Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

- Continuing with a great wallop of Christmas from the vast collection of Bill Peckmann, he sends along another Carl Barks gem. A Christmas for Shacktown glows off the page, and I’m pleased as punch to post it here. Bill’s introduction:

What happens when you take Carl Barks at the height of his powers and combine him with that potent, powerful time of the year, Christmas? Why you get, ‘A Christmas for Shacktown’, that’s what!

The magazine cover

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The End

The original Dell Donald Duck ‘…Shacktown’ comic book
hit the newsstands for Christmas of 1951. The story we
just posted was from a Gladstone Comics reprinted and
re-colored some years later. This editorial essay by noted
Carl Barks historian, Geoffrey Blum, was also in the Gladstone issue.

Thanks again, Bill.

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- A new book has been released, Albert Dorne, Master Illustrator. This is a book to fill a necessary hole. The brilliant work of Mr. Dorne must be recognized, and this edition gives him that spotlight he well deserves. With the mere viewing of any of these pieces I am immediately made to think of the Famous Artists School of home education. Mr. Dorne created that school and system and certainly affected a generation of artists.

The book’s cover

Bill Peckmann, of course, brought it to my attention, and wrote the following to introduce this post:

This is more of a heartfelt plug than an in depth review, but the book is hot off of the presses, it’s great, and just in case anybody wants to get them selves a well deserved stocking stuffer for the Season, this is it!

You know the new Albert Dorne, Master Illustrator book is going to be good because of a number of reasons. Number one, if you are a Jack Davis fan, did you ever wonder who Jack is a fan of? It’s something he always played very close to the vest, but now we know, It’s Al Dorne!
The second reason, is that the book comes to us by the same team that brought us that excellent book, Robert Fawcett, the Illustrator’s Illustrator, Messieurs Manuel Auad and David Apatoff!
The third reason the book is terrific, is because, it is about Al Dorne, illustrator extraordinaire, who was also the founder of the Famous Artist School! The ups and downs of his incredible life, a very huge selection of his work, it’s all here!

It’s said, that if you want to grab anybody’s attention,
you’ve got to start off with a potent bang. What better way
than with the master big bangster, prankster himself,
the one and only Jack B. Davis!

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This 1955 Jack Davis comic book cover is not from the Al Dorne book, but
I included it here to illustrate the fact that Al and Jack were marching to the
same drummer. Also, both men were absolutely fearless in taking on crowd scenes!

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Bill writes: Sorry, I couldn’t help myself. I had to throw in
another Jack Davis comparison to illustrate how both
Mr Dorne and Mr. Davis could handle and control drawing
crowd chaos like nobody’s business!

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- In 1976 at Perpetual Motion Pictures, Len Glasser designed a series of spots for CBS and their weather service. Models and animation was done (Ed Smith did the original animation.) These short spots were obviously funny, but they were killed, just the same. Never completed and never aired. Two segments of these have remained. One, the “Snowman” spot was picked up by Vince Cafarelli a couple of years back and, reworked with Rick Broas assisting him. They extended the piece a bit and made a short short film. The film was colored on cels and a quick soundtrack was put together. There was also another film which didn’t make it quite as far; it dealt with rain. I’ve finished up the art that exists for that one as best I could and have run it through the AfterEffects mill.

This week features that second spot, the one I’ve been calling “Rainman” – really it’s just a short gag that was never completed. Most of it is on cel, though I had to force a Bg out of a layout that I discovered, and I colored it. I’m sure this is not how Mr. Glasser would have seen the color, but I just wanted to highlight the limited bit of animation that is there. The same is true of the rain which he probably would have left black line with black, inked drops. I put some white into the rain to give a bit less of a focus on it.

Two of the animation cels weren’t painted, so I took the drawings that were there, they look like Ed Smith’s drawings, done in ink on animation bond. I painted them for the final QT I produced. As I say this is just an animation fragment with barely a beginning and no end. It’s all middle. However, I thought it interesting.

Even more interesting and very much more complete, is the “Snowman” spot which I will feature next week.

Here are the “Rainman” cels & drawings:

Early model sheet by Len Glasser

Background sketch

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____________________

The following QT movie was made reworking the art a bit,
coloring some of the artwork that wasn’t completed and
exposing it as I saw fit. There was nothing to go by.

This is just a fragment of a scene.
The rain colors and the BG colors are my choices.
I can’t say Len Glasser would approve. My only
concern was getting all the animation to read – rain & guy.

Next week’s spot is better. It has a laugh to it.

- We gave a little tease of this last week. Straight from the hot scanner of Bill Peckmann comes “Humbug” for Christmas joy. Here’s Bill:

Next in our Holiday helpings is a 1958 HUMBUG magazine’s ‘Christmas Issue’ by Harvey Kurtzman and his coconspirators. Fortunately for us, they are knee deep in shoveling out their unique form of tom foolery for everyone to enjoy in 2012!

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The cover was done by Jack Davis.

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This page was done by Bill Elder.

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These two pages are obviously by the inimitable Bob Blechman.

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A piece by Al Jaffee, who went on to become
one of Mad magazine’s favorites.

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This three page spread does not have
a Christmas theme but it does have
Harvey’s ever lovin’ lay outs with
Jack Davis at his brush and pen best!

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A tour de force two color centerfold spread by Al Jaffe.

A double page spread by Arnold Roth.

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‘A Christmas Carol’, art by Arnold Roth.

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While in a holiday mode, we will segue from a 1958 Humbug ‘Christmas Carol’ party
to a birthday party. It’s Harvey Kurtzman’s 58th birthday which was celebrated at
Harvey’s house in Mt. Vernon, NY, with family and friends in 1982. (Sorry about
the quality of the snapshots, they were taken with an old Kodak Instamatic camera.)

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Appearing in the photo L. to R. are Al Jaffee, Harvey Kurtzman, Bill Elder (kneeling),
Harry Chester (Harvey’s long time production manager and longer time friend),
Arnold Roth and a partially hidden and mischievous Jack Davis.

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The HUMBUG crew with their wives.

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Mr. and Mrs. Will Eisner and Harvey.

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Dena and Jack Davis.

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Harvey and his wife Adelle with daughters, Elizabeth, Nellie and Meredith.

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Many thanks to Bill Peckmann for sharing this material with us.

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- When I was younger, animation books were hard to come by. There were books like The Art of Walt Disney by Robert Field or The Art of Animation by Bob Thomas, a couple of books by John Halas, or the Preston Blair Animation book. Some of these were readily available and not too expensive (I bought the Preston Blair book for $1.99 – list price) others were considered rare books and were not only expensive but hard to find.

One book that was advertised in the back of magazines that were about film and/or animation was the Robert Heath/Tony Creazzo book Animation in Twelve Hard Lessons. For some reason, over many years, I never bought a copy for myself. As a matter of fact, I never actually even saw a copy at arm’s length. It was always not there.

Now, I’m spending some time at Buzzco, Candy Kugel’s studio. Lo and Behold, there was a copy of the book, and I finally got a chance to go through it. In fact, I’ve decided to post it on line and have found it to be pretty good. It starts out on the most basic level but gets more and more professional. Today’s post is about exposure sheets and planning for the camera. There’s a lot of information there. Much of it isn’t used in quite the same way it once was, but believe me knowledge of this goes a long and far way toward helping to make the film making process more solid and professional.

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This is a combination of pages 43 & 44 right up.

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I was not quite sure whether to continue today’s post or to stop here cutting off the next lesson until next time. The material upcoming is so dense in its technology (however dated, given that most of us are using computers these days) that I was confident most readers would just zip past that material. However I decided to include it today. I didn’t see the need to stretch the book out, and I thought the dedicated will stay with it.

There’s a ripe history there among the Oxberries and the optical printers. I’m sure back in the day of the classical animator, most of them probably didn’t know what the equipment actually was or what it did. The animator was involved with the line and the movement, the background person focused on the color planes they created. Who cared what they shot it on or how they did a dissolve. Of course, then there were the people like me who not only wanted to know how these machines worked but wanted to do it themselves. In fact, that was the case. For the first few years I shot my own animation on an animation stand I built out of an old WWII device used for creating ID cards. The only part that came from the Oxberry factory was the platen; I was too concerned about it being the proper kind of glass and the weight of the springs being just right. I eventually moved up to a rented Oxberry stand and would should overnight, and finally, I considered myself something of a success when I was able to hire a camera crew to actually film the material for me.

For the geeks out there who were like me, here’s the next chapter.

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- Friend Steve Fisher continues about town with some ver interesting photos.
For the bulk of the photos he had joined the Landmarks Conservancy’s tour of the Hearst Building at 57th Street and Eighth Avenue yesterday, Dec. 13th.

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Six-story restored base façade of
the original building was designed
by Max Urban in the 1920s.

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The tower was designed by Norman Foster

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Art work installation on wall designed by muralist Ben Long.

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Water sculpture installation designed by Jamie Carpenter.

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Test laboratories for Good Housekeeping on 29th Floor.

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Views from the 29th floor of the Hearst Bldg

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At the MTA Transit Museum in Grand Central Terminal
Steve found a model train of the very terminal
where the train set was standing.

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Steve writes: “You may ask why I took this photo.”
“If you thought it was because of the style of the shoe,
that’s only half of it.”

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“Check out the right foot.”

- Turn around, and it’s the weekend again. I guess that’s a good thing. But Christmas seems to be coming so quickly these days. It was only yesterday that I was complaining that they were pushing Christmas on us so soon after Thanksgiving. Christmas carols when we had hardly finished eating the turkey! Maybe they were right.

As we get closer to Christmas there are fewer and fewer Academy events. Things were mellowing out already this past week. I was so happy to not have had a dinner or a lunch or a screening to attend last Sunday. I stayed home and was quiet while the weather, outside, was pretty lousy. One of those days where the rain is light enough that you feel stupid opening an umbrella, but the wind and the temperature made it so bitter out that it was great to be indoors – anywhere.

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On Monday, I’d picked up a DVD for the animated feature, Consuming Spirits, at the Film Forum theater. The film should be seen on a big screen. It was shot in 16mm and looked pretty darn good in DVD. The story is complex, so I’m sure watching it focused in a theater would be better for the film. However, I loved it, just the same, and my review in the Splog on Tuesday was a foreshadowing of some of the reviews that appeared in the NY papers on Wednesday when it officially opened. This movie will be playing through Christmas Day; treat yourself.

It’s very positive that A.O.Scott in the NYTimes chose his top ten flms of the year. As usual he adds another five or six which he call his “honorable mention” list of films that came close to being in his top ten. Consuming Spirits was one of these “honorable mention” movies that take on a nice prominence.Mind you that I don’t always agree with Mr.Scott (e.g. my favorite movie of the year is not to be found on his list), but I do take pleasure when I see such a deserving, small film get the attention it deserves.

Read A.O. Scott‘s review for the NYTimes here.
Read the 3 star review by Farran Smith Nehme for the NYPOST here.

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On Tuesday there was a luncheon at the Four Seasons for Les Mis̩rables. Some of the cast РAnne Hathaway, Hugh Jackman, Eddie Redmayne, Amanda Seyfried and Samantha Barks were all there. We entered a different room this time; this one had a piano bar playing. Uh oh.

During the meal, director Tom Hooper announced that, even though they’d had a late night the night before – there was a lot of drinking, I guess, at the premiere – the cast was itching to sing for us. Samantha Banke, who did a lot of musical theater in England,sang “Summertimne”. This was an odd choice given the temperature outside, but she did a great job. Hugh Jackman then sang a song to his wife which was a love letter to her. Anne Hathaway followed singing a Christmas carol with Eddie Redmayne, Amanda Seyfried and Hugh Jackman doing backup. Coffee was served and the lunch ended quickly. Tom Hooper didn’t even recite a poem, but he did take photos of the crowd with his cel phone.

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On Thursday I went to an Academy screening of The Hobbit. If it resembled any of the Lord of the Rings movies (with endless battles going on among millions of computerized creatures) I was prepared to walk out. The film felt as though it had been written by one of those geeks you meet at Comic Con. Completely amateurish dialogue with cliché following cliché while all this good stuff passed on screen visually. The near-three hour length was exhausting. The score is great and Ian McKellan is a blessing.

The film was shot at 48 frs per sec (and projected back at the same rate) which created a sharper more defined focus, closer in look to hi def video than film. There was one character, covered in hair, who I found extraordinary to watch without my 3D glasses. The focus on his skin was amazing, and I spent a lot of the first hour searching for shots of him without my glasses on. I later learned the character’s name, Balin. I hate to say it, but that was really the height of the film for me.

I also have to agree that the animation of the gollum was quite amazing. Not as good as the tiger in Pi, but worth the cost of admission for an animator. If Andy Serkis has anything to do with it, I applaud him.

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On Friday night I followed up an ad in Variety that indicated a screening in town of the
Japanese animated feature, The Mystical Laws, was showing for Academy members. In the end, I couldn’t go; work finally got in the way.

I still want to see Goro Myazaki‘s film From Up on Poppy Hill. I know that Bill Plympton hated it, but he and I often disagree on movies. The film won the Japanese equivalent of the Oscar, and it did enormously well in Japan. Somebody liked it; there’s got to be something good there. I’m going to keep my eyes open for it; usually GKids ‘ distributing it means there will be a chance of its eventually playing.

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Today, Saturday, the Academy has its screening of animated and live action shorts. The short-list (ten animated and ten live-action) will screen so we can narrow the selection down to five films for each category. I can select the animated films from my home since I saw them all and remember the ones
I like. However, I haven’t seen the live action shorts and want to vote for them. So we start with animated films at 10am, live-action at noon, and we continue through till about four or five. There’s a lunch at 1pm. A long day of movies. Looking forward to it.

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To add a bit of punch to this post, I’m placing an article Chuck Jones wrote in 1965 for an ASIFA International bulletin just prior to one of the early Annecy Animation Festivals.

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(Click any image to enlarge.)

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- There are times when I wish I had a political blog so that I could vent some of the political venom that builds up in my little world.

Fortunately, my first love is animation, and I maintain steadfastly an animation and cartooning blog. And believe me, one blog’s enough.

Given that, I’m proud to present this post.

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- We’ve already met Fritz Baumgarten‘s characters Teddy and we’ve seen his version of Santa. In this sweet little book, Teddy gets to meet Santa. It’s another wonderful Christmas book done in the very round style of Mr. Baumgarten. That coupled with his delicate and limited color palette.
Teddy’s Weihnachten.

This book comes from Bill Peckmann. Many thanks to him. His one short comment is:

Here is our second German Christmas card (book) from Fritz Baumgarten. (Man, can he do birds, or what!)

I hope you enjoy it.

Book’s cover

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You’ve got to love this picture !

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Beautiful poses on those birds.

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The End

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And a last note comment with an additional page from Bill Peckmann:
“In keeping with the Spirits (hic!) of Christmas past, a peek of a future post…”

Having begun last week with an exceptional post, courtesy of Bill Peckmann, on Bernard Krigstein, we can only try to do another one. We certainly can’t top any of his artwork.
(Go here to read that past post.)

So here, again thanks to Mr. Peckmann, more great art. Bill takes over the writing from here on out.

With his ground breaking, graphic, illustrative comic book pages, Bernard Krigstein did some of the best EC Comics art ever.
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He excelled in their genre of crime comics…

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…their line of horror comics…

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…and their science-fiction titles.

But Bernie also did two stories for Harvey Kurtzman’s MAD comic book and a few illustrations for Harvey’s early MAD magazine. Here is all of Krigstein’s art work for MAD.

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Starting with MAD #12, June 1954, is Kurtzman’s and Krigstein’s 7 page
movie spoof titled “From Eternity Back to Here”.

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Here from MAD comic book #17, Nov. 1954,
is “Bringing Back Father”, a comic strip send up
done by using the talents of Harvey Kurtzman,
Bill Elder and Bernard Krigstein!

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For the first issue of Kurtzman’s MAD magazine, # 24, July 1955,
Krigstein did two illustrations to accompany a story done with text.

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Here from MAD magazine # 26, Nov. 1955, are a few story illustrations by Krigstein.
It would be the last time that he and Harvey Kurtzman collaborated.

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Postnote from Bill:
For those readers who are coming upon Bernie Krigstein for the first time and like him, there are still two very worthy books available on him through Amazon. Both are authored by Greg Sadowski, Vol. 1 is a bio, it’s an excellent bio, especially his early life, with many illo’s, both are out of print but not cost prohibitive.
Take a look, here.

- At Buzzco, they are preparing to send a lot of archival art to the MoMA. I’ve been trying to race through a bunch of it to scan it so that I can present it on this Splog. A folder of drawings by Len Glasser had to be organized so that I could send it out. There are certainly some odd bits in there.

Let’s start with a potpourri of pictures.

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This Background stands alone. It’s painted on a cel.

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Then here’s the cast of characters.
A model sheet for the Wacko.

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This W.C.Fields character belongs to Frito-Lay.
Doritos Corn chips; this character was the
spokesman for quite some time.

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There are three model sheets for the bear.

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Let’s get back to some character models.

Len Glasser had a unique style – perfect in its time.

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Cowboys always fill the bill.

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A kid who likes his hot dogs.

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He’s not too happy when he doesn’t have a frank in hand.

It seems to end with the boy not getting another hot dog.

Here are a group of drawings that work together. They’re some layouts Len Glasser did for a spot for NBC; it has something to do with the weather. The floating guy makes it look like it may be part of the story of the sun, the wind and the man with a coat. The sun and wind compete to see who can get the guy to remove his coat first. (Spoiler alert: the sun wins.)

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This seems to be the layout for the whole piece.

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But then, there’s another near-identical one with the addition of a snowman.
I’m not sure where the snowman appears in the spot. Is he the floating head?

This is the Background for the spot.

What follows are the layouts for the animation, though I’m not sure what’s going on.
They’re drawings, at this point, for the sake of drawings.

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It goes to Top Pegs for one drawing.
I don’t know why.

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Back to Bot Pegs.

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Another lone drawing with Top Pegs.

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Bot Pegs.

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This one has No pegs.

Let’s end on a picture of Santa. . .
. . . an original picture of Santa that only Len Glasser could draw.

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A Christmas card? Who knows,
but it’s great.