Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

- As I mentioned a few weeks back, ASIFA/Hollywood is planning a reunion of the crew of Raggedy Ann to celebrate the 30th Anniversary of that film’s production. This ASIFA event will be at the American Film Institute in Hollywood on November 17th. It’s hoped that a simultaneous reunion can happen in New York City, but I still wonder about that coming together.

Regardless, this is good reason to post art from the film and keep posting it until the event.
Sooooooo . . .

Here are some animation drawings/ roughs by Corny Cole. His artwork is close to Johnny Gruelle’s originals. He, of course, was the film’s origninal designer, though I’m not sure how his designs related to the final screen picture.

Corny did every drawing (partial inbetweens) though I’m only posting extremes. All this art was done on paper 19″ x 10.5″ for Panavision proportions. (And this was the small paper we used.) Of course, there’s an animated zoom in the scene. It wouldn’t be a Corny Cole scene without it. Here are Corny’s extremes:

75
(Click any image to enlarge.)

77

81

85

90

91

93

99

100

101

104

105

112

114

- Steam is the secret energy that runs my city. There’s an article in a local paper called The Gotham Gazette which describes the system in full detail. It’s a good read, so I urge you to go there if you’re interested in further understanding the system.

Atop ground we get to see steam leaking out of sewers, see giant pipes spewing steam into the air, and read about exploding steam pipes that cause damage. (There was a recent explosion at 42nd Street near Grand Central Station. Another in Murray Hill, a couple of years back, destroyed a building and closed a city block for several weeks.)

We pass by these steampipes and stewing manhole covers without thinking about it. It’s like some primeval force out of the Rite of Spring hiding underground.
_
(Click any image to enlarge.)

For the times Con Edison is working on the system at specific locations, they construct barber-pole colored pipes which emit large bursts of steam into the air. That wonderful scent you get when walking into a dry cleaners often surounds these pipes.

Back when Raggedy Ann started, there was a very large construction and similar pipe steaming up the entire front of the Brill Building in which we were located. I seem to remember we were originally on the fourth floor, so any offices that faced the front of the building saw nothing more than steam flowing all day long.

Dick Williams had one such office; the conference room was another.

The steam would make a very loud SHUSSSHHH-ing sound as it flowed out. This was often accompanied by workers jackhammering their way underground.

There was a Saturday rush to complete the art for the rough animatic. Dick and Gerry Potterton and I were in the conference room for at least 8 hours madly coloring storyboard drawings with colored pencils. We had a great time laughing and joking and gossipping about everyone under the sun. I was a lowly Asst. Animator, but they treated me like an equal. It was fun, needless to say.

All day long that incessant SHUSSSHHH; all day long that steam flowing up and pass our large bank of windows. It was crazy-making.

Dick finally broke from a conversation we were having to scream out at the steam and the workers. He was sure that New York was ready to burst out and blow up underneath us. Gerry and I had a good laugh at the rant.
_

Obviously, not all of these pipes are striped in the Con Edison orange and white. I found
this black, short pipe.

_
You can see it coming out the sewer caps. Sometimes heavy, as in the left; sometimes
light, as in the right.

_
Often close to invisible. I had to go closer to see the steam coming out of this cap.

This truck trailer has been parked on Fifth Avenue and 8th Street for a while. Apparently Con Edison isn’t supplying all the steam needs for the city.

I found this guide to where things are underground. It gives a good, informative view of what’s flowing underneath us in this town. Maybe it will blow up someday.

- Aside from the usual models that came my way on Raggedy Ann and Andy: A Musical Adventure, I was privy to a lot of private notes, cartoons and comments by some of the upper echelon, and I have all the production charts and drafts (which I’ll spare you) so that I can verify any info I’m sharing. I’ve chosen a couple of items to post today just as curiosity pieces.

Part of my job on the film was overseeing special effects (shadows, stars, etc.).
Dick gave an improvised storyboard, during one of our meetings, in which he detailed
all the combination live action/animation shots. Listed to receive this item are Al Rezek,
our camera supervisor, and Cosmo Anzilotti, the Asst. Director of the film.

About six months into animation, crisis mode started to set into the production. It was w a y behind schedule, and they were constantly searching for ways to move things along. At one point it was decided that more clarification was essential so that everyone would share in the same knowledge. Dick Williams prepared the following document to define what the animators would be doing for the remainder of the project.

Needless to say things changed from this plan.

The animators listed in order are:
Tissa David, Art Babbitt, Spencer Peel, Hal Ambro, Charlie Downs, Gerry Chiniquy, John Kimball, Warren Batchelder, Tom Roth, Dick Williams, Emery Hawkins, John Bruno, Gerry Potterton, Crystal Russell, George Bakes, Willis Pyle, Doug Crane, Jack Schnerk, Corny Cole, Grim Natwick, Cosmo Anzilotti, and Art Vitello.

Not listed here is Irv Spence who did quite a bit of animation.

Grim Natwick wrote a note to Dick a couple of months after the start of animation commenting on some of the animation problems he saw. It was done very large on
16 fld animation paper. (Grim always seemed to write LARGE.)

Grim’s note ends with a personal comment to Tissa David. A note from mentor to student.
It just goes to show you can always get animation lessons no matter how old or important you are.
Stay humble.

Happy Birthday, George Herriman

– As I posted last Friday, to celebrate the 30th Anniversary of Raggedy Ann & Andy: the Musical, I’m going to post a bunch of artwork from this film. I’m not even sure much of this material is of interest to anyone but those who worked on the movie, but since I worked on it, I’m interested.

Here are a bunch of model sheets of the secondary characters. The film opens in a playroom, and lots of toys inhabit these first few minutes. They all suffer from the same problem – too much. There are too many lines, there were too many colors, there was too much flailing-about animation. It would have been better to keep it a bit quieter, but that was never the Dick Williams way.

Here they are, right off Xeroxed copies:

Most of these model sheets were pulled from completed animation. In the case of this
group shot, Dick Williams did these drawings in reworking Fred Helmich’s animation in
the “No Girl’s Toy” musical number.

I really have to encourage you to click these images to enlarge. Gramps is the
perfect example of the brilliant detail that Dick Williams put into his animation.

Both these Gramps model sheets represent separate scenes. Most of the key drawings
from the scenes were placed on these models.

Here’s the walk cycle of Gramps done by Spencer Peel and approved by Dick Williams.

Hal Ambro did the animation on the Babette character, at least in the opening of the film where it was good. Dick Williams did the clean-up and inbetweens, himself.

Dick’s clean-up did a stunningly brilliant job of locking in this character. I’m not quite sure we had anyone else on staff who could have done this character as well. Dick Williams is
an enormous talent, but it was too bad he was limited to inbetweening.

Maxi Fix-it was a nothing of a character, yet he involved endless energy in animation and clean-up. No wonder the film’s budget quadrupled during production, and it wasn’t enough.

Susie Pincushion was just another character who had 22 colors on her.

The drawings that were used for this preliminary model sheet were by designer, Corny Cole. What a talent! The character looks as though it could have fallen out of the oriiginal books by Johnny Gruelle. The life in each and every one of these drawings was solid gold. Too bad it ended up such a lifeless and annoying character when it finally hit the screen.

The clean up guide for the knight shows you what’s been lost.

Queasy was the parrot that sat on the Pirate’s shoulder. Arnold Stang did his voice.

The animation of the pirate ship was split between Corny Cole and Doug Crane. I have
a couple of scenes done by Corny with his Bic pen animation. Someday I’ll post some of these drawings, but it’ll be a big chore to do it. Each drawing is so large that it’ll take three scans for each one and will require photoshop reconsrtuction. Lotsa work.
But they’re beautiful drawings, so it’ll probably be worth it if I can find the time.

– Tom Sito‘s blog, yesterday, reminded me that it was the 30th anniversary of the release of Raggedy Ann & Andy:A Musical Adventure .

To quote Tom’s blog:
___ASIFA/Hollywood is planning
___to have a reunion of the crew of
___Raggedy Ann to celebrate the
___anniversary. It will be at the
___American Film Institute in
___Hollywood on November 17th.
___A simultaneous reunion will
___happen in New York City. A lot of wonderful people worked on this film, many getting
___their first start.

This gives me a good reason to post some artwork from this film in the next few months. So, excuse me if you find it annoying to see artwork from a second rate feature. However, this was a seminal film for a lot of talented people who got a chance to work along some of the masters.
Just check out this list of animators on the film:
_____Hal Ambro, Art Babbitt, George Bakes, John Bruno, Gerry Chiniquy,
_____Tissa David, Emery Hawkins, John Kimball, Chrystal (Russell) Klabunde,
_____Charlie Downs, Grim Natwick, Spencer Peel, Willis Pyle, Jack Schnerk,
_____Art Vitello, Carl Bell and Fred Hellmich left mid-production.

_____Gerry Potterton was the consulting Director.
_____Cosmo Anzilotti was the Asst. Director.
_____Corny Cole was the designer of the film.

These were some of the younger upstarts inbetweening and assisting:
_____Bill Frake, Jeffrey Gatrall, John Gaug, Eric Goldberg, Dan Haskett, Helen Komar,
_____Judy Levitow, Jim Logan, Carol Millican, Lester Pegues Jr, Louis Scarborough Jr,
_____Tom Sito, Sheldon Cohen and Jack Mongovan.

_____I supervised assistants and inbetweeners in NY,
_____Marlene Robinson did that job in LA.

If you don’t know who these people are, trust me they were the backbone of the business for many, many years prior to 1976.

In some ways I think this along with some of the Bakshi and Bluth films led directly toward the rebirth of animated features. There was a long dark period before it.

So to start with the artwork.

This is a scene which immediately follows the Pirate kidnapping Babette.

Here’s the storyboard for the two scenes. It’s a copy of
Corny Cole’s drawing from the director’s workbook.

This is Corny Cole’s layout for Sc. 1A.

Here we have Dick Williams’ reworking of the same pose.
Fred Hellmich originally animated this, but Dick Williams redid the entire sequence, and
Fred left the film.

Dick’s LO for Sc. 1B.

Cut back to Andy (as drawn by Dick Williams) for Sc. 2.

How small it all gets on a pan and scan video.

– After posting a piece last week about the Popeye statue in Chester, Ill., I received a letter from Mike Brooks. I found it interesting enough that I’m going to post it here with some images from goodies for sale at his store.

This is Mike Brooks in Chester, IL. I am the founder of the Official Popeye Fanclub (1989) – and editor of the club’s quarterly news-mag that we havebeen publishing for more than 18 years. I also write a local weekly newspaper column called, ‘Popeye 101′ – and have for more than a dozen years. ’101′ is published on the same newspaper page as our good friend, Hy Eisman’s ‘Popeye’ comic strip.

In 1994, my wife and I gave-up good jobs – moved to Chester, IL – bought Bill Schuchert’s ‘Opera House’ and sat-up the only Popeye shop and museum in the world (Spinach Can Collectibles). We have had visitors from all 50 states and more than 60 countries since we opened – and more than 5000 items to display. Besides E.C Segar being from Chester, Schuchert was the model for ‘Wimpy’ and acted as Segar’s boss at the Opera House. Dora Paskel – who ran a local general store – was the model for ‘Olive’. Frank Fiegel – a local custodian – was the model for ‘Popeye’.

The “Popeye’ statue turned 30 years old a few weeks ago. Sculptor – Robert Walker – now 85 – made a return and was the main speaker at a special event held in Segar Memorial Park. I was also honored to be asked to speak at this event.

‘Wimpy’ got his own granite statue last year next to our building. There will be an ‘Olive/Swee’pea/Jeep’ statue unveiled in just a few weeks at ‘Popeye Picnic’ (28th year). This is scheduled to happen – 8 September. Actor Paul Dooley who played ‘Wimpy’ in the 1980 Robert Altman film is also supposed to be here. He missed the dedication last year, but has promised a return. By the way – this is only the beginning for statues. ‘Bluto’ will be unveiled next year. An entire ‘character trail’ is being planned – as long as we have money volunteers.

Popeye may not be as visible as he once was – but I assure you____ Actor – Paul Dooley
he’s alive and well here in Chester.

Please visit our web-pages – shop and club – and the official picnic page. We are what some have called – “one of the world’s best kept secrets” – but the shop and the picnic each draw a big crowd year after year.

You can visit the Mike Brooks’ Popeye shop and buy some of these great items displayed above (for reasonable prices, I might add) by clicking here.

There’s also the site called Popeye’s Poop Deck that you might want to visit for more information about Popeye and his history.

(Click any of the images above to enlarge.)
________________________________________________

- Don Brockway has an interesting new blog well worth checking into.
. The report he did on Raggedy Ann & Andy is first rate and worth reading.
. However I loved the information he’s posted on Disney scores performed by British orchestras. There’re a lot of good arrangements of classsic Disney songs. The Silly Symphony pieces are excellent. A second one on early animation scores is equally good and includes a Popeye medley.

– Tomorrow, Wednesday, ASIFA East will have a program built around the two dvds we have in release this coming week.

We’ll show clips from the four films featured on the dvds as well as a bit of the documentaries made for the discs. Masako Kanayama, Jason McDonald, Ray Kosarin and Stephen MacQuignon, all of whom were among those who helped make the films, will join me on the the stage to talk about the energetic little studio we had at the time that made the films in a very short period.

We’ll view the art styles that went into making the shorts and the various techniques we used in the making. I’ll bring some of the art to demonstrate.

If you’re in the New York area, I encourage you to join us for the evening. It’s free.
School Of Visual Arts
209 East 23rd Street
(Bet. 2nd & 3rd Ave)
5th Fl, Rm 502
7 PM

A post I enjoyed this last week appeared on Eddie Fitzgerald‘s Uncle Eddie’s Theory Corner.
The thesis Eddie presented is that inbetweens should be more integral to the animated extremes than mere inbetweens. Exact inbetweens of an animator’s work is essentially artless. A close breakdown of a great example, Rod Scribner‘s scene from Bob Clampett‘s Porky Pig short, Kitty Cornered, is given.

The problems occur (as many of those who commented on Eddie’s site stated) when an inbetweener – generally someone relatively new to the profession – is given free reign on an animator’s scene.

At Raggedy Ann, where I supervised NY’s assistants and inbetweeners, we had one novice erase Jack Schnerk’s roughs because she didn’t like the way they looked. The she repaired them and started inbetweening. Fortunately, we were able to reconstruct Jack’s scene and have the scene re-inbetweened.

At Fleischer’s studio in the thirties, for the first weeks of the job, inbetweeners were made to draw exact halves between two lines. Over and over and over and over and over.

Rod Scribner obviously had similar working methods that I was taught by Tissa David. Both qualify as straight-ahead animators. (This was initially the reasoning given for the rift between Ub Iwerks and Walt Disney that ultimately led to their early split.)

For those who don’t quite understand what I’m talking about, an Inbetweener by definition is hired to put missing drawings between two extreme drawings. An animator does drawings #1 & #5. The inbetweener draws #3, then inbetweens #2 and #4. A straight ahead animator would start with drawing #1 then continue forward until completion.

In fact, David and probably Scribner are more an amalgam of straight-ahead AND inbetween.

Tissa hates leaving drawings for an inbetween unless the process is forced on her or there is just too little time. However, working straight-ahead allows strange things to happen to the characters you’re animating. Going from drawing #1 to #2 to #3 etc. the drawings will subtly shift in shape until you can end with something very different by the time you reach the final drawing. Tissa tells the story of a dance scene where the character grew almost twice in size by the time she finished it. She then had to go back and redraw the entire scene, correctly sizing it.

She does very rough roughs for herself blocking the scene, leaving a large number of inbetweens. She then goes back and reworks the entire scene of completely new drawings (not clean-ups of her roughs) working straight-ahead UNLESS there are obviously mechanical inbetweens required. Then she’ll go back to do those inbetweens herself or hand them down to an assistant if available.

I assume Rod Scribner used a similar method. The drawings are too tight, especially the extremes for them to be otherwise. I wonder if there is a way to get inbetweeners to do the special inbetweens that Eddie longs for?
Certainly, they couldn’t be neophytes to animation, but would it make sense for anything less than an excellent assistant?

In my studio, I’ve tried to allow animators to work the way they like. They can work from the loosest of materials (sometimes just the rough storyboards we do) or the most exact of layout. I love it when animators do their own inbetweens, but some of my best animators over the years have required an assistant and an inbetweener. Doug Compton did some brilliant work with enormous vitality, and he definitely works with an inbetweener or five. John Dilworth, on my films, did some of the finest, most insightful character animation drawing his own inbetweens. Both of these guys are, now, excellent directors in their own right, both have similar but different methods of animation.

Eddie Fizgerald ‘s post has been quite thought provoking for me; I encourage you to take a look. Seeing the inbetween poses of that Porky scene is quite revealing. I may continue this with examples of my own. I know, for example, that Jim Tyer left inbetweens but it sure looks like he didn’t. Both Tyer and Scribner often did a more extreme kind of movement. I’m interested in the animators that worked a bit more quietly and did more interesting and expressive inbetweens themselves.

- Here are some bits and pieces of memorabilia I have in collection. (Boy do I own a bunch of crap!) However, maybe altogether it makes for an interesting post.

- First up in this UPA week is a piece of stationery from the UPA studio. The oddity of it is that the paper is not 8½ x 11 but 8½ x 14. To make it a bit more interesting, that’s a UPA ballpoint pen atop the paper. (Yellow!)

- John Hubley was an extraordinary artist. Every drawing he made, had three dimensions (no matter how flat the image was supposed to be.) His simplest sketch had such depth. Naturally, he was an amazing painter as well. His oil paintings were a bit impressionist/a bit surrealist/all original. He seemed somewhat inspired by Chagall.

John and Faith would both go to their respective studios every day to oil paint before they came into work. They usually arrived in the animation studio between 9:30-10:00 am. That means they were in there painting early. They took art seriously.

Here’s an invitation to an art exhibit held at Yale, where John & Faith taught. (The original was B&W; the painting was in color.)

- Finally, another invitation, this one for the “World Preview” of Ragggedy Ann & Andy. The character drawing was done by Dan Haskett and was the poster image for the feature film. Perhaps I’ll post some Raggedy art later this week.

There was some question as to who owned the rights to this film when, a year or so ago, Greg Ford was putting together a program of musical animated films for Lincoln Center. Greg couldn’t track down who would give proper permission for screening of a 35mm scope print. I wish someone would get it together.

Richard Horner was one of the producers representing Bobbs Merrill. He was originally a theatrical producer with an extensive and prestigious background who moved onto this film to produce.
He and I had a couple of meetings a few years before he died. He was producing some videos (pre-dvd) showing artists at work. His first was a video of Philip Pearlstein in his tudio painting a canvas. Horner, at the time, couldn’t find a distributor for the tapes, although they were already in all of the museums on the east coast. I tried to help but we didn’t get anywhere. Unfortunately, he died in 2002. He’s the last person I would’ve been able to contact for information about the film.

– Last night we tried something different around here. I pulled out the old,
lo-tech 16mm projector and I dusted off some of my collection for a small gathering of friends. Pizza and cartoons always works.

It helps to put together an eccentric program sometimes. I let the music do the walking and put together a musical tour. (Some might say torture.)
The program was a loopy one:

. I have a scope section of Pencil Test from Raggedy Ann & Andy – Tissa David’s “Candy Hearts and Paper Flowers” section. We watched this first because it was the only scope film I was showing. There’s a whole big lens change for Cinemascope. So I was able to set it up before anyone came, and just pull off the lens after that film.

. From there we went back to the 1929 Mickey Mouse Club sing-a-long of “Minnie Yoo Hoo” which I have attached to a rare trailer for Snow White. I don’t think animation was done yet, because the entire trailer is in live action.

. Jumping to New York’s Fleischers I programmed “The Little Dutch Mill” since this has my favorite Fleischer 3D multiplane use. The cinecolor has faded from red and aqua blue to one color – magenta. Somehow, that didn’t hurt the film.

. Back to MGM, we saw “To Spring” with the multitudes of gnomes bringing on the spring (appropriately, it was a beautiful day – finally – in NY) and “Swing Wedding” which includes Louis Armstrong and Fats Waller as frogs performing in the swamp.

. Clair de Lune with the Debussy track. This was done for the proposed Fantasia 2 and included in a later feature compilation as Blue Bajou.

. George Dunning’s “The Tempest.” was for the art crowd in me.

. Leave ‘em with a laugh. You can’t go wrong with Tex Avery’s “King Sized Canary,” and I didn’t go wrong.

Basically, I let music guide the program moving from the Minnie’s Yoo Hoo chant to swing and classical through modern and gave it all up for a laugh. It made for a lot of fun. If you have a 16mm projector, I suggest you try it. So much more fun than dvd/video.

- There are a couple of blogs/sites I rush to visit every day, and I thought I’d take a couple of minutes to tell you about them. There are those that I am religious about visiting, even if and though I suspect nothing’s changed. The four I’ve pointed to often enough include:

My favorite animation reading is still at Michael Barrier‘s site.

And I also look forward to reading what Mark Mayerson has to say about some of the classic works of animation art. His is an invaluable site.

Of course there’s also Cartoon Brew, Cartoon Modern (get there today to see Walt Peregoy designs), and Hans Perk’s A Film LA are immediate stops.

- However, after those four I jump to two favorites I haven’t given attention to.

Uncle Eddie’s Theory Corner is right up at the pinnacle among the favorites. Time to lighten up. This guy is the funniest man out there (he should have his own TV series, animated or otherwise.) His drawings always on display – they change daily – is Don Martin on some kind of high. However, Eddie’s knowledge is enormous; it’s not just for laughs. There’s depth here.

Check out some of his posts about art here or cartoonists here or women here or comedy here or lots of other subjects.

It all seems scattered, except for two things. They all tie back to animation and how to do it well. And they all come out of the mind of Eddie Fitzgerald who has to be one of the most positive and original voices I look forward to reading every day. Even when he says he won’t be there for four days I go back to see if just maybe . . .

I love this site. (By the way, check out the Fry & Laurie films he’s posted today. Stephen Fry has always been a favorite of mine, and Eddie features him today.)

- Blather from Brooklyn is another one of my favorite visits, and it’s usually how I end my blog reading in the morning.

The site has nothing to do with animation, (unless you feel as I do that everything has to do with animation) but it gives an incredible view of the New York I love. Because of the title, I originally thought the site was Brooklyn-centric, but I was wrong. There are posts about artwork around town here, haiku created from gravestones here, or photos of the Easter Parade on Fifth Avenue here. The site is by Annulla (not much more is revealed, but (s)he also has another blog called Annulla Cooks, and it’s great if you’re into recipes and cooking.
I used to visit Rachelle Bowden‘s blog for her travel around NY, but she now is in Chicago. Fortunately, I also like Chicago – though it’s no New York. And she’s also into food.

- Let me share an image with you.

When Raggedy Ann & Andy was winding down, Richard Williams asked me, over dinner, whether I would be interested in working in London on his feature, The Cobbler and the Thief. He had in mind one sequence which he said would be all mine. This was the film’s opening – a slow truck into the island where all the action of the film would take place.

(Click on any image to enlarge.)

This was a photostat of this island. The original drawing, Dick had said, was enormous. It was composed of many smaller segments that were pinned together on a wall in his studio. If you look closely you can see those dividers in this photostat. To give a better indication of the detail in this drawing, I’m posting, below, a second image of a small portion of it.

The idea of it exhilarated me. I believe he said that Roy Naisbitt was involved with it, and that was something to get me going. I’d read about many of Dick’s staff and had already placed them on pedestals – including Roy’s work. I would not only get to meet them but work with them as well.

I decided not to take the job. I thought it would be better to remain friends with Dick than to continue working with him. That decision is something I don’t regret. It would have been fun to have been involved with that film, but so much has happened in my life by staying put, that I have no regrets.

The storyboard for the original cut of Dick’s film included these panels which led into the image of the animated city. A still of the city remained in the Miramax/Fred Calvert version, but that’s all.