Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

– I posted some images from the title sequence I did for Sidney Lumet’s overlooked feature film, Garbo Talks.

Tissa had about two weeks to animate about 3½ mins. of animation. I begged her to leave inbetweens for me, which she did, though only on close positions. I inked on paper, and Robert Marianetti colored directly from these rough-ish drawings. It was done with prismacolor pencils on paper. The paper drawings were then cut out and pasted to cels.

Since it’s graduation season, I chose this sequence of extremes:

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Below is a rough PT of the piece with its staccato rhythm since it’s missing inbetweens.

[ Javascript required to view QuickTime movie, please turn it on and refresh this page ]

Garbo Talks ruff PT On twos at 24FPS
Click left side of the black bar to play.
Right side to watch single frame.

- Back in 1972, a month after I first started my initial job in animation, New York hosted the First NY World Animation Festival.

I had never been to a Festival of any kind before, and it intrigues me, as you might imagine. There were quite a few world famous animation figures that actually came to town to present their films, talk to other animators and shine.

This was an event that was created by the entrepeneur, Fred Mintz. All I knew of him was a joke Tissa told me. She, a Hungarian, said that Fred was a Roumanian, and the old story was true: if you went into a revolving door behind a Roumanian, you should check your wallet when you come out. Of course, this was a joke, and Fred turned out to be a nice guy who put a lot on the line to get this notion of a NY Animation Festival up and running.

In fact, there were three annual editions of this fest, and I went to all. I met quite a few famous International animators by just showing up.

For some reason, I haven’t been able to locate the program for this first festival (I do have those for 2 & 3), but I found this article in Backstage, which was a commercial Industry newspaper. I’m posting the cover story from this issue and hope it will be a some interest.

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This was the first time I met Bruno Bozzetto, Yoji Kuri, Millie Goldscholl, and many others. I have to say that I didn’t meet a lot of New York animators. At the time, people in the industry stayed away from such events. The older Paramount/Terrytoons crowd wasn’t interested in animation outside of work.

I did meet up with a few of the more art-interested people like Tissa David (who I had just met at Hubley’s), Lu Guarnier, John Gati and a few others.

The events were well attended. Not as many students as there are today, but there were some.

- Ali Baba is another beautiful film from the Luzzati-Gianini team. The film is adapted from the book by Luzzati done for Pantheon books in 1973. I’ve made some frame grabs:

(Click any image to enlarge.)

The film includes a lot of pans. Some of them quite long.
Doing cut-out animation, under the camera, with arduous pan movements
was a very tricky operation. You never knew if you were going to have a bump.
Today, in Flash or AfterEffects, you can see it immediately and repair any problem.

– I’ve been something of a fan of the films of Luzzati and Gianini. I’d met Emanuelle Luzzati at a function thrown at the Italian Embassy in New York, years ago. I bought a book by him, and the artist drew a beautiful pen and ink drawing in the frontispiece of the book.

In 1988, I met Giulio Gianini in Italy during a stay of a couple of pleasant days with an assistant of his at the festival in Treviso, Italy.

Mr. Gianini died this past Saturday, and I wanted to offer a bit of a memorial. Emanuelle Luzzati died January, 2007 and to memorialize that I posted some illustrations and information about the duo with a lot of frame grabs from a number of the Luzzati/Gianini films. It took a few posts, and I left off without wanting to overplay all of the art at my availability.
Luzzati & friend

The Thieving Magpie was the first of their films to receive an Oscar nomination, and it was the first of the frame-grab posts I showcased. I’d like to post it again in honor of Mr. Gianini. He was sick for several years and in particularly bad condition. His death wasn’t a surprise, but it is still an enormous loss.

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La Gazza Ladra (The Thieving Magpie) is a Rossini opera about a young maidservant who, accused of stealing a silver spoon, is sentenced to death for her crime.
At the eleventh hour, the real culprit is found to be a magpie.
A cartoon, if ever there was one. With great music!

The film tells a tale wherein a king and his hunters, on a bird hunt, are beaten
by a magpie who steals their gems and ultimately destroys their village.

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Luzzati who spent many years designing operas and ballets,
brought his knowledge to animation as the pair adapted several operas often utilizing the overtures of the operas they were adapting.

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Clay, and the Origin of the Species by Eliot Noyes
and the winner, Chuck Jones’ Dot and the Line.
The Sound of Music won the Best Picture Oscar, that year.

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This is years before Terry Gilliam made it somewhat fashionable. All of the
Luzzati-Gianini films were totally inventive and creative within the form they established.
Gianini’s animation was as dreamlike as Luzzati’s exciting designs. The films
look to be designed somewhere between Chagall, Kirchner and
stained-glass windows; the sensibilities are all Luzzati and Gianini.

Today we have Flash animation which does just about the same thing as cut-out animation, but the form used today is flat and vulgar and cartoony. It might be useful for practitioners of Flash to take a good look at what these two brilliant designer/animators did with a similar form under more complex and arduous methods. Ulltimately, it’s all related.

You can get a bit more information about Gianini and Luzzati from the website of the Luzzati Museum in Genova.

Thanks to Karl Cohen for the following information from Gianalberto Bendazzi:

Dear Karl,
I just want to share with you my sorrow for the death of twice Oscar-nominee Giulio Gianini.
He died in Rome on Saturday morning, May 16th, 2009.
He was born in Rome on February 9, 1927.

His lifelong friend and artistic partner Emanuele Luzzati had died in Genoa on January 26th, 2007.

I’ll post some further piece about his work later this week.

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- I was starting to put together a post of photos of signage and thought I should look back on what I’d posted in the past. I wasn’t impressed with my photos, but I enjoyed reviewing some pictures sent me by Steve Fisher.

Since I don’t have enough of what I wanted to put up today, I decided to send out Steve’s images again. They’re great.

(Click any image to enlarge.)

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Finally, this one. You have to get right on top of it
to see the message printed on the fence.

- Joseph Stella is one of my all-time favorite artists. His most famous paintings were all done in the early part of the Twentieth Century. (All of the paintings here were done between 1918 and 1929.) He admired the Futurist painters of Italy. He brought the same sensibility to America when he landed as an Italian immigrant.

The Brooklyn Bridge – 1919

This is one of two interpretations of the Brooklyn Bridge which Stella painted. It was ultimately a byproduct of a competition among artists. Georgia O’Keefe, John Marin, and Albert Gleizes are among the artists who also painted the bridge. Stella was so moved by the subject that he came back for a second shot at it.

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New York Interpreted: The White Way I / New York Interpreted: The White Way II

Stella developed a small series of charcoal drawings and paintings which he named, “New York Interpreted.” They certainly pushed his philosphies in art, and moved American Art forward.

New York Interpretated: The Skyscrapers – 1920-21

The Gas Tank – 1918

Factories – 1918

As you can see with this work, he was as adept at realistic drawing and painting as he was at Futurism. But, of course, that’s expected of any good artist.

The Red Flower – 1929

These two paintings are very much in the spirit of many of the flowers that Georgia O’Keefe painted. However, his symbolism comes heavily whereas O’Keefe’s is barely noticeable.

The Tropical Sonata – 1921

- A couple of news events have passed by the Arts pages of the New York Times.

Up had its premiere screening last night as it opened the Cannes Film Festival. It’s the first animated film to have had that honor – of opening the Festival. A lot of critics seem to be guessing that it’s because so many of the films in the competition screenings (Up is not in competition) are severe downers, and they needed something positive to open the Festival.

Lasseter is quoted as saying that he is “looking forward to seeing that great image of all these people tonight in their tuxedos, bow ties and gowns, wearing 3-D glasses in that big theater,” he said. “That’s going to be a good picture.” This according to the NYDaily News

The Sydney Morning Herald featured this review:
THE most opulent film festival in the world showed it was up to the technological minute on Wednesday when it opened with Up, the new 3D animation from Pixar Studios. As an audience studded with stars walked the red carpet, they were invited to accessorise their tuxedos and ball gowns with a pair of polarised plastic glasses.

It was the first time the festival had opened with an animated film, which caused ripples of horror among the faithful when the program was announced. Judging by the sounds of sniffing that preceded fierce applause, however, Up won them over.

“Walt Disney always said for every laugh there should be a tear,” said the creative head of Pixar, John Lasseter, at a press conference during the day. Walt’s formula is still working.

In case you want a few clues about what Toy Story 3 will be about, read this article in the NYTimes.

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The animated series Sit Down, Shut Up is down and out. According to the NYTimes and Variety, Fox has decided to cancel this animated sitcom which recently made its debut. They’ve chosen even to passing on airing the last episode produced. Apparently, sandwiched between The Simpsons and Family Guy, it was losing audience for both of those shows.

I recently saw Jason Bateman and David Cross together on the subway and wondered if they were recording anything for this show in NY. Of course, that’s ridiculous; it would’ve been done months ago..

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Finally, the Times had an article about the new show Dreamworks is preparing for Nickelodeon. Kung Fu Panda will now join the Madagascar Penguins on the Nick schedule.

This is probably good news for those working at Dreamworks. Many considered the film the best of the cg films out of that studio, and now it can go on forever. Hopefully, Jack Black will remain involved with it. It might have been nice if they had gone with the 2D style of the credit sequences. At least, do something to keep the movie special.

- For some reason, recently, I was thinking a lot about a title sequence I did for Sidney Lumet’s Garbo Talks. I thought of doing a piece about the job but remembered doing one for this blog and found it in Oct 2006. Here’s a recap of it. I’ll probably post some of the animation some day.

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- One of the pieces done in my studio which still leaves me proud is a title sequence done for the Sidney Lumet feature, Garbo Talks. In the film, the character played by Ann Bancroft has had a life that, in some small way, was shaped by Greta Garbo’s feature films. This is a small bit of backstory in the live action film, until the end.

(Click any image to enlarge.)

For the credits, I chose to develop this aspect of her story, and Sidney agreed on the approach. We told her life in a caricature of Ann Bancroft‘s character, growing up. The sequence ends with her at her current age, an elderly woman, and the live action begins. Hence, we were giving the life story of the film’s lead character before the film started.

The idea was to use the device that had been developed for TV in the 50′s & 60′s of the caricatured characters whisking through the sitcom titles. (See Bewitched or The Carol Burnett Show.) However, it was our intent to treat it in a serious way.

Tissa David did a stunning, tour de force of a brilliant piece of animation. It was a dance that the character went through, and the credits played off the animation, which played off stills of Greta Garbo’s films.

There was a small crew on the piece, which ran about 2 ½ minutes. Tissa animated, I did whatever clean up was left. Robert Marianetti single-handedly colored everything; Janet Benn and Christine O’Neill did additional I&P. Gary Becker filmed it, and Edith Hustead edited.

We worked with the film’s composer, Bob James (a great jazz musician and the man who wrote the Taxi theme song), who developed a piece of music that Tissa animated to. He developed a beautiful waltz, and Tissa animated to every beat, every note.

After a preview screening, that didn’t go well, I expected my credits to be dumped. No, only Bob James was dumped and replaced by tunesmith, Cy Coleman. His music for the opening ignored most of the beats, and he wrote a lush waltz to replace it. It never quite matched in the eyes of Tissa and me.

- All the anti-Don Bluth vitriol that came out in the comments on my relatively harmless piece on the recently released DVD of Banjo the Woodpile Cat has stuck in my craw. (here and here)

Don Bluth is a veteran animator who busted his butt to make a number of animated features. Some of these were really good; some were not so bad, and others were downright clunkers. Regardless of the quality, they all took a hell of a lot of effort and struggle to get to the screen, and for that alone,
I have a lot of respect for Bluth and those who were part of his close-knit animation family.

A personality did come through all of those features. You may or may not like that personality, but there is an imprint there that can’t be denied. I give the man and his team a lot of credit.

Yet from the comments that have been generated, one would think he had done a piece of trash like Hoodwinked or Barnyard.

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The major difference is that Bluth desperately tried to make a good film and change the world of animation with his product, the other two producers were just producing product. Make it funny and get as much booty as possible. I guess the latter two were successful. One got a good deal with Miramax (and is now directing a live-action feature). The other, a live-action director, got a deal with Nickelodeon and made a slew of other Barnyard attractions.

Don Bluth? I’m not sure what he’s up to now, but I do wish he’d get back to business and try another animated feature. Perhaps this time he’ll work with a first rate scriptwriter.

I’ve decided to post some screengrabs of a random scene from the PT of Bluth’s All Dogs Go To Heaven. I didn’t like this film when I first saw it in a theater, but I’ve warmed to it over the years. The folksy charm of Burt Reynolds still bothers me, as does that googly-eyed child typical of many Bluth films. (The children in Troll in Central Park is the crème de la crème of this character type.)

Anyway, here’s a scene. It’s chosen completely at random. I don’t know who animated it (please leave a comment if you know), but it took a lot of work, and I’d like to honor it.

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- Another thoughtful letter from the estimable Borge Ring

Pigs Is Pigs is a nice UPA-tinged Disney short from 1954.

It was written by only one man Leo Salkin, and the character animation was done by only one animator John Sibley. It was directed by only one Jack Kinney, but the graphic style was set by two good layout men both of them UPA fans: One the already wellknown Bruce Bushman and the other a newcomer John Wilson.

Wilson was an Englishman who moved to the Disney studios USA. “He was a good artist” said director Kinney.

After a while working at Walt’s own Disney Studio, Wilson quit and founded his own Wilson Studio “Fine Arts Films,” which also produced commercials – as who doesn’t..

He told me: “Whenever I needed a voice-over I phoned Orson Welles.”
‘”What was he like?”
“He was the sweetest man I have ever met, And if you gave him a good briefing he would be right on the first take”

“Wow”
says
Borge

Welles’ drawing for “The Little Prince”__ ps
a film he was planning with Mel Shaw
and Hugh Harman in 1941.

John Wilson had several loftier productions such as an animated ballet starring the traditional Russian straw puppet “Petrouschka” with Igor Stravinsky conducting his own “Petrouschkä” music .And he drew a trailer for Billy Wilders masterpiece “Irma la Douce”

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There is a story scetch in colour drawn by Orson Welles. It stems from WW 2 when Orson teamed up with Hugh Harman and Shaw to produce St Exupery’s fable about “The Little Prince”. In the same period Welles approached Walt Disney with a an idea he had for a joint venture. Walt liked Orson’s idea and felt flattered being approached by Le Grand Ourse. Here was high octane input, jucier even than Oscar Fischinger and Salvador Dali.
The venture did not survive. It died of natural courses – says the grapevine – because the _________Wilson & Stravinsky planning
Universe can never accommodate two Suns in one
Heaven even though they radiate in unison, with identical wavelengths, and much light.

John Wilson started out working at Pinewood in Art Direction for Great Expectations continued through the sixties animating Sonny and Cher and George Herriman. He worked at UPA and Disney finally opening his own studio in 1955.

His interesting studio did quite a bit of work during its Hollywood heyday. “archy and mehitabel in Shinbone Alley” was a theatrical feature that was released in 1971 starring the voices of Carol Channing and Eddie Bracken. The notorious book by Don Marquis with illustrations by George Herriman (of Krazy Kat fame) was animated with this feature. It’s worth searching out, if you haven’t seen it. They also did dozens of animated song segments for the popular Sonny and Cher Show, and achieved some long term visibility with that show.

Currently, John Wilson is back in his native England. You can see lots of film clips, movie stills and fine art pieces on his entertaining website, Fine Art Films.

Both images come from Charles Solomon‘s fine book:
Enchanted Drawings: The History of Animation.”