Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

This was a really busy week as far as seeing movies went. The first three were Special Oscar preview screenings.

- Sunday night there was a screening of Dreamworks’ Rise of the Guardians. This was a rough cut; it had a lot of unfinished scenes. many were missisng proper lighting, the score was a temp track (a 101 strings big budget adventure-music type played LOUD and LOUTISH.) When I learned that the brilliant Alexandre Desplat was doing the music, I realized that I’d only seen 2/3 of the film. Desplat might actually be able to save this loud, annoying and tedious film. By the way, someone tell them that people don’t smile that much – visually, I mean – actually, aurally too (whenever there’s a hole in the track, they stab it with someone laughing), and females can do something other than pose cute. There isn’t one real female character in this film.

I met the director, Peter Ramsey, Jeff Katzenberg,the brilliant writer, David Lindsay-Abaire, who was wasted on this one. I met the producer, Christina Steinberg, and William Joyce, who fathered the whole thing. The film reminded me a lot of the Shrek films, stylistically, I mean. It wasn’t pretty.

Jude Law is brilliant and Alec Baldwin can do anything – including a Russian Santa Claus. Who knows maybe when they add the real and final score, when they finish coloring the scenes and when they put it all together properly it’ll be great. I seriously doubt that’ll happen, and it’ll be hard to sit through again. I do want to hear the new score, though. I like that composer and want to see how he scores this mess of a movie.

Monday night there was a screening of On the Road, the filmed version of the Jack Kerouac book. Directed by Walter Salles who did Motorcycle Diaries, this film doesn’t have the same drive as his last. The poster is a closeup of Viggo Mortenson, who in his two minutes in the film, brings it to life for a short bit. There are a lot of stars who make short appearances. I wish the lead actor had been someone with more screen presence. There weren’t too many people on the screen that you really cared about, and that certainly included Kristin Stewart who can’t act very well.

The tiny Disney theater was packed with celebrities (I sat next to Dianne Wiest) who all made it to the afterparty at Le Cirque. That was fun.

Tuesday brought The Master in 70mm to the Ziegfield Theater – one of NY’s largest and best. Lots of stars in the theater. I sat next to David Straithairn.

This was THE film of the year, so far. Joaquin Phooenix has a damn good chance of winning an Oscar. He was great. The film was eccentric and felt slow even though I never felt the need to check out my watch. Why don’t we get films like this in animation? Johnny Greenwood‘s (Radiohead) score is out of this world. The first really big film of the year. Although the film is about vague and elusive ideas, so much is left for the viewer to determine, the film has stuck in my head for the past five days replaying many of the scenes. I look forward to seeing it again at the Academy screening on Sept. 24th.

The film got an excellent review from AO Scott at the NYTimes.
Also excellent notices from the NYPost and the Daily News. But the best review I’ve read was Karina Longworth‘s review in The Village Voice. She responded to some of my thoughts on the film. An excellent piece of criticism.

Thursday I saw Arbitrage. Richard Gere, Susan Sarandon, and Tim Roth in a film about a corrupt hedge fund manager who accidentally kills his French paramour in a car crash. Can he get out of the financial predicament he’s in to save the company? Can he hide his involvement in his girlfriend’s death? A pot boiler that kept me interested, though the film is really about nothing. Richard Gere was good but no competition for Joaquin Phoenix or Phillip Seymour Hoffman in The Master.

Friday night I saw a new play that starred Jake Gyllenhaal and Brían F. O’Byrne. Called If There Is I Haven’t Found It Yet, (what a bad, unmemorable title) there were excellent performances from all four actors, but the play was a ghost of a show. Something about bullying an overweight high school girl in England. Mix that with something about global warming and have a set with a glass tank of water in the front of the stage. The furniture which is piled in a junk heap center stage is there for the actors to pick and choose the pieces they want to do the scenes with. Then they throw it into the tank of water at the end of the scene All scenes end with this violent action. When the girl tries to kill herself in the bathtub, water overflows leaving, on purpose, at least a couple of inches of water on the set. The actors play the last ten minutes ankle deep in water. (At one point, I actually wondered if the tank were going to overflow and water would come into the audience. I was sitting in the fifth row.) I think this is supposed to be a metaphor of some kind for the mess global warming is doing to the world which is a metaphor for the mess the world is making of families.

The play was not good. The actors were. They all play with Brit accents and all do well at it. I thought of waiting for Jake Gyllenhaal at the end of the show to say hi after Man Who Walked Between the Towers. However, there must have been a hundred people crowding the front of the theater to get a look at the star. I got outta there.

This afternoon, Saturday, I’m going to see Francine at MoMA. Melissa Leo‘s new film is being released by MoMA for the first week. The reviews haven’t been good.

- There’s a wonderful and extensive interview with Richard Williams on the blog One Huge Eye. The interview was conducted by Alex Amelines, the cre­ator of one­huge­eye. He’s also the founder and direc­tor at the Lon­don based Stu­dio Tinto. Other interviews on the site include those with: David Sproxton, Eric Walls, Jeff Pratt and Nick Cross. (It’s obviously a Brit site.)

- John Kricfalusi has a tutorial, on his site, in how to properly ink his style. This, in many ways, is a lesson in how to ink (period). There are minor things that you would not do for every style — such as inking the entire externalline of the character in a heavier weight. This is purely a style preference. However, control of the thick and thin line as well as control of details is astute. Inking is such an enormous part of the animation process that it’s amazing to see how few pay proper attention to it. There have been many a film that have been badly hurt because of poor inking. I’ve seen beautiful inking on many a Peanuts special, but I’d also seen one that had a very poor, wavering inking rendering that episode almost unwatchable – for me. (The general public probably didn’t notice it.) If those lines are not right, it can damage the animation and takes the heart out of controlled assisting.

Yet, the opposite is true as well. An exhibit at the NY Public Library at 42nd Street in 1998 was one of the best I’ve ever seen. It was a program of “Celebrity Caricature” mostly from the 20′s & 30′s. In among the magazine art was a small section on animated caricature. Drawings by Tee Hee and Joe Grant were on display with a couple of cel set-ups. The ink lines were stunning. They were drawn with delicate thick and thin lines done with crow-quill in multiple colors. Just as the models would be marked up for the different cel colors, it had markings for the ink line colors, as well. The Charlie McCarthy & W.C. Fields in the image to the right represents some of the beautiful caricatures from “Mother Goose Goes Hollywood”.

After a piece about inking, how could we avoid an article about a brand new animation camera. The Terry cartoons introduced a new camera in 1939 which allowed them to film live action, projected one frame at a time, from beneath the platen. Thus you could easily combine live action and animation at the camera phase, thus avoiding any opticals.

Here’s an article from Modern Mechanix.

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William Benzon has completed his lengthy article about Dumbo on his site, the New Savannah. He’s put all of these posts together into one big read. You can read it in PDF format by going here. Quite a work of scholarship by Mr.Benzon.

- Bill Tytla is probably the finest animator who has graced the history of the medium. He was a brilliant actor who dominates most of the classic early films of Disney work. Snow White, Pinocchio, Dumbo, and Fantasia are all appreciably greater films because of his work. In studying this master’s work frame by frame you can see a real elasticity to the character, one that is not apparent in the motion of those same characters. There’s true emotion in the acting of these characters, and it’s apparent that he uses that elasticity to get the performances he seeks.

There’s something else there: Tytla’s roots were in Terrytoons: I have no doubt you can take the guy out of Terrytoons, but it seems you can’t take the Terrytoons out of the guy.

Let’s look at some of the drawings from some of the scenes I posted here in the past.

Where better to start than with those gorgeous dwarfs from Snow White. Here’s a scene I posted where all seven are animated on the same level as they carry Grumpy to the wash basin. If he won’t clean himself, then the other six will do the job for him. Take a look at some of the distorted characters in this scene, then run the QT movie. Look for the distortion in the motion.

As for the drawing, like all other Tytla’s scenes it’s beautiful. But tell me you can’t find the Terrytoons hidden behind that beautiful Connie Rasinski-like line.

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Flipping over to Stromboli, from Pinocchio, we find animation almost as broad as many Terrytoons, the difference is that Tytla’s drawing that roundness and those enormous gestures on purpose. He knows what he’s doing and is looking to capture the broad immigrant gestures of those Southern European countries. Stromboli goes in and out of distorted drawings, as I made clear in a past post.

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A strip by “Paul Terry”as starring his 1930s character, Barker Bill.
Borrowed from Mark Kausler’s blog It’s the Cat.

from the Terry short, The Tempermental Lion

The Laughing Gauchito was a short that was, no doubt, going to be part of The Three Caballeros. Tytla, Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston had all animated for the short before Disney, himself, cancelled the production.

Here are three drawings from the film, and they are all beautiful extremes from the scene. (Tytla marked his extremes with an “A” to the right of the number, or at other times with an “X” in the upper right.) The beautiful roundness does not come at the expense of his drawings. Below the Laughing Gauchito we see a cartoon drawing by Carlo Vinci from a 1930′s Terrytoons short.

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A Terrytoons drawing by Terry artist Carlo Vinci from a mid ’30s short.
borrowed from Animation Resources

Here’s a scene Bill Tytla did for a Harman-Ising cartoon. He was the supervising animator, and the lack of Disney becomes evident in the drawings. The animation is closer to a Terry short than what he did at Disney’s. The movement feels muddy in that actual cartoon. I’m sure it was his own animation trying to blend with the style of Harman’s work.

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Another beautiful Carlo Vinci drawing from a 30′s Terry short.
borrowed from Animation Resources

And here’s a drawing out of a Little Lulu cartoon. I’s not a film directed by Tytla, and is not a good drawing. But Tytla’s influence on all the Lulu shorts at Paramount at the time can’t be denied. It certainly looks more Terrytoon than Paramount. This is not even a good Terry drawing – though its for a Paramount cartoon.

Back at Disney, Tytla animated Willie the Giant from the Mickey short, The Brave Little Tailor. This character, like Stromboli, owes a lot to Terrytoons. I felt this when I first saw the short as a child, and I still think it true. The same, I think, is also true of the same Giant character when he appears in Mickey and the Beanstalk, which Tytla obviously didn’t animate but would have handled if he’d stayed at the studio.

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Another Carlo Vinci sketch.
borrowed from Animation Resources

This following, last drawing is a Tytla drawing I own. I know Tytla did it. He gave it to Grim Natwick who gave it to Tissa David who gave it to me. It’s a gem.

- Bill Peet was a masterful and brilliant storyboard artist. Every panel he drew gave so much inspiration and information to the animators, directors and artists who’ll follow up on his work.

This is the sequence from Dumbo wherein baby Dumbo plays around the feet of his mother. Brilliantly animated by Bill Tytla, this sequence is one of the greatest ever animated. No rotoscoping, no MoCap. Just brilliant artists collaborating with perfect timing, perfect structure, perfect everything.

Tytla said he watched his young son at home to learn how to animate Dumbo. Bill Peet told Mike Barrier that he was a big fan of circuses, so he was delighted to be working on this piece. Both used their excitement and enthusiasm to bring something brilliant to the screen, and it stands as a masterpiece of the medium.

Of this sequence and Tytla’s animation, Mike Barrier says in Hollywood Cartoons: What might otherwise be mere cuteness acquires poignance because it is always shaded by a parent’s knowledge of pain and risk. If Dumbo “acted” more, he would almost certainly be a less successful character—”cuter,” probably, in the cookie-cutter manner of so many other animated characters, but far more superficial.

I had to take the one very long photstat, on loan from John Canemaker, and reconfigure it in photoshop so that you could enlarge these frames to see them well. I tried to keep the feel of these drawings pinned to that board in tact.

(Click any image to enlarge.)

Bill Peet at his desk on Dumbo.
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I think this sequence where Dumbo gets washed by his mother and plays around her legs is one of the greatest ever animated. There’s a sweet tenderness and an obviously close relationship between baby Dumbo and his mother which is built on the back of this sequence. It not only establishes both characters solidly, without words, but it sets up the mood of everything that will soon happen to the pair during the remaining 45 minutes of the film. Without that established bond, the audience wouldn’t feel so deeply for the pair during the “Baby Mine” song or care so much about Dumbo’s predicament.

Tytla has said that he based the animation of the baby elephant on his young son who he could study at home. Peet has said that Tytla had difficulty drawing the elephants and asked for some help via his assistant. There’s no doubt that both were proud of the sequence and tried to take full credit for it. No doubt both deserve enormous credit for a wonderful sequence. Regardless of how it got to the screen, everyone involved deserves kudos.

Here are a lot of frame grabs of the sequence. I put them up just so that they can be compared to the extraordinary board posted yesterday. Both match each other closely. Whereas the board has all the meat, the timing of the animation gives it the delicacy that would have been lost in a lesser animator’s hands, or, for that matter, in a less-caring animator’s hands. The scene is an emotional one.

(Click any image to enlarge.)

(Click any image to enlarge.)

- As I recently wrote, John Canemaker and I are putting together a memorial for Tissa David. We have arranged to book a pretty large theater; we’ll ask specific speakers to talk about Tissa, and we’ll show several films and clips of Tissa’s brilliant art. At the moment we have no access to a space where we can have a wine and cheese offering, so come with plans to hook up with others if you want to go out afterward. If that should change I’ll let you know.

The event will take place on Tuesday, October 23rd at 7pm.

Until then, I’ll repost many of the Tissa pieces on Thursdays offering a lot of her drawings, interpretations of Hubley art and films she worked on otherwise. On Saturday posts I’ll bring you up to date on any further information about the event.
I’ll announce the place/the theater in a future post.

- I forgot to mention a couple of weeks back, the Splog made it to Boing Boing. In the earlier years I kept trying to get a mention on that site, but my fare never seemed to be what they were looking for. Eventually, I surrendered and stopped submitting posts.

Then I received an email from my friend, Mark Mayerson, congratulating me for making it. Wow!

I went to the link he gave me and found a YouTube transfer of one of my films there. This was a video I had made a million years ago (or maybe it was 1983) for a group I really enjoyed. Their song, Cavern, was long and sweet and minimalist, a movement I loved. (Give me Phillip Glass or early-John Adams over Chopin or Schumann any day of the week.)

The band, Liquid Liquid, was represented by 99 Records, a small record store in the Village. I went to the store and met with Ed Bahlman, the owner of the store and 99 Records. My offer was to do a music video. The agreement was that I could do what I wanted with no interference from anyone. We would jointly own the film. They could use it any time to promote the group, the song, the record company – in short anything to do with their company. I could use it however I wanted including all distribution rights that had nothing to do with the band.

I made the video. It’s an harangue against the unseen, daily bits of violence we all see in the world. Especially those who live in the city. Someone bumps into you on the street and keeps moving. Someone pushes you tight trying to get a subway seat. someone rushes to the front of the line in the supermarket oblivious to those who’ve waited. You know the stuff; the annoying bits of hurt people do while they listen to their I-phone, or while they’re texting and wouldn’t notice you even though you’re in their face. It’s my contention that these wee bits of violence ultimately turn into bigger, more hurtful turns. That’s where I aimed the video.

I wrote “video”, because that’s how I edited and finished the film. I wanted to teach myself how to use this new medium that was arising, and I edited at a major tape house in town. I was really into multiple and split screen film at the time, and I use this video to play with that. Lots of purposeful and planned repition on varied spli-screen setups. The band’s bassist, Richard McGuire, was always in touch, and I invited him to the edit, giving him a voice to make suggestions for the video. He came to the overnight session and we had a good time together pushing the piece to completion. Richard would later become a graphic designer, illustrator, and New Yorker cartoonist. He directed a segment of the French animation feature, Peur(s) du Noir.

The video quickly ended up on a couple of National, late night shows that broadcast new music videos. It also made its way to a few local shows. I sent it out to a small number of film festivals and had a modicum of success. It helped that the band was in a big law suit against a bigger group on a larger label. The contention was that the other group, Grand Master Flash, had stolen the group’s original riff. Liquid Liquid and 99 Records won that law suit and got some big PR. Of course, by that time the group had split up.

Terry Tolkin worked for 99 records. He would later become an Elektra Records vice president and No.6 Records label head. He was also my brother’s companion at the time. He helped in some of the early negotiating. Many years later, Terry contacted me asking if he could post the video on YouTube. (When we made the video there wasn’t much of an Internet, nevermind a YouTube.) I said sure, and it’s gotten a lot of hits (over 300 thousand.) The band has a big and well-deserved reputation. Terry put it up and a few years later Boing Boing noticed it.

- Opening in theaters next Friday is a new animated feature. Toys In the Attic is a multimedia film combining 3D stop motion, 2D animation, pixillation and live action. The film stars the voices of Forest Whitaker, Joan Cusack and Cary Elwes in the English language version. The film was directed by Jiří Bárta, an interesting director working in the Czech Republic. The film will be in theaters on Friday, September 7th. I’ll have a review of it on Thursday.

After the fall of the Czech Republic, Bárta had the difficulty of being stuck in a country in which he wasn’t allowed to release any of his films. Through the 1990′s he pushed to do an animated feature called Golem. The film never found its financing, but a short trailer was made of the work he did on it. The trailer is predominantly live action setting up the story of the Golem. Bárta works in a very detailed multimedia look. Live action is partially animated, stop motion animation moves into live action or 2D. He works similarly in Toys in the Attic, a film that looks very different from the simulated (meaning cg) cartoon puppets that usually grace our screens. It also looks very different than Golem. Toys In the Attic is a children’s film.

- This week, Hans Perk posted the animation drafts for the Disney short Mr Mouse Takes a Trip on his blog, A Film LA. This might be enough, except he also adds a YouTube video of Walt Disney doing the voice acting alongside Billy Bletcher (as Pegleg Pete) for this film. The video is obviously an extra on one of the Mouse DVDs, but I seem to have missed it. Regardless, even if you know this video, it’s worth seeing it again. How different the process of recording these days.

- Bill Benzon, just a step away from completing his thesis on Dumbo, takes a short break/post to write about the Chuck Jones film/Frank Tashlin story, The Bear That Wasn’t . . ..

Using Mike Barrier‘s incisive interview with Tashlin, as his back up material, Bill writes with some authority on this peculiar film from the oddball combination of Jones & Tashlin. Brains don’t always mix with blood, and from my vantage point the film doesn’t quite make it, though it’s interesting to read Benzon’s take on the WB cartoon. Not surprisingly there are some thoughts as to the similarities with Dumbo in its story. “In both cases we have animals imagined as ‘floating’ somewhere around and about and in-between the world of machines and men. That bear is mistaken for a man who hasn’t been broken to Fordist harness. . . . . . . And Dumbo’s problem is to find a way he can fit into the circus world as a performer.” In the end, we hear the simple yet complex reason, in Tashlin’s own words, why and how the story was destroyed by Jones.

- It was a bit sad for me to see that Nickelodeon executive, Brown Johnson, had been ousted from her job. (Here’s Variety‘s take on it.) She truly created an excellent model for a children’s television network and helped form it into a real challenger to Disney’s channels. Brown Johnson pushed with a lot of original animation programming. Nick’s Dora the Explorer was developed under Ms. Johnson’s leadership; likewise the breakout show, Blue’s Clues. True, Nick hasn’t been all that recently. Where Disney changed and went with a lot of tweenies live action series, Nick tried to follow suit but not with confidence. They weren’t successful with that strategy. They should have just concentrated on better shows. Animated ones.

I guess networks only know from firing proven execs and hiring new, young, exciting turks. The first show announced by her West Coast replacement, Russell Hicks, is the yet-again-reworked Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. (Something tells me they haven’t found their way yet, and with a heavy dullard’s foot they plod forward with a loud thud.) Hopefully, Ms. Johnson will land elsewhere and bring her love of animation with her.

- Finally, on Friday, Sept. 14th at 7:30pm the Motion Picture Academy will have a celebration of the work of John and Faith Hubley. The focus will be on their development as artists in animation with an ind-depth viewing of the artwork and films. Historian/animator, John Canemaker will host the talk and members of the family will be present.

Tickets are currently on sale: $3 for Academy members, $5 for general public.
I would buy tickets quickly if you plan to go; it will likely sell out soon.

Visit Oscars.org to purchase tickets or go to the boxoffice of the
Samuel Goldwyn Theater 8949 Wilshire Blvd. Beverly Hills, Ca 90028.

This show is a slightly different version of the program that John conducted in New York City at the Academy, here. It was covered in a large way by me on this Splog. Go here to see that post, which includes lots of pictures as well as the full contents of the event. The difference between this coming event and the NY one is that Faith Hubley was not part of the NY program. She and several of her films are included in the LA version.

In truth, I’ve been wholly absorbed and entertained by the political Presidential race. The choice of Ryan for Republican VP just made the whole thing so juicy, it’s all I can watch on tv. Even the Yankees have taken back seat to Chris Matthews, Joe Scarborough, et al. It was fabulous watching Ann Coulter throw a hissy fit after a Romney aide talked about RomneyCare in Massachusetts. She screamed on Hannity’s show demanding that the aide get fired. Hilarious and wonderful. A real Reality show.

I’ve had to wait a full week to be able to post this, sorry. However I couldn’t resist sharing it, and by now, you’ve probably all seen this . . .

Right after the announcement that Ryan was the Republican choice for VP,
this came in my email.
Spam
of a sort.
But pretty funny (and accurate).

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Just released this week is the trailer to Toys in the Attic a mixed media animation feature directed by Jiri Barta. It was made in the Czech Republic. The film will play in NY next weekend as part of the International Children’s Film Festival. That will take place on:
Saturday & Sunday, August 25-26, 11:00am
at the IFC Center.

The English version of the film stars the voices of Forest Whitaker, Joan Cusack and Cary Elwes and is being released to theaters on September 7th.

Here’s that trailer:

- Movies I’ve seen this week are numerous.

It all started with ParaNorman, which I kinda liked even though I didn’t find it as dramatic as I would have liked. The pacing seemed a little stodgy until the big climax at the end. And then it turned a bit too preachy in its obviousness. However, the animation is slick almost to the point where it vies with cg for fluidity. I still like my puppet animation in the Ray Harryhausen mode; I want to see the fingerprints on the puppets. George Pal seemed to have it down perfectly, and there was something to the great design of Pal’s animated films. No other like them, he was a total original. The ParaNormal characters look like they might have been designed for a Sony cg film.

However the film is very amiable and I have no real complaints. It beats out the Ice Age films.
You can see my full out review here. I also did a talkback at the screening with the two directors, Chris Butler and Sam Fell. They both seem to be intelligent and knowledgeable guys with a real love for animation.

The NYTimes‘ Manohla Dargis loved the film. “The story . . . is principally a vehicle for the movie’s meticulously detailed pictorial beauty, which turns each scene into an occasion for discovery and sometimes delight.”

The NYDaily News‘ Joe Neumaier wasn’t so thrilled with the film. “The 12-year-old boys who go to see “ParaNorman” — and who are the only ones who might enjoy it — should double up on the sugary treats to stay awake during this gorgeous-looking but zombi-fied stop-motion animated creep show. It’s as slow as a corpse, and half as interesting.”

The NYPost‘s lead critic Lou Leminick loved it. “So good, it’s scary.” ““ParaNorman’’ is probably the year’s most visually dazzling movie so far, and the stunning climax centering on an 11-year-old witch is too good to spoil.

Let’s just say this is the first movie this year that warrants a 3-D surcharge.”

- On Tuesday I saw a double feature:

The Campaign, the Will Ferrell and Zach Galifanaikis film which parodies the political battling going on around us as the two play two candidates vying for Congress. Shoddy politics play out even before either of them are elected. This is funny. Funnier than I expected but not as funny or serious as it should have been. 2 stars.

The Awakening was a British ghost story that just didn’t make it. Rebecca Hall‘s a fantastic actress as is Imelda Staunton. That didn’t matter for this film. It was dead on arrival. The ghosts in ParaNorman were more fun. 1 star for the great camerawork.

- On Thursday I saw a small little film; Robot and Frank did matter that Frank Langella
starred in it. This guy is a great talent and can bring anything to life, including this movie and the robot that works for him. (Though Peter Sarsgaard‘s voice of the robot makes it quite creepy.) It’s a sweet little film that’s pleasantly short. A nice metaphor between an aging forgetful man and a robot that wants to have his brain rebooted so he can’t testify against the inveterate thief. However, a couple of scenes, particularly one toward the end between Langella and Susan Sarandon make you realize how good the film should have been if the script and direction were better. 3 stars because it should’ve been better.

Thad Komorowski has an excellent article on his blog What About Thad which talks about Paul Murry and Dick Huemer‘s work.

Thad is doing a followup to the new
The Adventures of Buck O’ Rue book currently out on the market. This book is a collection of rare comic strips by Huemer and Murry of a short lived strip.

The article includes plenty of Scrappy talk and links to many interviews.

- Bill Benzon has an absolutely great piece on his blog, The New Savannah. He reviews the under appreciated Winsor McCay gem, The Pet. He takes a break from his detailed analysis of Disney’s Dumbo to review this movie (which he also adds to his post), and it’s worth the read. Please do it before Bill Plympton tries to rescue this film, too – or maybe I should have said wrest this film from the history of Winsor McCay.

- Speaking of Bill Plympton and Winsor McCay, his bastardized version of McCay’s film, The Flying House, is now available on DVD. I’m included as part of an amateur documentary included saying how much I dislike what Plympton has done. The one good piece on the DVD is a fake documentary (also amateur production values) supposedly showing where McCay had lived. Among the ruins Bill finds a discarded McCay film, which turns out to be . . . . but tnen, this is the only good joke on the entire video, so I won’t give it away in case you persist in buying this.

I’ve tried in vain to find a link so that you can buy the DVD. None are out there, so I assume it hasn’t been released officially. I’ve linked to Plympton’s own site where it should eventually show up. Go here.

- I’ve been going crazy (a good thing, I think) animating and reanimating and reanimating a scene from the opening sequence for POE. It’s taken a while, but I think I’ve finally gotten something of a style for the film which will enable me to incorporate all that Tissa’s done with new work from lesser animators and artists. In all honesty, the color styling and photography of the poor film I saw this week, The Awakening (see above), led me to it. That film was bad enough, but my mind was completely overwhelmed with thoughts of the work I was doing at home. Thank you Academy for getting me to that film, thank you Tissa for being so brilliant, thank you Daumier for all the inspiration, and, especially, thank you all you investors at Indiegogo for making it possible for me to work on this.

By the way, investors, the goodies are in process right now, and you should have the promised benefits heading your way, soon. I’m sorry for the delay.

- Jack Schnerk‘s daughter, Mary Schnerk Lincoln, has put three of her father’s commercial sample reels onto YouTube .
Just last week I found myself using one of those reels to showcase a Rowland Wilson designed commercial done for Phil Kimmelman & Ass. Seeing that reel again, brought me back to the other two reels on YouTube, and the great work animated by Jack. 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, of course, 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.

He did have an exercise which he thought was important for an animator to pass. He suggested you animate a character walking in a 360° circle away from and back toward the camera. This is a tough test of mechanical ability, and Jack is right; it’s tough and can prove your mettel. (Milt Gray does just that with his somewhat vulgar character, Viagri, but the animation is impeccable. Milt’s a first rate animator.)

I wish I had more samples of the many scenes Jack animated that I assisted. He worked in a very distinct style – I don’t think I’ve seen anyone else ever draw that way. Somehow, the very rough drawings weren’t hard to clean up, and, though he worked very rough, 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, yet he was always taking a chance on the scene, pushing to some new way of doing it. I think of all those Hubley scenes that went to color art, yet Jack had done some daring moves that could have made some of the scenes go bust. None ever did.

I met Jack at the Hubley studio, then again when I worked for Phil Kimmelman. At Raggedy Ann, I dropped Jack’s name as often as I could until Dick Williams finally saw him, and brought him on board. There was no doubt he would, Jack was that gifted. At least once a week at Raggedy Ann, Jack would give me some original piece of advice, and the more I followed it, the better my work grew. Something as simple as draw rough. I’d been an assistant too long, and my clean line would assure that my animation would never move out of those lines.

Jack Schnerk animated the French trapper sequence. There was such a rush
on the scene that I remember Jack bringing it in saying he hoped it would work.

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.

Though not always the best quality, you can also watch a few of the longer, famous short films Jack animated on:

Gerald McBoing Boing by Bobe Cannon. Jack told me that this includes the first scene he ever animated, even though he didn’t get credit. He did Gerald running alongside the train (starts at 4:41)
Tender Game by John & Faith Hubley
Really Rosie directed by Maurice Sendak
A Nose by Mordi Gerstein
The Violinist by Ernie Pintoff
Give Me Liberty by Ralph Bakshi is one of many bad shorts done for Terrrytoons at the end when Bakshi was in charge.

After reading this post today, Bill Peckmann sent the following note:

Hi Michael,

Your post today on Jack was just wonderful!

When I broke into the business in 1962 at Elektra Films, Jack’s room was the one they put me into. It was pure heaven! As a super, wet behind the ears novice, to be in the same room with someone that had ACTUALLY worked at Disney and UPA, you gotta be kiddin’!

My luck held out further because I assisted/followed up Jack (at Focus and PK&A) on all of the print cartoonist/designer spots you mentioned today. I would have done that work without pay! The combination of Rowland and Jack on a job, I still need smelling salts.

As when we all worked on Rowland’s spots, where I did those caricatures of Jack, ‘Sounds of Focusville’ and ‘Kimmelman of the Klondike’, I also did this caricature (attached) in Gahan’s style of Jack when we worked on ‘Carter Hall, Pipe Tobacco’ together.

I will pull together Xerox copies, pencils and stats of the art of Gahan, Bob Weber, who ever I can lay my hands on, etc. of the spots that Jack animated plus a JS rough or two.

We can look forward to more of Jack Schnerk next week, thanks to Bill’s collection.

I’d received a note from Fraser MacLean this week. He’s the author of the brilliant and beautifully illustrated book, Setting the Scene: The Art & Evolution of Animation Layout. It was odd that I’d just been talking about his book when I’d heard from him. This got me to think that I might post a reminder of a couple of the excellent books that were released this year. I’d reviewed a number of them, and would like to keep them at the front of your mind, so to speak. Here are three easy picks to tell you about.

Setting the Scene: The Art & Evolution of Animation Layout is a book about Animation layout, obviously, and it belongs on every bookshelf of those who work in the medium or are interested in it. I guarantee your first visit to this book, though, will be your ogling the incredible illustrations. They’re just wonderful. From 101 Dalmatians to the Cobbler and the Thief, from Pixar to Dreamworks. It’s an attractive book.

The book covers layout from the point of traditional 2D animation, preparing for the camera, as well as for the computer. It also covers the Layout of animation for cgi films. (See my full review here.)

At the top of the list this year would have to be Adam Abraham‘s fine book, When Magoo Flew: the Rise and Fall of Animation Studio UPA. It is a gem. This is an intensely researched book about the studio that changed the direction of animation in the late 40s.

The book is a very political one, or at least it’s about the politics of the studio that grew out of the Disney strike and pushed on through the McCarthy hearings with their hot design influences. The politics also refers to the ins and outs of the studio, whether it’s John Hubley not liking Herb Klynn’s artwork or Jack Heiter losing his job for refusing to listen to Jules Engel‘s thoughts on color.

There’s a lot in this book and it’s a treasure for anyone interested in that studio or those people. It also helps that a brand-spanking-new DVD was released at the same time with many of the important films from the studio. Jolly Frolics, the UPA Collection. We’re still waiting for the Magoo Theatrical Films to be released, as promised, on DVD. Mr. Magoo:Theatrical Collection

This book also has a companion website, When Magoo Flew, hosted by the book’s author Adam Abraham. There’s material there which you won’t find in the book. (Se my fuller review here.)

The third book I’ll mention here, is a big, lavish, picture book. Two Guys Named Joe: Master Animation Storytellers Joe Grant and Joe Ranft is the story of two story writers and artists working at opposite ends of the Disney Studio, and it was released almost a year ago today.

Joe Grant was one of the old timers who made it through the Golden Age in the 30s & 40s as well as the Golden Age in the 80s. He was a force in the studio, and brought some real art and artistry to the characters and designs he helped develop. Joe Ranft was a youngster who helped put Pixar on the map. His expertise in developing and telling stories made the early cgi features all that they were.

John Canemaker pulls their two stories together and showcases their lives and studio experiences to give an interesting viewpoint of the Disney studio. This is an unusual but excellent book, and in case it’s fallen off your radar, I might suggest you take another look if you don’t own the book. It’s a worthwhile volume to enter any animation collection. (View my full review here.)

On his blog, the New Savannah, Bill Benzon has focused in on Disney’s Dumbo and his in depth analysis features quite a few blogposts. Hearty reading for those of you who’d like to see more about this Disney great. (I sometimes think Bill is writing specifically for me; I love it.)

Dennis Hermanson of Hillsborough, NC sent me a video that he thought I should post on the site. This is not really my kind of video. It’s trying to be Pixar and does a good job of it, but it doesn’t do anything to get me excited about animation. But I can see that it would excite others, so I decided to post it here, just the same. I hope you enjoy it.

MTV is offering something called MTV’s Retro Mania. But I come a bit late because it’s ending its Summer run with the return of Daria this next week. Some of their favorite Episodes from the New York produced show, Daria, will air Monday, July 30 until August 3, 2012 from 9:00am to 12:00pm.

If you miss that, you can go to the MTV website and watch episodes on line. Daria.

There was a time, I think, when this show was cool. I guess I have to catch up; I still haven’t made it through a show. I did root for the show to do well in that a lot of people who had left my studio went on to do work on the series.

Museum Animation Programs

- The museums in New York are offering a number of important animation programs this summer. Now through October 28th the Whitney Museum is showing Oskar Fischinger: Space Light Art—A Film Environment. This was a multiple screen program he had devised in 1926 called Raumlichtkunst. It included 3 35mm films that were projected simultaneously. It has now been transferred to high definition video and is projected in a loop, so that it is constantly running for the museum’s audience. The film was recently restored by the Center for Visual Music in Los Angeles. From the museum’s posting it says: “Radical in format, its display of abstract shapes and colors produces, according to Fischinger, ‘an intoxication by light from a thousand sources.’”

The Quay Brothers at work

Meanwhile the Museum of Modern Art is having a gallery exhibition of the Quay Brothers‘ work. The brothers, originally from Philadelphia, have settled in London where for the past 30 years they created avant garde stop motion films. They’ve worked as illustrators, stage designers, and filmmakers. The installation showcases all of their work and features a series of “dormitoriums,” miniature décors created for their stop-motion films.There will also be a complete retrospective of their work including their early work, graphic design, calligraphic work, and works on paper. Their films include a complete retrospective of all the puppet films, as well as the student and live action films.
The program will rum from August 11th through January 7, 2013.
I’ll try to keep you posted on the upcoming film programs as they approach.

Also at the MoMA, Tues July 31st at 6PM and Mon August 6th at 8PM, Lou Bunin‘s version of Alice in Wonderland will be screened. The film is rarely screened theatrically and hard to find in DVD. While in production, Disney did everything possible to stop it from going forward, trying to take it to court. Both this Alice and Disney’s ultmately opened within months of each other. When it opened in England in 1950 the British censors objected to a caricature of Queen Victoria, and the film wasn’t released in England until 1985.

Jeff Scher continues to produce rich, abstract animated films. His latest is a music video for his “favorite new band.” I’ve embedded the film, below. Take a look.

- I received a note from Jossie Malis about a series he’s been creating called Bendito Machine. In his words:

Bendito Machine is a show which reflects on the innocence of a small, naive and clumsy species that cannot live without their machines, and which is guided by enlightened greedy bastards, who believe they have the answer to everything.

I was intrigued enough to go to his website and search out the films. There are four of them; they’ve just completed the last of the four. You can watch them all on line (here). They’re quite attractive pieces each about 5 – 10 minutes in length, and they’re all silhouette films. The filmmaking group is, naturally enough, a small one with obvious dedication to the work. It is quite attractive, and I encourage you to take a look.

They’ve recently started a Kickstarter campaign in hopes of raising money to do more of them; I think it’s a worthwhile project. Take a look at the films and consider for yourself whether it’s worth contributing – even as little as $1.

There are a couple of other nice reads out on the internet this week:

Traditional Animation features a good interview with Producer, Gary Goldman, on the 30th anniversary of The Secret of Nimh. The interview reviews all the elements that combined to create the studio and pull this first feature film together. This is a good site and worth visiting (and I don’t say that just because it includes an interview with me in its backlog.) There are many parts from news to forums to interviews.

Mike Barrier has a fine piece on the Harman-Ising cartoon, The Milky Way (the first non-Disney cartoon to win an Oscar). It features some beautiful preproduction artwork from the film.
Of course, on Mike’s site there’s also the great interview with Warner Bros animator, Phil Monroe. In case you haven’t yet read it, you should. Certainly if you have even the slightest interest in animation history.

Bill Benzon, in his very detailed and analytical way, takes on the script of Disney’s Dumbo on his blog, New Savannah. Anything Dumbo is worth reading, especially if it’s written by someone as erudite as Mr. Benzon.

One of those blogs that sits out there forever and has become a valuable piece of real estate for those, like I, who keep coming back to it is the Al Eugster Blog. Mark Mayerson set up this wonderful blog which honors a fine animator. There are many photos of Mr. Eugster in the many positions and studios he animated for. Pictures of the Ub Iwerks studio (Iwerks pitching horseshoes), the Disney Studio in 1935, the Fleischer Studio, or the pictures I sought out this week, the Gifford Studio in NYC. Many thanks to Mark for this hidden treasure as well as for his not-so-hidden treasure, his current blog, Mayerson on Animation. That site is a must-check daily.

Finally, what happens when you’re an artist and your email address has been pillaged by some idiot and all your “friends” on your mailing list have been contacted and told that you’ve been robbed in Spain and left penniless, so please send money? Well, if you’re Gene Deitch, you send out the following note to all on your mailing list who may have been approached:

- Back in February, I got a real kick when I found out that I’d won the NAACP Award for Outstanding Children’s Programming for my show, I Can Be President. HBO told me that they would get my award and send it to me. Great to have a big-sized advocate.

This past Monday, I suddenly remembered that award and emailed HBO about it. I wondered where it stood. They found it at HBO and said they’d send it to me. Since I live about a dozen blocks from HBO, I planned to pick it up, myself, from HBO. They said it might be better if I let them deliver it.

Turns out that the award weighs a ton, and is pretty big. I’ve taken a couple of pictures of the prize and am posting them here. I couldn’t be prouder. Yet, again I thank the artists that worked with me to get out this film: Matt Clinton and Katrina Gregorius. I also thank Christine O’Neill who did all the behind-the-scenes work to make the production possible.

- Congratulations to Emily Hubley who was just voted in as a member of the MP Academy. Another New Yorker in the group! If you ask me, it’s been a long time coming. She’s been making films longer than many of the other members, and is such a serious and devoted
animation artist. She’ll be a credit to the group.

I like the fact that there seems to be a large number of strong animated features coming out this year. Brave is the formidable release this year, and I expect it’ll be hard for other films to beat it. Madagascar 3 has gotten such positive attention that I’m almost encouraged to see it, myself. Ice Age 23 will be out mid July. Just in puppet animation we have Frankenweenie, ParaNorman, and Hotel Transylvania; all of which feature monsters. And there are many more a comin’ It’s a big year for animation.

Epic looks like the most interesting of them all, though shades of Arietty overshadow it for me. (Actually, Arietty has been my favorite release of this year.) Epic will be released by Fox in 2013. Maybe that’ll be a big year, too.

- Bill Benzon has another excellent article on his site, New Savannah. This time he discusses the “metaphysical implications of animation as a medium, specifically, animation as opposed to live action film-making.” It’s a good read about animated elephants, particularly those in Dumbo.

- And speaking of Miyazaki, the new movie, Beasts of the Southern Wild, features a few scenes right out of Princess Monokone. There’s a slew of enormous wild boar with tusks and temperament that torment the lead character, Hush Puppy. The confrontation scenes at the end of the film have almost as strong emotional weight and power as Miyazaki has brought to them, even though this seems to be live action (with cgi help). A.O.Scott of the Times said that “Beasts of the Southern Wild is a work of magic realism and, to some extent, an exercise in wishful thinking.” It’s a raw version of Terrence Malick, but that could just be the immaturity of the filmmaker. This is his first movie, and he’s only 29. But then his brilliant star is just six years old, and she gives the year’s best performance so far.

This was certainly the movie of the week, far better than To Rome With Love (even though I’m a Woody Allen junkie.) This film seemed miscast, poorly acted (Penelope Cruz just is wrong for the part and not trying to act in it) and sloppily written. I haven’t seen Ted, but I’ve enjoyed the trailers I’ve seen. I’d expect the worst from Seth MacFarlane, though I usually laugh at some of his stupid jokes. He’s, at least, sweeter than Adam Sandler.

There is another animated feature currently playing in New York. The Korean film, King of Pigs, will play at the Korean Film Festival at the Walter Reade theater in Lincoln Center Saturday & Sunday July 7th & 8th. The film has been compared to Lord of the Flies.

The film and the Festival were reviewed well in the NYTimes yesterday. There are also another two animated korean features in the Festival. There are also Asura Thursday, July 12th and Gyo Saturday, July 14th. Go to the schedule to read more about these films or to buy tickets in advance.

– Retta Scott‘s name was always an intriguing one for me.

She was an animator on Bambi, Dumbo and Plague Dogs. She was layed off at Disney’s when they hit a slump in 1941 but came back to do a number of Golden Books for Disney. The most famous of her books was her version of Cinderella, one which was so successful that it remains in print today as a Little Golden Book.

When asked why females weren’t animators at the studio, the Nine Old Men who traveled the circuit, back in the 1970′s, often mentioned her. They usually also said that she was one of the most forceful artists at the studio, but her timing always needed some help (meaning from a man.)

Ms. Scott was known predominantly for her animation in Bambi. Specifically, she’s credited with the sequence where the hunter’s dogs chase Faline to the cliff wall, and Bambi is forced to fight them off.

The scene is beautifully staged and, indeed, is forceful in its violent, yet smooth, movement. I was a young student of animation, at the time, so this sequence has always had a long and lasting impression on me.
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I’m curious to know how Western Publishing proceeded with the illustrated Disney books. Apparently a large number of Disney artists contributed to the books – at least in the 40′s & 50′s. Bill Justice, Dick Kelsey, Mary Blair, et al. Then, of course, there are the Golden Books that didn’t have a Disney connection by Disney artists. The Poky Little Puppy by Gustaf Tenggren is, of course, the most famous of these.

(Retta Scott working on Pastoral seq. from Fantasia. From The Art of Walt Disney by Finch.)

Here are some of her illustrations for Cinderella published in 1950 to tie in with the Disney film. Oddly, the illustrations don’t completely look like the film’s characters. The cat and mice are close, but Cinderella, herself, is very different, less realistic. She looks more like a Mary Blair creation. When I was young, I was convinced that these were preproduction illustrations done for the film. If only.

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