Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

- New Yorkers seem to have given themselves over to the tennis matches being held at the US Open in nearby Flushing, Queens. For those who couldn’t get tickets, American Express has taken over Madison Square Park at 23rd Street and Park Ave and set up a faux arena to view the matches. They offer everything you want to know about the matches including a big screen TV, portable rest rooms, bleacher viewing stands, and even vendors selling high priced wine.

I took some photos yesterday afternoon. (Click any of them to enlarge.)

As you enter the park from 23rd Street, you come upon a small area wherein this large board greets you with the full schedule and all the results to date.

Here you can also buy T-shirts and goods (left) or take tennis lessons (right). Earlier in
the week they had a larger set-up where you could actually play a round or two.

As you move toward the main section of the park, you see lots of picnicking people laying about in the humid sunny weather. The big screen TV is just visible in the distance behind the steel trees.

Once you arrive at the center of the action, on the North side of the park, there are bleachers constructed for people to watch the TV screen.

The bleachers are on the right and left of the screen. Lots of other people sitting on the ground all around the TV screen.

Many people sit between the two sets of bleacher stands within what is usually a reflecting pool. It’s interesting how contained and quiet it all is.

A group of tents has been set up to sell food. Sandwiches and drinks, for the most part.
It looks upscale enough that I’d assume the prices were high.

There were about five tents of food, all of which looked similar to me. These tents were placed near some beautiful flowers in an attractive setting.

Wine and beer seemed to be the principal item for sale.

Just to the rear of the screen, things were significantly quieter.

There, 20 feet away from the action, the resident homeless crowd were having their own party. Squirrels were running everywhere feasting on their own goodies.

On the way out, I passed a number of generators that were rendering the power for the whole operation. Not much of a tennis fan, I left in time to watch the Yankees beat up on
the Kansas City Royals.

Eddie Fitzgerald had an excellent piece on his site this week about the Yiddish Theater. Most people have forgotten the theatrical heritage that came out of that form. The immigrants to America brought a theatrical treasure with them. In New York, Second Avenue housed dozens of theaters that entertained a very large audience with hundreds of plays. The shows, of course, were all performed in Yiddish. These shows were not only in Manhattan but in the outer boroughs as well.

Many performers stepped out of Yiddish Theater into stardom, but there were also many directors, writers, composers and designers that emerged as well to create the history of the mainstream theater.

My favorite set designer, Boris Aronson, a Russian immigrant, designed for the Yiddish Unser Theater in the Bronx. He took his position as an opportunity to introduce Constructivist designs to audiences. New art was entering America at the popular level, and it was accepted.

Aronson did quite a number of set pieces and costume designs before moving over to the mainstream, English-speaking theater. He became the foremost designer on Broadway designing the original productions of many shows such as Cabin In The Sky, Bus Stop, The Crucible, and Awake and Sing. His later work included Cabaret, Fiddler On The Roof, Company, Follies and Zorba.

Here are a few examples of the work he did for the Yiddish Theater.

(Click any image to enlarge.)

The above three images are from Aronson’s first production. The Constructivist designs were for Ansky’s production of Day and Night (1924).

The allegorical plays of the Yiddish theater often featured Heaven and Hell. Here, Aronson designed a “a concert hall in the skies of hell.” The show was Maurice Schwartz’ production of “Angels on Earth” for the Yiddish Theater in 1929.

The show “The Bronx Express” required a subway car (pictured left) with advertising cards. A tired buttonmaker on his way home from work dreams that these ads come to life. (pictured right)

In the same show, the buttonmaker dreams of a beach resort boardwalk. Aronson keeps the ceiling of the subway car intact for this set.

- Fantasia continues. Or at least my posts of art cribbed from the Simon & Schuster 1940 book by Deems Taylor, “Fantasia.”
Though I’m not the biggest Fantasia fan, I have to admit that I like looking at these pictures on my site.

Today I’m putting up the images in the book from The Nutcracker Suite. Not all of them are inspired, but they’re all worth it for the one of the milkweeds falling among the autumn colored leaves.

(Click any image to enlarge.)

– I need not tell you that I’m a fan of the work of Errol LeCain. I have a good collection of his illustrated books.

To remind you, he’s the artist who led the design and stylization of the BG’s for Dick Williams’ Cobbler and the Thief feature. He worked at Dick’s Soho Square studio until his death. Something in his style always held me captive. I suspect this is what initially drew me to Richard Williams‘ work.

I’ve gotten my hands on this 1976 “Puffin’s Pleasure” book. It’s sort of a sampler of piece by the artists and writers who’ve done many of Puffin’s books. (Puffin is the children’s book division of Penguin Books.)

Within this book, Errol LeCain has a three page spread. The first image below covers the first page of his piece. This is all the text the article gives us.

I’ve done a number of posts featuring LeCain’s art.
You can view them here:

____The Snow Queen_______________-____Aladdin
____Growltiger_________________________Thorn Rose
____Pied Piper of Hamelin_______________12 Dancing Princesses
____Have You Seen My Sister____________Hiawatha’s Childhood

- Just for my own amusement here are a couple of setups from Dick Williams’ film,
The Cobbler and the Thief. Errol LeCain did the backgrounds.

Thanks to Garrett Gilchrist for these images.______

If you haven’t seen Jaime Weinman‘s article on Ed Benedict (actually Amid Amidi’s Animation Blast article with some stills added), check it out.

– We all know that Snow White was the first Hollywood animated feature. Many of us also know that Lotte Reiniger directed the very first animated feature in 1926, Prince Achmed. (This film is occasionally shown on TCM, though it’s not scheduled within the next 3 months.)

Some others of us may also know that Alexander Ptushko directed the first animated puppet feature, The New Gulliver in Russia.

This 68 min. film is discussed in that history of Russian puppet animation book, My Puppet Friends, which I described and featured last week. It’s a film which isn’t very well known in the West, although its title has been a part of my liturgy of animation history since I was a child. Only once in my memory, can I recollect a public screening in NY, and I wasn’t able to attend it. Presumably, with dvd it’s going to be available soon – if not already.

By all accounts, this must be a somewhat difficult film to sit through. Even this book, My Puppet Friends, tells how they chose to change the Jonathan Swift story since, obviously, no one could relate to his political critique of the capitalist 18th Century England under King George III.

Per all commentaries I’ve read, the Russian film makers chose, instead, to make it a polemic espousing the Marxist beliefs of their day. Since this poiint seems to show up in every criticism of the film, one can only assume they wield a heavy hand in their interpretation.

There is also, often, strong criticism of the puppetry in the film comparing it unfavorably to the work of Ladislas Starevich. That’s understandable given the amazing talents of that artist, who was working in France at the time of this film’s production, 1935.

The New Gulliver was actually a combination of live action and puppet animation. Peter, a young boy, falls asleep and awakens to find himself bound to the ground by all his dolls. Thus he is thrown into a variation of Swift’s story.

Here are the rest of the illustrations for The New Gulliver which are included in this 1971 book, My Puppet Friends.

If anyone knows how to get a copy of this film, I’d appreciate hearing about it.

Hubley’s street scene from the film, Dig

- The website Ironic Sans has a great series going entitled Animated Manhattan. They’re commenting on all the animated films that use Manhattan as a backdrop. They’ve gone through many films from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles to Fritz the Cat from Sundae In New York to the animated titles for Conan O’Brien.

Images from Hubley’s short film, The Hole

Off the top of my head I can think of another half dozen films they could analyze, so I assume this series will continue for a while, and I’m glad about that. It’s a good idea.
Thanks to Animated News for pointing the way.

Gregorio Prestopino’s Harlem from Hubley’s short film, Harlem Wednesday

– Since I presented some photos of Yurij Norstein yesterday, I thought today I’d call attention to several pieces about him on line.

His short film adapted from a haiku by the Japanese poet Bashō is on YouTube. This was a project done for an compilation animation feature. Go here to view it if you haven’t. Actually, you should see it again if you have seen it.

Then take some time to read the excellent interview with Norstein about this film.

Follow this by watching a short commercial Norstein directed/animated.

Of course, if you really want to do justice to this great artist, you should view (not on YouTube but on DVD) Tale of Tales. And watch it a couple of times to really get the brilliance. This DVD also includes all of his other films (which are equally brilliant.)

The Norstein DVD also includes a 15 minute documentary about his work and his work methods. This has been placed on YouTube in two parts. It includes several shots of him working on his multiplane camera set-up.
Here’s part 1
and part 2

There’s also a wonderful book by Clare Kitson, Yuri Norstein And Tale of Tales: An Animator’s Journey. It’s an inspired and inspirational book. Especially if you know the film.

I highly recommend it.

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– Back in 1985, master Russian director, Feodor Khitruk, escorted the brilliant animator/director, Yurij Norstein, on a trip to New York.
My friend, Charles Samu, who was playing host to them on the trip, asked if I’d like them to visit my studio. I suggested a breakfast meeting so that I could call in a couple of additional people who would like to attend. Specifically, I was thinking of Tissa David who was an enormous fan of Norstein’s film, Tale of Tales.

I must admit I was over the top since Norstein was nothing short of a hero to me. His film had completely changed my thoughts on animation and its importance in the world. I find his film the answer to anyone who questions whether animation can live up to what live action can do. The answer now is, YES. (Of course, I haven’t seen anything remotely comparable to this 1978 film since seeing it – despite the invention of the computer.)

In short, I think it’s a GREAT film of the highest order.

So they came, and here are some photos of the meeting.

My studio, at the time, was on 38th Street off Fifth Avenue. This is facing a windowed
wall we had that looked out onto the rear of the building. (You could see the Empire State Building from there.) The studio also had a large skylight overhead. Liz Seidman works to the Left and Greg Perler, my editor, works to the Right (far in front of Liz.)

Norstein (L) and Khitruk (R) arrived on time with Charles (taking the picture.)

We set a table full of lots of food, but I don’t think any of us were interested in eating.
L to R:Norstein, Khitruk, Tissa David, Greg Perler (standing in the back, editing), Lisa Crafts, me, Bridget Thorne (hands visible). Charles Samu sat opposite Lisa and took the pictures. Others were there but didn’t make Charles’ camera lens.

I had plenty of questions about Norstein’s style and production methods. He tried to respond, and Khitruk acted as the interpreter and had to draw his answer at one point.

I followed up by drawing my next question.

There was quite a conversation despite the fact that we were speaking two languages.
(And I don’t remember a word of what was said.)

Khitruk packs up as they prepare to leave.

Norstein and I exchanged little souvenirs of the meeting.

Tissa and I posed for a picture before the break up.

After everybody left, we got back to work. Bridget Thorne had to run an errand and
Liz Seidman & Mary Thorne went back to work on Lyle Lyle Crocodile.

I had an in-house meeting with Mark Sottnick (above), one of the producers of Santa Bear, which was also in production.

- I have a few Betty Boop drawings Grim Natwick had done in the mid Seventies. When he achieved a small bit of fame for animating this character, he was besieged with requests for drawings. He did a number of drawings to give to interviewers. These included some cels that he actually had inked and painted. Not all of these drawings and cels were handed out. Not all of them were good.

Until I run out of these drawings, I thought I’d post some of them, one a week. Maybe soon they’ll do a Betty dvd comparable to what they’ve done with Popeye and keeping her front and center might encourage someone. Here’s the earliest of the drawings I have, and I think it’s a good one.

(Click image to enlarge.)

James Stevenson has another of his wonderful op-ed commentaries in the NYTimes today. Take a look; this guy is one of my favorite writers/cartoonists/artists around. I love his work.

– Continuing to post some of the sketches from the Deems Taylor Fantasia book published by Simon & Schuster in 1940, I want to put the focus on the sketches from Night On Bald Mountain. It’s obvious that these are all paintings by Kay Nielsen. His style is uniquely distinctive.

The artwork is beautiful and powerful in its own oddly delicate way. The style became a bit more circular in the hands of Bill Tytla, but it never lost the power of its origins. It just became more emotional.

Hans Perk at A Film LA descibes the exhibit at the GL. Holtegaard museum near Copenhagen. Some of the Nielsen art for this sequence was displayed.

Here, then, are some of these images:

(Click any image to enlarge.)