Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

The book’s cover.

- Many years ago – I think I was 12 or 14 – I was consumed with animation and drawing. My parents took us ice skating. Of the brood of five children, I was the only one who refused to get on the ice. I purposefully brought my 8mm camera along. It was more important for me to record the event than to participate in it.

When I got home, I questioned my inactions. Why was it that I wouldn’t ice skate? I realized it was a deep fear that I would fall and someone would skate over my right hand, and I wouldn’t be able to draw again. That was when I religiously started trying to teach myself to draw left-handed. Every chance I got I put into that ice-skating fear by practicing left-handed drawing. It didn’t take long for me to stop trying. I could see some small progress in what I was trying to draw and left it at that.

This psycho-memory of mine flashed across my brain recently when I discovered James Tim Walker‘s book, Drawings From The Left or Parkinsons Pictures. I received a call from Tim and a copy of his book soon thereafter.

The book really looks like a sketch book. In fact, when I took it from the envelope I actually wondered if it was an original or had it actually been printed. The textures on the cover made the pen and ink over red pencil drawings look real. After running my finger over it, I realized that it was published.

I’d read about Tim’s story on Cartoon Brew and The Blackwing Diaries, and I was curious to see the book. I’d looked around a couple of shops in NY but hadn’t seen a copy to peruse. I knew it was for sale on Amazon, but I like thumbing through books before I buy one.

Tim had been an artist, animator and director for many of the LA studios and had a rich and solid career. Then Parkinson’s disease hit him. (Since my father died of complications from Parkinson’s, I’m all too familiar with the debilitating disease.) Tim has Lateral Parkinson’s, meaning only one side of his body was affected. Naturally, this was the right side, and the right-handed Tim had to face up to the fact that he wouldn’t be able to draw again – unless he taught himself to draw left-handed.

A good example of the many drawings by Tim in his book.

Four years later, and this book of Tim’s “Left-handed drawings” was published. The drawings are all bouyant and lively cartoons of a series of original characters. They’re all posed in many positions, like model sheets, showing the versatility of an animator at work. There’s as much life here as in any of Fred Moore’s drawings. As a matter of fact, I learned from Jenny Lerew’s site The Blackwing Diaries, that Tim is a fan of Fred Moore’s work and has a collection of Moore art.

It’s a testament to the strength and endurance of a solid artist to be able to overcome the difficulties life has dumped on him. As a matter of fact, I think in some way that anyone who has made a career out of animation is practising this same endurance, albeit on a smaller level, to overcome the odds of a changeable industry.

The page that Tim drew and autographed for me.

- Bill Peckmann sent some fresh Alex Toth material and with it came some notes. So, I’ll turn the blog over to him today:

In keeping with the celebration of Dean Mullaney‘s book, Genius Isolated, I thought I’d scan some of Alex’s early 1950′s and early 1960′s comic book art.

The first three are DC Comics’ “All American Western” covers from 1949 to 1951. (Wonderful house/publisher coloring.) The character he was doing for the book was called “Johnny Thunder”, a western hero with a Clark Kent duel personality. Alex was only 21 years old at the time of the first cover.

(#121 has been reprinted in “Genius”)

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The following is the back cover of issue #121, it’s an ad, non Toth, I just thought you’d get a kick out of it. . . .

. . . As an 8 year old I remember this premium/give away very well, Donald and Mickey were the prized ones of course. To all us little cookie snappers at that time, anything Disney was few and far between, unlike today!

The following complete story is from EC Comics’ “Two-Fisted Tales”, issue #22, 1951. (This scan is of the cover done by book editor Harvey Kurtzman.)

The story “Dying City” was written, layed out and outstandingly inked by Harvey Kurtzman. The beautiful tight pencils were Alex’s. Both gents were in their best Milton Caniff mode, wonderful job of a very grim story.

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In 1963 Alex was doing “Mad Magazine” type pages for “cartoon car” type magazines coming out of the west coast. It looks like he had an easy time slipping into the skins of Jack Davis and Mort Drucker and seemed to enjoy doing it for a while. These 2 stories are from “DRAG CARtoons” #2. They are take offs of the then popular TV series, “Dr. Kildare” and “The Defenders.

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Both these stories plus all of the rest of this type that Alex did for the “cartoon car” magazines were lovingly and handsomely collected by Manuel Auad (publisher of the new, excellent Robert Fawcett book) in his/this Alex Toth, One for the Road, published in 2000.

Cover – “One for the Road”

Many thanks to Bill Peckmann for all the great material in this post.

- More images collected from Cinderella. But first, let me start with this email my sister, Pat, sent me. She’s always sending
me funny email jokes, and this one seemed to come at just the right time – in time for this post. It just reads:

A Coincidence? I think not!”

The Prince and Cinderella is one thing but the two sisters’ dresses. That’s where this comparison takes the cake.
Anyway, I thought you might enjoy it if you haven’t already seen this.

Now, onto more Cinderella art. This all started with Hans Perk‘s wonderful blog, A Film LA and the Cinderella drafts he’s posting. Take a look. They’re a treasure (as is everything Hans posts.)

We start with a couple of finished BGs and move onto to models and designs for Cinderella’s room, house, and castle.

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The Stepmother

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The Stepsisters

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- I continue, here, with more images from Cinderella.

I think of this series of posts as an outgrowth of the Cinderella drafts Hans Perk is posting on his excellent blog, A Film LA. Check them out if you haven’t already.

Many of the following drawings are better drawn than some of those in the first post. Others almost look as though they’re frame grabs rather than the preliminary sketches (See #9 & 10) they are. I hope you enjoy them. If you know who did any of the art, don’t hesitate to let us all know.

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I just read a great little quote by Wilfred Jackson in Didier Ghez‘ book Walt’s People Vol. 6. I thought I’d share it. It comes from an interview with Jackson by Steve Hulett:

Pinocchio was the last picture I worked on that was done so strictly under Walt’s guidance. All during the thirties it was that way. Then he backed off and began throwing more responsibility to the rest of us. He figured we should know our business well enough to help him make pictures instead of being extra fingers on his hand.

And it’s my personal opinion that this accounts a great deal for some of the difference that you see in the spirit and the heart that you see in the pictures during the thirties. That gradually, it got a little less evident until it got to the point, in my estimation, where the Disney pictures became superb technically, but a little lacking in a joyous creative spirit you’ll find in those early pictures. As time went on, it was more and more diluted by the influence of others . . .

- Here are some pages from Arnold Roth‘s Comick Book of Pets. These pages were sent to me by Bill Peckmann. It’s a beautifully layed-out book.

The front cover

The back cover

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Title Page

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Dedication Page | Contents

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Many thanks to Bill Peckmann for sending the scans. Roth’s art and sense of humor have always been a favorite of mine.

- Cinderella art. I’ve taken a lot of drawings that I could find from an old DVD and from some books and have put them all together in a jamboree of images making up a couple of posts. The occasion for this, to me, is to celebrate the drafts recently posted by Hans Perk on his resourceful site, A Film LA. This is all leading up to something. I don’t want to do: a mosaic of the film. I am not that in love with the movie to do all that work, but perhaps I’ll do a variation of the form, created by Mark Mayerson.

The artists of these sketches are nameless. None of the art was identified, so I send it out that way. The Mary Blair images are obvous, and though there’s a preponderance of Blair artwork for this film, I”ve tried to limit her a bit. I did devote a lot of space to her artwork in past posts. You can find more of her Cinderella images here.

For now here are some images of the character, Cinderella.

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- Mayor Bloomberg has had an all-out war going on cigarette smokers. They’re no longer able to smoke within restaurants, bars, or public parks; they also can’t congregate outside of buildings anymore. The price of a pack of cigarettes in NY is about $11 in a retail drug store like CVS, I can’t imagine smoking a pack a day without being rich. (My father used to smoke three packs a day! I’m not sure he’d be able to afford the bad habit today.)

Given the intolerance for smokers in this city and the high price of maintaining the habit, it’s a surprise that everyone hasn’t already quit smoking. But all we have to do is look downward, and we can see that there is still an abundant number of people smoking. You can’t move two feet without stepping on or over some worn out butts. (It was in Canada that I saw homeless people gathering the butts to refashion their own cigarettes from the left-over tobacco in the cigarettes they found. That’s something I’d only seen in films from the Depression era US.)

People treat the outdoors as if it’s their own personal ashtray. That was always the worst of the habit that I saw. Butts fly out car windows, get smashed on the sidewalks and curbs, onto stairwells and subway tracks. So it was an easy photo target for me to shoot the detritus of the NY smokers. Here’s the result of some casual photos shot during the week while walking home.

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Flora, fauna, butts and coffee cup caps.

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Butts seem to enjoy nestling in the pavement guides.

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Heading down the subway steps.

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Farther downstairs in the subway.

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On the subway tracks.

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Outside lobby doors . . .

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. . . or store doors

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Floating in the muddy water in the curb.

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Or looking up to a tree stained sky.

- Anthony Lane has written an expressive and interesting piece for The New Yorker Magazine. I felt the article about Pixar intelligent and well-worth reading. Perhaps the fact that I haven’t visited the Emeryville factory, made the piece informative and amusing to me. This is something written for the general public.

I was first informed of the story by George Griffin who wrote: You might want to read the Anthony Lane article on Pixar in this week’s New Yorker. “It’s from a bemused outsider POV, a bit condescending, yet often witty and even insightful. It reminded me of why I distrust the emotional core of the brand: just change the eyebrows and voila!”

No sooner had I received that email, when I’d found that Amid Amidi had already written not one but two nasty bits about it on Cartoon Brew here and here. He calls the article “fawning” and says it, “. . . has convinced me that it is next to impossible to write anything of substance about the studio at this time.”

Perhaps Amid read a different article than I have or perhaps he’s written often enough about the studio (2 books on the market so far) that he just doesn’t have more to say. That is, unless he goes negative which Lane isn’t trying to do.

Anthony Lane has a distinct style in all his writing, and it rises to the top in this article. That style carries the article, at least, for the first half. Like his best movie reviews it’s not the deepest thinking, though there are some good observations I would’ve missed had I not read it. (Yet, how many reviewers these days are deep thinkers. You might find a handful if you work hard at it. Gone are the days when Pauline Kael would argue with Andrew Sarris in their columns over philosophical differences about a movie. Today it’s all thumbs up or down and five Rotten Tomatoes out of ten.)

The piece for the New Yorker was intended as a puff piece, and it delivered. Those, like I, who are not completely sold on Pixar’s eternal genius would hope for more, but I accept the article for what it was and enjoyed it as such.

Rather than take anyone’s word for it, I suggest you try to read the article yourself. It’s not on-line (unless you have a subscription to The New Yorker) but can be found on newstands or in libraries or in friends’ hands. The search is worth the read, despite the snarky reviews of it on line.

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- Speaking of Pixar, the Vancouver based school, VanArts is holding a Pixar Artists’ Masterclass in Animation and Story Development. Matthew Luhn (Head of Story) and Andrew Gordon (Animator), both from Pixar Animation Studios, will be the instructors. The program will travel to several cities – with two days in New York, June 24th and June 25th. Geared for professionals and students alike, the classes are now 60% sold out, but have some availability if you’re interested.

Check it out.

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Through an email comment sent me by Mike Peraza, I went to his blog, The Ink and Paint Club, and found it quite interesting. There’s a particlularly good piece about Don Griffith, nestled in some older position a few pages back; there is also a three-post-piece about The Black Cauldron that’s worth a read. You’ll find plenty of bits like this:

As Cauldron was screened for the new management, Jeffrey Katzenberg proceeded to ask for “… cover shots” during sweat box meetings not fully understanding that extra shots to “cover” a scene was only done in live action. In animation, we DREW each shot as they were needed depending directly on the story board/workbook. Multiple animated variations would have made the already expensive process out of financial reach even for Disney.

Scrolling through the blog, if you’re a Disney fan, you’ll find something that appeals to you. Take a look.
I’ve added the site to my “blog roll” to the right.

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- Jake Friedman has a big article on Art Babbitt’s involvment with animation education going all the way back from the Disney golden age right through to his lectures at Dick Williams’ studio. The piece can be found at AWN.

This reminds me that I’ve meant to run some more of the Williams notes on the lectures. It eventually became Dick’s book, The Animators’ Survival Kit, but there’s something innocent about the rough quality of those notes. I’ll post more of them soon.

A sample of the Dick’s notes

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(Click any image to enlarge.)

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- Leif Peng on his site, Today’s Inspiration, has been posting art of Rowland B. Wilson all this past week. Bill Peckmann has suggested we post a complementary piece today to work with Leif’s site. Consequently, here are a number of pieces. As we go through each, I’ll give you Bill to tell you in his own words what’s coming.

I’m starting off with a CARTOONIST’S PROFILE of RBW. You’ve posted some of the art in color already, but it’s nice to see how it breaks down in B & W.
Rowland was always totally aware of how his color art would translate into the gray scale.

The cover of Cartoonist Profiles.

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The next two gags were taken from a reprint book titled “Esquire’s World of Humor”, 1964(?). Fortunately they hadn’t been reprinted in the Whites of Their Eyes, so they are somewhat “new”. Sadly, they were reprinted in B & W, the color art must have been beautiful.

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Here are examples of how Rowland figured out the shading of his full color TV GUIDE illustrations. He would take a Xeroxed line drawing and then “fool” with it with colored pencils.

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The next 3 pieces are roughs for PLAYBOY gags. Even his roughs look “finished”. Suzanne Wilson was kind enough to send me these.

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Here are some photos from June, 1973 when Rowland started working at Richard William’s studio in London. Fortunately for Rowland, that was just the time that Grim Natwick was teaching over there and as they say… that was the start of a beautiful friendship!

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One Soho Square

Rowland at his desk

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Animator, Jeff Short with Rowland.

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Rowland with Grim Natwick

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Bill Peckmann with Grim Natwick outside Dick’s studio

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Rowland with Grim

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Rowland with Suzanne

Finally, here’s a note from Suzanne Wilson about the Rowland B. Wilson book which is currently in the works:

A compendium (?) of Rowland’s personal notes, techniques, sketches, etc. is in the works. It is largely based on Rowland’s collected “how-to” pages that he developed in order to create a system that could be applied to illustration, animation, cartooning and graphic novels.

The publisher is Focal Press. I don’t expect it will come out until 2012…

They haven’t said I can’t announce the book, but the title is not finalized (plus I am having conniptions about ever completing it on time…

I happened to scroll down on Michael’s website and see Laurel and Hardy. I didn’t know if you knew Rowland painted them on the cabinet doors of a workbench he built…

The workbench

Oliver

Stan

- Yesterday, in conjunction with Hans Perk‘s posting of the drafts to Cinderella on his excellent site, A Film LA, I offered some stills from the live action reference material shot for the animators. Today, I have some stills shot for publicity of the crew working on the film, with Ilene Woods posing in all the departments of the animation studio.

I recognize very few of those posing. If you have any idea who any of the artists are, please don’t hesitate to chime in on the comments section.

Here are those stills:

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Milt Kahl is bottow row, far right, next to Ken O’Connor (far right).
Ham Luske is pointing. Anyone know anyone else?

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I think that’s Clyde Geronomi with Helene Stanley.

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Helene Stanley

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Mary Blair

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(L to R) John Hench, Mary Blair, Claude Coats and Walt.

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Mary Blair with John Hench
(Thanks to Rudy Agresta for the I.D.)

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Obviously Mary Blair was key to this film.
I think that’s Ken Anderson with her.

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Song writers: Al Hoffman(left),
Mack David (center), Jerry Livingston (far right)

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Ilene Woods recording a song.
(Not really; she’s posing. The mic is over her head.)

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Ilene Woods and Ted Sears
(Thanks to Mark Mayerson for the I.D.)

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Layout artist Ken O’Connor shows off a pumpkin coach model.
(Thanks to Dan Jeup for the I.D.)

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Ilene Woods with Marc Davis

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Ilene Woods and BG painter, Art Riley (I think?)

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Ilene tries to shoot the film, but her fingers are stuck under the platen.