Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

- Jerry Beck has a new toybox of a book called The Hanna Barbera Treasury. I haven’t read the book, but I have picked it up and looked at it. It’s a pop-up, pull-out, unfold and play-with-something-on-every-page kinda book. It’s unfortunate, because I think Jerry probably has a lot to say about this company and their history, but the book is designed to be a fun cartoon book. It’s designed to sell to consumers and not to tell anything truly informative about H&B.

However, because of the review Mike Barrier posted last week and a couple of follow up letters the subject of Hanna Barbera’s value has been raised. Since the review was posted and the letters and comments on other blogs appeared, I’ve thought a lot about the subject.

Let me tell you my history here. I remember when Ruff and Reddy first appeared. I was a kid watching the Howdy Doody Show. They’d gathered their “peanut gallery” at the end of their program to announce that a great new cartoon was going to premiere next Saturday at 10:30 AM, following their program, and they showed a short clip.

The next weekend, I was ready for Ruff and Reddy. Howdy and Buffalo Bob reminded us to watch it. The excitement built to a high.

I watched. I don’t remember much about it; the show didn’t make an impression. I remember a lot of the Howdy Doody shows; not much about Ruff and Reddy. I remember liking the opening credits with the two characters in frames. I remember it was, of course, in B&W as all TV was back then. That’s about it. A lot of long shots cut to close ups. I remember that. I was 10. Disney’s Sleeping Beauty was still two years away.

A couple of years later Huckleberry Hound premiered in syndicated form on local channel 11. It was ok; I liked the design style. However, I recognized that there wasn’t a lot happening and that the backgrounds didn’t have a lot on them. I did like the sponge painting technique; I’d never seen anything like it.

There were a lot of news stories about adults watching Huckleberry Hound (with its other featured cartoons – Yogi Bear and Snagglepuss.) I was maybe 12, but I got the reference to Yogi Berra, and I got the parody of Bert Lahr’s voice. He was the Cowardly Lion; how could I miss it? This show was also in B&W, though color TV was just starting to enter our world.

Yeah, I watched the show daily. I watched more after Yogi Bear got his own show, and I enjoyed the Quick Draw McGraw segments. But there were all those wild west backgrounds with only tiny buttes on the straight lined horizons. Maybe a cactus appeared on the bicycle pans, and I got to recognize what a bicycle pan was (without knowing the term). Essentially I was picking up some animation cheats without doing more than watching.

The Flintstones got a lot of attention when they first appeared on ABC. After all, this was the first animated sitcom. It looked a lot like The Honeymooners, but I liked that. It also reminded me of the Fleischer shorts I’d seen about the cavemen living in a somewhat modern world. There was also that Tex Avery cartoon that was similar; I’d seen it on TV by then. I enjoyed those early Flintstones. It was entertaining when they had their baby, Pebbles. Somehow, though, the show lost it for me about that time. I didn’t watch after Bam Bam entered. By then the great inking was not looking so great. I don’t think I saw The Flintstones in color until the 1970′s.

I watched The Jetsons for a small time; I liked TopCat for the first season (all those voices culled from the Phil Silvers “Bilko” show.)

I opted out once Jonny (ugh) Quest entered, and I never went back to H&B.

Looking back on it all, I see how limited the animation was, but I knew that back then and imitated it in my own 12 year old’s animation. I tried doing the limited animation as H&B developed it, but I’d also tried it as Ward Kimball did it in Toot Whistle Plunk & Boom and those other Disney Tomorrowland shows he did. Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol was also a much bigger influence than H&B.

The backgrounds were interesting, but I was much more interested in the design style I’d seen in 101 Dalmatians or Sleeping Beauty. I’d bought some B&W lobby cards from Sword In The Stone, and I tried my hand at imitating the backgrounds – in colors I’d choose. These were much more enjoyable than anything I’d seen in H&B cartoons.

So, where am I going with all this? Looking back now on all that limited animation history, I have to say that I learned the tricks – probably many of them before I learned the right way to do it. I also got to realize that H&B truly flattened out the animation in ways that UPA and Kimball’s limited animation didn’t do.

For a short time H&B and Ruby Spears farmed animation to New York animators. I picked up a lot of work and was able to animate and assist about 200 feet a week. They liked my stuff, and I made a lot of money in a short amount of time. Weeks later my shows would be on TV, and I couldn’t identify ANY of the scenes I did. It was all so forgettable. It was about making quick money, and I hated it. I quit and started my own company.

I had to unlearn the H&B method to get it out of my system, and I think that the world of animation also had to unlearn it. Unfortunately, I don’t think it ever came undone. All those bad habits that were designed by brilliant guys working for Hanna Barbera are too strong.
_Then, John Kricfalusi with Ren & Stimpy introduced newer ways of cheating – ways that worked for that show. Everyone who graduated from Cal Arts started imitating that.
_Now with the influence of Flash, tv animation is doomed to move east or west, bob up and down, and rarely toward or away from the screen. There is no such thing as perspective. Big actions happen off screen or pop from one pose to another (some justify this as an imitation of Tex Avery’s work – it’s not.) If a car crashes, do it off screen. Just shake the background with the audio crash. There are a hundred much more subtle cheats I could point out. You see them everywhere: in anything on tv, in Persepolis, in The Triplettes of Belleville, in newer Disney features. Everywhere.

Today, there’s a lot of sloppy cheating and very little animation to see. It all did really start with Hanna Barbera when they modernized animation to become a big assembly line. Michael Barrier is right in his review. I’m not a fan of Hanna and Barbera’s work – not even on the Tom and Jerry cartoons. (As a matter of fact, I suspect they helped Rudy Ising get the boot from MGM after taking his characters from that first T&J cartoon, Puss Gets The Boot.) But I’m not talking about their MGM work, here. I’m just interested in the factory they built on Cahuenga Blvd and the bad habits they offered the future.

In a way it’s brought us back to the days of silent animation. Col. Heeza Liar probably used more drawings than your average Huck Hound cartoon. I’m not sure the stories were any better either.

Is it time to invent Mickey Mouse again?

- Here’s the second of five storyboard pages loaned me by John Canemaker. The boards were drawn by the brilliant Bill Peet.

The Little House was a short, and is part of the Disney Rarities dvd still available. The image to the right comes from that dvd’s extras.

Mary Blair was the key designer of the film. Her color work is exceptional, and I’ll try to give some examples of her art in future posts.

All of these boards are small photos that I’m blowing up large, so you’ll be able to see them. It involves heavy scanning of oversize work, then cutting them up and reconstructing them so that they’re in order. Sorry that I have to take a few posts to make them all available. They’re worth the trouble.______________ (Click images to enlarge them.)

Here’s the second page of this board.

This is the full second board as it looks before I cut it apart. You can see that the image is small and I had to cut it up so you can enlarge it enough to make it visible.
The blue nunbers below the panels represent the row of images displayed.

Page 2 – 1a

Page 2 – 1b

Page 2 – 2a

Page 2 – 2b

Page 2 – 3a

Page 2 – 3b

Page 2 -4a

Page 2 – 4b

Page 2 – 5a

Page 2 – 5b

Page 2 – 6a

Page 2 – 6b

Page 2 – 7a

Page 2 – 7b

Page 2 – 8a

Page 2 – 8b

- John Canemaker loaned me these boards by Bill Peet for the short, The Little House.

These storyboards are five dense pages.
The photo images on them are small, so I had to break them apart and reassemble them so that you’d be able to enlarge them enough to study.

They’re an excellent example of an extraordinary story artist developing a pre-existing story, the children’s book by Virginia Lee Burton (who also wrote Mike Mulligan and His Steamshovel.)

This is the first of these five pages. It’ll take a few posts to get them all in.

This is the full first board as it looks before I cut it apart. The image is small and I cut it up and reassembled it. The blue nunbers below the panels represent the row of images displayed.

Page 1 – 1a____ You’ll have to click images to enlarge them enough to view them properly.

Page 1 – 1b

Page 1 – 2a

Page 1 – 2b

Page 1 – 3a

Page 1 – 3b

Page 1 -4a

Page 1 – 4b

Page 1 – 5a

Page 1 – 5b

Page 1 – 6a

Page 1 – 6b

Page 1 – 7a

Page 1 – 7b

Page 1 – 8a

Page 1 – 8b

The following are three images from the dvd extas to give an indication of color.

- Has anyone else noted that the world has gotten meaner?

Remember the comic strip Pete the Tramp by C.D. Russell? no, it’s probably before your time. Pete was a tramp who stole pies from windows and got in trouble with the law. He was the typical hobo in comic strip form, and the strip started during the depression and lasted through 1963. I read it in color in Saturday’s NY Journal American.

Pete usually slept on park benches under newspapers and got his feet slapped by the cop. I noticed park benches this week and wanted to call attention to the way our society has handled tramps, hoboes, homeless people. In New York, they’ve made them uncomfortable.

This is the park bench I noticed.

It’s a bench in Madison Square Park, and I noticed it because it’s become a relic of the past. A person could actually sleep on it.

The few longer seats are “Priority seating.” This means bums have to get up for older people. I’m not sure what it means if the bum is an older person.

__________(Click any image to enlarge.)

- Last week, I posted the souvenir booklet sold with the initial roadshow presentation of Fantasia. Here I’lll complete the post of the magazine.

The booklet certainly feels quality. The paper is good and the illustrations are high caliber. However, many of the images were reused in several other books on the market at the time, notably the Deems Taylor book, Fantasia. That book, in itself, feels more like a souvenir of the film rather than anything more.

The booklet is quite handy for all the credits given. It makes the film feel important. One wonders if others of the early films had similar books. I haven’t seen any but assume they must have existed. If anyone knows for sure, leave a comment.

So, here it is. I’ve split it into two posts with #2 to follow.

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1415
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- Christmas is in the past, and the decorations are long gone.
Every year I save all the original cards and a couple of others I enjoy.
My favorite original card this year came from Tom Hachtman.

Tom wrote me about the development of this card:
– I sat down at the kitchen table to do cards with my niece April Centrone. She is a brilliant and somewhat demented artist. I gave her the Christ child from the creche and she began to draw – legs, body, hands and then, unhappy with the results, tossed it aside. I picked it up from there and put the baby in Santa’s lap.
The artwork was a collaboration. I wanted to clarify.
(Click any image to enlarge.)
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- Marjane Satrapi received her best animated feature award this week from the NY Film
____Critics by saying, “In France, they always call the New York critics tough bastards. So
____thank you, my bastard friends.”

____It’d be nice to hear what she might say if she wins an Oscar. She’ll get my vote.

- The Pirate VeggieTale Movie got the reviews it deserved. The Village Voice’s Ed
____Gonzalez called it, “Humorless, incoherent, and ugly as sin…”
____I was going to attach an image from the film, but I couldn’t sink that low.
____However, I must say I prefer the Veggietales images to those from any of the Shreks.

- I love the gag cartoons that Stephen Worth has posted on the ASIFA Hollywood
____Animation Archive side. They’re from UPA New York, and they comment on
____Lu Guarnier’s having the only window in the studio. The studio was divided into stall-
____like cubicles. (At least, this is Tissa David’s description.)
____What fascinates me is that these cartoons were saved for the past fifty years! They’re
____absolutely worth it, but how much of the important art is gone, yet these inside-gags
____are still extant and in good shape.

____By the way, a comment from his niece Pat, reminded me that Lu had told me about
____his first name – that his father named him “Lucifer, the light bearer” because he would
____someday lead the world out of its darkness. He wasn’t named after Lucifer, the devil.
____This also had me wondering about the middle initial “B”. Lu wouldn’t tell me
____what it stood for and left me guessing whether it was for “Beelzebub.”

- Speaking of Stephen Worth, I’ve been entertained by the back and forth discussion
____between Michael Barrier and Stephen Worth regarding the history of story/script
____development at animation studios. Worth says that prior to 101 Dalmatians, all scripts
____for animation were done by storyboard artists. Mike Barrier (having viewed the
____evidence) states the obvious – scripts did exist as far back as the silent Disney days.

____I’ve seen enough of these scripts to know that Barrier is correct. The script for
____Brotherhood of Man was published in the 1945 Hollywood Quarterly, for pete’s
____sake. Hubley, Phil Eastman and Ring Lardner did this script in advance of
____any storyboard work, which Hubley, ultimately, did. I saw parts of that storyboard as
____well. I believe it’s now in the MoMA archives.

____Scripts did exist. Just look in the Merritt and Kaufamn book, Walt In Wonderland.
____Pg 102 has a verbal scene-by-scene breakdown with a follow-up board for the Oswald
____cartoon, Africa Before Dark. That’s 1929.
____I think in this argument, Stephen Worth is just fighting the hard fight to protect the
____claims of John Krisfalusi that only storyboarded scripts are good for animated films.
____The argument is not worth much more of a comment. The comments on Cartoon
____Brew have gotten beside the point.
____Barrier offers us a page of a Cinderella treatment & a Fleischer Koko silent film.
____There’s also another page of a Superman script on Thad Komorowski ‘s site
____contibuted by Bob Jaques.
____Need anyone offer more?

- Speaking of Mike Barrier, his comments about Hanna/Barbera, their shorts and Jerry
____Beck’s recent book, The Hanna-Barbera Treasury, are quite astute.
____His commments have also provoked some serious thoughts from Mark Mayerson
____about the subject. Mark comments, “There is no question that the animation industry
____suffered a major blow with the death of theatrical shorts and the rise of television. It
____took the industry more than 25 years to recover from that blow. Hanna and Barbera
____had no part in that recovery and if anything, they probably delayed it.”

____I certainly agree, but I’m more bitter. I don’t think there was ever a recovery from
____H&B’s handiwork. They put the animation industry in the gutter, and it hasn’t
____stepped out except for a few individual steps by others. A film like Persepolis suffers
____from the residue of Hanna Barbera’s flattening of animation. UPA introduced limited
____animation; H&B flattened it out.

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- There’s another great Tom Hachtman image on the Kaliyuga Theater site for Al Carmines‘s play, In Circles about Getrude Stein. Tom, of course, draws the Gertrude’s Follies comic strip. This watercolor was done for Carmines. Tom sent it to me, and how could I pass up posting it?

I’m almost tempted to buy a ticket to the show.

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- Let’s talk about the breaking of joints. No, I haven’t entered Tony Sopranoland. This is an animation blog, so I’m obviously talking about the animation principle that deals with the “breaking of joints” to create any arcs or curves in animation. All human action is controlled by this method of movement. A body can only bend at joints – knees, wrists, elbows etc. Any other break is artificial and verboten in trying to make your character seem real. Any animator of the human form would swear by it.

Here’re four pages from Dick Williams’ book which illustrate the principle. Though if you look at his book – all those walks, all those bent wrists – this is one of the backbones of Dick’s training/education.

1 2
___(Click any image to enlarge.)
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3 4

This is something I learned early on – long before I entered the business professionally.
I wasn’t sure it was spelled out in the Preston Blair book and went back to see, but it wasn’t. I don’t know where I originally read about it, but I must have somewhere – probably one of those old animation books I’d borrow from the library.

I’m sure they created it when animators at Disney in the early 30′s decided to get rid of the rubber-hose animation they’d been doing. It was a bit of rebellion. They followed the natural rules of physics. Today anything other than this would be the rebellion.

The one guy who broke this rule, and is just about idolized for it today, is Jim Tyer. His many distortions and odd working of his characters was an end in itself. This is probably what I liked about him.

I’ve always seen animation as a way to caricature life not to recreate it.
Sidenote: This is why I don’t like most cgi films. They’re just trying to reproduce their form of life. Sure, Surf’s Up got those waves down pat; it’s almost perfect. Unless, of course, you’re looking for them to say something about waves rather than realistically rendering them and their movement.
Sorry, I respect it, but it’s like super-realistic painting done today; I have difficulty getting into it.

Animation is drawn. Drawing invites nonsense – even in the most serious of situations.
Tyer uses his graphic distortions to make scenes funny. In Fritz the Cat he handled some serious scenes with a quieter distortion, though it’s there just the same. It’s the acknowledgement that we’re watching an animated film that gets me charged. I like being in the moment and outside of it all at the same time.

Does that make sense?

Lyle Lyle Crocodile was about a housekeeping, dancing crocodile that shares his house with a child. When his original owner comes to take Lyle away, the child gets upset, sings a song of remorse and cries. Lyle hides in a broom closet while the child sings from the other side of the door. I chose to view this as a cartoon. For god’s sake, it’s a cartoon crocodile that dances! For anyone who wants to see it, I’m mocking the situation. Visions of candy canes and ice cream cones dance around the croc’s head as he remembers the good days. I asked the composer to use a harmonica and a saxophone to pull the tears. Every time I see the scene I laugh hysterically. Most audiences don’t see this, and they weep for the boy and his pet.

This is what I love. Something for me and something for people who don’t want that extra bit of separation. It’s actually a hard thing to pull off, but it’s great when you do.

The same bit is true about the breaking of joints. In every film, I go out of my way to break that rule and see if it’s noticeable. I’m not even trying to be as blatant as Jim Tyer. To be honest, I don’t think it is noticeable, although I see it every time. Tissa David hates when I do such things, but I can’t help it. I love the graphic distortions animation encourages, but I also love the rules of behaviour that help me tell staid stories. Hey, it’s great being the boss of me.

- Reviewing the career of Lu Guarnier, yesterday, I saw the title, The Mouse and His Child. This Russell Hoban book is an absoulte gem – a GREAT book. The film wasn’t quite its equal, but because the story is so brilliant, the film isn’t bad. Too bad they cut the last third of the book out of the film and ended the story early. Hoban told me that he hated what they did to his book, but I still like it.

The film was done by Sanrio, a Japanese company that made all their money on Hello Kitty products. They produced two features in the US. Metamorphosis and The Mouse and His Child. Both films failed at the box office.

However, The Mouse and His Child, directed by Fred Wolf and Chuck Swenson, has some real charm. There are small glimmers of exciting animation throughout the film.

I don’t really know who did any of it. Corny Cole, obviously, did the big closing animated zoom of the film. I sought out the work of one animator I liked, and it turned out to be Vincent Davis. It was the first work I saw by him, and I’m still charmed by it.

Here’s a small walk at the beginning of the film. Lots of shape shifting in the assisting, but there’s something nice about it, too. I don’t know who animated it.

1 2
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5 6

7 8

910

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I like this film; I’ll probably have a bunch more to say about it eventually.

- I received word late yesterday that Lu Guarnier had died December 29th. He had been in poor health for some time, living at a nursing home in Marlborough, Mass. Lu was someone I considered a friend for years while I worked within the industry; we worked together for John Hubley, Phil Kimmelman and R.O. Blechman. He had a unique, rough, drawing style that was certainly a challenge for an assistant animator.

He once told me that his father took pleasure in naming him Lucifer B. Guarnier, and you can guess what the “B” stands for. He also enjoyed his annual trips back to LA where he still had a lot of friends._______Lu at WB.

Lu had started at Warner Bros. in the 30’s and told me many funny stories about working in Clampett’s unit. He started as inbetweener to Clampett and worked his way up to animator. $12 a week. He once told me of the “hurt” jokes that were enormously popular for a short period back in the day. How “hurt” was he?
Well, as an inbetweener, he was the last to receive some animation that Clampett had done in a particular Porky Pig cartoon. An axe was falling on Porky and at the very last moment, he was saved from the blade falling on him. Lu, for a joke – a “hurt” joke – decided to continue the animation with Porky being cut in two as an alternate ending that he sent to PT. After they watched the dailies, they could watch the alternate – the correct version. Well, it just so happened that that was the day Leon Schlesinger was making the rounds. The fresh dailies arrived and the assembled animation crew watched Porky cut in two. Leon turned to director, director to Clampett, Clampett to the lowly inbetweener who squirmed his way out of the room. Lu expected to be fired, but wasn’t; they all laughed after he’d left the room.

Tissa David told me that the UPA studio was one long space that was divided into cubicles. She called them “stalls” like horses would occupy at a racetrack. Grim Natwick, Tissa and Jack Schnerk shared the third cubicle. The only one who had a window was Lu Guarnier; he shared his space with Vince Cafarelli, his assistant.

Lu was always a natty dresser, with a fine jacket, slacks and a bow tie. He gave me quite a few little gems that I’ve featured on this site. My favorite included the WB Christmas card filled with caricatures by Tee Hee. Lu, on one of his LA jaunts, had it signed by everyone he met. Tex Avery, Bob Clampett, Chuck Jones, Friz Freleng, both McKimsons. Even Hanna and Barbera. It’s a treasure, and I think Lu always regretted giving it to me. He often asked about it.
___________(Click image to enlarge.)

I’ve missed him since he went into the nursing home, after his wife died. Now, knowing he’s no longer there, I’ll miss him even more. He was a gem of a guy.

I have some drawings for a couple of scenes Lu animated. I’ll try to post one or two of them in the next week or so.

- I continue, here, my posting of the two boards filled with artwork from Dumbo’s Pink Elephants sequence, there’s a lot of delightful artwork.

Again, the photos I have, graciously loaned to me by John Canemaker, are smaller than I’d like. (You can get an idea, by clicking on the image to the right, as to how dense the boards are.)

I’ve scanned them at a decent resolution and have broken them up into smaller panels so that you can enlarge them to a viewable size. I’ve had to piece the photos together to keep them in order, so it’s been a bit time consuming. However, I think the boards are worth it. Again, I’ve interspersed some frame grabs from the final film to show how it ended up in color.

The following images were in the gallery part of the dvd. These are the color versions of some of the images above.

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