Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

Continuing with the posts of the storyboard for The Wind In The Willows, here are sequences 10 through 13. Once again, this board was probably used for the pose reel done in 1941 when the film was trying to be a feature film. (This is the reason no captions lie beneath the images.) Thanks again to John Canemaker for the loan of the board to post.

I took a look at this sequence in the film that stands, and it’s wholly different. They’ve really compacted the scene in a clever way, but something of the character development is also shortchanged.

I’m posting frame grabs underneath the boards.

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– Speaking of John Canemaker, he had a great event last night with a screening of his movie, The Moon and the Son: An Imagined Conversation,
at the Beekman Theater followed by the opening of a showing of art from his film at Manhattan Marymount College.

The last time I saw a program of animation at the Beekman Theater it was the screening of John & Faith Hubley‘s Of Stars And Men back in 1964. As with that opening (I was there back then to see my first Hubley films), there weren’t many from the animation community in attendance. Tissa David came out to support John and was shy when John introduced her.
I was at the gallery opening and loved it. There was a large group, and the art was sensational (as was the wine and hors d’oeuvres.)

Kudos and congratulations to John Canemaker and his companion, Joe Kennedy.

You can still catch the art trip at the Hewitt Gallery of Art at
. . . . . . . . . . . . . Marymount Manhattan College, located at 221 East 71st Street.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . ____________________. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Now through May 23rd.

Go.

- I had been planning to photograph the final sculpture of the trees, posted yesterday, to show the end results with vehicles gone and park cleaned up. However, the deluge that hit the city, yesterday was the 2nd worst in history. 7.5 inches fell within 12 hours. There was no way I’d have been able to photograph anything in the sheets of rain that was falling. Nor did I want to. I was just as surprised to find that the sandbags worked for my studio. Mine is the only lower level (basement) space in the area that wasn’t flooded. Hallelujah! I don’t have to mop for 8 hours. More rain today.

Now for comedy. Today we have the third part of John Canemaker’s storyboard for The Wind In The Willows. It seems to be not far from the Mr. Toad film, and it’s certainly mopre of an acting board than was the Pinocchio board I’d posted.

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- Before going directly into The second installment of The Wind In The Willows storyboard, I’d like to say a couple of words about the passing of Kurt Vonnegut. It was a bit of a surprise.

My lawyer was the representative of Mr. Vonnegut and I heard that he was a collector of owl drawings. I had illustrated a book by John Gardner, Gudgekin the Thistle Girl, and the fairy tale featured a witch who changed into an owl. I was asked to trade the original illustration for a signed copy of one of Mr. Vonnegut’s books. Needless to say, I jumped at it. His autographed copy was a cartoon for me in the frontispiece of the book. Unfortunately, the book is in storage or I’d post the image.

I met Kurt Vonnegut a couple of years later and we had a very nice conversation. I’m sad to hear of his accident and the complications that ensued, and I’m even sadder to hear of his death. My condolences to his family and friends and to the world who is now deprived of his intellignece.

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- Here are the next three pages of The Wind In The Willows board. As suggested by Michael Barrier in the comment section of part 1. this board was probably assembled to produce a preliminary Leika reel. The giveaway is the lack of dialogue and commentary underneath the drawings. The assembly was made to be photographed.

Fortunate for us it worked its way out of Disney, past many years and many owners into the hands of John Canemaker, who has loaned them to me. There’s some great drawing here.

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Speaking of Mike Barrier he has some excellent commentary on “Who Killed Cock Robin?” the Silly Symphony short. Mike suggests, appropriately that all the divers elements floating out there – storyboards, drafts, production charts, etc. – can give us a view of a film’s making only when they’re culled together and viewed as a whole. This is what he’s trying to do with the one short. Lots of scouting is necessary to get a bigger picture, otherwise they’re just drawings that don’t tell the larger story.

– Probably my favorite children’s book is The Wind In The Willows. There have been many animated adaptations of this book since it became a public domain item, but for years there was only one version, Disney’s Mr Toad half of The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad. The loudest most raucous parts of Kenneth Grahame’s delicate novel, blared their way onto this animated compilation feature.

We all know that the book was planned as a feature way back when Disney, in the late 30s, was buying up titles of famous children’s books to prevent other competing studios from turning them into animated features. Work began on adapting the book. They never quite broke it as they hoped, and it ultimately became a featurette with its primary focus on the loose cannon, Mr. Toad.
. . . .The film, as it exists now, has some positive elements and some fun animation, but the story was always a bit too quiet and British to successfully survive a proper adaptation in the Disney canon.

When John Canemaker loaned me his copy of the Pinocchio boards, he also brought The Wind In The Willows (not titled Mr. Toad). There are few captions here, but this obviously is designed for a full-out feature not an abbreviated featurette. The images on his original stats are small, so I’ve blown them up a bit and tried to marginally clean them up. It’ll take a little time to scan and post all 17 pages, but here we begin:

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Disney’s Mr. Toad first aired on the Disneyland television program on February 2, 1955. You can buy the dvd of Ichabod and Mr. Toad on Amazon among other places.

If you’re interested you can read the entire book of Kenneth Grahame’s work (minus the beautiful Shepherd illustrations) here.

You can buy the book here.

Dave Unwin‘s version is my favorite adaptation in that it retains some of the flavor of the original book and isn’t afraid of being quiet at times.

– These are the last of the pages of storyboard I have from Pinocchio. It’s the big climax: Pinocchio and Gepetto, on the raft within the belly of the beast, escape and make it to shore.
They’ve started a fire of their only safety within and are hoping it’s going to make Monstro open his mouth so that they can escape.

The drawings are all large scale images on five hole animation paper. They’re pinned to the board as opposed to the tape used in some of the earlier pages, and it feels a bit more of a working board than others of this series. However, I assume this is still for some kind of publication.

Of note is this first page of Monstro poses. It really details the action as Monstro works up a sneeze. These certainly look like animation drawings rather than storyboard. Note the perspective ruling for the front of the whale on the second and last image.
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The Animation Guild Blog directs us to this article in The London Times which tells us the Aardman and Sony will soon be in business together. After the Dreamworks breakup, it was expected that Aardman would eventually find a new home, and it looks as though they’ve found one. The announcement is expected to be made official today, Monday, by Sony.

Extra note: SONY made it official. There was a formal announcement via Variety that said Aardman and Sony will work together, but they haven’t decided on the first film.

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Jaime Weinman has directed us to the closing sequence to Variety Girl which features great caricatures of celebrities by T. Hee. This film also includes a wonderful puppetoon sequence by George Pal (not shown on YouTube.) A take off on Cinderella, it pretends to be a backstage view; it’s charming. I believe T. Hee had a hand in writing it.

- The next section of the storyboard I have available to post, shows Gepetto in the belly of the whale and his reunion with Pinocchio.

Unfortunately, here, the type is almost illegible on the originals. I’ve tried to goose it a bit in Photoshop, but I don’t think I had much success, unless I want to destroy the images.

There are actually three pages here. Two worked lateral to each other, so I’ve attached them so that you can view it more easily. Boards I’ve marked 5b and 5c are longer than the past boards (and look smaller as thumbnails.) I hope they don’t take too long for you to enlarge and download.

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Thanks, again, to John Canemaker for lending the boards to me for posting; thanks to Borge Ring for giving them to John, and Dave Hand for giving them to Borge.

- The pieces of the Pinocchio storyboard I’ve been presenting are missing whole chunks of the film. We jump to the underwater scene where Monstro wakes up.

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Unlike the earlier posted segments, these are pinned to the board, and the drawings are done on the large animation paper used at Disney in the late 30′s. Each image would be about 12½ x 15½ on five hole paper. That’s a big board.

Just a reminder. Mark Mayerson continues to do a bangup job of posting his “Mosaic” of the entire film of Pinocchio, based on Hans Perk‘s posted Drafts. Mark’s comments are at least as valuable as the “Mosaics”. Visit his site if you haven’t yet and love Pinocchio.

- Well, we’re going to skip a couple of sequences for the next storyboard segment I have available from Pinocchio. The first is the Lobster Inn where we meet the coachman as he conspires with Foulfellow the Fox and Gideon the cat. They plot on kidnapping little children for a coach ride to Pleasure Island.

The boards seem to be missing all of Stromboli and Pleasure Island. I’ll post what I have.

Again, I’m splitting these boards in two laterally for the largest size resolution.
Thanks, once more, to John Canemaker; Borge Ring for giving them to John, and Dave Hand for giving them to Borge.

1a1b There’s a nice flow to some of this page and some decent reaction shots which we hadn’t seen in any other of this board.

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This page seems a bit different than others. The images are a bit more detailed and are spread out. I’m still not sure what purpose these boards served. Interesting that the images are taped and not pinned up. They’re obviously storyboard images regathered for some purpose, possibly a publication.

MONSTRO on Monday.

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ASIFA-East President, David Levy, will be on radio today. The show NON FICTION is hosted by Harry Allen. Tune into WBAI-NY / 99.5 FM at 2:05 PM. The segment is scheduled to last 20 minutes.

Listen on line here.

– I notice that there were a number of sites today featuring articles and material about Ward Kimball, (e.g. here and here) and there’s the Ward Kimball/My Space page which I visited. Jaime Weinman has a post that presents thoughts which I certainly agree with. In fact, they could have been mine.

A year ago, I posted a couple of Kimball drawings. These came to me years ago (the 70′s?) via John Canemaker. The Bacchus drawing appeared in his Nine Old Men book. I have a few more drawings by Ward Kimball, and I thought it’d be nice to post a few of them.

I’ve always had mixed feelings about Kimball’s work. On the one hand his persona as presented to the public was always annoying. He came off as the wacky cartoonist who just wanted to show you how wacky he was. (There was a hint of this in Chuck Jones, as well.) He obviously had a big ego and had good reason for it. There was no doubt that this guy could draw like a son-of-a-gun, and his animation was often breathtaking. It always sided more toward the cartoon rather than the real, and it had a style so different from the others. You had to admire it.

The crow sequence in Dumbo is brilliant, to say the least; the Mad Hatter in Alice is the heart of that film (though I wish it weren’t), and the Cheshire cat the most memorable part; and Toot Whistle Plunk & Boom is probably the best short done at Disney’s after WWII. However, there’s nothing I liked about the Oscar winning It’s Tough To Be Bird or Dad Can I Borrow The Car?. (This is a good example of Kimball’s personality entering the films.)
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The interview Mike Barrier did with Kimball in 1969-1986 offers some good insight into the man and some excellent detail. It adds to the piece Canemaker wrote in The Nine Old Men. Many people have written about Kimball, but I think John Canemaker‘s book has to cover his career best. It brings him to life and gives us a good encapsulation of his life and work.
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The comic to the left is obviously and ad parody, but don’t ask me what this Mickey compilation model sheet is. What’s with all the type?

This was obviously a card for someone (Oliver Wallace?) who was operated on. I’m sure I’d have enjoyed something this funny if I was trying to recuperate.

This caricature tells you that there must have been some real competition among the animators as the Captain Hook character approached.

You can watch some Kimball clips on YouTube (until someone takes them down.)
Disney Family Album Opening and Part 1 and Part 2.
Escalation, an independent anti-war (Viet Nam) short
the Snow White soup eating scene P.T.
Thad Komorowski has posted quite a few clips from Kimball. Here are some:
Cinderella‘s Lucifer
Dumbo‘s crows
Mother Goose Goes Hollywood 1, 2, 3
The Three Caballeros

- Here’s the third installment of the Pinocchio storyboards loaned to me by John Canemaker.

A bit of history about these boards seems appropriate. In the early 1950s, Dave Hand (the director of Snow White and Bambi, among others) gave the photos of these pages to Borge Ring (brilliant Oscar-winning Dutch animator). This information came from Hans Perk on his excellent blog A Film LA as he completed posting all the Drafts to Pinocchio.

Borge brought in a photographer to rephotograph these boards which he gave to John. Years later they were loaned to me, and I’m posting them.

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