Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

– In the what took so long category is the new, fabulous blog Mark Mayerson has put together. It’s clean, direct, accurate, and informative. Mark is far and away one of the finest historians out there, and it only enriches us all to have his thoughts on line regularly.

For quite some time, Mark’s site dedicated to the work of animator Al Eugster has been one of the benchmarks of animation history on line. This older site features some very valuable photos and archival material on one of the great animators.

I’m sure I’ll often be pointing out a lot of the valuable material he offers on this new, welcome site. For now … visit Mayerson On Animation.

- There’s a lot of animation in NYC this weekend. Of course, the ASIFA East celebration/party/Awards presentation is Sunday at 6PM at the New School Auditoruium, 66 East 12th Street.

Tonight, the Tribeca Film Festival comes to a close with their awards presentation and party. I’ll be rooting for Emily Hubley’s short to win a prize there.

- To continue with yesterday’s posting of Grim Natwick‘s Cheerio commercial, this is the cycle of sharks snapping/chasing the girl. I don’t think any of the drawings are wholly Grim’s. The numbers on the drawings are done in Tissa David‘s handwriting, so Grim may have worked out the breakdown chart with her and asked her to animate the shark to his timing. Bits of each shark are definitely his: the darker lines – the nose on 21, the shark’s mouth and guitar on 22, and the face on 26.

(Click on any drawing to enlarge.)

- Tomorrow night the Museum of Modern Art is hosting a show featuring comedian and show biz personality An Evening with Eddie Lawrence.

Performer, writer, painter, and “Old Philosopher” Eddie Lawrence /strong> recalls his career on stage, screen, radio, and television, reminiscing about his relationships with the artists Fernand Léger and Henri Matisse, and media personalities like Major Bowes, Judy Holliday, and Johnny Carson.

- And speaking of MOMA, they now have on line an interview with Ralph Eggleston re the Pixar exhibit at the Museum.

- These drawings are a cycle from a Cheerios commercial animated in the late 50′s by Grim Natwick for Drew Robert Lawrence Productions. This again highlights the importance of a good assistant for 2D animation. Tissa David assisted Grim on this spot, and her cleanups are sensational. You can see all the detail that Grim actually includes in his drawing when you look at how the clean-up person properly does the job.

There’s a large shark on another level chasing the girl. I’ll post those tomorrow.

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(Click on any image to enlarge.)

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- The following drawings compose a walk cycle by Shamus Culhane done for a commercial in the early 60′s. I have the rest of the rough animation drawings, but I found the walk cycle interesting enough to post here.

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(Click on any of the images to enlarge.)

He uses an odd numbering system, but the walk cycle is solid. Animated on one’s, it has a typical 12x beat. Each foot lands on the 12th frame. This is the standard walk tempo; it’s a typical march beat: 120.

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I like what the leg does as it kicks out between the 4th & 5th drawing pictured above and between the 10th & 11th on the bottom line. I’m also amused by the stretch of the push off leg on the last drawing pictured; it just grows.

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The assistant has a job to do, but the other 200 drawings in the scene take the character to even wilder proportions. This, of course, is what makes the assistant a necessity in good 2D animation. I’m not sure what or if the equivalent is in cgi work. Unfortunately, I think good assistants are non-existent anymore – at least, in New York.

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- On May 22,
the NY chapter of the MPAcademy will present their monthly screening, Monday nights with Oscar. This month they are showing The Defiant Ones, starring Sidney Poitier and Tony Curtis.

(Image scanned from Bob Thomas’ 1959 Art of Animation)

Of more interest to animation enthusiasts is the short playing with that film: Paul Bunyan. This 17min short was nominated for the Oscar in 1958. It’s been shown on television often enough, and was recently included in the dvd collection, Disney Rarities – Celebrated Shorts, 1920s – 1960s. (I find the transfer on the DVD high contrast, and not the best quality.) This is the first time I can remember a theatrical screening of the film.

With strong designs by Tom Oreb and stunning backgrounds by Eyvind Earle, it’s a chance to see one of the best animated theatrical films of the 50′s.
(Image taken from Disney Rarities DVD.
Click either image to enlarge.)

The 1958 Oscar winning live action short, Grand Canyon, also from Disney, is on the program as well.

May 22nd at 7pm, at the Academy Theater at Lighthouse International, 111 East 59th St. Tickets are $3 for Academy members and $5 for the general public. Call 1-888-778-7575 to buy tickets in advance.

- Back in the good old days, animators used to worry about knowing a lot about life to be able to properly caricature it in their animation. Art Babbitt took piano lessons, dance lessons, horseback riding lessons all as a way of bettering himself and understanding things that he needed to put into his artwork.

This wasn’t just a casual thing. The noted Firehouse 5 Plus 2 grew out of these animators who played music. With Ward Kimball on trombone, Danny Alguire on cornet, Frank Thomas on piano, Dick Thomas and/or Harper Goff on banjo, and Erd Penner on tuba this group routinely played Dixieland music for themselves and were able to manage a nice sideline – outside of animation.

– These days animators are only interested in other animation. Not too much time is spent at art museums, reading or concerts, never mind playing the piano. Yet, a lot of time is spent covering every poor animation wiggle. It ends up being a case of theft with everyone stealing from everyone else. “Homage” is an overused word, and every Ren & Stimpy wannabe tries to imitate Tex Avery’s snapping/popping style of animation. Whole films are looking like ripped off scenes from other films, and too little is looking original.

It’s bad enough in TV animation, but it’s slipped over to theatrical films, too. Every character ends up moving like every other character.

Bad animation is bad animation – even if it’s cgi. Sorry, guess I’m just turning into an old grouch.

(Click on any of the images to enlarge them.)

Back in 1972, Fritz the Cat premiered. For me, just getting a start in the film business, it was out of nowhere. I didn’t know it was coming, and I was taken aback by its arrival. It wasn’t so much that it was a sexually daring film – the puerile sex in the film was more embarrassing than sexual – it was the vigorous down & dirty way the film was pulled together. This always got me charged and inspired me to want to do something immediate.

Bakshi had spent a lot of time in the New York animation industry. He obviously rose quickly through Terrytoons and then Paramount. (Is it odd that he witnessed the end of two long-time studios in the City?) He then went to make The Marvel Superheroes and Rocket Robin Hood in Canada. Steve Krantz (Judith Krantz’s then-husband), one of the uncredited producers, worked with Bakshi to acquire the rights to Fritz The Cat (much to R. Crumb‘s displeasure) and to get it financed, and they set up a studio in NYC.

I recommend reading Michael Barrier’s Funnyworld article about Fritz The Cat for an in depth telling of its difficulties getting to the screen and an insightful look at the film.

What Bakshi did by setting up Fritz The Cat in New York was to make a film that utilized the talents of a lot of the Paramount and Terrytoons guys who were put out of work. It plays like a who’s who of New York animators. Guys like Jim Tyer, Nick Tafuri, Cosmo Anzilotti and Marty Taras made the industry in this city. Now they were being stretched beyond their mettle.

A number of the animators had a big problem with the racy work they were animating. The story of Jim Tyer is that he, a very devout Catholic, quietly bore with the material until one day he just slammed down his work and, cursing all the way, walked off the job.

The extremes on this page are part of a scene that Marty Taras animated. By the look of some of the other animation drawings I have, I’d say Marty had no problem with the racy material.

He was an animator who figured large in the New York community. He spent much of his time at Terrytoons and Paramount. He was closely associated with Baby Huey at Paramount working on many of the shorts – in the same way Johnny Gentilella was associated with Popeye. In fact, Marty was sometimes, lovingly called Baby Huey (partially because of his shape.)

He had a very clean, rounded line not unlike that of Connie Rasinski, who reigned over Terry’s for more than thirty years. His animation also moved in a perfectly rounded, smooth way, but never had any real depth of character. Though it always felt like Marty had done it.

I’ve worked with Marty on a number of jobs, usually as his assistant, but I rarely had communication with him. He’d bring in the work, we’d have a couple of small pleasantries to exchange and he’d leave. Anytime I brought up the job, there’d be little in it for Marty to talk about. He kept to himself when I knew him.

Just his neatly assembled pack of animation drawings with his easily cleaned-up artwork. No violent strokes of the pencil (a la Grim Natwick) ripping through the paper with strong, bold, violent numbers. No, Marty was clean and round and neat. Everything exact and in place.

– Thad Komorowski whose site Golden Age Cartoons has been invaluable for some time, has just put up a piece about Marty Taras with an interesting, older picture of him, at his new blog Identifying Animators and Their Scenes.

– This is the final model I have from Heap Hep Injuns a 1950 Paramount cartoon. Tom Johnson drew this image, prior to animating it, and Izzy Sparber directed the film. I’d heard some stories about I. Klein regarding this film, though he’s not credited, so I suspect he may have had something to do with model approvals, as well. Actually, he may have been the “Izzy” referred to on the pan posted yesterday.

(click on image to enlarge.)

I was never a big fan of the Paramount cartoons. Growing up in New York, we’d always get Paramount or Terrytoons shorts playing with features in the theaters. Only rarely did a Warners cartoon or a Disney short show up. (I don’t think I saw a Tom & Jerry cartoon until I was 17 when they started jamming the local TV kidshows with them.)

Saturdays there was always the placard outside the theater advertising “Ten Color Cartoons”. A haughty child, I naturally wanted to know why they didn’t show B&W cartoons – that’s what we saw on television, and I usually liked them more. I must have been insufferable for my siblings to put up with me.

The starburst at the beginning of the Mighty Mouse cartoons always got an enormous cheer in the local theaters. I don’t remember ever hearing that for Popeye or Harveytoons.

In celebration of the new season of baseball I have a couple of model sheets from a Paramount cartoon.

A story writer, Larry Riley, gave me these drawings back in 1972, but he never told me the film’s title.

Thanks to Thad Komorowski and Bob Jaques we know they’re from Heap Hep Injuns (1950). (see comments)

(Click images to enlarge.)

Larry Riley was a wild guy. On my first commercial job at Phil Kimmelman & Ass. he and I were the inbetweeners working side-by-side on some of the Multiplication Rock series. Larry had had a long and busy career in animation. He had been an asst. animator at Fleischer‘s, a story writer at Paramount, an animator at many studios. He ended up doing anything – including inbetweening at Kimmelman’s for the salary. The stories Larry told me kept me laughing from start to finish. There was no doubt he had been a writer for years. In a not very exciting job, it made it a pure pleasure to go to work every day to hear those hilarious stories. I can’t see Lucky 7 without thinking of laughing. It wasn’t the stories per se that were funny, it was his take on it.

Larry told me of his years at Fleischer’s in Florida where he was an assistant. He and Ellsworth Barthen shared a room, and, according to Larry, had lined one of the walls of their room with empty vodka bottles. Now, I’ve heard of frats doing this with beer cans, but doing it with vodka bottles requires some serious drinking. One of the many times I got to work with Ellsworth, I asked him about the story, and he reluctantly backed it up telling me what a wild guy Larry was.

Larry also told of a 3D process he’d developed for Paramount in the 50′s when the movies were all going 3D. I believe there were two Paramount shorts done in this process: Popeye: The Ace of Space and Casper: Boo Man. Larry offered to give me the camera on which he shot these films – he had it stored in his basement. He was afraid it would get thrown out when he died. I didn’t have room for it, and it probably did go in the garbage.

My regret; I still hear the sadness in Larry’s voice.

(Forgive the racist pictures, but I guess they’re a product of their times.
The animator who drew these is Tom Johnson (he signs the bottom one) and they were approved by the director Isadore (Izzy) Sparber per the top one.
The drawings are deteriorating, obviously. The one above uses a lot of glue to hold it together, and that’s eating away at the paper.)

– Continuing the saga of Vlasic Pickles, the agency approved the stork, Edgar Buchanan and the plan of action.

We’d already finished the first commercial which was on the air. (Represented by the two set-ups posted here. The style was done with acrylic paints – out of a tube – on top of the cel. Ink with Sharpie on cel; paint dark colors – ON TOP of cel – up to and over ink line; after drying paint again with lighter tones, and again. Imagine kids & a gun in a spot today!)

(Click on images to enlarge.)

Phil Duncan did a great job animating it. I inbetweened, and the Agency loved it and approved it to color.

All this time, John and Faith were busy preparing the start of Everybody Rides the Carousel. It was to be three half-hour shows (Eventually CBS changed their mind and asked the shows, still in production, to be reconfigured to make a 90 min film) and was in preproduction. I did the spots on my own with John checking in. Faith wanted nothing to do with a commercial and was somewhat furious that a commercial was ongoing.

Within weeks the spot was in color and two junior exec. agency guys, John and I stood around the Hubley moviola. (It was a great machine with four sound heads and a picture head that was the size of a sheet of animation paper. Pegs were actually attached to enable rotoscoping!)

The two agency guys were buttoned up with good suits and briefcases. They stood behind John and me, and I operated the moviola.
We screened the spot the first time. I turned around and these two guys had come undone. Their ties were loose and astray; they were visibly sweating. I swear this all happened within the course of 30 secs.

John smiled and optimistically asked how they liked it. They looked at each other, and couldn’t answer. I don’t think they were able to form a decision or say what they actually thought. Eventually, they left with the spot in their briefcase and would get back. It wasn’t good.

They did get back. I was asked to pack up all the elements and ship them back to W.B. Doner. The spot was thrown out of the studio by John who refused to change it. (Hubley’s stork.)
He liked what was done, and apparently had a rider in his contract
which covered him – somehow.

The spot showed up at Jack Zander’s studio, Zander’s Animation Parlour. They used the Groucho impersonation and slicked it up a lot. Vlasic is still using that stork, and that was John’s last commercial endeavor.

(Note: Thanks to Mark Mayerson’s comment, yesterday, we know that Pat Harrington was the Groucho impersonator later used for the stork’s voice.)