Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

- I have quite a bit of artwork from the film, Raggedy Ann & Andy: A Musical Adventure, the 1976 feature film by Dick Williams. Hence, it’s always an easy decision to post some of it. Unfortunately, every animation drawing is so large, it takes a lot of time to scan and put it together.

Here are two pieces that were I first posted in October 2006 with a healthy focus on one indomitable artist:

____________(Click any image to enlarge.)

I think in many ways, the unsung hero of Raggedy Ann was Corny Cole. He was there from day one working with Dick Williams and Tissa David – once the one minute pilot had secured the job for Dick. Corny was brought in as the key designer, and Gerry Potterton came on as Dick’s Associate Director.

I was hired soon thereafter, even though I had no idea what I’d be doing. For the first couple of weeks, while they were recording, I just moved furniture and read the script and whiled away the time by drawing Johnny Gruelle‘s characters.

I helped Dick and Gerry add spot coloring to the storyboard as the animatic was being shot. We spent a long Saturday coloring like mad with colored pencils. We worked on the last section of the animatic to be shot. I’d say 90% of the board was done by Corny. Dick and Gerry added spot drawings as needed, while we built the animatic.

Corny then did lots and lots and lots of drawings to give to animators.
Some of those drawings are posted herein for a scene at the beginning of the “taffy pit” sequence. These drawings were also used in the animatic.

After Corny finished feeding the animators, he started animating, himself. He took on a sequence that filled the screen with a pirate ship full of dolls floating around some rough waters. The large sheets of paper were filled with Corny’s black bic pen lines. Doug Compton eventually worked with Corny to finish this overworked sequence.

- John Celestri sent me a clipping from the Cincinnati Enquirer re the kidnapping of Ann & Andy. Hence, I am prompted to post the following layouts and storyboard drawings by Corny Cole.

This first Layout marks the introduction of Raggedy Andy. He’s under the box. This drawing gives you a good idea of the detail Corny put into every drawing.

The following images come from the first shots of the Pirate Captain. He espys the new doll, Babette, and falls madly in love.

The first four stills are 8.5×14 copies of the storyboard; the remainder come from the director’s workbook. They’re all sequential.

I think the parrot, which was added in pencil, is the work of Asst. Director, Cosmo Anzilotti. The bird just shows up later, so Cosmo probably tried to give him some business.

It’s here that the Pirate goes into his song (everybody sings in this film) and concocts his plot to kidnap the French doll.

- Emily Hubley‘s first feature film has made it into the New Directors:New Films series at MOMA in conjunction with the Lincoln Center Film Society.

The Toe Tactic is 2/3 live action and 1/3 animation. Emily directed both parts of the film and wrote it as well.

The film’s stars include: John Sayles, Marian Seldes, Eli Wallach, Andrea Martin, and Mary Kay Place.

The short synopsis found on line is: In this hybrid of live-action and animation, a young woman grieves for her father while unaware of the magical world around her.

A review appeared in the Austin Chronicle when the film played as part of the South by Southwest Festival.

The film will play:
______Sat Mar 29: 6:00pm (Walter Reade Theater)
______Mon Mar 31: 9:00pm (MoMA)

- I was pleased to have received word that the great Gerald Potterton will be awarded the Pulcinella Lifetime Achievement Award from the 12th Annual Cartoons on the Bay International Festival of Television Animation in Salerno, Italy.

The award is presented each year to “a prestigious personality of the world of cinema and television animation,” will be given to Gerry during the awards ceremony on April 12th. Previous recipients of the Lifetime Achievement Award include Italian animator Bruno Bozzetto, Roy E. Disney, and Bill Hanna & Joe Barbera.

I met Gerry on Raggedy Ann when I first started in a very big office with almost no one as yet hired. I spent a great Saturday with Gerry and Dick Williams coloring storyboard drawings mostly drawn by the brilliant Corny Cole. The drawings were being fed to, cameraman, Al Kouzel to shoot an animatic on 35mm film. It was a funny day, and I was in heaven working with Dick and Gerry for a solid Saturday.

Both Gerry and Dick were part of the Grasshopper Group in England back in the 50′s (along with the likes of Bob Godfrey, George Dunning and Stan Hayward. They’d known each other for quite some time and were close. I was the odd man out, but couldn’t have enjoyed the company more – with questions aplenty that I snuck in during the day.

During Raggedy Ann, I’d let Gerry know that I wanted desperately to see a film he’d done in 1969, Pinter People. This was a documentary about Harold Pinter and his characters, showing the varied places that his characters inhabited: the parks, the pubs, the places. The films includes Pinter talking about these characters and includes five animated segments (about 45 mins of animation) from Pinter’s short plays. It is truly one of the first adult animated films built around words. Gerry brought me a 16mm copy to view, and I returned it immediately.

I couldn’t be more pleased to see him receive this award, and I don’t think there is anyone more deserving. Congratulations, Gerry.

Here’s the part of the press release that was sent which includes Gerry’s bio, for those who are unfamiliar with Mr. Potterton’s distinguished career.

Few Canadian film careers have been as colorful as that of British-born writer, director, producer and animator Gerald Potterton. In a career spanning over fifty years, he has worked on dozens of live action and animated films, including the classic British animated feature Animal Farm and the Beatles’ Yellow Submarine. He left the National Film Board to start up Potterton Productions, the largest film production house in Canada at the time, but he is best known as the director of the cult classic, Columbia Pictures release Heavy Metal, which was released in 1980. He directed the great American silent film comedian Buster Keaton in a National Film Board live-action short, The Railrodder, for which he was awarded a Buster for “film excellence in the Buster Keaton tradition” in 2002 at the annual Buster Keaton Celebration in Iola, Kansas.

In 1998, Potterton was selected as one of the “Ten Men Who Rocked the Animation World” at the first World Animation Celebration in Pasadena, California. His prolific career has been honored with retrospectives at North American film festivals from Ottawa to Seattle.

- There’s a brand new site debuting today, and I’m pleased to say that my studio had a small part in seeing it off and running. Abe Levitow was an animator and director whose work I’ve long admired. I met his daughter, Judy Levitow, during the production of Raggedy Ann and Andy, and I really enjoyed her friendship. So many years later, she contacted me to ask about our sites and their design and told me that her family was hoping to put up a site to honor her father. The end result was that Matthew Clinton, a key animator in my studio, worked with Roberta Levitow in putting together the new site www.abelevitow.com, ______________ Chuck Jones and Abe Levitow
for the family, Judy, Roberta and Jon Levitow.
Darrell Van Citters was principal in organizing the archival material. As of today the site’s operational and in full swing.

The site includes lots of photos, artwork and information about Abe Levitow’s life and career.

For those of you who are not familiar with his work, Abe Levitow started at Leon Schlesinger’s studio where he worked for years, breaking only for work in the Signal Corps during World War II. He animated key sequences of What’s Opera Doc, Robin Hood Daffy and Broom-stick Bunny. He joined UPA where he was an animation director on 1001 Arabian Nights with Magoo, and he directed Magoo’s Christmas Carol and the feature Gay Purr-ee.

He worked with Chuck Jones at MGM where he directed a number of the Tom & Jerry shorts as well as co directing The Phantom Tollbooth with Jones.

Abe Levitow’s animation for Richard Williams was key to Dick’s films. On The Christmas Carol his animation of the ghost of Christmas Present revealing the two waifs “want” and “ignorance” under his robe is the finest scene in that fine film. (I suddenly realize that he is probably the only artist to have worked on both the Magoo Christmas Carol and Williams’ Christmas Carol.)
He died in 1975 at age 53.

This new site also announces the soon-to-be-published book by Darrell Van Citters about the making of Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol.

- Back during the production of Raggedy Ann, in New York, there was an Assistant Animator named, Duane Ullrich, whose company I enjoyed much. He came from the West (I’m thinking maybe Oklahoma, but I honestly can’t remember) and had a lot of amusing comments. One that stuck with me was his surprise in finding “black snow” in New York. He thought that this might be one of the most interesting things he’d seen here.

This thought occurs to me every year that it snows in New York. Last week, we had one of our first real snowfalls this year. Within a day the snow was disappearing. When I saw the “black snow” I decided to share some images with you.

These were all taken on a 20 block walk I made enroute to work. It was misting a hail-like rain while I shot. And cold.

(Click any image to enlarge.)__________

1_ 2
______Snow naturally sidles up to corners and crevices when it hits cement.

3_ 4
______Any object it can lean against is where to look for it.

5_ 6
___Curbs and news vending machines seem to be among the last places to find snow.

7_ 8
_Of course, once you enter a park there’s plenty of snow, but it stays fresh and white.

9_10
_Here are a couple of trees and shrubs and bushes collecting snow – not quite black yet.

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___These steel trees stood tall through the winter storm and didn’t collect a lot of snow.
___However, they’ve started taking them down. I guess the loan of these art pieces has
___come to an end. (Or else they’ve found some rust.)

- For years, I’ve been intrigued by the two Alice In Wonderland animated features that were released almost simultaneously.

I first saw the Disney feature in B&W on the Disneyland television show when I was a child. It appeared in a truncated form edited down to the one hour format (which was probably around 54 minutes at the time.) They repeated this TV version several times, even after the show moved from ABC to NBC.
I didn’t get to see it in a theater in color until the mid 70′s.

I saw the Lou Bunin version one Sunday afternoon on local NY television in an unadvertised presentation. It took a very different approach. The live action opening was severely edited in that TV version. I saw it projected once in the Museum of Modern Art. (There’s an excellent site that I located about this film which features lots of color stills.)

I had a conversation with animator, Jack Schnerk, during the Raggedy Ann production. He’d worked on Bambi as an assistant and told me that they rushed the last half hour of that production to get it out within the final six months. We were talking about Disney features when he told me that Alice was the last Disney feature he saw. He sat through half of it, he said, before walking out. All he could think was what a waste of talent and effort. All those drawings!
He then said, he saw the Bunin version of Alice soon thereafter (they did open within a week of each other) and felt that THAT’s what Disney should have done!

I did a little reading this week and came upon this article from the NY Times, October 8, 1946.

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There was another article from 1953 that I’m not posting. Disney took the Bunin film to court trying to suppress the film’s release. The article seems to side with Disney, but the judge didn’t. He lost the attempt to block the puppet film.

Then I decided to look at reviews. Both films had negative reviews from Bosley Crowther. Both were in the same week’s issues.

First the Bunin film reviewed July 27, 1951.

Here’s the negative review of Disney’s film from July 30, 1951.

I posted this cel two years ago. It was from a scene Richard Williams animated for his Christmas Carol. The drawing was done on cel not on paper with a mars omnichrome pencil. Hence, the inking is Dick’s, as well.

David Nethery has posted a cel from Abe Levitow’s sequence – probably my favorite scene in the film comes from this sequence. The scene where Christmas Present moves back his robe to reveal the two children – “ignorance” and “want”. I think I disappointed Dick when I told him this years ago and hadn’t named one of his scenes. Given the way Dick worked on Raggedy Ann, I’d guess he did the cleanup on these scenes as well.

- I apologize for the server problems we had yesterday. Our site was down for most of the day. If you haven’t seen yesterday’s post, just scroll down.

- Jack Schnerk‘s daughter, Mary Schnerk Lincoln, has put three of her father’s commercial sample reels onto YouTube . This gives me a good excuse to call attention to his work, once again. There are a number of well-known and collector’s item commercials in these reels. Included are spots designed by the likes of Gahan Wilson, Tomi Ungerer, Charles Saxon and Rowland Wilson.

Jack Schnerk was a great animator who deserves considerably more attention. He was a strong influence on me in the first eight years of my career and taught me quite a few large principles about the business. He also told me a few stories of his work as an assistant at Disney’s on Bambi and Dumbo as well as the great times animating at UPA and the difficulties of animating at Shamus Culhane’s studio. Actually, he didn’t tell me about his problems with Shamus; another animator did. Jack complained about the business, but never about how he was treated.

I wish I had more samples of the many scenes of his that I assisted. He worked in a very distinct style – I don’t think I’ve seen anyone elseever draw that way. Somehow, the very rough drawings weren’t hard to clean up, and he didn’t leave the bulk of the work for the people following him. He was concerned about the timing and did every drawing he needed to make sure that timing worked. Most of the time we worked together, he had no chance to see pencil tests. Only on Raggedy Ann did he have that luxury.

Jack had a dark side, that I appreciated, but he also brought a lightness and individual sensibility to the work he did. He took chances in his animation and timing and sometimes failed but usually succeeded with them. That’s more than I’ll say for most of the animators I’ve met in the business.

See Jack Schnerk sample reel 1.

Jack Schnerk Sample reel 2.

Jack Schnerk Sample reel 3.

There are a lot of animation events around my world today.

- The MP Academy is holding their screening for the animated shorts that are eligible for __nomination. The program starts at 11:30 today and will go for the length of the films (with
__a break for lunch.) I’m assuming I won’t be done with that until 7PM. I expect that the
__films will be as they usually are:
____There are the great ones that undeniably should be nominated.
____There are those that are just good and do not stand up.
____There are those that you can’t wait to get on with it. The dull.
__Since I don’t know how many films, nor any of the titles to be screened, I’ll report on this
__screening after the fact.

- In LA, there’s the Raggedy Ann reunion. Jim Hill has a great article on this in case you’d
__like to know more about it. They will show a 35mm print of the film (thanks to Mark
__Kausler) and will chat about the experience of working on the film. It was intended that
__we would have a NY version of the event at the same time so that the Raggedy people
__in NY could feel as though they were a part of it. However, given the long
__Academy screening scheduled for us, given the lack of a suitable copy of the film to
__screen, and given the lack of a space to hold the event, it’s obvious we weren’t able to
__have it here. The timing isn’t right, I guess. Raggedy Ann, the film, always did suffer the
__fate of being an “also ran.”

__If you’re in LA, go to it. The film has moments worth seeing, and the chat should be fun.
_______Raggedy Ann & Andy Reunion
_______November 17th at 3pm
_______Mark Goodsen Auditorium
_______American Film Institute
_______2021 N. Western Bl
_______Hollywood, CA

– Nina Paley will hold a preview screening of her
__82 mins. feature film, Sita Sings The Blues.
__Nina says:”We’ll screen the whole 82-minute
__feature on DVD, then the 3-minute 35mm film
__test of “Battle of Lanka,” so you can see just how
__gorgeous it looks on film.”

__Saturday, November 17, 7:00 pm and 9:00pm
__NYU Tisch School of the Arts
__room 006, (lower level)
__721 Broadway
____between Waverly Place and Washington Place
__New York City
__Free!

__If you want to attend the New York screening,
__please RSVP with “Sita NY” in the subject, to:
_______Nina_Paley@Yahoo.com.

__Space is limited, and priority will be given to
__those with names on the list. This is just a sneak preview;
__“the bigger and better genuine premiere will happen in 2008.”

__The 7pm show is full, so you probably should expect to go to the 9pm show if you’d like
__to see it.

Finally, I’d like to direct you to the monthly column in today’s NYTimes by cartoonist, James Stevenson. His work is just about my favorite these days, and this piece is excellent. It’s called “Balloons Over Broadway” and tells the story of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.

- While working on Raggedy Ann and being somewhat close with Richard Williams when he was in town, I was amused by something that happened early on.

Dick was in and out often recording and editing the voice track. A lot of time was spent in the rehearsal studios in the Broadway/theatrical of town. (That was about three blocks away from the studio.) In an elevator ride up to the rehearsal space, Dick overheard a large black man in the elevator. I believe he was a delivery guy, maybe a messenger.

Dick popped up in a flash. He immediately asked the guy if he had ever done any acting. No? Well, Dick hired him on the spot to be the voice of the leader of the One Eyes. His voice was incredibly deep and dark.

Within the week, Dick had rerecorded the lines. (Another actor had done him in England, and Dick was looking for something better.) To be honest, I’m not sure if this was actually the final voice used in the film (it could be), but the story was so entertaining to some fly-on-the-wall like me, that I remember it well.

After recording the piece, Dick did a thank you drawing for the guy. I made a xerox. This is that copy done with drying magic markers.

___________(Click image to enlarge.)

Sites to point to:

- Hans Bacher has created a new addition to his Animation Treasures. We now have Animation Treasures III. Look forward to more of Hans’ beautiful background reconstructions taken from the films themselves. He’s opened a wonder in his displays. I still go back often to view the many of the backgrounds (specifically Mr. Bug) that he’s revealed to us.

- Once again, Rob Richards continues similar work on a variety of films on his site, Animation Backgrounds. The many Alice In Wonderland backgrounds are enormously attractive on their own.

- As if you haven’t already heard about it, let me point you in the direction of Bob Jaques‘ new site Popeye Animator ID. Bob is enlightening us on the world of a lot of unfamilair animators. We know their names from the many credits we’ve read, but Bob is analyzing and detailing scenes that these artists have created. Names like Frank Endres, George Germanetti and Lillian Friedman become real as Bob gives us a lot of information that doesn’t seem to be located anywhere else. I’m also looking forward to Bob’s writing about Johnny Gentilella. This was the first real animator I met in the business and someone who helped me along the way. I’m always ready to hear more about Johnny Gent.

For this post alone (take a real good look at the tree) I’m grateful to Bob and his new site.

– Bee Movie opened today, and received mixed reviews in New York. The reviews I’ve read paint a brash, colorful, jokey sort of film, which makes it sound not unlike many animated films we’ve seen in the recent past. Who would have expected otherwise? The film gets a 50% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. I guess I’d call that mixed reviews. The feature in this film, I guess, is Jerry Seinfeld’s sardonic sense of humor. Perfect for the child in all of us.

Jack Mathews of the NYDaily News said:

If the movie proves anything, it’s that computers have gone past the ability to simply reproduce hues and tints and can now give the entire spectrum previously unperceived depth.

Kids are going to adore looking at this movie, living in it, flying through and above its brilliant landscape. It’s an animated joyride over a relief map of Manhattan.

I just wish the script was as good as the paint.

A.O.Scott in the NY Times writes a generally positive review with these few lines I’d like to point out:

The DreamWorks Animation formula, exemplified in the mighty “Shrek” franchise (and imitated by would-be rivals at Sony and Fox), is to charm the children with cute creatures and slapstick action while jabbing at the grown-ups with soft, pseudosophisticated pop- cultural satire. “Bee Movie,” directed by Simon J. Smith and Steve Hickner and animated by several hundred industrious drones, pushes this strategy almost to the point of dispensing with the kid stuff altogether.

There are a few splendid cartoon set pieces … that show off the latest computer animation techniques. But most of the film’s creative energy is verbal rather than visual, and semimature rather than strictly juvenile.

There was an ASIFA East screening of this film on Tuesday. However, I chose to see another mediocre movie, American Gangster, on that date. I won’t get to see Bee Movie until next Tuesday, and maybe I’ll comment on it on Wednesday next.

- Tissa David did some of her most elaborate and fluid animation in Raggedy Ann and Andy. Her first scene to animate (after the pilot) was the introduction to her song number. This scene was a whopping long one and was particularly elaborate. It was also the first whole scene put into production.

The cameraman Al Rezek constructed a makeshift multiplane setup for it. This was a bit difficult to do in Panavision, but he did it. There had to be an ominous shadow of a bush overlapping the pair of dolls as they entered the deep dark woods. The scene must have been shot a dozen or more times until we were happy with it.

I have all the drawings to this scene, rough and clean up. There are a lot of them. I’ll post a couple of Tissa’s roughs here to give you an idea of the scene. Dick Williams cleaned it up, himself, and it took him a while. In a future posting, when I have more energy I’ll post more of the roughs against Dick’s clean ups.

I’m also posting some frame grabs from a bad pirated dvd version I have of the film.

(Click any image to enlarge.)

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