Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

- Christmas is in the past, and the decorations are long gone.
Every year I save all the original cards and a couple of others I enjoy.
My favorite original card this year came from Tom Hachtman.

Tom wrote me about the development of this card:
– I sat down at the kitchen table to do cards with my niece April Centrone. She is a brilliant and somewhat demented artist. I gave her the Christ child from the creche and she began to draw – legs, body, hands and then, unhappy with the results, tossed it aside. I picked it up from there and put the baby in Santa’s lap.
The artwork was a collaboration. I wanted to clarify.
(Click any image to enlarge.)
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- Marjane Satrapi received her best animated feature award this week from the NY Film
____Critics by saying, “In France, they always call the New York critics tough bastards. So
____thank you, my bastard friends.”

____It’d be nice to hear what she might say if she wins an Oscar. She’ll get my vote.

- The Pirate VeggieTale Movie got the reviews it deserved. The Village Voice’s Ed
____Gonzalez called it, “Humorless, incoherent, and ugly as sin…”
____I was going to attach an image from the film, but I couldn’t sink that low.
____However, I must say I prefer the Veggietales images to those from any of the Shreks.

- I love the gag cartoons that Stephen Worth has posted on the ASIFA Hollywood
____Animation Archive side. They’re from UPA New York, and they comment on
____Lu Guarnier’s having the only window in the studio. The studio was divided into stall-
____like cubicles. (At least, this is Tissa David’s description.)
____What fascinates me is that these cartoons were saved for the past fifty years! They’re
____absolutely worth it, but how much of the important art is gone, yet these inside-gags
____are still extant and in good shape.

____By the way, a comment from his niece Pat, reminded me that Lu had told me about
____his first name – that his father named him “Lucifer, the light bearer” because he would
____someday lead the world out of its darkness. He wasn’t named after Lucifer, the devil.
____This also had me wondering about the middle initial “B”. Lu wouldn’t tell me
____what it stood for and left me guessing whether it was for “Beelzebub.”

- Speaking of Stephen Worth, I’ve been entertained by the back and forth discussion
____between Michael Barrier and Stephen Worth regarding the history of story/script
____development at animation studios. Worth says that prior to 101 Dalmatians, all scripts
____for animation were done by storyboard artists. Mike Barrier (having viewed the
____evidence) states the obvious – scripts did exist as far back as the silent Disney days.

____I’ve seen enough of these scripts to know that Barrier is correct. The script for
____Brotherhood of Man was published in the 1945 Hollywood Quarterly, for pete’s
____sake. Hubley, Phil Eastman and Ring Lardner did this script in advance of
____any storyboard work, which Hubley, ultimately, did. I saw parts of that storyboard as
____well. I believe it’s now in the MoMA archives.

____Scripts did exist. Just look in the Merritt and Kaufamn book, Walt In Wonderland.
____Pg 102 has a verbal scene-by-scene breakdown with a follow-up board for the Oswald
____cartoon, Africa Before Dark. That’s 1929.
____I think in this argument, Stephen Worth is just fighting the hard fight to protect the
____claims of John Krisfalusi that only storyboarded scripts are good for animated films.
____The argument is not worth much more of a comment. The comments on Cartoon
____Brew have gotten beside the point.
____Barrier offers us a page of a Cinderella treatment & a Fleischer Koko silent film.
____There’s also another page of a Superman script on Thad Komorowski ‘s site
____contibuted by Bob Jaques.
____Need anyone offer more?

- Speaking of Mike Barrier, his comments about Hanna/Barbera, their shorts and Jerry
____Beck’s recent book, The Hanna-Barbera Treasury, are quite astute.
____His commments have also provoked some serious thoughts from Mark Mayerson
____about the subject. Mark comments, “There is no question that the animation industry
____suffered a major blow with the death of theatrical shorts and the rise of television. It
____took the industry more than 25 years to recover from that blow. Hanna and Barbera
____had no part in that recovery and if anything, they probably delayed it.”

____I certainly agree, but I’m more bitter. I don’t think there was ever a recovery from
____H&B’s handiwork. They put the animation industry in the gutter, and it hasn’t
____stepped out except for a few individual steps by others. A film like Persepolis suffers
____from the residue of Hanna Barbera’s flattening of animation. UPA introduced limited
____animation; H&B flattened it out.

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- There’s another great Tom Hachtman image on the Kaliyuga Theater site for Al Carmines‘s play, In Circles about Getrude Stein. Tom, of course, draws the Gertrude’s Follies comic strip. This watercolor was done for Carmines. Tom sent it to me, and how could I pass up posting it?

I’m almost tempted to buy a ticket to the show.

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- Let’s talk about the breaking of joints. No, I haven’t entered Tony Sopranoland. This is an animation blog, so I’m obviously talking about the animation principle that deals with the “breaking of joints” to create any arcs or curves in animation. All human action is controlled by this method of movement. A body can only bend at joints – knees, wrists, elbows etc. Any other break is artificial and verboten in trying to make your character seem real. Any animator of the human form would swear by it.

Here’re four pages from Dick Williams’ book which illustrate the principle. Though if you look at his book – all those walks, all those bent wrists – this is one of the backbones of Dick’s training/education.

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___(Click any image to enlarge.)
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3 4

This is something I learned early on – long before I entered the business professionally.
I wasn’t sure it was spelled out in the Preston Blair book and went back to see, but it wasn’t. I don’t know where I originally read about it, but I must have somewhere – probably one of those old animation books I’d borrow from the library.

I’m sure they created it when animators at Disney in the early 30′s decided to get rid of the rubber-hose animation they’d been doing. It was a bit of rebellion. They followed the natural rules of physics. Today anything other than this would be the rebellion.

The one guy who broke this rule, and is just about idolized for it today, is Jim Tyer. His many distortions and odd working of his characters was an end in itself. This is probably what I liked about him.

I’ve always seen animation as a way to caricature life not to recreate it.
Sidenote: This is why I don’t like most cgi films. They’re just trying to reproduce their form of life. Sure, Surf’s Up got those waves down pat; it’s almost perfect. Unless, of course, you’re looking for them to say something about waves rather than realistically rendering them and their movement.
Sorry, I respect it, but it’s like super-realistic painting done today; I have difficulty getting into it.

Animation is drawn. Drawing invites nonsense – even in the most serious of situations.
Tyer uses his graphic distortions to make scenes funny. In Fritz the Cat he handled some serious scenes with a quieter distortion, though it’s there just the same. It’s the acknowledgement that we’re watching an animated film that gets me charged. I like being in the moment and outside of it all at the same time.

Does that make sense?

Lyle Lyle Crocodile was about a housekeeping, dancing crocodile that shares his house with a child. When his original owner comes to take Lyle away, the child gets upset, sings a song of remorse and cries. Lyle hides in a broom closet while the child sings from the other side of the door. I chose to view this as a cartoon. For god’s sake, it’s a cartoon crocodile that dances! For anyone who wants to see it, I’m mocking the situation. Visions of candy canes and ice cream cones dance around the croc’s head as he remembers the good days. I asked the composer to use a harmonica and a saxophone to pull the tears. Every time I see the scene I laugh hysterically. Most audiences don’t see this, and they weep for the boy and his pet.

This is what I love. Something for me and something for people who don’t want that extra bit of separation. It’s actually a hard thing to pull off, but it’s great when you do.

The same bit is true about the breaking of joints. In every film, I go out of my way to break that rule and see if it’s noticeable. I’m not even trying to be as blatant as Jim Tyer. To be honest, I don’t think it is noticeable, although I see it every time. Tissa David hates when I do such things, but I can’t help it. I love the graphic distortions animation encourages, but I also love the rules of behaviour that help me tell staid stories. Hey, it’s great being the boss of me.

- Reviewing the career of Lu Guarnier, yesterday, I saw the title, The Mouse and His Child. This Russell Hoban book is an absoulte gem – a GREAT book. The film wasn’t quite its equal, but because the story is so brilliant, the film isn’t bad. Too bad they cut the last third of the book out of the film and ended the story early. Hoban told me that he hated what they did to his book, but I still like it.

The film was done by Sanrio, a Japanese company that made all their money on Hello Kitty products. They produced two features in the US. Metamorphosis and The Mouse and His Child. Both films failed at the box office.

However, The Mouse and His Child, directed by Fred Wolf and Chuck Swenson, has some real charm. There are small glimmers of exciting animation throughout the film.

I don’t really know who did any of it. Corny Cole, obviously, did the big closing animated zoom of the film. I sought out the work of one animator I liked, and it turned out to be Vincent Davis. It was the first work I saw by him, and I’m still charmed by it.

Here’s a small walk at the beginning of the film. Lots of shape shifting in the assisting, but there’s something nice about it, too. I don’t know who animated it.

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I like this film; I’ll probably have a bunch more to say about it eventually.

- I received word late yesterday that Lu Guarnier had died December 29th. He had been in poor health for some time, living at a nursing home in Marlborough, Mass. Lu was someone I considered a friend for years while I worked within the industry; we worked together for John Hubley, Phil Kimmelman and R.O. Blechman. He had a unique, rough, drawing style that was certainly a challenge for an assistant animator.

He once told me that his father took pleasure in naming him Lucifer B. Guarnier, and you can guess what the “B” stands for. He also enjoyed his annual trips back to LA where he still had a lot of friends._______Lu at WB.

Lu had started at Warner Bros. in the 30’s and told me many funny stories about working in Clampett’s unit. He started as inbetweener to Clampett and worked his way up to animator. $12 a week. He once told me of the “hurt” jokes that were enormously popular for a short period back in the day. How “hurt” was he?
Well, as an inbetweener, he was the last to receive some animation that Clampett had done in a particular Porky Pig cartoon. An axe was falling on Porky and at the very last moment, he was saved from the blade falling on him. Lu, for a joke – a “hurt” joke – decided to continue the animation with Porky being cut in two as an alternate ending that he sent to PT. After they watched the dailies, they could watch the alternate – the correct version. Well, it just so happened that that was the day Leon Schlesinger was making the rounds. The fresh dailies arrived and the assembled animation crew watched Porky cut in two. Leon turned to director, director to Clampett, Clampett to the lowly inbetweener who squirmed his way out of the room. Lu expected to be fired, but wasn’t; they all laughed after he’d left the room.

Tissa David told me that the UPA studio was one long space that was divided into cubicles. She called them “stalls” like horses would occupy at a racetrack. Grim Natwick, Tissa and Jack Schnerk shared the third cubicle. The only one who had a window was Lu Guarnier; he shared his space with Vince Cafarelli, his assistant.

Lu was always a natty dresser, with a fine jacket, slacks and a bow tie. He gave me quite a few little gems that I’ve featured on this site. My favorite included the WB Christmas card filled with caricatures by Tee Hee. Lu, on one of his LA jaunts, had it signed by everyone he met. Tex Avery, Bob Clampett, Chuck Jones, Friz Freleng, both McKimsons. Even Hanna and Barbera. It’s a treasure, and I think Lu always regretted giving it to me. He often asked about it.
___________(Click image to enlarge.)

I’ve missed him since he went into the nursing home, after his wife died. Now, knowing he’s no longer there, I’ll miss him even more. He was a gem of a guy.

I have some drawings for a couple of scenes Lu animated. I’ll try to post one or two of them in the next week or so.

- I continue, here, my posting of the two boards filled with artwork from Dumbo’s Pink Elephants sequence, there’s a lot of delightful artwork.

Again, the photos I have, graciously loaned to me by John Canemaker, are smaller than I’d like. (You can get an idea, by clicking on the image to the right, as to how dense the boards are.)

I’ve scanned them at a decent resolution and have broken them up into smaller panels so that you can enlarge them to a viewable size. I’ve had to piece the photos together to keep them in order, so it’s been a bit time consuming. However, I think the boards are worth it. Again, I’ve interspersed some frame grabs from the final film to show how it ended up in color.

The following images were in the gallery part of the dvd. These are the color versions of some of the images above.

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- With all the screenings I’ve attended in the last few weeks, I seem to continually end up at the Fifth Ave. subway station at 59th Street and Fifth Ave. On display at the station are a
number of polar bears tiled into the walls. These are set far enough away from each other so that the white tiled polar bears set on the white tile backdrops don’t bother each other. You also have to walk the length of the station to see them.

These are glass mosaic murals by artist, Ann Schaumberger done in 1996 in collaboration with Miotto Mosaics. I was able to locate _________________(Click any image to enlarge.)
another work by her but not much other information.

Apparently there are other animals displayed in the 60th Street exit of this station, but I didn’t get to see them. I was primarily interested in the tile artwork downstairs where you wait for the trains.

In the past, I’ve posted features on the tile art displayed at the 23rd St. and the Prince St. subway stations. These are both on the BMT train line. (NY has three lines: the IND, the IRT and the BMT. Originally these were different guage tracks; now there’s no real difference.)

There are fewer bear setups than there were hats or working people – as appeared in other station art. Yesterday, after going to one of the last screenings I had in the area, I decided to photograph these tile bears and present them here.

You’re greeted by these penguins at either side (Uptown or Downtown) of the station.

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Farther down the station, you come upon these polar bears with an excellent orange ornamentation about them.

Close up you can see the detail on the tiling, but the bears as a whole look better a bit back from them.

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As I mentioned, penguins greet you at the entrances/exits of the station. You can see them on both sides of the platforms.

Above ground, the Plaza Hotel (no longer a hotel) stands. Lots of horse-drawn carriages stand in the cold waiting to take tourists for a ride through Central Park.

- After my post last Sunday about the William Steig exhibit at the Jewish Museum, I was contacted by them to ask if I wanted images of art from the show for my blog, and of course I jumped at the chance.

They sent quite a bit of material as well as the captions that go with the art, and this gives me a good excuse to post more of Steig’s art. Because these images are photos (not scans) of the original art, they show the texture of the paper and the edges including some Steig’s writing, so I feel like there’s a good reason to post it. (The photos of the art, by the way, are all by Richard Goodbody.)_________Photo of Steig circa 1930′s.

I’ll probably display these image in a couple of posts so you can see a good sampling of this man’s work. I don’t have to say that I am a fan; I think by now it’s obvious.

You might want to check out the book, The Art of William Steig, which is a catalogue of the show. It’s available through the Museum as well as through other resources.

Ann Scher left a comment on my last post that the Steig exhibition is on view at The Jewish Museum in NYC until March 16, 2008. It will then travel to San Francisco, to be shown at The Contemporary Jewish Museum from June 8 – September 7, 2008.
If you have the time take a visit.

Here’s some of the earlier work that this artist did.

What a Woman!
preliminary drawing for The Rejected Lovers (1951)
pen and ink on paper
© 1951 William Steig, renewed 1979, 2007
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In the Nick of Time
from “Dreams of Glory” series, published in The New Yorker, May 26, 1951
pen and ink and wash on paper.
© 1951 William Steig, renewed 1979, 2007
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“Are we early?”
Delivered to Look magazine, May 17, 1956
pen and ink and wash on paper
© 1956 William Steig, renewed 1984

“What did I do?”
published in The New Yorker, June 30, 1962, pen and ink and wash on paper
© 1962 William Steig, renewed 1990
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“I got my first haircut at Ditchick’s Barbershop”
final illustration for When Everybody Wore a Hat (2003)
pen and ink and watercolor on paper
original version, in pen and ink and wash, c. 1959
© 2003 William Steig

- Back in the olden days, films were released very differently.

It wasn’t until the early 60′s that an important film opened at more than one theater in a town/city. (I can remember that United Artists package of ten films that first did this. It included To Kill A Mockingbird, Dr. No, and A Hard Day’s Night. Even then we were talking about 60 theaters not 3000.)

In New York key films opened on Broadway, in Manhattan, and you had to buy reserved seat tickets in advance to see it. The film would play there for a month or two and then move onto more theaters locally around town.
I can remember the trip to see How The West Was Won, The Tales of The Brothers Grimm, Lawrence of Arabia, and others.

With this higher priced film presentation, you were given a small booklet or you could buy the deluxe souvenir booklet. In 1963, I found this deluxe booklet for the initial premiere of Fantasia. I bought it from a used-book dealer while I was still in college.

This past week, I watched Fantasia again and used the program to read some credits. That’s when I thought it might be interesting to feature the booklet on this site.

So, here it is. I’ve split it into two posts with #2 to follow.

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- The great thing about the holidays is that there are a number of parties where you can catch up to and meet with some people you haven’t seen in a while. I had a great time at George Griffin and Karen Cooper‘s New Year’s day gathering. Some of my oldest and dearest animation friends were there.

It was fun catching up with John Canemaker, Emily Hubley, Bill Plympton, Signe Bauman, Debra Solomon, Lisa Crafts, Nina Paley and George, himself. It was a total surprise meeting up with Veronika Soul again. It may have been 15 years or so since we last saw each other. She’s a fantastic artist whose work always gave me a charge. Now that she’s back in NY and I have her contact information, hopefully we’ll see more of each other.

It was also great visiting with John Schnall. He’s one of my favorite people in animation, and we rarely see each other except for the occasional party.

I don’t generally like posting YouTube pieces; I’d rather direct you to their pages. After seeing John Schnall, he followed up with his YouTube link, and I checked it out.
His pieces had me laughing aloud, and I have to share them with you.

John’s been making animation for quite a while. We worked together back in 1987 when he supervised the production of Lyle Lyle Crocodile for me. If I remember correctly he did his first commercial bit of animation on that film when the family decorates their home for the return of Lyle. Anyway, that’s one of the things I was thinking about while watching that movie at the MOMA screening. (I suppose this is what most people do while watching their own films; remember what was going on when the film was being made.)

The piece below, is an hilarious mix of George Bush and another YouTube hit. For me the joke was completely unexpected and well done. There are a dozen pieces on John’s YouTube site; they’re all well done and funny. Take a look. They give Jib Jab a jab by actually saying something.

(Click image to go to John’s YouTube page.)

- Today’s the day the Iowa voters perform their curious voting rituals. I’ll be all eyes and ears tonight. I’m not sure any one President will be able to undo the horrific work this last guy and his team have done. Certainly, the crop electioneering don’t fill me with confidence. Ms. Clinton, for one, is unable to adequately answer any ONE question she’s asked. Consequently, I see her as just an extension of what we’ve already got. A mouth full of non-sequitors and gobbledygook for answers. The only aim they have seems to have little to do with me. Edwards has continuously spoken up for the poor and disenfranchised. Since they’re not the ones who would put him in office, I’m not expecting him to win. Obama looks attractive to me though a bit languid on the campaign trail. Where’s Al Gore when you need him? As for the Republicans, when Romney is leading the way and Huckabee is his big challenge, they have problems.

Christmas balls dangling – live fruit still kicking Jan 1
Photo by Steve Fisher

- Now that the holidays are past us, and we’re ready to pull down the trimmings, we can get onto the new. As it turns out, there were a number of excellent new sites/blogs created toward the end of the year, and I’d like to call attention to a few.

- The Thief, for me, has been a daily must-visit site. It’s written by four people who started out working at Richard Williams’ Soho Square studio. Their experience and stories about working on Dick’s Cobbler and the Thief (or is it The Thief and the Cobbler?) feature are posted for us to enjoy. This feature is probably the last glorious attempt at a cel-aniamted feature without the slightest use of a computer. It’s undeniably brilliant in some of its animation, and reading about the work is so informative to me, that I quite enjoy it._________________A Tissa David Yum Yum from The Thief.

- Toons At War has been an excellent blog has been focussed on this incredible subject since August of 2006. The material that has been posted on this site has been great to view and study. Lots of beautiful art.

Now David, who hosts and writes that blog, has a new and exciting site. Vintage Disney Collectibles gives lots of rare and interesting material showcasing the marketing work of Disney, particularly in the earliest days.

There are plenty of “Disney” sites out there, but David’s specialization, here, is obviously such a work of love that it can’t help be informative.

In the past I gave some small attention to the work of Paul Lasaine. His excellent site reveals some of the incredible artwork he’s done for a number of films.

His matte paintings, poster artwork and design work for some of the newer cgi features is extraordinary. It’s fun seeing strong works of design and planning for some of the backbone work of these films. The detail of the painting above (from Surf’s Up) gives me a small bit of respect for the strong craft that goes into the making of some of these cg films.

This is a beautiful site with lots of examples of artwork from Prince of Egypt, Surf’s Up, Lord of the Rings and several live action features.

- Bob Jaques‘ relatively new site (mentioned here several times) has become one of my favorite daily stops. Popeye Animator ID does just that; it identifies and highlights the work of some of the animators at the Fleischer studio. People like Lillian Friedman, Louis Zukor or George Germanetti would get absolutely NO attention were it not for the detailed, entertaining and revealing posts on this site. Even Bob’s riffs on reuse animation are just compelling.
Between this site and the new_______________Popeye meets the multiplane camera._
Popeye dvd’s out recently, I think
I’ve recently spent more time watching Popeye than I have in my life. And I’m enjoying it.

- Finally, my friend, Joey Hachtman has a new site on My Space. It’s called Three Designing Women, and it showcases the exciting trompe L’oeil murals she’s been producing out of her Point Pleasant location.
I wrote about her in this earlier post.
The caricature of the Three Designing Women, to the left, is by Tom Hachtman, Joey’s husband. Take a look at the site..