Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

- This is the final part of this level of animation. We’re posting the scene from Peter and the Wolf animated by Ward Kimball of the three hunters after the wolf. There are a lot of drawings, so posting them has had to be in five segments.

Next week, the level where the littlest hunter separates from these two bigger guys.

As with past posts, I start with the last drawing from last week.

180

8182

8384

8586

187

8889

9091

9293

9495

9697

198

9900

0102

0304

205

0607

0809

1011

1213

1415

216
There is no number 217.

218

199a

220

2122

2324

224a

The following QT movie represents all the drawings posted to date.
I exposed all drawings on ones.

Click left side of the black bar to play.
Right side to watch single frame.

Many thanks go out to John Canemaker for the loan of the scene to share.

- I’ve been posting some great comic strip and comic book strips here in the last two weeks. By far, my favorite strip is Polly and Her Pals by Cliff Sterrett. I haven’ yet posted the original I own. It’s a Sunday page from March 1943.

The art is large sized and comes in two halves. I’ll post it actual size and add a couple of cut ins so that the art can be seen a little better.

I’ve had to do some photoshop touchup since the original got a bit of water damage during a flood in my studio.

(Click any image to enlarge.)

2

5

7
White paper covers more trees on the left of this panel.
You can see the shapes coming through.

9
This panel is composed of a lot of pasted on bits of paper.
All the glue is trying to fall off, and the papers are delicate,
especially on the roof of the building, left.

11

12

(Click any image to enlarge.)

- I received a magnificent gift, recently, from John Canemaker. It’s a book that was published in Japan that intensely focusses on the work of Mary Blair, the brilliant artist who
designed and stylized many Disney’s golden films.

The book is chock-a-block with images, and even though most of the writing is in Japanese, the book is a glorious item to read through – just for the pictures. Fortunately, there is identification in English under all of the images. John Canemaker also has a wonderfully written Foreward in the book.

I’m going to make a couple of posts selecting some images that I found exciting and relevant to Ms. Blair’s career. Included, of course, will be some paintings and designs by her husband, Lee Blair, and her brother-in-law, Preston Blair.

I’m sure a lot of the paintings were chosen to act as a comparison to some of the animated segments done by the trio. Take, for example, “Woman with Red Flowers in Hair” by Preston Blair.

This post will attend to the pre-Disney paintings of all three artists.

Wedding Photo – March 3, 1934
Mary and Lee Blair

Lee Blair – The twins

Mary Blair – Couple in Snow Sled

Mary Blair – Ice Skaters

Lee Blair – Mary by the Sea

Mary Blair – The Revelation

Mary Blair – The Expectation

Mary Blair – The Invitation

Mary Blair – San Francisco Nights

Mary Blair – Landscape of Trees

Mary Blair – Landscape

Lee Blair – Old Mansion

Lee Blair – Redwood Slashings

Preston Blair – Night Street Scene with Cable Car

Preston Blair – Female Nude Preening

Preston Blair – Couple Kissing

Preston Blair – Woman with Red Flowers in Hair

May I also remind you that John Canemaker has a wonderful book available in the US. The Art and Flair of Mary Blair is still for sale on Amazon.

- Here’s a recap of photos from Summer 2007 when Heidi and I visited Coney Island, just prior to the close of Lunar Park. (Something similar has been built in its place.)

– Last week, Heidi and I went out to Keystone Park to watch the Mets’ AAA ball team, the Cyclones. This ball park is right next door to Coney Island. We went because Heidi’s group at the New Victory Theater planned the outing, and we had a great time with them. Since the amusement park is about to undergo reconstruction, it seemed like a good time to visit that as well.

I found some difficulty watching the game – we ended up in right field in the bleachers.
It was impossible to figure out who the players were for the Cyclones, never mind the opposing team, the Renegades. It’s hard to care who wins unless you’re a diehard Met fan, and I’m not. I don’t even like the Mets. As a matter of fact I kept checking into the Yankee loss on the radio during this AAA game.

2 3
The field was attractive, and the park seemed small, despite the regulation sized field.
The team played well, winning the game after having to come back from a deficit.

4 5
4. The scoreboard was impossible to read during daylight hours, but it was fun with the drawn, cut-out “Cyclone” (a roller coaster in coney island park) at the top.
5. It’s hard to avoid the real “Cyclone” behind the scoreboard toward left field. The siren call of the Wonder Wheel sang to us throughout the game.

6 7
6 & 7. Nathans, of course, is the gateway to the Coney Island theme park. The place is always crowded, and I assume the food is great.

A little trip down a boardwalk, passing the gaming areas, brings you to Astroland.
This is the part of the park that’s undergoing reconstruction and closings..

9 10
9. Walking down that boardwalk, the Wonder Wheel keeps beckoning. This ride is sort of a Ferris Wheel mixed with a Roller Coaster. It’s frightening. As you revolve, the carriages race forward or back as gravity dictates. It looks calm and takes you by surprise.
10. Finally you enter Astroland. It looks like a kiddie park; the ones that Walt Disney was trying to make obsolete. He wanted parents to be able to participate.

1213
12. The carousel gets more and more attractive to me as I get older.
13. The goofy looking haunted house was called Ghost Hole. We were starting to get into their versions of characters.

1415
14 & 15. The famous bumble bee is the first of the characters you come upon. I kept looking for someone walking around dressed like a bee.

1617
16 & 17. You know that’s not Mickey or Donald. They’d have to pay a licensing fee.

1819
18 & 19. And that flying elephant is no relation to Dumbo.

2021
20. As the sign says, it was also the day of the Mermaid Parade. Lots of people dress as mermaids and parade down the boardwalk. I usually watch a public access TV show in Manhattan that annually broadcasts the entire parade. They play musak in the background and you just watch the crazies flaunting their homemade costumes and eccentric makeup.
21. So all day long we were seeing the fallover from this parade.

2223
22. There were a couple of other mermaid dressed people I photographed but seem to have deleted the pictures. Sorry.
23. Finally, I grabbed my own mermaid, and we went home. I was tired; I’m getting too old for this.

On the post about Give-aways, I had a little story I was going to add, and at the last moment, I decided not to include it,=. So, why not now?

Back in 1957, when the original Mickey Mouse Club was in full swing, in conjunction with Ipana toothpaste, there was a TV offer of a mail-in of a book which included puppets of Jiminy Cricket and Pinocchio. As a puppet fan, I raced through the tube of Ipana to get to the new packaging to send away for it. $.50 for postage and handling.

It took about a month to receive the book of cardboard pages. There, inside, were punch-out pieces of Jiminy and Pinocchio. By following the instructions, you could put together puppets of the two characters. It was rather complex, but I did it, and boy was I pleased with the end result. By manipulating tabs in the back you could operate the mouth (similar to a ventriloquists puppet) of Jiminy – he always was the talker.

Pinocchio was the marionette and was operated by string. I still remember this give-away gift as if it were yesterday, and I’ve searched the internet for pictures of the book, but haven’t found it. I’m sure I eventually will.

Mind you, I’d made my own marionettes and hand-puppets by the time I came upon this book. I was 10-12 at the time and, through a book I’d borrowed from the library, I found that I could cut and sew muslin, stuffed with more muslin, to make some fine puppets. They all looked a bit like Mr. Potato Head when they were finished, but I was proud of them just the same.

Likewise, there was a book once put out by Dover publishing. Called Motion Picture Toys. The cardboard pages included punch-out objects that, when assembled, produced early animation machines: Praxinoscope, anascope and especially an excellent Zoetrope with animated strips. I remember using this book as a guide and followed it closely to make my own zoetropes that I gave to my siblings one Christmas. Of course, I did my own animated strips that they could interchange.

I’ve searched for that booklet, too, but have had no luck. I’ve even written to the company hoping they’d have some back copies they’d sell me, but they’re not to be found. Of course, that book wasn’t free, but it was pretty cheap and reminded me of the Jiminy/Pinocchio giveaway.

- Michael Barrier left a comment on my Giveaways post, yesterday, and referenced a comic giveaway which was drawn by Walt Kelly featuring a circus milieu. Here’s that part of his comment reprinted:

Kelly definitely did draw what I think is the most wonderful WDC&S subscription premium, a 10 x 14 (I think, without taking my framed copy down from the wall to measure it) sheet called “The Disney Gang at the Circus,” which shows about 30 Disney characters under the big top, doing all sorts of funny Kelly stuff.

Mike couldn’t illustrate that cover, but here is the ad for that giveaway, courtesy of Bill Peckmann.

To the right is the magazine cover of the issue that the ad appeared in.

Speaking of Mike, he has a brilliant post for all those interested in the history of Mickey Mouse. The old saw of Walt dreaming up Mickey Mouse on his train ride back from New York isn’t even considered when you read about the origins of the Mouse on Mike’s site. Stories about Ub hiding in closets aren’t even pulled out of the hat.

As a fan of silent animated films, I’ve seen my share of Mickey Mouse wannabes that raced after Farmer Alfalfa in all those Terry-Moser Aesop Fables. Likewise just about any other cartoon maker in the pre-Mickey world; you’d see more than your share of mice that could easily be stunt doubles for Mickey. I always assumed it was natural that Mickey just came out of these mice that all animators seemed to be drawing. But no.

Mike goes into the true origins of the mouse, and the evidence seems certain.

Of course, anyone seriously interested in animation history or writing looks into Mike’s site regularly enough that I’m not reporting anything new. But for those of you who haven’t come across this essay by Mike, go there.

- John Canemaker has a new, fine piece about acting in animation on his Print Magazine blog page. Take a look.

March 1947 (Walt Kelly?) cover with “Barks” on the box.

- Imagine you’re a kid and while reading your comic book you hit on a page offering some freebees that you have to mail away for.

Back cover

(Click any image to enlarge.)

So you mail for your subscription to get the goodies, and eventually the envelope shows up at your door.

You slowly and excitedly remove the contents. Your great and brilliant gifts unfold:

And here’s a post script from Joakim Gunnarsson:

Bill, what a nice set of subscription posters ya got!
Have seen some of them before but not all I think.
You are right about Kelly doing some of these, but I’m not 100% sure wich he did and which Dan Noonan did.
I’d say the ones with Dopey are Kelly for sure!

The original art to the one where they are playing instruments has survived, BTW.

Joakim.

- About two weeks ago I started thinking about the state of animated short films. This was the result of my viewing the most recent Pixar short, “Day & Night”. This film had a lot of the problems most Pixar shorts have, and I came to realize that it’s the same problem most shorts being made today have. The word is sophomoric.

The stories, to my taste, are just too lacking in real intelligence. Early shorts from Pixar seemed to be trying to advance their hardware; for example, “For the Birds” was pushing the envelope on cgi rendering of feathers. (As it turns out, this is one of their better short films; the story is well written and timed.) Later shorts from them are trying to push some other limit, but they just are not.

I’m not concerned with the technique used in these films or the quality of the animation. After all Pixar is paying millions of dollars for these tiny films; they should be well animated, designed and produced. And, for the most part, they are. Pixar tags them onto a blockbuster effort like Toy Story 3 and is able to recoup the investment – something the average Independent will probably never do.

In this film, “Day & Night”, the two principal characters, drawn in 2D animation, are surrounded with a black matte. The interior coloring of the characters is filled with computer animation images of day, for the first character, and night, for the second. One is jealous of the other – until, of course, midnight passes and Day becomes Night, and vice versa. Over the last minute or so, we’re given some pompous narration to make it sound like it’s an important theme and film. The whole enterprise feels lifted from other, more original films done many years ago. The only difference, really, is that this is in gorgeous 3D – a nice package.

“Day & Night” utilizes character designs that seem to come out of the groovy seventies. This is a Hollywood version of Zagreb, which was a Yugoslavian variation of UPA, and the filmmakers try to attach a story that also feels redundant of some of those many seventies student films.

Teddy Newton, the director, seems to like the “moderne” style of animation. His past directoral effort, Boys Night Out (co-directed with Bert Klein), and his character designs all push toward what I call the CalArts style, an angular take on mid-Fifties animation styling. Basically, to me, this style has nothing to do with art and all to do with regurgitating the work of other artists who reworked art. It’s all too intermural – there’s nowhere for it to go.

I can’t just stop with this Pixar short; many other shorts made recently have this same feeling as though they’re pushing some limit. In fact, what they’re all doing is limiting themselves with the past history of animation, and not always the best animation.

When the Lasseter/Disney troupe decided to rework Goofy in a Hollywood short a couple of years ago with Goofy How to Hook Up Your Home Theater, to me there was more honor in the workman-like effort as they purposefully borrowed from some mediocre shorts. It might have been a more complex effort had they tried doing a good Mickey short, but they pulled this film off.

Hundreds of short films are being made quickly via the new media. We can see them all over YouTube these days. Student films glut websites; one or two of them actually are well-realized. I just wish there were more concern for story. More attention has to be paid to this part of the film; it’s more imortant than the animation, the design or the music.

Day & Night makes me feel as though they started with the style and tried to work the story into it. It really doesn’t work on any intellectual level. I wonder how many young people actually go about making their films this way. Start with the look and the design, then wrap a story into it. Yet, the reason to see a film has nothing to do with the design; it’s all about the story. What do you have to tell me?

Actually, I’m not sure it ever was a better time for the short film. It always seems to come down to one or two films, every year. They dominate the market and Festivals everywhere; those are the one or two films that create the conversations after those Festivals. In fact, it’s the one or two smart artists that come up with these shorts, and there will always be these infrequent artist among the many.

Here are a handful of random shorts and filmmakers (off the top of my head) I’ve liked recently:

The House of Small Cubes by Yojiro Takita, was a beautifully constructed, animated and produced short that deserved its Oscar. It gave us several ADULT themes that were finely developed and executed.

Skhizein by Jérémy Clapin was a well crafted film with an idea that, at first, seemed to clever for its own sake, but turned out to be a short piece of genius that held up viewing after viewing. The use of cgi to creat a mix of flat and 3D surfaces just added to film’s depth.

Andreas Hykade‘s most recent short, Love and Theft, is a beautifully graphic free flowing paean to animation and linear art. Like all other Hykade shorts it turns to rich primary colors that seem to be all his own style. He seems to be entering the master class of animation film makers.

In Rains by David Coquard-Dassault, a sudden rainstorm initiates a lovely and poetic piece that simply gives us delicate images of those reacting to the weather. It’s so quiet, witty and original.

Aardman seems to have perfected the animated short film. Their last Wallace & Gromit film was so well-tuned, one almost took it for granted. Yet, in most of the shorts seen last year, this one stood out for extraordinarily high filmmaking standards. Even their more experimental shorts, such as the The Pearce Sisters Directed by Luis Cook does 2D animation using cgi and creates a dark mood with simple and effective means. All of their shorts are well written, well cut and intelligent; always crafted at the highest possible caliber. This includes every one of the films they’ve done for television. Pixar should study their films a little closer.

The Simon’s Cat series by Simon Tofield are beautifully done shorts featuring the same cast, beautiful linear design and well animated characters. The films are wordless, yet they all have a love of humanity and observation of the world around us that comes across as funny and touching, both at the same time. These shorts are made using Flash, yet don’t have that tedious cut-out feel of the tiresome pop from-pose-to-pose animation that the medium seems to engender.

Word is out that the next Pixar feature will also be preceded by a short. Cars 2 will have a Toy Story short accompanying it. How appropriate. Hopefully, they’ll get it right with the stable of characters the whole world loves. Perhaps it’ll give them the chance to show us what really happened to Bo Peep.

By the way, a good place to see shorts that are more challenging is at Ian Lumsden’s Animation Blog. It’s worth paying attention. The videos he features and analyzes often don’t show up elsewhere.

- Here’s part four of Ward Kimball‘s scene from Peter and the Wolf . The scene was loaned to me by John Canaemaker, and there are a lot of drawings. One more installment to come on these two hunters running. Then an addition of the little guy in the middle.

As with all other posts, I start with the last drawing from the last sequence.

140

14142

14344

14546

14748

14950

15152

15354

155

15657

15859

16061

16263

16465

16667

16869

170

17172

17475
Note: It pops from #175 to #180 as the little,
middle guy returns to this level.

180

The following QT movie represents all the drawings posted to date.
I exposed all drawings on ones.

Click left side of the black bar to play.
Right side to watch single frame.

– Jaime Weinman has an excellent post on his blog. He posts the donkey-change scene from Pinocchio with the music only. It accents the terror in the sequence and shows off the brilliance of the Leigh Harline score.

Something else worth watching during the sequence is the brilliant use of direction. The camera moves brilliantly from left to right, never crossing up or confusing where any of the characters are. The necessity of this is magnified when we pick up Jiminy running to and into the saloon. No one ever crosses the 180, yet the violence of the sequence is always growing. And this is all with only a music track. It’s great film making.

This reminds me that I recently watched a bit of Martin Scorcese‘s The Last Tempatation of Christ. There was a scene where Christ, Willem DeFoe sat at the edge of a hillside talking with a follower. The camera followed the 180 strictly. Then Christ makes a wild gesture with his hands, and the camera swirls with it. From then on the image has crossed the 180, and we’re looking at a wholly different setup.

It was one small setup in a larger film reminding me that Scorcese, one of our elder statesmen now, still directing vibrantly, is more alive and challenging than ever. He uses all the extensive knowledge he has to break all the rules. Rent this movie or get another lesser known Scorcese film, and see what I’m talking about.
His work is an inspiration.

Amid Amidi has posted a wonderful piece on the passing of Betty Kimball. The photos and drawings of her by her late husband, Ward, are priceless. You’ve probably all seen it at Cartoon Brew, but if you haven’t, go there.

- Brian Sibley has had a great blog since 2006. Called the blog. This has been a daily stop for me ever since I found it. Brian, who writes plays, scripts and books, uses this blog to discuss many cultural events and thoughts that pass by his life. This includes interesting and fine comments about many movies and plays that have opened. There’s a lot there in an entertaining and informative style.

Well, perhaps you may have missed that he’s just begun a new blog called decidedly disney. This one has as its focus, obvously, Disney and Brian has a lot to say about them. Take a look.

- Bill Benzon wrote a recent, thoughtful piece on the blog, On The Human. Here, he espouses the premise that “nothing in human psyche and society makes sense except in the light of cultural evolution.” He posits thoughts about Nina Paley’s feature, Sita Sings the Blues as support for this idea. If you find it too heady for you, at least scroll down to the midway point to read his comments of Sita.

Benzon is one of the finest intellectuals interested in animation and this article explains why.

- If you haven’t read the couple of posts Mark Mayerson has written about character and story structure particularly concerning Toy Story 3, I suggest you take a look.

- Jeff Scher‘s latest Op Ed opus appears in today’s NYTimes. Summer Hours is the perfect thing for the torrid summer day (like we’re experiencing in NY today.) A cool drink of iced tea. The perfect music is, once again, by Shay Lynch.

Jeff Scher‘s website.
Shay Lynch‘s YouTube page.

Here are more Dick Moores comic strips. These are, again, from the collection of Bll Peckcmann. Bill sent notes along with them; the comments with the strips are by him. Many great pieces.

(Click any image to enlarge.)

Inside front cover gag. Lower left panel is all
Dick Moores, neat silhouette, wrap around tail on word balloon.

1
Title page. Everything we loved about Gasoline Alley is already here.
Great spotting of blacks, wonderful feel for the weather and
he always moves the story along with well designed panels.

2
Page 3 of story. Here we can see his love for entering hidden rooms,
basements, barns etc. Another nice touch, the diagrammatic silhouette.

3
Page 4. Nice intro of the little robot character.

1
First 3 pages of 2nd story in the book.
Dick Moores’ ease of story telling comes through, a portent of
things to come 20 years later with Gasoline Alley.

23
I wonder if he wrote his own stories like Barks?

Two Cinderella Sunday strips.

Here’s a MM original that I think (could easily be wrong) was done by DM.
The time/year fits with the time he was doing Disney stuff, there’s also a nice silhouette in it
and that loose chicken scratching, cross hatching that I love. Whoever did it, it’s beautiful,
what neat brush and pen lines, not one dab of correction whiteout used on it.