Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

Steve Fisher sent me a couple of packs of photos of life in Mount Olivet Cemetery in Queens, NY. The pictures were an automatic for me, and I’m glad to present them here.

A bit of history:

Mount Olivet Cemetery was incorporated in 1850 under the Rural Cemetery Association Act of 1847 as a nongovernmental supervision, non-religious and private non-sectarian cemetery. The original restriction of having mostly Espicopal Church services was repealed in 1851.

The cemetery was designed as a “Garden Cemetery” with winding roads and many horticultural specimens. Space was allotted in and around most family lots to allow for landscape planting and a vast variety of trees and shrubs that have been planted. The cemetery has a regular tree and shrub pruning program and plants trees to make up for those lost due to storms, insect or disease damage.

Thank you, Steve, for sharing the pictures.

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This week’s films included the documentary, The Dirty Wars. This is the film taken from Jeremy Scahill‘s book of the same title. It’s about the wars America is pulling secretively atacking whomever they choose without proof of reason.

The film centers on Ayman al Zawahri, an American who protested the workings of the U.S. in the past tseveral years. He was assassinated by a drone after having been called the #1 enemy of the U.S. after the murder of Bin Laden.

Scahill presents and argument and gets no response of proof of al Zawahri’s guilt. He is beyond belief when Zawahri is killed by a drone. The film makes its point and has a strong theme. It’s quite a good documentary.

THe NY chapter of the Academy had Jeremy Scahill and Richard Rowley present to answer questions from the Academy’s Patrick Harrison.

These Q&A sessions are going to be on the Academy’s website soon. When Chris Wedge‘s session is up, I’ll let you know.

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1) L-R: Harrison, Rowley, Scahill . . | . . .2) Harrison

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3) L-R: Rowley & Scahill . . . | . . . 4) Scahill

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5) Scahill . . . | . . . 6) L-R: Harrison, Rowley, Scahill

Here’s a NYTimes interview with Mr. Scahill.

There was a second Academy film to see this past week. On Thursday the Pedro Almadovar film was a real bust. Seventies disco meets an Hispanic airline, from the point of view of the cockpit. Absolutely dreadful is about all I can say for it. Since I’m a big fan and waited patiently to see this one, it was very disappointing. That’s about all I can say.

The Disney kingdom of Arendelle trapped in eternal winter

More of the Disney “Frozen”.
Let’s hope that that shadow does not belong to the following character.

Trouble
It’s like being trapped in a little doll shop that
both my sisters would have rejected.

In comparison, how less pretentious and more beautiful in its
simplicity, was the Russian feature.

Or Errol le Cain’s beautiful book illustrations.

Speaking of Frozen, it’s too bad that this clip isn’t s much fun as I had expected. It’s nice, though to see Disney in his natural state. Just thought I’d share.

Part of the treat of gathering the drafts from Hans Perk‘s site, A Film LA is that he leaves notes about what he’s read on those animators’ drafts. Here are some samples from just the Peter Pan and the Lady & the Tramp notes:During the posts of Peter Pan:

My MOST important reason for posting these is to give recognition to those many animators whose names are forgotten since the iconic status of the “Nine Old Men” has overshadowed them all. Mind you, I revere the Nine as the next man, but there were so many more great artists.

Today we find e.g Marvin Woodward who was with Disney since September 1930. Jack Campbell started in 1933 and did such memorable scenes as the ones with the Blue Fairy in Pinocchio. Don Lusk started just a year later – and more memorable scenes. As a matter of fact, except for Art Stevens, all animators mentioned above started at Disney in the mid 1930′s, excepting Fergie and Woodward, so they had between some 15 and 22 years of experience at this time, not counting their time before they got to Disney’s studio.

And there were many more animators working on Peter Pan that should be recognized. Cliff Nordberg, Hal Ambro, Jerry Hathcock, Eric Cleworth, Hugh Fraser, etc. etc. It is to recognize the skills and talents of ALL the animators that I post these drafts.

On the drafts for Lady andthe Tramp, Hands commented:

As I wrote before: I find this film incredibly well drawn and very well animated – less occasional “fumbling” than on the previous couple of films. It is a step up from Peter Pan, and on it’s way to the meticulousness of Sleeping Beauty. The inking is SEVERAL steps up! The inking of the ending of lines in Pan was at times erratic – here it is under FULL control! It is a beautifully drawn film, with beautiful layouts, backgrounds and inking. Also, it is a nicely told story with a few surprises (though after seeing it for the umpteenth time, I am not all that surprised anymore) and especially fun side characters, like Jock, the beaver, the pound dogs and the Siamese cats. And then Milts marvelous scenes – Frank‘s (Thomas) spaghetti with-a da meat-sa balls… This film is truly a classic.

Actress, Esther Williams died this past Thursday at the age of 91. At the age of 17 she won the Olympic gold medal for swimming and this led to a good film career. Her swimming sequences in the films became Busby Berkeley-type numbers with dozens of swimmers surrounding her in large pools. Apparently, she burst her ear drums some nine times in the making of these sequences, over the course of her career.

She swam with the Hanna-Barbera characters, Tom and Jerry, in the film Dangerous When Wet. A very colorful sequence that isn’t terribly wonderful in its animation, but it certainly suits the film. She started as a gymnast and ended as a bone fide movie star.

Tom Hanks was on David Letterman last night, and he came with his big moustache direct from his Broadway part in Lucky Guy.

Letterman cut in mid sentence during a conversation with Hanks to say, “Now I remember who you remind me of, with that moustache.” Hanks was somewhat surprised but said, “Who?”

Letterman responded, “. . . that conductor from The Polar Express.” Hanks asked, without a second’s break, “Are my eyes creepy enough?”

A while back, Bill Peckmann assembled a number of sample pages from the many pieces Jack Davis had illustrated over a 10 year period. View that here. Bill’s done it again and offers many more glimpses of the many styles of this brilliant illustrator by showing the lead, splash panels of the many stories he did. It really gives us a good indecation of how much work and how varied Jack Davis’ style was and still is.

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Mad comic book #8.

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The Haunt of Fear #22.

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Frontline Combat #15.

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Mad #9.

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Tales from the Crypt #39.

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Two Fisted Tales #36.

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The Vault of Horror #33.

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Mad #10.

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The Haunt of Fear #23.

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Two Fisted tales #40.

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Mad #12.

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Tales from the Crypt #40.

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The Vault of Horror #34

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The Haunt of Fear #24

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Mad #13

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Tales from the Crypt #41

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The Vault of Horror #35

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Mad #14

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The Haunt of Fear #25

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Tales from the Crypt #42

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Mad #15

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The Vault of Horror #36

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The Haunt of Fear #26

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Tales from the Crypt #43

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The Haunt of Fear #28

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The Vault of Horror #37

And we end with three cover samples.

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Andreas Deja has a recent post which begins with Cruella de Vil in bed, in curlers, reading the newspaper. She is annoyed by a phone call from Jasper, one of her henchman. Andreas reports her half of the conversation, “‘Jasper!’ she pauses in anger, then ‘Jasper, you idiot!’”

Andreas, finishing up his comment on Marc Davis‘ beautiful animation, writes,”Everything is top notch here, her body composition, wonderful grotesque expressions – those cheekbones are priceless – and of course subtle, controlled animation.
Modern animation as good as it gets.”

That last phrase really got me thinking, “Modern animation as good as it gets.” How astute of him. It’s something I’d thought about before, but here it’s actually articulated by Mr. Deja, one of the most important of the 2D feature film animators. (To me, he’s probably the finest of all current animators.)

I’d placed the break in animation from Richard Williams onward. Dick had studied all the masters, imitated and reworked many of their best moves. He turned his thriving studio in the seventies and eighties into the pinnacle of the medium, teaching animation to many gifted artists and producing commercials, predominantly, had trained a small army to go out into the world and make good, strong theatrical style animation of the highest caliber. Rules were reworked and made to work to get the richest form of the medium.

Animation was reborn in the style of Richard Williams and his influences such as Art Babbitt, Ken Harris. and Milt Kahl.

Hans Perk on his blog, A Film LA, publishes the drafts of the animators working on the Disney features allowing us to know who did what scenes. These are usually very informative. Hans recently completed posting the drafts to Lady and the Tramp. In among these drafts, Hans made this comment:

Again, very serviceable animators, no masterpieces…
I like the CinemaScope note for sc. 28: “Lady will have to be alive throughout scene.”

Then if you notice other scenes on this page there are some that dictate “held cels” of other characters to the left or right of screen. They were certainly trying to control the animation for the wide, Cinemascope screen. See if you can find a note like that on any feature done today. See if you can find ANYTHING held on any feature done today.

Of course, I’m talking principally of 2D animation – Disney (or Dreamworks) 2D features.

Andreas is writing about animation features done from Cinderella forward. I believe he’s considering the changes that the live action reference work to make Cinderella, Alice and Peter Pan led to Sleeping Beauty and later films. 101 Dalmatians was the big change with the human animation, led by Milt Kahl, Marc Davis, and to a great extent Frank Thomas.

This was the big change. This was the model followed by animators that came after the “Nine old men.” With a couple of films, such as Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin, a cartooning style entered the work and stayed there. The genie in Aladdin almost turns that film into a reworked Warner Bros cartoon. But a couple of the animators: Andreas Deja, Glen Keane, Mark Henn, Duncan Marjoribanks, Ruben Aquino and several other prominent among this generation went directly to the Milt Kahl model. Interestingly, this is also Dick Williams‘ model.

Of course, Milt Kahl is perfect to place at the center as an ideal.

Just as Snow White and Pinocchio were a step up from the Silly Symphonies, so too, 101 Dalmatians and Sword In The Stone were a step up from Cinderella and Peter Pan. Tarzan, The Lion King, and The Prince of Egypt were remarkable changes from The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, and Aladdin.

Given the work on Lilo and Stitch, Mulan, Spirit and several of the later features, it seems like a major change – a new growth period was due. Yet it was cut short by the financial success of some of the cgi features. 2D animation stopped.

Modern animation was stilled for the moment.

To keep in accord with Hans Perk‘s recent posting of the drafts to Lady and the Tramp, I am reposting a couple of these valuable past posts. Here’s one I like a lot.

- A friend (who asked to remain anonymous) sent a copy of this script of “The Story of Pluto,” an early episode of the Disneyland TV show. This document obviously follows the show very closely, but I think a lot of the on screen dialogue is actually missing. Regardless, I thought it a good opportunity to go back to the show (which when it hit TV was called “The Story of Dogs.” (At least, the video on the Lady and the Tramp DVD, which has the same date listed is longer.)

I’ll first post the “script” and then will follow with frame grabs from the TV program wherein Lady runs from some rough dogs who are chasing her, and Tramp comes to her rescue. The original show aired in B&W, but this version mixes B&W PT to color ruff-cut. It’s one of my favorite sections of the film with a lot of animation by Woolie Reitherman. (It comes on page 11 of the script.)

Here are the script pages:

Script Cover

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This sequence is followed immediately by Milt Kahl‘s sequence where Lady and the Tramp go to the zoo. They seek the help of the beaver to remove her muzzle.

The Zagreb Animation Festival, now called Animafest, the 23rd World Festival of Animated Film, starts June 4th through 9th.
One of the last artifacts Tissa David gave me was an invitation poster from the 1st Zagreb Festival. I thought it’d be a good idea to post that today to coincide with the Festivl’s opening. All those going there, have fun and good luck.

The initial poster for the first Zagreb poster.
The nose is taped on and stands up, as in a pop-up book.
The tag is connected by thin, light string.

The envelope the poster came in.

- The recent posts by Hans Perk on his blog A Film LA of the animation drafts to Lady and the Tramp have led me to add to the mix by posting some of these older posts.

Here are a lot of drawings done predominantly by Joe Grant in the early forties in preparation for the movie.

The illustrations – some are obviously BG layouts, others storyboard drawings – have a light and jaunty feel. They’re very cartoon in nature, and belie the actual feature they produced which, at times, is quite beautiful. Disney truly got the feel of “Main Street, USA” in this film.

I’m interested that most of the images don’t take in Cinemascope (since they were obviously done before the decision to go Scope.Cnemascope didn’t come into being until 1953) Most of them are also fast drawings that don’t feature the Tramp as we know him, and even Lady takes on a different form.

You get the feeling this film was pushed out relatively quickly. The results are excellent, regardless. Sonny Burke and Peggy Lee wrote an excellent pop-song score that doesn’t quite capture the turn-of-the-century, but it does capture the atmosphere of early 50s USA.

This drawing is in B&W on the DVD, but it appears in
Bob Thomas’ 1958 book, “The Art of Animation.”

(Click any image to enlarge.)

Bg for The Princess and the Frog.

This looks not too different from a shot in Hitchcock’s Psycho.

You can find more Bgs from Lady and the Tramp on Hans Bacher‘s site, one1more2time3.

The following are Joe Grant development drawings.

We seem to be in the Little Golden Book territory
with some of these images.

An earlier and different view.

Or did I mean the New Yorker circa 1948?

I love weather and would have applauded more of it in the film.

(Click any image to enlarge.)

Madison Square Park in NY’s Chelsea offers space to sculptors to off their works of art to the public with a work that generally stands within the park for about six months. This year’s sculpture will be on display from May 2nd through September 8th.

From the display explaining this exhibit there is this:

Red, Yellow and Blue is a new installation by the New York-based artist Orly Genger, This is Genger’s largest and most ambitious work to date. Red Yellow and Blue envelopes three lawns within Madison Square Park with 1.4 million feet of undulating, layered nautical rope covered in over 3,400 gallons of paint.

It merges elements of painting, sculpture and craft. Genger’s labor-intensive and largely physical process involves weaving and painting rope in large sections b hand, and then gradually building these colorfully-lined sections on=site at the park. In her work, Genger explores the traditionally intimate and domestic activity of knitting to create large-scale, monolithic forms which consume, challenge and occupy the spaces they occupy.

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- I received a couple of dispatches from the great Borge Ring. Of course, I’d like to share them with you.

hi MICHAEL

I enjoyed reading your article about clean lines and ruff animation at Walt’s
Disney Studio:

At Annecy I asked Marc Davis how many men he employed on the animation of
Cruella de Vil.

“None whatsoever. – The number of scenes showing Cruella was not more than one
artist could handle. (then with a laugh) there wasn’t even a modelsheet”

“But she interacted at times with other characters such as the two villains”

“That’s right – they were animated by John Lounsbury – He and I worked well
together even though he was seated in another wing.There was a scene where the
two villains get slapped in the face by Cruella. I made Cruella do the tho slaps
and brought the drawings over to John. It was up to him to see that the villain
heads were there where the slaps hit.”

greetings
Borge

PS
That which I’m quoting here may not tie in directly with your article, but I
thought that you (of all people) aught to know about it because you already have
so many pieces of the allbeloved jigzawpuzzel we call The Golden Years.

And then I received this note on the Martin Toonder post.

hi Michael
Marten Toonder and I became close friends over the years and we played the game
of “Do You Remember?”
Marten said: “If you will write a book about me as a filmmaker, I will finance
it – It will take you a year.”
I once said: “Marten, why did we clash so often?”
“Ach, Ring, that was my mega ego”.

best
Borge

Jerry Beck‘s excellent blog, Animation Scoop, has an interesting post by Charles Kenny. It questions the abundance of animated features rushing out to the theaters. Just this Thursday there was a report that Disney/Pixar plans on releasing 15 features in the next six years. According to Cartoon Brew, they’ve released the titles and the release dates for all of them. That seems to support Mr. Kenny’s comment.

Jeffrey Katzenberg has already stated that he hopes for Dreamworks to start producing two features a year starting next year.

We can question the quality of these releases but this really isn’t the point as I see it. Live Action features come out by the hundreds each year. From that large number maybe a dozen are really good films, maybe a hundred turn a profit, and far fewer are the sought after block busters.

Animated features have been fewer, far fewer released each year. It was just two years ago that we ere astonished to see 18 films qualify for the Oscar. That, of course, had nothing to do with quality. They just had to be eligible according the Academy’s rules, which basically means they had to be the right length, have the right release date at the right theaters and be animated.

Just as with the Live Action films the animated films will naturally fall into similar categories: the good the bad and the ugly. Bu we already have that, in my view. There will just be more of them.

If animated features increase their production, it means more work for animators, more of a chance for a couple of really good films to get produced. The hope would be that there would also be the opportunity of more films getting released that aren’t all big studio movies. That’s probably where our gems will come from. If there are more animated films being produced the likelihood of a greater sample might encourage the smaller distributors.

Whatever we think of it, it’s probably going to happen.

I just thought I’d post a quick note. Hans Perk has been currently posting the drafts for Disney’s Lady and the Tramp on his blog A Film LA.

This film was such a landmark for anyone of my generation who sought out the Disney features back in 1955. All those incredible ads and tv shows we saw on the Disneyland show make it really stand out from many of the others. It was, consequently, and enormous success for Disney. (It’s also a pretty great film.) Bill Peet’s work is sensational.

To coincide with Hans’ blog I’m going to post a couple of pieces on Lady and the Tramp, as well. Starting Monday.

A letter from Friend, Tom Hachtman, from the New Jersey Shore.:

HI Michael, Joey and I were working in Toms River so we took Rt. 35 South through Mantoloking. It has been seven months since Sandy.
I shot these from the window of Joey’s truck. There are over 500 houses in Mantoloking and all of them were damaged. Over fifty houses totally vanished.
The name Mantoloking, according to Wikipedia, is derived from Lenni Lenape Native American language and possibly means ‘sand place’.

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