Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

- In 1991, I’d started a small booklet publication, called Sporn-O-Graphics, that I sent out to about a thousand people on my mailing list. Basically, we were promoting ourselves by giving brief interviews and articles about the people in animation who had touched our films in some way. We focused on the films just about to air or were recently completed.

In a lot of ways, it was more fun having a hard copy magazine rather than a blog. It seemed a bit more permanent to have something in your hands, that stayed there until you were done with it.

The third issue, July 1992, concentrated on two specific films, NIGHTINGALE and THE POKY LITTLE PUPPY’S FIRST CHRISTMAS. Denise Gonzalez had just taken over editing the magazine and she conducted many of the interviews and articles for the issue. Her interview with art director/designer, Bridget Thorne, was the key piece, for me, in this issue. She also wrote a bit about voice acting for animation, concentrating on Heidi Stallings who had done the principal adult part for THE POKY PUPPY film.

I’ve posted these two pieces, here, to represent that issue.

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(Click any image to enlarge.)

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Here are links to issue #1 and issue #4

- Seymour Chwast has been one of our most important designers for generations, now. He has influenced art as one of the founding members of Pushpin Studios and has touched all phases of illustration and design.

This year he produced a graphic novel version of Dante’s Divine Comedy: A Graphic Adaptation. The book doesn’t simplify but has reduced the Epic poem to a detective story. The pages are black and white, but the color is all in the drawing. The only similar work I can think of is Robert Crumb’s The Book of Genesis, an equally brilliant work.

Here’s a sample of Book I – Inferno. In other posts, I’ll share a bit of the remaining two parts – Purgatory and Paradise.

cover

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- James Thurber has long been a national treasure, both as a writer and a cartoonist. The only problem is that most of the younger generation has probably no idea who he is.

He’s been the go-to guy for design-y animation.
-It all started with the UPA animated short, Unicorn in the Garden. This was a holdover from the planned animated feature, titled Men, Women and Dogs, that UPA was going to make of his work.
- The William Windom tv series about a cartoonist at work, My World and Welcome to It, used his style.
- The War Between Men and Women, a movie starring Jack Lemmon, portrayed the story of a bachelor cartoonist whose love life fed his comic strip. The style of Thurber fed the animated version of his strip.

He was a New Yorker cartoonist and writer. Here’s a sample of the cartoons printed in that magazine.

My Life and Hard Times was a big book for Thurber. Several of his biggest short stories are in this book, including: “The Night the Bed Fell” and “The Night the Ghost Got In.”

Here are the illustrations from that book:

The book’s cover

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- Frank Thomas is one of those animators that I took too much for granted. The more I look at his work, the more I realize he was one of the greatest animators to have graced the business.

His animation of Captain Hook is brilliant.

Per comments by Wil Raymakers and Sandro Cleuso, I’ve learned that this particular scene was animated by Woolie Reitherman. Naturally that would be under the supervision of Thomas, who controlled the character, Hook.

I can’t speak more highly about this scene. In a flash, I can tell you exactly where this scene sits in Peter Pan, and I’ve remembered it since I was a child; it’s that key to me.

The scene is obviously designed to be on ones, and I have the drawings for the second half (on ones), but the first half includes only the keys. Consequently, there’s some staccato movement in the QT movie I’ve made. Regardless, it’s beautiful.

The scene comes to me courtesy of Louis Scarborough Jr., who made the loan.

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Here’s a QT movie of the complete action from the scene, including Part 1.
Since the scene has been inbetweened, it’s exposed, for the most part, on ones.

- Today marks the anniversary of the bombing of Pearl Harbor. This was not only a disastrous day for our country, and whatever affects our country affects the animation studios equally.

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The December 8, 1941 issue of LIFE Magazine included this display of DUMBO stills. A day after the bombing, I kind of suspect no one was into noticing the stills. George MacArthur was on the magazine’s cover – not intentionally bringing War into the issue, but accidentally doing it.

Fleischer’s Hoppity Goes To Town had the same sad problem. It opened the week after Pearl Harbor and sank as quickly as the Hawaiian Fleet. The film was finally reviewed in the NY Times in February 1942 (as can be read below) but there wasn’t much to save it at the box office.

Here’s a promotion that ran in the NYTimes in May of 1941,
six months before the film would be released to a deadened market.

The review pulled from a page of other reviews.

- Here from the Mickey in B&W Treasures DVD comes some story sketches from the great, early short, Mickey’s Orphans. It’s valuable to see how much action happens between these drawings, and one wonders if there are other story drawings missing, or did the animators get to play a bit with the action.

This film was done in 1931, and certainly a procedure was developing at the studio in the process of making these films.

Here are the story sketches for this film, and some of them are beauties.

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Hans Perk has posted the draft for this film on his blog, AFilmLA, and I’ll try to put together a visual breakdown of the film to match it.

By the way, what a resource AFilmLA is. Hans is currently posting the draft to Fantasia. What more could we want? Thank you, Hans.

- As I’m sure you’ll learn from many blogs that today is the anniversary of Walt Disney‘s birth. His 109th birthday.
Just as importantly, to me, this is the anniversary of this blog. This is the fifth year I’ve been writing these posts on a daily basis and having fun doing it. Here’s hoping for another five years.

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- My good friend, Steve Fisher has noticed a trend in New York, at least in Queens. There’s a depressed state taking hold of Christmas. He comes with evidence in these photos. I’m glad to share them, and only hope that things will perk up.

Well, Santa may be ready, but I’m not sure anyone else is.

One Frosty, down for the count.

Mickey’s a bit deflated.

Et tu, Snoopy?

Charlie Brown for company.

Down and out like laundry out to dry.

Mary watches from a drainpipe in silence,
waiting for Christmas.
What fools these mortals be.

- There’s a wonderful new blog post on Darrell Van Citters’ Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol blog. It features the story of Abe Levitow as told by his children, “REMEMBERING THE MOOSE” by Judy, Roberta and Jon Levitow. A great piece to read, I encourage you all to take a look.

This is a great site, by the way. Plenty of material about the artists who were involved in those changeover days at UPA. Great artists get their due, lots of artwork from the film and the period, and lots of info to learn.

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- According to Variety, Disney has picked up the distribution rights for the Spanish animated feature, Chico and Rita. This is director/producer, Fernando Trueba‘s first attempt at directing an animated film. Spanish graphic artist, Javier Mariscal, co-directed the film.

The film celebrates the Cuban jazz pianist, Chico, and his relationship with nightclub singer, Rita, as they leave Cuba to move to the jazz world of the New York in the late 40s.

Disney will release Chico and Rita Feb. 25 on more than 100 screens. (This, of course will allow Disney to enter it into next year’s Oscar fest. in an attempt to get the number up to 16 for a five nominee ballot.)

The film won for best feature at the Holland Animation Film Festival in November. The animated movie continues Trueba’s taste for Latin music, already reflected in three awarded musical docus (“Calle 54,” “Blanco y negro” and “The Miracle of Candeal”) and the creation of a Latin jazz record label.

It’s unlikely they’re expecting a wealth of cash from the distribution of the film except, perhaps, making something from the DVD, if it gets good reviews. I notice that they haven’t picked up the TV rights.

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– Meanwhile, writer/director, Geoff Marslett’s animated feature, Mars, opened in New York
yesterday. The NYTimes review by Jeannette Catsoulis wasn’t all that it might have been. She called it “. . . low key, low budget and low energy . . .” and pretty much left it at that. The film is another of those rotoscoped-animation type things not quite as energetic as “Waking Life” and “A Scanner Darkly.”

Marslett, who teaches animation at the University of Texas at Austin. The film is playing at: the reRun Gastropub Theater, 147 Front Street, Dumbo, Brooklyn.

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- William Benzon, again, has written several excellent pieces on animated films on the blog New Savannah. He has a two part article on Miyazaki‘s film Porko Rosso. The article intelligently argues the idea of a pig, the leading character, being the only non-human in a particular world where no one takes notice. Part 1 and Part 2.

There’s also a third recent article on thoughts generated by Miyazaki in his book, Starting Point, about how he constructs his films with an ever changing and growing storyboard that doesn’t get done until the film is, usually, already being animated. Go here to read this piece.

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- I received a letter, accompanied by a Press Release, from Don Hahn re the video release of his documentary, Waking Sleeping Beauty. Here’s part of the email letterL

After a yearlong trek though film festivals and art house cinemas, my documentary WAKING SLEEPING BEAUTY is coming out on DVD this week and I hope you’ll get a chance to review it. WSB tracks the renaissance of Disney Animation from box office disappointments and the near closure of the studio, to great success with films like The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast and The Lion King.

The positive response to the film has been bigger than I ever imagined. Not only has it appealed to the fans of animation, it’s also struck a chord with corporations and organizations of all kinds that have gone through their own periods of declines and resurrections. We found that WAKING SLEEPING BEAUTY not only entertained, but touched people emotionally as well.

The DVD has over 80 minutes of bonus material with amazing footage of Howard Ashman working with Jodi Benson during the recording sessions for The Little Mermaid and Howard’s priceless talk to the animation crew about musical theater and animation. I also put together an audio commentary track that features alternate narration from Peter Schneider and myself as well as new unheard material from Glen Keane, Mike Gabriel, Kirk Wise, Rob Minkoff, Jeffrey Katzenberg and Roy Disney.

I hope you’ll get a chance to view the doc and announce to your readers that WAKING SLEEPING BEAUTY is out on DVD tomorrow, November 30th.

I wrote about this film and reviewed it when it was released theatrically back in March of this year. You can read that here.

- Here are more pages from the book by Albert Hurter, He Drew As He Pleased (Simon and Schuster, 1948.) This gem is a rare book, indeed.

Albert Hurter was one of the European illustrators Disney brought into his studio for Snow White and Pinocchio. Hurter was the his own master, drawing designs which would be used generally to further the design of the features and Silly Symphonies.

A similar position seems to have gone to Joe Grant when he worked in the period during the making of Beauty and the Beast through The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Some of his drawings, as can be seen in John Canemaker‘s book, Two Guys Named Joe, are just as brilliant. Indeed, there were a lot of brilliant artists floating around the Disney studio in the late Thirties, early Forties.

Many thanks to Bill Peckmann for the loan of the book’s pages and the arduous task of scanning these illustrations.

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“He was fond of scarecrows . . . ”
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“One of Albert’s ambitions was
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Variations on a Centaur
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Gladiators at Work
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The Titans
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Siamese and Otherwise
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- Karl Essex read on my blog about Glen Keane‘s poses and saw some negative comments about Andreas Deja which I rebutted. He had a number of artwork pieces that he sent me to post. There’re no cliched poses among them; I like Deja‘s work.

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Hercules 1

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Hercules 2

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Hercules 3

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Hercules 4

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Lilo from Lilo & Stitch

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Jafar from Aladdin

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from Deja’s sketchbook King Triton from The Little Mermaid

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Roger Rabbit