing artists at work. His first was a video of Philip Pearlstein in his tudio painting a canvas. Horner, at the time, couldn’t find a distributor for the tapes, although they were already in all of the museums on the east coast. I tried to help but we didn’t get anywhere. Unfortunately, he died in 2002. He’s the last person I would’ve been able to contact for information about the film.