Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

– This past weekend I came upon two reviews in one issue of Daily Variety. Kung Fu Panda and Waltz with Bashir were reviewed on the very same page. Both animated films are being presented in Cannes, and Variety reviewed them well in advance of their release (at least, in the U.S.).

Kung Fu Panda didn’t receive a very positive notice: Chopsocky ‘Panda’ has bear necessities read the headline.
“Even by moppet-defined standards, _______The cast of Kung Fu Panda in Cannes.
the situations, characters and moti-
vations here are extremely elementary and lack nuance; other than Po and his prescribed transformation, none of the other figures reveal dimensions not fully evident at their initial appearances.” They went on to praise some of the graphics.

As for Waltz With Bashir, the reviewer said it is, “A subject that might, had it been made conventionally, have repped just another docu about a war atrocity, is tranmuted via novel use of animation into something special, strange and peculairly potent …”

The Hollywood product is designed to capatilize on the voices of Jack Black, Dustin Hoffman, Lucy Liu and Angelina Jolie. The other, Israeli made feature uses a mix of acted and documentary voices (including the director) and is subtitled.

The reviews in Hollywood Reporter were almost identical to these in Variety.

Of course, Kung Fu Panda will ulltimately have a large enough public in its Dreamworks distribution and will probably score $150-200 million. It was designed for commercial purposes to attract a large “family” (meaning “children”) audience.
Waltz With Bashir may not make it to the U.S. Variety said that U.S. distributors in Cannes are taking a “wait and see attitude” before buying into it.
________ Ari Folman _______.._.____That usually means that it has some problems.
_____________________.__________The film has sold to distribution in Spain, Germany, France and Greece. Writer/director, Ari Folman admits that the film is difficult to watch (it is about war) and cannot be changed to a happy ending movie.

The directors of Kung Fu Panda have worked in LA’s animation community. John Stevenson has been with Dreamworks for a while. Stevenson worked in storyboard on Madagascar, Sinbad and Spirit. He also directed episodes of the tv show, Father of the Pride. Mark Osborne has directed episodes of SpongeBob SquarePants prior to joining Dreamworks to direct on this film.

The director of Waltz With Bashir, Ari Folman, also wrote the film. He wrote and directed two other live action films and wrote episodes of “In Treatment”, the Israeli version of the show that transferred to HBO. His next film will be an animated adaptation of Polish author Stanislaw Lem’s “The Futurological Congress”. This time, he’ll make the animated feature in English.

I haven’t seen either film, obviously, though I’ve looked at a lot of clips. One is dyamically drawn with a lot of pop and snap to the animation – meaning there are no characters there. The other looks rotoscoped – more in the manner of the Chicago 10 than Waking Life. I’m getting discouraged again about the medium I love. But then, I’ve only seen clips. Perhaps they thought the poetic scenes wouldn’t attract audiences.

Here’s an article about the Kung Fu Panda party at Cannes.
Here’s a Cannes interview with director, Ari Folman.

- I first met Ross Care years ago. He had scored the music to one of John Canemaker‘s early short films, The Wizard’s Son. I was impressed, and since I was looking for a composer for the first film of my new company, Byron Blackbear & The Scientific Method, I asked Ross for his help. He did a great job with little time and less money.

It was only a short time later, that I learned that Ross was an animation music historian. Somehow, we worked together in setting up a program for ASIFA East in which the conductor for Bambi, Alexander Steinert, took the stage with Ross to analyze the music for that film. I had a 16mm print of the film, and we watched about half of it. It was one of those memorable ASIFA meetings, that stay with you forever.

A year or two later, Ross had written an extensive article on Bambi’s music for The Quarterly Journal of The Library of Congress, the Spring 1983 edition. I just recently ran into the article on my shelves, and after getting Ross’ permission, I’m posting that article here. It’s 22 pages long, so I’ll have to post it in two parts.

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_________________________________________________To be completed Thursday.

Article: Copyright © 1983 Ross B. Care

- I have a few really down and dirty older xeroxed copies of layouts for some Fantasia scenes. Without defining what they are, I thought I’d just post them and let you figure them out. When I have the folder info, I post that as well so you can see who did what.

I follow the LO’s of each scene with frame grabs from that scene.

___Falling flowers land on water. Unfortunately, a small part of the
midsection for this drawing is missing. The xeroxes, of course,
are all large and reconstructing them was a bit complex.

The BG layout is below.

(Click any image to enlarge.)

These two drawings represent twirling blossoms as well as
the perspective planning for them and the background for the scene.

The following two long pans show a background of leaves and the
progression of Faeries that sparkle around those leaves.

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Zeus

Clouds open

Zeus steps out of a silhouette.

Zeus in closer shot

The BG layout

- Some of you may remember that I gave some attention to some steel sculptured trees that were placed in Madison Square Park last year. They stood there for almost a year and became part of my daily trek through this city park.

This past week some objects started to appear on the large, Oval Lawn, and I started to photograph the setup.

It turns out to be a number
___________ (Click any image to enlarge.) ________________of ceramic works by
____________________________________________________Richard Deacon, a British sculptor. He has his own website. Oddly, his artwork doesn’t seem to be reproduced large in any of the photos on his site or others I visited.

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A tent was set up to protect the materials from the rain, and the
not-very-large sculptures were drawn out of wooden boxes.

There was the one tent on the side of the great lawn, and another tent
was set up over on a sandy side bar (about 100 yards away.)
The tents obviously protected the sculpture from the rain, and
it was raining while I shot some of these stills.

This was done off on the side. I’m not sure how the actual sculptures
were moved to the Oval Lawn. I don’t even know if they’re heavy,
though one assumes they must be to survive the weather.

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Things came together quickly. At the end, there were a couple of
vehicles left standing about. There’s a truck in the background
of the photo on the left, and another is almost hidden
in the background of the photo on the right.

Finally everything seemed to be in place, and
the sculptures were all centrally located on the big lawn.

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Here you can see the children’s playground in the background.
The sculptures almost seem to be part of it.

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At the moment, the lawn is closed to pedestrians.
Once the public performance events begin to happen, it’ll be curious to see
how the public intermingles with these sculptures.

The art pieces do blend well with each other, though.
Something new to view on my walks.

After all the construction vehicles had disappeared, I noticed
a tool box off to the side. At least, I think it was a toolbox.

Just today, I noticed that they’ve added little markers in front of each piece to identify and give information about the art. The Oval Lawn is shut off to the public, so it’s not possible, at the moment, to read the markers.

I didn’t have my camera with me this morning. I’ll get photos of the final setups and post them on another day.

- Here’s another of the animated bits from the flipbook that came with the Frank Thomas/Ollie Johnston book, Bambi: The Story and the Film. It’s peculiar that they selected this sequence to put into a flipbook since it doesn’t quite work. Obvously they don’t use all of the animation drawings for the flipbook, and they’ve washed over the short holds that are in the animation. There are lots of interesting poses, though.

The piece was animated by Ollie Johnston.

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- I have quite a bit of artwork from the film, Raggedy Ann & Andy: A Musical Adventure, the 1976 feature film by Dick Williams. Hence, it’s always an easy decision to post some of it. Unfortunately, every animation drawing is so large, it takes a lot of time to scan and put it together.

Here are two pieces that were I first posted in October 2006 with a healthy focus on one indomitable artist:

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I think in many ways, the unsung hero of Raggedy Ann was Corny Cole. He was there from day one working with Dick Williams and Tissa David – once the one minute pilot had secured the job for Dick. Corny was brought in as the key designer, and Gerry Potterton came on as Dick’s Associate Director.

I was hired soon thereafter, even though I had no idea what I’d be doing. For the first couple of weeks, while they were recording, I just moved furniture and read the script and whiled away the time by drawing Johnny Gruelle‘s characters.

I helped Dick and Gerry add spot coloring to the storyboard as the animatic was being shot. We spent a long Saturday coloring like mad with colored pencils. We worked on the last section of the animatic to be shot. I’d say 90% of the board was done by Corny. Dick and Gerry added spot drawings as needed, while we built the animatic.

Corny then did lots and lots and lots of drawings to give to animators.
Some of those drawings are posted herein for a scene at the beginning of the “taffy pit” sequence. These drawings were also used in the animatic.

After Corny finished feeding the animators, he started animating, himself. He took on a sequence that filled the screen with a pirate ship full of dolls floating around some rough waters. The large sheets of paper were filled with Corny’s black bic pen lines. Doug Compton eventually worked with Corny to finish this overworked sequence.

- John Celestri sent me a clipping from the Cincinnati Enquirer re the kidnapping of Ann & Andy. Hence, I am prompted to post the following layouts and storyboard drawings by Corny Cole.

This first Layout marks the introduction of Raggedy Andy. He’s under the box. This drawing gives you a good idea of the detail Corny put into every drawing.

The following images come from the first shots of the Pirate Captain. He espys the new doll, Babette, and falls madly in love.

The first four stills are 8.5×14 copies of the storyboard; the remainder come from the director’s workbook. They’re all sequential.

I think the parrot, which was added in pencil, is the work of Asst. Director, Cosmo Anzilotti. The bird just shows up later, so Cosmo probably tried to give him some business.

It’s here that the Pirate goes into his song (everybody sings in this film) and concocts his plot to kidnap the French doll.

- Among the brilliant scenes in Dumbo is one that usually is overlooked in all the animation books. Yet, to me it separates this film from other Disney films, except, perhaps, Pinocchio. The tent building scenes are a brilliant mix of solid animation, excellent (and quietly hidden) effects, strong music and perfect screen direction. The sequence works extremely well on its own, but it works even better as a significant part of the film as a whole.

I sincerely doubt that Walt could have been in the studio when the sequence was built. Certainly, this espouses the Socialist politiical views of many of the strikers and one wonders what Walt thought of it. Presumably, because it has been developed as such an integral part of the film, the underlying political current of the sequence could hardly be lost, but it’s hard to miss the overall feel of it. Perhaps I’m completely wrong, and the feel of the piece can just be chalked up to a product of the period.

I would love to hear what other, more informed historians have to say about it.

Here, are frame grabs detailing the sequence.

__________________(Click any image to enlarge.)

- I don’t intend to give an introduction to Norman McLaren or his work here, but he obviously was one of the solidly great film makers on the “Art” side of animation. His films are worth studying for their timing, if not for their sheer genius. As a matter of fact, his exercise films on timing are incredible (though I have no idea how you’d get to see them today.)

I do have a book of some drawings by him, and given the stories about China in the news today, I thought I’d post some of his drawings done in China. These aren’t printed on the best of papers, so the quality isn’t all it could be. However, I thought it might _____________(Click any image to enlarge.)
be worth showing this other side to his art.

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Moving away from China, there are two other drawings I thought compelling and
would like to share here.

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– Retta Scott has been fascinating to me from the earliest days in my interest in animation. I believe it was on a “Disneyland” when I first heard her name. Back then the research readily available to me was not great. Bob Thomas’ book The Art of Animation listed her as an animator on Bambi. It doesn’t even give her credit for Fantasia, despite her principal work on the Pastoral sequence. Nor does it mention her work on Dumbo, The Wind In the Willows or The Ruluctant Dragon.

She was layed off at Disney’s when they hit a slump in 1941 but came back to do a number of Little Golden Books for Disney. The most famous of her books was her version of Cinderella, one which was so successful that it remains in print today as a Little Golden Book. She was an animator on Plague Dogs.

When asked why females weren’t animators at the studio, the Nine Old Men who traveled the circuit, back in the 1970′s, often mentioned her. They usually also said that she was one of the most forceful artists at the studio, but her timing always needed some help (meaning from a man.)

Ms. Scott was known predominantly for her animation in Bambi. Specifically, she’s credited with the sequence where the hunter’s dogs chase Faline to the cliff wall and Bambi is forced to fight them off. The scene is beautifully staged and, indeed, is forceful in its violent, yet smooth, movement.

Ms. Scott died in 1990.

Continuing with prior posts featuring some of the sketch work from this film, I feature some of the original work from this sequence. Many of these drawings are storyboard pieces and are not actually the work of Ms. Scott. However, they certainly inspired what she would animate.

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_________These, above, are two frame grabs from the sequence.

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The dogs corner and chase Faline up a rock wall where she tries to stave off the violence of the attacking dogs. She remains there until Bambi comes to save her, fighting off the dogs.

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_____Though most of the drawings above aren’t the work of Retta Scott, this one is.

- Dumbo is certainly one of my favorite Disney features if not THE favorite. Naturally, the “Baby Mine” sequence is a highlight. The sequence is so tender and fine-tuned to appear straightforward and simple. This, of course, is the heart of excellence. It seems simple and doesn’t call attention to itself.

This is a storyboard composed of LO drawings from the opening of that sequence. They appear to be BG layouts with drawings of the characters cut out and pasted in place.

It’s not really a storyboard, and I’ve always wondered what purpose such boards served to the Disney machine back in the Golden Age.

Below is the board as it stands in the photograph.

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Here is the same photographed board, split up so that I can post it in larger size. I’ve also interspersed frame grabs from the actual sequence for comparison.