Commentary 01 Jun 2013 04:47 am

Posty Posts

Missive from Borge

- 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:
    cruella
    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

________________________

Lotsa Cartoons

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.

________________________

Lady Drafts

Lady58I 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.

________________________

Mantoloking Memories

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’.


Mantoloking1 1

Mantoloking2 2

Mantoloking3 3

Mantoloking4 4

Mantoloking5 5

Mantoloking6 6

4 Responses to “Posty Posts”

  1. on 01 Jun 2013 at 1:12 pm 1.Charles Kenny said …

    Michael, thank you very much for taking the time and effort to discuss my post.

    My main concern is that the major studios are painting themselves into a corner when it comes to animated films; running the risk of audience burnout as a result of chasing the easy dollar.

    Should audiences tire of the current formula (and given that they are human, they will at some point), then we are in for a rough couple of years as studios retool.

    Hopefully, smaller players (like GKIDS) can prove to audiences that animated films encompass much more than what comes out of Emeryville and Burbank and arrest the slide into homogeneity.

  2. on 01 Jun 2013 at 2:37 pm 2.Scott said …

    “Slide?” TV animation jumped feet first into homogeneity feet first 30 or so years ago and never left! Virtually every tv cartoon is the same noisy garbage, with lots of blabbing and little imagination. But you are correct–features are being dragged down in that direction, too. They’re all the same story, in different costumes.

  3. on 01 Jun 2013 at 11:30 pm 3.Michael said …

    I wish I could disagree with you. There have been several good limited animation tv series. There have been too few cgi features even worth thinking about.

  4. on 02 Jun 2013 at 11:52 pm 4.Roberto Severino said …

    I feel Scott’s sentiments and largely agree with him. Outside a few exceptions, a couple of adult oriented shows, and probably some of the best gems of the animation boom of the 1990s and 2000s, TV animation has mainly remained stagnant. It can be really depressing but it should only motivate all of us cartoonists to strive to make something 200x better someday.

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