Monthly ArchiveSeptember 2012



Bill Peckmann &Books &Illustration 11 Sep 2012 08:33 am

Fritz Baumgarten’s “Das Hochzeitsfest im Wiesengrund”

Hoppity comes back to town and gets maried, or in this case, at least, it’s Fritz Baumgarten. He’s a brilliant illustrator that Bill Peckmann introduced me to. He’s done a series of books in German, and Bill knows how much of a sucker I am for this ma’s illustration work. The book Bill sent me, here, is Das Hochzeitsfest im Wiesengrund or as we say in English, The Wedding in the Meadowland. I hope you enjoy it.


Book cover

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Many thanks to Bill Peckmann for sharing this excellent book.

Animation &Disney &Peet &Tytla 10 Sep 2012 05:10 am

Dumbo Takes a Bath

- Bill Peet was a masterful and brilliant storyboard artist. Every panel he drew gave so much inspiration and information to the animators, directors and artists who’ll follow up on his work.

This is the sequence from Dumbo wherein baby Dumbo plays around the feet of his mother. Brilliantly animated by Bill Tytla, this sequence is one of the greatest ever animated. No rotoscoping, no MoCap. Just brilliant artists collaborating with perfect timing, perfect structure, perfect everything.

Tytla said he watched his young son at home to learn how to animate Dumbo. Bill Peet told Mike Barrier that he was a big fan of circuses, so he was delighted to be working on this piece. Both used their excitement and enthusiasm to bring something brilliant to the screen, and it stands as a masterpiece of the medium.

Of this sequence and Tytla’s animation, Mike Barrier says in Hollywood Cartoons: What might otherwise be mere cuteness acquires poignance because it is always shaded by a parent’s knowledge of pain and risk. If Dumbo “acted” more, he would almost certainly be a less successful character—”cuter,” probably, in the cookie-cutter manner of so many other animated characters, but far more superficial.

I had to take the one very long photstat, on loan from John Canemaker, and reconfigure it in photoshop so that you could enlarge these frames to see them well. I tried to keep the feel of these drawings pinned to that board in tact.


(Click any image to enlarge.)


Bill Peet at his desk on Dumbo.
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I think this sequence where Dumbo gets washed by his mother and plays around her legs is one of the greatest ever animated. There’s a sweet tenderness and an obviously close relationship between baby Dumbo and his mother which is built on the back of this sequence. It not only establishes both characters solidly, without words, but it sets up the mood of everything that will soon happen to the pair during the remaining 45 minutes of the film. Without that established bond, the audience wouldn’t feel so deeply for the pair during the “Baby Mine” song or care so much about Dumbo’s predicament.

Tytla has said that he based the animation of the baby elephant on his young son who he could study at home. Peet has said that Tytla had difficulty drawing the elephants and asked for some help via his assistant. There’s no doubt that both were proud of the sequence and tried to take full credit for it. No doubt both deserve enormous credit for a wonderful sequence. Regardless of how it got to the screen, everyone involved deserves kudos.

Here are a lot of frame grabs of the sequence. I put them up just so that they can be compared to the extraordinary board posted yesterday. Both match each other closely. Whereas the board has all the meat, the timing of the animation gives it the delicacy that would have been lost in a lesser animator’s hands, or, for that matter, in a less-caring animator’s hands. The scene is an emotional one.


(Click any image to enlarge.)


(Click any image to enlarge.)

Photos 09 Sep 2012 07:49 am

Caltabellotta Steve

-Steve Fisher, my friend, returned from Sicily, the town of Caltabellotta, a week or so ago. He always brings back interesting and curious photos, and this year is no exception. I’ve picked out a couple dozen from the many he’s shown me, and would like to post them here. Any writing from here on is Steve’s

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Figs on porch

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Fires were rampant across Sicily this summer, like I’ve never seen them before.
Sometimes they are deliberately set in order to replenish nutrients in the soil for
future harvests, but this year was especially dry and hot and many more
unintentional fires resulted. Outside our town, a couple of fire-fighting planes
were sent over to quell the spread. Here are a series of photos I took, some
from the fire ranger’s station perched high above the fields.

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Commentary 08 Sep 2012 04:36 am

Comment Tally View

- You gotta love Thad Komorowski. His site goes into some real hard-nosed animation history like ironing out all those Production Numbers from the Warner Bros and MGM shorts. His work in this area pushed Adam Abraham to assemble the Prod. Numbers for UPA cartoons and Pietro Shakarian assembled the numbers for the Lantz cartoons (or should I have written cartunes?).

Thad also has an excellent piece on his blog about the early color films of Chuck Jones. Yes, we’re talking Sniffles.

For quite some time, I’ve read many an article about these films constantly putting them down. Thad’s an original – the first I know to find something solid in them. (Though I have to say he does it with an apology in his throat.) The reason behind the post is to review a new DVD on the market, Looney Tunes Mouse Chronicles, a collection of Jones cartoons that feature mice. All the Sniffles and the Hubie and Bertie shorts.

These Sniffles films really got me when I was young. I couldn’t get enough of Bedtime for Sniffles. I always thought that film was brilliant – I still think that. I can remember every scene in that movie; I’ve watched it so many times. Jones took WB close to what Disney had led the industry in doing – emotional drama. Some might say overemotional drama – which often veers too close to “cute” for anyone’s taste. These are children’s films, yet Jones was able to find a real conflict in this one-character cartoon, Bedtime for Sniffles. Poor Sniffles just wants to wait up to see Santa. You always feel that Jones is beaming with pride after pulling off such a stunt, and Thad talks in depth (but never quite enough) about Jones’ ego. I think this is probably half of what Jones offers in his films; his ego is the backbone. This was a principal part of the Jones oeuvre. It’s blatantly part of What’s Opera Doc, it drives One Froggy Evening, and it’s in the spine of Bedtime for Sniffles. Maybe it’s just starting to shine in the Sniffles short, but it’s definitely there.

There was this odd period in animation history. Just prior to WWII, cartoons got cute, cuter, cutest. Merbabies, kittens galore, underground gnomes bringing Spring, countless trips to The Milky Way, and all the cartoon stars get a pack of nephews to follow them. What was in the milk that adults drank on the way to the movie theater? Why were these cute cartoons so popular during this short period? The Milky Way might have played with Ninotchka; Merbabies might have doubled with The Adventures of Robin Hood or Jezebel. What was it that the adults of that decade saw that they loved? I’m so far removed from the thoughts of those pre-War people that I certainly can’t judge; I can only wonder. Sniffles was certainly a product of this wave of those animation shorts, and in many ways he stays current. (I love that they revived him for the WB comic books of the late fifties and sixties: “Magic words of poof poof pifffles. Make me just as small as Sniffles.” This was the chant Mary Jane would recite to begin a comic adventure story as she grew tiny.) Warner Bros hasn’t dropped Sniffles altogether; they just don’t use him too often.

Anyway, I was taken with this post by Thad, and he takes it into serious history, where I just reminisce. I will take that film apart though. I may just pull a lot of frame grabs over the weekend.

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Storycorps Kickstarting

- I received an email from Storycorps promoting their latest film. These excellent animation pieces have all been directed and produced by Mike and Tim Rauch with art direction by Bill Wray. The films have a style all their own somewhere between John K and Warner Bros. The tracks are all live storytelling done by Storycorps in their recording booth.

Here’s the latest film they’ve completed:

Facundo the Great


There are also promos with the YouTube video that try to get you to Kickstarter to their fundraising campaign so that they can make their first full half hour special. They do good work, and it’s worth the investment if you like. (I can’t imagine that the $25,000 they’re seeking is the complete budget for a half-hour show.) The final date is approaching within the week.

An interesting thing about the promo-emails that came to me were the names mentioned. After announcing the name of the piece, there’s the sentence, “It’s a spirited childhood story that includes amazing backgrounds from the legendary artist, Bill Wray.”
The only other name listed in the entire letter is “Amy Adsley, Marketing and Communications, StoryCorps” – who signed the letter.
The next day I received the very same letter with a different marketing person. I trashed both emails, sorry I didn’t save the new name.

I hate to say it, but I think the Rauch Brothers have never gotten their proper due from Storycorps considering they sought the connection with Storycorps and did the first couple of films with their own money. Once it was obvious that this was the way to go, Storycorps took charge, and I see the names of Mike and Tim shrinking away from the publicity. I suspect nothing is going on except that the brothers just aren’t getting their due. They’re the ones that pull the films together and make sure they work.

But then this is all speculation on my part. I’m sure all is right in Storycorps land, but it is an observation that I’ve made. I may as well cause some trouble since I have nothing to do with the films or Storycorps or the Brothers (except that I like them both.) If I were they, I’d put my names a little louder in my future contracts.

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Toys in Review

The critics, as might have been expected, had differing views of the new animated feature, Toys in the Attic. Per Rotten Tomatoes, the film garners an 80% positive among the reviews they’ve collected. In New York the thoughts are not too different:

    Manohla Dargis of the NY Times gave it a somewhat positive review: “‘Toys in the Attic’ isn’t as unsettling as Mr. Svankmajer’s work, but even in this English-language version, it’s scarcely a cute and cuddly family film of the generic type often foisted on American tots.”
    The NY Post‘s Farran Smith Nehme gives the film three stars and says: “Stop-motion animated film has a predictable plot but vividly imaginative, engrossing visuals.” “The movie is passionately retro, but Barta shows his methods can create a world every bit as engrossing as the latest CGI.”

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Offbook

There’s a new YouTube channel from PBS Digital Studios. Their most recent episode of the “Offbook” series is The Art of Animation and Motion Graphics: a brief view of animation and a look at today’s latest innovations. John Canemaker is featured in the film. He gives a short look at the varying forms within the medium. It’s a cursory look for the A.D.D. generation, under the guise of “informational”.


“Offbook”

Apparently a new video is released every other Thursday under the “Offbook” title. To date there are 12 such videos. The one on Typography is good, as is the brief introduction to Title Design and another on Street Art.

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POE Continues

- It was great, these last two weeks, watching first the Republican convention, then the Democratic convention. The two were so different, one from the other. One was workman-like; the other was inspirational. One was full of lying accusations and lots of promises that didn’t quite jive with plans they’d written down. The other featured speeches that sometimes veered into poetry. Night after night the Dems left me charged.

All the while I was doing a scene from POE, over and over and over, trying to tighten the
style. Finally, on take 25 (or thereabouts) I was content to leave it. Locked. I started the next scene, and it feels the same. I’m already on take three, and I haven’t started the animation yet.

It’ll work out, I’m sure.

Meanwhile Jonathan Annand wrote: “There’s a short run exhibition at the Brandywine Museum starting September 8th that you might be interested in, if you don’t already know about it: Picturing Poe: Illustrations for Edgar Allan Poe’s Stories and Poems. The publicity for the show reads: Édouard Manet, Gustave Doré, Paul Gauguin, James Ensor, Aubrey Beardsley, Arthur Rackham, Harry Clarke, Barry Moser and Robert Motherwell are among the more than two dozen artists featured.

Unfortunately, time is too tight for me just now; I’m sorry I’ll miss it.

Pictured above:
Portrait of Edgar Allan Poe, 1988,
by Horst Janssen (German, 1929-1995)

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Bill Peckmann &Comic Art &Illustration 07 Sep 2012 05:52 am

Toth Oaters

The Republican and Democratic conventions have me worked up into a political frenzy. Given the patriotic fervor running through my blood, these days, it’s appropriate to post this Alex Toth sampler. There’s nothing more American than good cowboy stories, and Bill Peckmann has sent me just that. Over to Bill:

    Alex Toth spent a large portion of his life in Hollywood and not only did he live there, he breathed it! Alex loved movies and like any good film director he was able to do comic book genre stories with the same great flair that a John Ford would bring to his different films.

    Here are three ‘Western’ stories by Alex with each one going down somewhat of a different ‘Trail’.
    The first one, ‘Anachronism’, was published in DC’s ‘Weird Western Tales’, # 14, Nov. 1972.

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Alex laid out this story horizontally, which makes for
some beautifully composed pages and panels, like a
well done Sunday funnies page of years ago. The readers
would have had to read the book sideways, I wonder how
Alex got away with that with the editors/publishers.

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I’ll separate the stories again with some of Alex’s ‘Doodles’.


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The story that follows is:
‘The Wings Of Jealous Gods’ from DC’s ‘Adventure Comics’, # 425, Jan. 1973.

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Here are more of the doodles Alex Toth did, these in pen.

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Here is the third Toth Western tale. It was a small booklet done for the Ralston-Purina Cereal Company in 1982.
It’s a story starring movie cowboy Tom Mix. (It must have taken Alex back to his childhood days of Saturday afternoon movie house matinees.)
There was hope of doing more, but as far as I know, this was the only one produced.

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And, finally . . . A couple of more doodles.

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Animation &Commentary &Puppet Animation 06 Sep 2012 06:30 am

Toys in the Attic – review

- This is my idea of heaven. This week in politics can only get better tonight. The Democratic convention is full of intelligent, smart speakers who are performing at their height. I spend my days waiting for the nights. Those speeches are just too delicious. How can my politics NOT slip over into this Splog!

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- The animated feature, Toys in the Attic, opens in theaters tomorrow, Sept. 7th.
I’ve received a number of emails from the producers of this animated feature. It was done in the czech Republic and has been adapted for English Speaking audiences. The voices inlude Joan Cusack, Cary Elwes and Forest Whitaker in the English language version. The film was directed by Jiří Bárta, who has done a number of other films which, like Toys in the Attic, are mixed media: 3D stop-motion mixes with 2D animation which mixes with pixillation and live action. It’s an attractive and exciting film which depends less on technology than on knowledge of the medium from filmmaking to animation.__________________Director, Jiří Bárta

The stop-motion puppets are not of the Laica variety. There is no heavy financing behind them that they can create millions of facial movements that are replaceable so that any emotion can animate into another one. The animation is not quite as slick and, consequently, looks more hands-on.It’s very effectve, just the same. I think of Ray Harryhausen’s work which strobes and is awfully clunky in many parts, but it’s still grabbing in its emotional simplicity.


Weird bugs

The sets and costumes, the puppets and the mixed-in 2D animation all sing hand-made and very human. There’s an enormous attractiveness to this, and it’s all so creatively done. A character wals in front of a mirror; his reflection is a 2D version of himself. Trains pull in and out of stations and travel all across the attic. The smoke out of the train, the billowing steam from the engine. It’s all a linear 2D animation. Water floodsan area. The water is done using sheets of blue fabric moving forever forward animated as water even though it’s obviously made of cloth. Oh yes, 2D animated drops of water bounce around the cloth water. (It reminded me of Fellini’s Casanova (1976) when he went to the sea. The sea was made of large sheets of billowing black baggies. It’s obvious that it isn’t water, but somehow you bought the theatricality of it. Here, I bought the cloth running water, but I wonder if children will not be puzzled, or will their minds go with the flow of the director? I’d really like to know.)

The story is a simple one:Buttercup , a little doll with a penchant for housekeeping, is kidnapped. Lots of mechanical insects do the job for a living breathing statue/bust the color of a dark patina (a greenish-gray which includes his live action teeth). The bust seems to move in live-action (though it also appears to be animated in some odd way); maybe just part of it is live action, the rest pixillated. Buttercup’s friends, led by a wooden Don Quixote marionette (without strings), a teddy bear, and a mouse doll set out to save her.

The film is like a Svankmajer film for children. It’s more Eastern-European than the Quay Brothers and almost as surreal. Oddly, you sit there with your eyes glued to the screen as oddity after oddity moves forward. Desie the celebrity voices, I didn’t recognize one of them. They all wheeze and grunt and have accents. All their lines are partial sentences and short bursts. It’s quite original. I have to say that I never got emotionally invested in any of the characters. Sweet Buttercup is an old-time children’s doll who keeps house for others.

When she’s kidnapped, she’s thrown in a cell where she continues to sweep. Every once in a while, the captors pour ashes in on her from overhead. She’s covered with ashes and left in the pitch-black dark. Yet she continues to sweep. What else is there for her to do?

I probably felt more sympathy for the wooden Don Quixote. There seems to be a vulnerability in the old puppet event though the animation of the character isn’t overtly invested with any real character traits that I’d look for as an animator. It moves well but not with any

This film is certainly like nothing that would ever be made in Hollywood. William Joyce wants to do this but is too clean, airbrushed and slick; totally lacking in textured personality. The distributor calls Jiří Bárta a Czech Tim Burton, but I can’t agree. Burton works in a style that pops out in your mind – you’d recognize the style that everyone tries to steal. Bárta’s style is much more surreal; it’s a play on reality not a stylization of it.

This is one curious movie that I enjoyed, but I’m not sure it’s for everyone’s taste. I wasn’t kidding when I dropped the Svankmajer name. There’s no doubt that Bárta has seen his work.

If you’ve seen the film please let me know what you thought.
I’d be curious to read your review.

Animation Artifacts &commercial animation &Illustration &Models 05 Sep 2012 05:40 am

Odds & Ends from the Cafarelli collection

- Going through a stack of boxes searching for genuine animation, one tends to find a number of gems that represent animation past but don’t nicely link to other pieces. The end result is that you hold a lot of odds and ends in your hands and you seek a way to post them. That’s certainly the case with Vinnie Cafarelli’s collected works.

I’ve located a lot of pieces that interest me, but I don’t necessarily know where they come from or why they were saved. So today I’m posting a number of these bits of art.

Here we have Layouts, cel setups, photos, models and more than a small share of invitations and Christ cards. Here they are:

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A Christmas Card from the NY-UPA Studio.
Many of the employees signed it.

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A guide to many of the names
of those who signed the card.
(Click to enlarge)

I had a scanning problem on the upper
right and will try to correct that.


An invitation to a Christmas party at the Maysles Bros
studio. Certainly only for a member of the elite.


A Christmas Card from Fred Mogubgub.


A Christmas Card from the Goulding-Elliott-Graham Prods.
Ray Goulding and Bob Elliott, together with Ed Graham formed
this studio to do Piels commercials. (Bob Goulding & Ray Elliott were the
voices and held onto ownership of the characters. work dried up soon
since one commercial product & client couldn’t maintain the studio.)


A finished setup from a Yellow Pages commercial.
This was done at Gifford Productions.


Pablo Ferro during UPA days.


Vince Cafarelli (far left) while in the military at
Fort Benning, Ala. made extra money as a
bartender. These are the days just prior to his
workng at UPA.


A small racy sketch among the art.
We’re not sure who drew it but guess
it might be Vince Cafarelli’s work.


All that remains of a pitch for an antacid spot.
Obviously drawings 1 & 2 are missing, but
these two were interesting enough for me to post.

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A storyboard (3 pages) for a cigarette company
(Sportsman Cigarettes?). Obviously a sample board.
Is it a live action spot? Probably for Gifford Studio
which also did live action spots.

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Animation &Animation Artifacts &Hubley 04 Sep 2012 06:12 am

Phil Duncan’s Walk Cycle – recap

- Phil Duncan was a mainstay of the Hubley animators in all the time I was there. That was my good fortune. What a learning experience for a young animation student.

You could tell who Hubley’s favorite animators by the frequency in which he doled out sequences to them. Whereas Tissa David or Bill Littlejohn or Barrie Nelson would have been asked to animate entire shorts by themselves, someone like Phil Duncan would get whole sequences to animate. At the same time, John so depended on Phil and trusted what he did.

There were never pencil tests at the Hubley studio. Only one instance of it do I remember, and that was on the Art Babbitt mime scenes from Carousel. As I said once before, I remember John running out to get me asking if I’d like to see animation as good as I’d ever see. We then watched the PT over and over together. Ultimately John took Art’s animation on twos and had me put it on four frame dissolves to get more screen time out of it. A budget was a budget and you had to make the most out of the excellence you had in your hand.

But as I mentioned yesterday, Phil would animate on odd numbers expecting the even numbers to be inbetweened. Most times, John asked me to reexpose the scene on fours and not do the inbetweens. Of course, Phil was aware this would happen and had planned on it.

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Here is a walk cycle (and more) by Phil Duncan from Of Men and Demons, which was nominated for the Oscar in 1969. The full scene includes the three demons walking and then flying up to their cave.

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(Click any image to enlarge to full animation paper view.)

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The rest of the scene breaks out of the walk cycle. I
enlarged the frames to accomodate the remainder of the action.

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“Demon” walk cycle from Of Men and Demons
On threes at 24FPS
Click left side of the black bar to play.
Right side to watch single frame.

Animation &Animation Artifacts &commercial animation &Hubley &Models &repeated posts 03 Sep 2012 05:11 am

Vlasic Business at the Hubleys

– Years ago I worked at the Hubley studio on a pair of commercials for Vlasic pickles. One of the two spots made it to the air.

This is from the spot that never made it.

Vlasic had a commercial they wanted, and because of the agency’s long time relationship with the Hubleys, they came to him to try to develop the character. (The agency was W.B. Doner, the agency that had done so well with Hubley’s Maypo commercials.)

The agency came with two already-recorded voices: one was a Groucho Marx impersonator (Pat Harrington was the Groucho impersonator ultimately used for the stork’s voice.*) The other voice was character actor, Edgar Buchanan, a man with a gruff voice who appeared in a million westerns. John Hubley wanted Edgar Buchanan – it was a much richer voice, lots of cowboy appeal.

John designed the character to look like one of those stationmasters in cowboy films. The guy who gives out tickets and does morse code when he has to. The stork had a vest and a blue, boxy, stationmaster-type cap cocked off to the side. It was a great character.

Phil Duncan was the animator. A brilliant character guy who had done everything from Thumper to George of the Jungle. I loved cleaning up and inbetweening his work. It was all fun and vibrating with life.

The rough thumbnail drawing (above) fell out of one of Phil’s packages. It was a thumbnail plan of the action. Phil would do these things which usually stretched around the edges of his final drawings. In a nutshell, you could see the scene and how he worked it out. Lovely stuff.

I felt this drawing was as beautiful as the original animation drawings.

The agency approved the stork, Edgar Buchanan and the plan of action.

We’d already finished the first commercial which was on the air. (Represented by the two set-ups posted here.) The style was done with acrylic paints – out of a tube – on top of the cel. Ink with Sharpie on cel; paint dark colors – ON TOP of cel
- up to and over ink line; after drying we painted it again with lighter tones, and we pained it again after it dried using even lighter tones with a translucent color. Imagine kids & a gun in a spot today!)

Phil Duncan did a great job of animating it. I inbetweened, and the Agency loved it and approved it to color.

All this time, John and Faith were busy preparing the start of Everybody Rides the Carousel. It was to be three half-hour shows (Eventually CBS changed their mind and asked the shows, still in production, to be reconfigured to make a 90 min film) and was in preproduction. I did the spots on my own with John checking in. Faith wanted nothing to do with a commercial and was somewhat furious that a commercial was ongoing. She daily spoke out against this spot with many shouting matches. I never quite understood the problem. The spots didn’t hold up any other studio work; I was making it as easy as possible for John to not have to do much work on the spots, and they were getting necessary money to help finance some of the preliminary work for the Carousel. (Of course, the Hubley name was involved, but even Michelangelo did commercial work – like the Sistine Chapel to pay for the art. Not that Vlasic was the Sisine Chapel, of course.)

Within weeks the spot was in color and two junior exec. agency guys, John and I stood around the Hubley moviola. (It was a great machine with four sound heads and a picture head that was the size of a sheet of animation paper. Pegs were actually attached to enable rotoscoping!)

The two agency guys were buttoned up with good suits and briefcases. They stood behind John and me, and I operated the moviola.

We screened the spot the first time. I turned around and these two guys had come undone. Their ties were loose and astray; they were visibly sweating. I swear this all happened within the course of 30 secs.

John smiled and optimistically asked how they liked it. They looked at each other, and couldn’t answer. I don’t think they were able to form a decision or say what they actually thought. Eventually, they left with the spot in their briefcase and would get back. It wasn’t good.

They did get back. I was asked to pack up all the elements and ship them back to W.B. Doner. The spot was thrown out of the studio by John who refused to change it. (Hubley’s stork.)
He liked what was done, and apparently had
a rider in his contract which covered him – somehow.

The spot showed up at Jack Zander‘s studio, Zander’s Animation Parlour. They used the Groucho impersonation and slicked it up a lot. Vlasic is still using that stork, and that was John’s last commercial endeavor. The character is still showing up in a cg version, just as bad as the 2D version.

* Thanks to Mark Mayerson for this information.

Articles on Animation &Richard Williams &Tissa David 02 Sep 2012 04:21 am

Labor Day



Steve Fisher
returns from his Summer with the perfect picture for Labor Day 2012.

Tomorrow is Labor Day. The photo shows a flag which at its base is in focus and grows more and more wildly out of focus as it moves from that base. That’s the American political system at this point in 2012. In the most important speech of his life to-date, Paul Ryan, Vice Presidential candidate, lied openly. When confronted by the obvious lies on CNN, he admitted it, rode right over the lies, defending what he’d said even though there’s no truth there and no reality to it. The man rides on the border of the insane, convinced that he’s right, and having no proof of it, makes it up. Somehow this makes sense to him but not to those of us who prefer honesty. The old media (not the “liberal media”) report their findings to him and he merely mocks them. Their basinc discoveries are irrelevant to him. He wants only to dupe his base and capture other simpe minded folk ot there. We, the bigger audience, can only take it in and vote when it gets to be our turn.

Just the same . . . _______ . . . Happy Labor Day

By the way, Labor Day exists as a celebration of the Labor movement, meaning the U-nions. They are the enemy of the political right, and those on the right should stand by their principles and go to work. Or, at least, shut up while they take the day off from work with salary. There’ll be plenty of time tomorrow for more lies.

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Jones Doc to Air

- Tomorrow morning, at 10:15 am, Turner Classic Movies will air the Chuck Jones documentary, Chuck Jones: Memories of a Childhood. Undoubtedly, this is in conjunction with the Jones Centennial Celebration currently in progress. This film was directed by Peggy Stern, the producer who worked with John Canemaker on his Oscar winning film, The Moon and the Sun. Canemaker is a producer on this film.

It’s a 30 min film which will be followed by the Jones short, The Dot and the Line.

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Grim Writes About Tissa

Here’s an interview Tissa David did with her mentor, Grim Natwick, for Cartoonist Profiles magazine.


Magazine Cover

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