Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

- Steven Fisher caught the following photos in the back yards of Queens, NY.
Wildlife remains wild, even in the City. This is a hawk feeding on a small animal it’s caught.

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Many thanks to Steve for sharing the photos.

- There will be a memorial service for Vinnie Cafarelli at Buzzco on January 6, 2012 from 4:00 to 9:00pm. More information will be relayed at this site when we get closer to the date.

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I’ve been visiting a lot of sites and blogs lately and would like to share links and make a few comments about some of them.
Let’s start with the sites/blogs I visit every day, some of them several times a day, knowing there’s a lot to take in or there will be updates. I’m sure you visit most of these as well; they are the staples for the animation community.

The Daily Stops

Cartoon Brew, of course, is the place to get a lot of information first. Jerry Beck and Amid Amidi each has a specific taste, and together they combine to make something that captures a very wide audience. There is a lot of first-hand news flashes as well as material they’ve culled from other sites. The only annoying part of the site comes in the “comments” section where the crazies come out to make their inane comments. Of course, it doesn’t bother me enough to not read most of them.

Mike Barrier for many years was the publisher, editor and prinicipal writer for the most important magazine devoted to animation, Funny World. (I’ve been rereading several issues – currently #13 – and can’t believe how much information I’m still getting out of some of the writing.) The site is every bit the same as the magazine, except it comes more frequently. The writing and research is first rate and the material presented is always deeper than others have offered. This is a necessary stop for anyone even remotely interested in animation. He’s fiercely opinionated, but often has good reason backing up that opinion. (Though he still admits to liking POLAR EXPRESS.) His writing style is the best on the web with a superb vocabulary and well considered choice of words.

I don’t miss a day without visiting this site even though Mike sometimes will take a month off (notifying us in advance) from writing. However, I want to get the new posts the moment they’re up; it’s that important to me.

- Mark Mayerson‘s blog is my third stop, daily, on my rounds. His comments are always sharp and well thought out. His writing is done in a businesslike approach – no frills and no nonsense. His news items are often off the mainstream and definitely worth visiting. The finest part of this site is when Mark comments on a film or short or analyzes the makeup of a scene (see his 14-part take on a short sequence from Ford’s Stagecoach.) Often even Cartoon Brew lifts news items from Mark’s site. The comments section is usually from those who are knowledgeable, so they’re worth reading.

- A Film LA is Hans Perk’s great blog. This is a wonderful resource of a site. Hans posts drafts to many of the Disney films.. He also posts invaluable items from the Disney archives. I love this site for the information I pull from it and study.

Eddie Fitzgerald is one of the most creative guys on the Internet. His blog, Uncle Eddie’s Theory Corner, keeps changing about four or five times a week, and it’s always a genuine treat. He creates photo-montage essays that either are outright hilarious or somewhat serious. Just in the last two days he went from “THE AMAZING SLUMS OF RIO” to “HOW GERMANY GOT OUT OF THE DEPRESSION” to “SHOULD ANIMATION CHARACTERS WEAR WIGS?” From recipes to animation analysis to photo-cartoon comics, you never quite know what you’re going to find here, but it’s always fun.

John Kricfalusi‘s blog is a must read for animators. He often gives advice, which is usually skewed to his particular style of cartoony animation. It’s a different world if you’re a Disney-esque animator, but it’s vital that even you know what’s on his mind, because it’s always written from a sure knowledge of animation theory. I would have loved seeing what he might have done with Aladdin’s Genie. Eric Goldberg did a perfect job, but John K might have take it to the farthest reaches.

The Animation Guild Blog (TAG Blog) is the animation guild’s blog which is primarily written by Steve Hulett. It changes at least once a day, and focuses mainly on the business side of animation. There are also excellent audio interviews with animation veterans who talk about their history. At times the creative side of animation is also discussed. This is an important blog to read to get information from. I find the comments generally well informed and the discussions there usually on a high level. However, most of the commentators generally label themselves as “anonymous” which is more than a little annoying. It gives a good indication of the fear floating politically in the business.

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At least Weekly Stops

Signe Baumane‘s site, named after the feature she’s creating, Rocks In My Pockets, contains some of the best writing on the web. Signe’s stories from her life read like fantastic adventures through a unique universe. They’re all so personal and so vivid in their imagery that they could only have been written by an animator.

I’m hooked on this site and I turn up religiously to see if something new has appeared.

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- I’ve gotten to enjoy Gene Deitch’s blog, Gene Deitch Credits. He gives commentary about a number of the people he’s come in contact with over the years and writes short essays about each of the individuals. I enjoyed his take on John Hubley, Jim Tyer, Jam Handy, Bill Hurtz and especially Phil Scheib. As a matter of fact, I like them all. So little of worth is usually written about some of these people, and Gene’s personal comments are usually gold. I do wish some of them were longer. However, that’s better than wishing they were shorter.

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50 Most Influential Disney Animators
Countdown of the 50 Most Influential Animators in Disney Studio History
- Someone who tends to overwrite is Grayson Ponti at 50 Most Influential Disney Animators. His idea of putting out a list of the top 50 animators in Disney history is an ingenious one – except, of course, that you ultimately run out of numbers. This will happen soon, since he’s down to the top two. He’s announced a follow-up blog when he completes the top 50.

Each entry is extensive in length and usually filled with typos and hard-to-comprehend writing errors so it takes a bit of time to wade through the posts. It must take quite a while for him to write these pieces, it’d be worth his rereading them to correct errors.

Often, however, there are a lot of interesting comments that Grayson posts that make you think back to some of the scenes of the animators under discussion. I can’t say I’ve disagreed with much that he’s written, thus far.

Another problem I have with the blog is that he lifts images from many other sites without giving appropriate credit. Many of the drawings and cels lifted are in personal collections, and he should let his readers know.

- Dan Caylor has a good site called On Animation. It offers a lot of videos and news briefs. Many of these videos (all in a large format) will also show up in places like Cartoon Brew, but there are those I’ve only been able to see at this site. A good example is a wonderful piece showing the back stages of Aardman‘s puppet making for their film Pirates. This is a 17 minute piece that really gives an in depth look at the size of the puppets, not to mention the size this production. Quite informative.

The site is well worth visiting to see what new film shorts have been posted.

Steven Worth had created the site for the ASIFA Hollywood Animation Archives. That site is still up, but the links weren’t working and you couldn’t access the archive. Now Steven has started this site, Animation Resources, and is quickly posting all those original links from the old site. There’s too much valuable artwork to not see it accessible; so it’s great that we can now get to it.

Recent Finds

I came across this French title designer this past week and was quite impressed. You can see a number of Laurent Brett‘s title sequences at the site. The link appeared on the Steven Heller post about the film titles for OCS 117 on Imprint magazine. However, I found all of his work quite interesting.

Laurent Brett‘s title design.

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There are so many other blogs and sites that I can’t continue here. Perhaps I’ll pick it up at another time. I suggest you scroll through my blogroll on the right of this page to see what else is there (in case you don’t know about one or two of them.) I’ve barely scratched the surface. Andreas Deja’s blog, DejaView, is a miracle of animation drawing, Scribble Junkies is another voice for Bill Plympton and Pat Smith, Hans Bacher’s beautiful blog, One1more2time3, is necessary viewing, Alltop is a great way to surf the top few animation blogs. There are so many more; I will continue this.

- Here we have the conclusion to the comic book version of Ben & Me. Part 1 here.
Al Hubbard was the artist behnid the work; beautiful brush inking and great compositions. The material came from Bill Peckmann‘s collection for which I’m enormously grateful. Any notes from here on come from Bill:

Whenever Al Hubbard adapted Disney feature film characters to comic books he always gave them the authenticity they deserved. His style is deceptively loose and simple but he was always on model and his drawings are full of life.

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The back cover

Here’s a neat way to show off Hubard’s formidable lay out ability, it’s by showing the pages in the gray scale mode so the coloring doesn’t get in the way. (Luckily the colors transform well into gray values. Let your imagination do the coloring and it also takes on the somewhat wonderful look of a production storyboard.)

His page and panel layouts are terrific. They are well designed, move the story and hold your interest. All wrapped up solid acting poses.

(Here are 3 gray scale pages.)

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Seeing my post of Bill Peet‘s storyboard for Ben & Me, Bill Peckmann followed up with this note and artwork:

I remember as a kid when “Ben and Me” came out it was “big doin’s”, those were the years where you had to wait 5 years between Disney features, a long time for a youngster. The short was great, it had feature length quality and it seemed that Amos the mouse just stepped off of the back lot of Cinderella.

Needless to say when the comic book adaptation came out it was added very quickly to the stack of Disney comics at home. It was done by Al Hubbard, one of my favorite Disney comic book artists (like Carl Barks and other Disney comic book gents at the time, we did not know his name then). With his wonderful brush line, Hubbard was the next best thing to Walt Kelly. (He had successfully taken over Kelly’s “Peter Wheat” bakery character.) He also did the “Mary Jane and Sniffles” feature in the Looney Tunes Merrie Melodies comic books.

The comic book coloring was done in the simplistic style/way of it’s day, so unfortunately, the color richness of the film is totally missing.

Cover

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This is the first half of the magazine. There are another 16 pages to go. Tomorrow.
Many thanks to Bill Peckmann for scanning and sending the images to post and for sharing his collection with us.

- This is the fifth post of this scene, and the second that concentrates on the shadows. There are more where this comes from, and the post will continue with more parts. There are a lot of drawings to this scene (almost all on ones.)

However the scene’s a beauty. I think the animation by Riley Thomson recalls some of the earlier gutsy cartoon animation from the late Silly Symphonies. Mickey’s shadow moves several times from the right side to the left as he hacks away at the brooms. Whenever he walks, there’s always planned slippage in the movement. And the extremes are bold for a Disney cartoon. In a way, it brings Mickey back to his roots despite the high-minded subject matter of this film.

Harvey Toombs did the assisting. The sequence director was James Algar.

We start off this scene with the last drawing from the last post (Shadows Part 1):

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The following QT incorporates all the drawings from this post and the last.
All previous posts will be combined in the final piece.

All drawings were exposed per the Exposure Sheets.

- Setting the Scene: The Art and Evolution of Animation Layout is a beautiful new book by Fraser MacClean. This is a stunningly attractive book with a great number of illustrations going all the way back to Winsor McCay right up to recent Dreamworks films.

The book talks about the history of the layout artist and gives plenty of examples from the past to the present, 2D to CG. It addresses how McCay did his films, through the silent animation era, past the Golden Age of animation, right up to the present day’s more complicated methods for computer graphics. It’s a wonderful and heavily researched book with an enormous number of illustrated examples.

A Winsor McCay LO for Gertie

Original drawn layouts for the likes of One Hundred and One Dalmatians, Chuck Jones/Maurice Noble shorts, Betty Boop shorts, Gulliver’s Travels and The Thief and the Cobbler dress this book giving it a strength that none of the words could offer. Storyboard sequences for Peter Pan, The Rescuers Down Under, Cinderella or Song of the South help get any point across in the most visual way possible.

The book is somewhat dense and took me quite some time to go through it carefully. The material is so interesting, though, that I was ready to give it all the time necessary. Every time you turned a page there’d be another beautiful illustration that just took a lot of time to study.

A planning drawing for the great multiplane scene in Pinocchio

from B&W to color
Johnn Didrik Johnsen’s LO for Tom & Jerry “Puppy Tale” (1954)

Probably my only complaint about this book would be that the type is small and harder to read. At times even the illustrations are a bit smaller than I’d like. This, of course, is because anything larger would require greater printing costs and make the book too expensive. So, I’d rather have what sits in my hand than something I’d think hard about buying. As it is, the book is a must own for animation enthusiasts, and there’s a lot to learn for anyone interested in the process of animated film making. I wouldn’t hesitate to wholeheartedly recommend this book to anyone.

Brad Bird’s planning sketch for “The Iron Giant”

I could keep pulling more and more illlustrations from this book. They’re all unique and totally illustrate what the author is talking about at the moment. And they’re all gorgeous. You have to take a look at this book. It’s is another beautiful book from Chronicle Books. They are batting a perfect score, as far as I can see.

- As every other animation blog out there will remind you, today is the anniversary of Walt Disney‘s birth. The difference between us and others is that this is also the anniversary of this blog. It’s the sixth year that we’ve been posting animation information, artifacts and ephemera on a daily basis. It’s been a real treat to continue doing so; I’ve learned a lot in the process and really do enjoy it. I wouldn’t mind going another six years.

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- Hans Perk has just started posting the draft to the featurette, The Fabulous Mr. Toad, on his blog A Film LA. I can’t think of a better time to repost the original storyboard for the film. I’ve combined the several parts of the past posts into one longer piece.

– Probably my favorite children’s book is The Wind In The Willows. There have been many animated adaptations of this book since it became a public domain item, but for years there was only one version, Disney’s Mr Toad half of The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad. The loudest most raucous parts of Kenneth Grahame’s delicate novel, blared their way onto this animated compilation feature.

We all know that the book was planned as a feature way back when Disney, in the late 30s, was buying up titles of famous children’s books to prevent other competing studios from turning them into animated features. Work began on adapting the book. They never quite broke it as they hoped, and it ultimately became a featurette with its primary focus on the loose cannon, Mr. Toad.
. . . .The film, as it exists now, has some positive elements and some fun animation, but the story was always a bit too quiet and British to successfully survive a proper adaptation in the Disney canon.

When John Canemaker loaned me his copy of the Pinocchio boards, he also brought The Wind In The Willows (not titled Mr. Toad). There are few captions here, but this obviously is designed for a full-out feature not an abbreviated featurette. The images on his original stats are small, so I’ve blown them up a bit and tried to marginally clean them up.

As suggested by Michael Barrier, this board was probably assembled to produce a preliminary Leika reel. The giveaway is the lack of dialogue and commentary underneath the drawings. The assembly was made to be photographed.

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(Click any image to enlarge.)

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Disney’s Mr. Toad first aired on the Disneyland television program on February 2, 1955. You can buy the dvd of Ichabod and Mr. Toad on Amazon among other places.

If you’re interested you can read the entire book of Kenneth Grahame’s work (minus the beautiful Shepherd illustrations) here.

You can buy the book here.

Dave Unwin‘s version is my favorite adaptation in that it retains some of the flavor of the original book and isn’t afraid of being quiet at times.

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- I’m sorry to report the sad news that Vincent Joseph Cafarelli died in his sleep yesterday.
He was 81 years old.

“Vinnie” was a principal mainstay in the New York animation industry. He worked at Famous Studios on classic characters Popeye, Little Audrey and Baby Huey.

Later he worked at Gifford Animation on such advertising campaigns as the Piels Brothers and TipTop Bread. Margaret Hamilton provided the voice for Emily Tipp! You can go here to see 3 examples of the TipTop Bread commercials produced in the 1950′s.

Vince joined Stars and Stripes Forever, Inc, as their first employee upon his return from London, England where he worked with Pablo Ferro. Stars and Stripes was owned by producer Bob Staats and designer Len Glasser. They became the hottest boutique shop in the psychedelic 60’s creating such classics as: Chicken of the Sea “Mermaid”, Speakeasy, Sparklettes, and Ortho.

While at Stars and Stripes Vince worked with designer, Hal Silvermintz and film editor, Buzz Potamkin. Those two left to form Perpetual Motion Pictures, Inc. and after Stars and Stripes folded, Vince went to join them. There he was responsible for many ad campaigns and co-directed Strawberry Shortcake in Big Apple City and animated on all 5 Berenstain Bears holiday specials. He co-directed Deck the Halls With Wacky Walls.

Ultimately, Vinnie joined with Candy Kugel to form Buzzco Associates where he remained to the end. The two of them worked together for many years. You can check out a gallery of his art at AWN.

I’ve known Vinnie for 35-40 years, and can’t think of a sweeter gentler soul in animation. Most recently we’ve met on a number of occasions at the Academy. We spent a lot of the ten hours watching the long list of shorts and had a good time talking about them. I’ll miss his presence. My heart goes out to his family as well as Candy Kugel and Marilyn Kraemer who’ve spent every day with him for the past forty-odd years together. The three were partners in business and friendship and were completely dependent on each other.

More details of his life as well as information on memorial services will be forthcoming later. Buzzco is intending a memorial to take place on the Epiphany, January 6th, 2012; I will make sure to post further information on this site.

- This past Thursday night, Paul and Sandra Fierlinger presented an hour’s worth of their latest project at Parson’s School. The film, Slocum at Sea with Himself, tells the story of the first person to have sailed SOLO around the world.

The film was a work in progress in every sense of the phrase. It started in full color, included scenes over final Bgs that weren’t colored and had other scenes that were pure pencil test. The sound was predominantly music composed and performed by the brilliant Shay Lynch. (You may know his music from the many films he did for Jeff Scher.) Yet, it all stood with a great dignity as a strong piece.

The film was full of potential to be even greater than their last feature, My Dog Tulip. Imagery was stunning and beautifully designed and animated (as usual from this team). It was a real treat seeing the work in progress, and it was easy to fill in the gaps. The movie takes place almost completely on water, and it’s amazing the effects they’ve achieved in animating such a difficult project. I was wholly taken by it.

As monumental as the screening was – truly inspirational, the talk Paul gave in advance was thought provoking. They are making the film with their own money and planning to release it online in short segments. All told the feed would take about six months to receive the entire feature. To buy these feeds, which will be built into a website that would constantly change for each segment, will cost about $30 in total. They’re hoping for a built-in audience of boaters and leisure craft enthusiasts around the world. Slocum is a well-known story to these folk, and the likelihood that they’d have interest in the subject is great.

Theirs is a provocative idea for distributing the film, and the business model Paul presented seemed original and probably a successful one. It will take some time before the feature is finished, but I’ll be watching closely to see how successful they’ll be. I’d bet on them, too.

There is no doubt of the love they’re pouring into this project. Take a look at these stills:

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- The Moon and the Son: An Imagined Conversation, John Canemaker’s animated short, is now available in a special edition DVD. This powerful and moving film, which has won both the Academy Award and the Emmy Award, explores the difficult emotional terrain of father/son relationships as seen through Canemaker’s own turbulent relationship with his father.

The Moon and the Son combines many different elements from John’s remembered versions of the facts, to the actual evidence of the life on screen: the trial transcripts, audio recordings, home movies, and photos. The original and stylized animation tells the true story of an Italian immigrant’s troubled life and the consequences of his actions on his family. The film features the voices of noted actors Eli Wallach and John Turturro in the roles of father and son.

The DVD includes the complete 28-minute film and the following bonus materials:
- A new documentary detailing the film’s creative evolution, influences and reception, with animation director/designer John Canemaker and producer Peggy Stern.
- The first rough cut (working title: “Confessions of my Father”) with original soundtrack
- A Photo gallery of production sketches, preliminary artwork and storyboards

I enjoyed thumbing through all the extras on this DVD. When the film was being made, John shared its progress with me at several stages. I’m intrigued with how much material was there in the development. As a long time friend with John, I felt I’d known some of the story over the years. But the film, and now the new material, give me larger insight to the full story. Spending time reading the storyboard (one of the extras) again – having seen the film several times – allowed me to see some of the background which shaped John’s quest to tell this story.

The DVD is available now on Amazon.

Some samples of the art work on the new disc.


A somewhat Feiffer-like page within the storyboard.

Smart sketches grow in color.

A very “Canemaker” sketch that reminds me a bit of a Picasso sketch.

There’s lots more on the DVD.

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- Tom Hachtman has seen an unusual turn with his Gertrude and Alice characters. You’ll remember that he’d developed a comic strip, Gertrude’s Follies, built around Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas. A friend and admirer of the strip, Hans Gallas, has written a children’s book around Tom’s characters, and Tom illustrated the book. Now that book’s been published, and can be purchased from their site. Gertrude and Alice and Fritz and Tom is a charming account of what happens when Gertrude and Alice have to take care of a couple of young boys during their stay in Paris.

Here are some of the book’s exuberant illustrations.

The book’s cover

And here are some of Tom’s original sketches for the book.

Original sketch for the cover.
Très different from the final.

A preliminary sketch for a lot of pages

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- Bill Benzon, on his blog New Savannah, has finally completed his treatise on Fantasia and has published it in a PDF form. You can download this here for a great read. 96 pages of intelligent discourse on the feature. This document contains his original, and shorter commentary on the Pastoral sequence. For his longer take on that sequence download this document.

- There were a number of other early Jack Davis pictures that I didn’t post last week (here). These were all sent courtesy of Bill Peckmann. Note that a couple seem to have reflection coming off them; presumably they were in frames.

As Bill wrote in the first post:

These are images from the discs that Jack sent me. They are untitled and
undated, ranging from the beginning of when he first put pen and brush
to paper, up to recent endeavors. So, we’ll just have to sit back and enjoy
what’s going to served up in front of us without rhyme or reason.
I don’t think anyone will have a problem with that. 99% of the art was
new to me, as I hope it will be for the rest of his fans.

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putting Judges

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Barrons

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Golf report

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Under the Rainbow

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Ladder and Hat

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Fine wine

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4 Bucks

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Hunting Dogs

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Hunting Hog

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All Stars

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Cowboy

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Jack Fishing

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Jack in Rocker

Jack at Work