Search ResultsFor "fantasia"



Action Analysis &Animation &Commentary &Tytla 01 Apr 2013 04:55 am

Stanislavsky Boleslavsky and Tytla’s Smears & Distortions – 4

stromjump13I would guess an actor, one who was truly devoted to their craft, would try to assume the full personality of the character he or she is playing. For an actor who felt devoted to the craft, they’d veer toward some specific acting school. Stanislavski or Boleslavsky, Actor’s Studio, Meisner, Chekhov or whatever combination thereof, the actor would use these schools of approach trying to fully possess the soul of the character.

Marlon Brando, Julie Harris, Paul Newman, John Garfield, Clifford Odets, Montgomery Clift and Marilyn Monroe all these acting greats had their techniques, and all those methods did start with Stanislavsky.

The question for us is how did this affect animation’s actors – the animators? Or did it? I’ve only seen this discussed in depth in one book, Mike Barrier‘s Hollywood Cartoons. Barrier shows a real understanding of Stanislavsky and Boleslavsky when he discusses the overt course of action taken by one animator, in particular, Bill Tytla.

We know that there were plenty of others that were excited by the newly discovered techniques, though we don’t know how wide spread this influence was. My first realization that it was a strong influence came from a joke John Hubley shared with me. He said that the animators broke into two groups, those that were interested in Stanislavsky and those that couldn’t spell it. Hubley was friends with Tytla. Tytla had been the close roommate to Art Babbitt, and Babbitt was close with Hubley, right to the near end.

But Tytla. Let’s look into what he was doing with his animation. I’m going to make a lot of suppositions to tell you what I think he believed . . . the reasoning and the way he worked.

Now, let me show you something.
Here are some drawings and a QT movie of the seven dwarfs. Six of them are carrying Grumpy to the wash basin to clean him despite his violent protests.

Note the distortion on many of the drawings. #239 & 241 for example. #254 & 256 as well.

DwarfDist222 222

DwarfDist230 230

DwarfDist236 236

DwarfDist239 239

DwarfDist241 241

DwarfDist243 243

DwarfDist247 247

DwarfDist254 254

DwarfDist256 256

DwarfDist260 260

Here’s the QT movie of the full scene:


The P.T. is exposed on ones at 24FPS.
Note the buttons on the bottom far right will allow you to
advance (and reverse) the action one frame at a time. You
should go through this to see the distortion on the inbetweens
and how it works when the animation is in full motion.

There’s a great deal of distortion and smearing in Tytla’s work. I think he uses it to heighten the acting moments that his characters are performing. This particular scene is more action than acting, so other than to show off his distorting the characters, it isn’t a great example of acting, per se. Bt that drawing #239 is a good example of what he’ll do, even to the face of the principal character in the scene, to get his animation to work.

It’s almost as if he’d studied live action frame by frame and represents all those motion blurs in live action by smearing the face. The dwarfs are probably the first time complicated acting is successfully achieved. They’d done it before with many of the characters in the Silly Symphonies, but these are characters who sustain strong personalities over a long period of film. They also go through strong emotional changes which underline and works off their personalities.


Tytla had a very different character in Stromboli for Pinocchio. He was a theatrical type, very changeable personality with emotions going all over the place – from high to low in the bat of an eye.

Tytla brought beautiful distortion to many of the drawings he did, using it as a way to hammer home some of the emotions in the elasticity he was creating. Yet, the casual observer watching this sequence in motion doesn’t ever notice that distortion yet can feel it in the strength of the motion.


Four drawings (#1, 11, 22, & 48) that shift so enormously but call no attention to itself.
Brilliant draftsmanship and use of the forms.

After I first posted some of these drawings and spoke a bit about the distortion Tytla would use to his advantage – for emotional gestures – I received some comments. I’d written that . . . “It’s part of the “animating forces instead of forms” method that Tytla used. This is found in Stromboli’s face.

This note arrived from Borge Ring after my first post Bill Tytla’s scene featuring Stromboli’s mood swing:

    The Arch devotees of Milt Kahl have tearfull misgivings about Wladimir Tytla’s magnificent language of distortions. ‘”Yes, he IS good. But he has made SO many ugly drawings”

    Musicologists will know that Beethoven abhorred the music of Johan Sebastian Bach.

    yukyuk
    Børge

Note in one of these arms (right) Tytla uses Stromboli’s blouse to make it look like there’s distortion. It barely registers but gives strength to the arm move before it as his blouse follows through in extreme.

There’s also some beautiful and simple drawing throughout this piece. Stromboli is, basically, a cartoon character that caricatures reality beautifully. A predecessor to Cruella de Vil. In drawings 76 to 80 there’s a simple turn of the hand that is nicely done by some assistant. A little thing among so much bravura animation.

Many people don’t like the exaggerated motion of Stromboli. However, I think it’s perfectly right for the character. He’s Italian – prone to big movements. He’s a performer who, like many actors in real life, goes for the big gesture. In short his character is all there – garlic breath and all.

Here’s a short part of another scene. I’ve enlarged the images a little so that the thumbnails are more revealing. Just look at the distortion on the heads and how he stretches the arm to give it a violent emphasis.

strombolism1 1
Tytla starts with arm and head all the way back to
the character’s right. It’d be hard for Stromboli to
reach any further back without real distortion.

strombolism3 3

strombolism5 5
He then slowly advances the head inbetweening slowly.
The arm hasn’t moved very much – maybe what they
call today a “moving hold.”

strombolism7 7

strombolism9 9

strombolism11 11
Now the arm comes out swiping violently.
The head’s almost complete in its turn to the left.

strombolism12 12

strombolism13 13
The arm rips across in three drawings.
The head has gone too far.

strombolism14 14
The head goes back to where it should – almost no inbetweens
for Stromboli to get ready for speech. He’s taken 14 drawings
to display his anger.

strombolism16 16

strombolism18 18

strombolism20 20
The arm comes back into a near fist; the expression is violent.

strombolism22 22
The head starts shaking in a “no” gesture.
Violent.

strombolism24 24

strombolism25 25
The head and arm are all the way back.
The vest has been set up to make a violent move.

strombolism26 26

strombolism28 28
Now the arm and fist swipe across in violence.

strombolism30 30
He’s completely pulled his angry head in to his neck.

strombolism32 32
Both arms, moving violently, are suddenly restrained.

strombolism33 33

strombolism34 34
He hits a full stop with his arm.

strombolism36 36

strombolism37 37
He’s made the realization that he has to change his expression
so that he doesn’t lose the frightened kid – completely.

strombolism38 38
A lot going on in only 38 drawings.

Here’s the final QT of the entire scene.This part comes at the very beginning:


Stromboli
Click left side of the black bar to play.
Right side to watch single frame.

David Nethery had taken my drawings posted and synched them up to the sound track here.

It’s not clichéd, and it’s well felt and thought out. Think of the Devil in “Night on Bald Mountain” that would follow, then the simply wonderful and understated Dumbo who would follow that. Tytla was a versatile master.

We’ll continue next time with Dumbo Fantasia and other Tytla gems.

Daily post 17 Mar 2013 03:02 am

Fantasia Program recap

- Back in the olden days, films were released very differently.

It wasn’t until the early 60′s that an important film opened at more than one theater in a town/city. (I can remember that United Artists package of ten films that first did this. It included: To Kill A Mockingbird, Dr. No, and A Hard Day’s Night. Even then we were talking about 60 theaters – not 3000.)

Before then, in New York City, key films opened on Broadway, and you had to buy reserved seat tickets in advance to see it. The film would play at the one theater for a month or two and then move onto more theaters locally around town.

I can remember the trip to see How The West Was Won, The Tales of The Brothers Grimm, Lawrence of Arabia, and others.

With this higher priced film presentation, you were given a small booklet or you could buy the deluxe souvenir booklet. In 1963, I found this deluxe booklet for the initial premiere of Fantasia. I bought it from a used-book dealer while I was still in college. The film has no credit list; you have to consult the program to get that.

This past week, I watched Fantasia again and used the program to read some credits. That’s when I thought it might be interesting to feature the booklet on this site.

1 2
(Click any image to enlarge to a readable size.)

3 4

5 6

7 8

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1314

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1920

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Commentary &Layout & Design &repeated posts 14 Mar 2013 04:38 am

Tubby – looking back

Sometimes the bad films we work on leave the greater mark, and it’s good to look back, infrequently, to assess the damages.

- I was reading the 1957 Disney Studio Directory posted on Joe Campana‘s site, Animation – Who & Where. when I came upon the name of Howard Diettrich. This threw me back to 1973 and Tubby The Tuba.

I’d just been layed off at the Hubley Studio, after completing the first 20 (of 60) episodes of Letterman. Officially, I had been categorized as an “inbetweener” in the u-nion. I’d done everything from animate to ink at Hubley’s, but that was my category. I received a call from Johnny Gentilella. We’d met through Hubley, and he was now working for NY Institute of Technology. They were in the early stages of production on their feature, Tubby The Tuba, and I was offered the job of Assistant Animator, a categorical promotion.

NYIT was the school I’d graduated from and received my BFA; it was located in Old Westbury, Long Island – about an hour’s drive from Manhattan. It’d be interesting, returning to my old school just to see how it had changed. By taking the Long Island Rail Road, I was able to cut down that ride by a few minutes and leave the driving to someone else. I was picked up at the station and driven to the animation building, a small cottage on the campus. Everyone was out to lunch except for Johnny Gent(ilella), and he drove me (about a couple hundred yards) to meet Sam Singer, the producer recently hired to do the film.

Singer had done all those Courageous Cat cartoons that had infested children’s programming back in the late 60s/early 70s. Oddly, I enjoyed them; I always was a glutton for bad animation. Love those cel flares, shadows, scratches and cel edges.

I was directed to his office. In there was another producer, Barry Yellin, who had broken his ankle and was on crutches. I got to meet the two of them and listen to them kibbitz around me, virtually ignoring me for a few minutes. Singer was chewing on a cigar, and I couldn’t take my eyes off the spittle that seemed to be moving down the cigar in his mouth. When I finally left to return to the animation building, I saw that Singer was also on crutches. He had a clubbed foot.

I sort of remembered that meeting as an omen of things to come. The entire place, while I was there, felt like it was on crutches.

I liked Johnny Gent a lot; we got along well at Hubley’s; on Letterman I got to mangle quite a few scenes by him as I learned how to inbetween properly.

There were only about 8 others at NYIT at the time. Other people I met included Walt Kubiak, another assistant who I enjoyed talking to; animator, Chuck Harriton, who I’d met at Hubley’s (and never really was crazy about); Lou Marcus who was filming the work on an Oxberry. Lou had gone back in animation for many years and had plenty of stories to tell. (See Andrew Marcus’ comment below.)

The person I most associated with was the editor of the film, Phillip Schopper. He was a young guy who took the LIRR everyday from Brooklyn to Old Westbury. We’d meet daily on the train and laugh over the events of the days out there. I’ve stayed friends with Phillip, who has become a first-rate filmmaker; we rarely talk about those days at NYIT.

It was not a fun place to work. At the time, everyone chatted over their cubicle walls. I was in the front of the studio with full view of the front door. I was constantly getting notes from Chuck Harriton who persistently altered the models of the characters in ways that no one else was drawing. I was forced to work his scenes off-model. Johnny Gent always had a beautiful drawing style and made it easy for assistants to follow and inbetween. He and I spent most of our lunch hours alone together in the studio. We were able to have quite a few conversations; I loved that part.

Everyone seemed to back talk everyone else as they walked out the front door. I couldn’t help wondering what they said about me when I left. Too much swiping makes for an unpleasant working condition.

At one point, Sam Singer brought in a number of his people from California. I’d already been there about four weeks so was glad to see some new blood. Many of the few people were ex-Disney people, so there was a lot for me to learn. Nino Carbe, was a good example of this. He had done some incredible work at Disney’s on Fantasia and other films. He was an artistic force and a nice guy to meet.

Howard Diettrich was a virtuoso assistant who had worked on Sleeping Beauty. Unfortunately, he was an alcoholic who had a big problem. Sam Singer took him under his wing and had decided to cure him. Hypnotherapy came in, and Howard went through the mill for Singer. It made a soap opera of a story for all of us working there, and it was hard for me to watch.

I decided to leave. They wouldn’t allow me to quit without going to Alexander Schure. He was the President of the school – yes, NYIT was still predominantly a school – and he was financing the whole thing. His idea, ultimately, was to introduce computer animation to the world, and he invested heavily there. Some of the brilliant people who grew out of this department moved on to develop Lucas and Pixar.

So I went to Alexander Schure, and he argued with me for about 30 minutes. I told him that the travel time was too much. He didn’t accept that. He liked the fact that I was an art school grad from his school and was working there. He offered to have his son pick me up and drive me.
I knew that there was no solid directorial voice coming from the top, and the film could never be good. My artless tactic was to say as much. He told me that he was going to take over from Sam Singer, and he would be the voice of clarity. Now I knew I really had to get out. He finally surrendered, and I left. Happily.

I was back with Hubley within two weeks. Even better.

I didn’t get to see the film until I borrowed a vhs copy from Dante Barbetta, who eventually joined their staff to animate when it got significantly larger.
That was not a good film, as a matter of fact it was incredibly bad. I’m not sorry I left, though I would have enjoyed more time with Johnny Gent; it was the last time I worked with him. I also still wonder what happened to Howard Diettrich.

Note: Last year, John Celestri wrote about the later period in the making of this film on Mark Mayerson‘s site. Part I and Part 2.

Animation &Commentary &Daily post &Errol Le Cain &Richard Williams 25 Feb 2013 05:28 am

POV

The Richard Williams Mystique

hands

Next Friday, at the invitation of filmmaker-editor-director, Kevin Schreck, I’ll have the pleasure of seeing his recently completed documentary, Persistence of Vision. This is the story of the making of Richard Williams‘ many-years-in-the -making animated feature, The Cobbler and the Thief. I’m not sure of the film maker’s POV, but I somehow expect it to be wholly supportive of the insistent vision of Richard Williams in the making of this Escher-like version of an animated feature. A work of obsession.

It’s the tale of an “artist”, someone who sees himself as an artist, and continually pushes through the world with what would seem to be evident proof of such. After all, this man had single-handedly altered the face of 2D animation in a world that was about to throw it away with all its rich history and artistry and strengths. A medium that had developed through the years of Disney with giant, filmed classics such as Snow White, Pinocchio, Fantasia and even Sleeping Beauty. A medium that had drastically changed to 20th century graphics under the hands of people like John Hubley, Chuck Jones, George Dunning and many others and had just about reached a zenith where it was moving toward something wholly new, something adult.

Instead the medium took a turn in the wrong direction. The economics of television brought us back almost 100 years as films became more and more simplistic and simpleminded in the rush to be cheap. Even the Disney studio went for the poorest subject matter using cost-saving devices to sell their films. Films became shoddier and shoddier, and the economics ruled. The closest the medium would come to art was Ralph Bakshi‘s Fritz the Cat and Heavy Traffic, low budget movies that traded on racy material in exchange for an attempt at something adult, stories barely held together with editing tape. Animation was getting a bad name from every corner whether it was the sped-up graphics of Hanna-Barbera, the reach to the lowest common denominator with poor animation from Disney, or the shock and tell of Ralph Bakshi‘s filmed attempts at what he saw as art.

Williams took a different turn. He went back to the height of animation’s golden era, inviting artists such as Grim Natwick, John Hubley, Ken Harris and Art Babbitt to his London studio to lecture on the rules and backbone of the animation. He brought some of these people to work on a feature that he’d decided to create within his studio on the profits of commercials. These very same commercials financed the training of Dick and his young staff.

Dick&animatorA documentary done in 1966, called The Creative Person: Richard Williams offers an excellent view of his studio. We see snippets of shorts Dick made with his own coin: Love Me Love Me Love Me (1962) or The Sailor and the Devil (1967) wherein we see the training of a young and brilliant illustrator named Errol le Cain. (Le Cain became known for his magnificent, glimmering children’s book illustrations. He was doing most of the backgrounds for The Cobbler and the Thief, and had certainly had a large part in its design.)

LeCainCUWe see in this documentary the first hint of The Cobbler when it was called Nasruddin. It was based on a book of middle eastern tales of a wise fool whose every short story tells a new and positive anecdote. Dick had illustrated several books of these tales with many funny line drawings. The book was written by the Idres Shah who had undertaken a role within the Willams studio finding funds for the feature. Eventually, the two had a falling out, and Idres Shah left with his property. Williams took the work he had done as Nasruddin and reworked it into The Cobbler and the Thief. ________________________________Errol le Cain

Meanwhile the work within his studio continued to develop, growing more and more mature. The commercials became the highlight of the world’s animation. Doing many feature film titles such as What’s New Pussycat (1965), A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1966), The Charge of the Light Brigade (1968) led to Dick’s directing a half-hour adaptation of The Christmas Carol (1971). Chuck Jones produced the ABC program, and it led to an Oscar as Best Animated Short.

Through all this The Cobbler and the Thief continued. Many screenplays changed the story and the stunning graphics that were being produced for that film were often shifted about to accommodate the new story.

alevitowBy this time, Williams had developed something of a name within the world of animation. Strong and important animation figures went to his studio to work for periods of time. Someone like Abe Levitow taught and animated for the studio. (His scenes for The Christmas Carol are among the most powerful.) Many of the Brits that worked in the studio and then left to start their own companies were now among the world’s best animators.

Williams had the opportunity of doing a theatrical feature adaptation of the children’s books The Adventures of Raggedy Ann and Andy and took it. A large staff of classically trained animation leaders such as Art Babbitt, Grim Natwick, Tissa David, Hal Ambro, Emery Hawkins and many others worked out of New York or LA as the company set up two studios to produce this film. Working for over two years, Dick’s attention was diverted to work away from his London studio, where commercials and some small devotion was given to The Thief by a few of the key personnel working there. Dick spent a good amount of his time in the air flying from NY to LA to NY to London and back again and again. He concentrated his animation efforts on cleaning up animation by some of the masters, rather than allow proper assistants to do these tasks. By doing this he was able to reanimate some of the work he didn’t wholly approve of. Entire song numbers were reworked by Dick as the film flew well behind its budget and schedule.

Eventually, the film finished in confusion and mismanagement, and Dick moved to his LA studio where he continued commercials and began Ziggy’s Gift, a Christmas Special for ABC.

rabbitrogerFrom this he went back to his London studio and did the animation for Who Framed Roger Rabbit for producer/director Robert Zemeckis. He hoped that work on this feature, which won three Academy Awards, including a special one for the animation, would be the triumph he needed to help him raise the funds for The Thief and the Cobbler. Now that he was safely back in his own studio in Soho Square he felt more focused.

A contract came from Warner Bros., and the work began in earnest.

Dick’s history wasn’t the best working on these long form films. Chuck Jones replaced him on The Christmas Carol to get it finished when work went overbudget and schedule. Dick was putting too much into it. Gerry Potterton finished Raggedy Ann when the budget went millions over with less than a third completed. Eric Goldberg took over Ziggy’s Gift, the Christmas Special for ABC, to get it done on time. On Roger Rabbit, the live action director stayed intimately involved in the animation after his shoot was complete. When it became obvious that things weren’t going well, he stepped in to complete that film.

In all cases of all of these films, Dick never left. He stayed on working separately on animation or assisting to try to keep a positive hand in the quality of the work that was done.

ProcessionWhen The Cobbler and the Thief ran into very serious trouble, there was no secondary Director or Producer to come in and complete the work. Instead that job fell to the money men. The completion bond company, essentially an insurance company for Warner Bros. to make sure they wouldn’t lose their money if things didn’t go well, stepped in. They closed Dick’s studio and removed Dick from the premises. The boxed up and carted off all animation work done or in progress. It was all moved back to Los Angeles.

The Weinsteins, through their company, Miramax bought the film at auction and completed it with a poor excuse of an animation outfit they set up in LA. Work was also sent to Taiwan. The script was reworked trying to capitalize on the success of Disney’s Aladdin that had recently opened in the US. If Robin Williams‘ ad libbing could be such a success, imagine how well Jonathan Winters could do repeating that for a character who, in Dick’s original version, had no voice. Now he didn’t stop talking.

The new film failed miserably and deserved to do so. The primary audience, I would suspect, was the entire world animation community coming to look down on the artificially breathing corpse.

willams teaching Richard Williams, himself, retired and moved far from the mainstream. He continues to work on small animation bits, but his primary work has been in making a series of DVD lectures revealing how animation should be done. This accompanies a well-received book he wrote and illustrated. Meanwhile, the animation community still hopes that something will emerge from that corner.

Dick turns 80 years old on March 19th. He’s still an amazing forceful and exciting personality. I wish I had more access to him (as does most of those who knew him back then.) He’s had probably the greatest effect on the animation industry of anyone since the late sixties. There are still studios thriving today on information they learned from Dick and his teaching.

If you’re unfamiliar with the blog, The Thief, I suggest you take a look.

Articles on Animation &Books &Commentary 18 Feb 2013 04:59 am

Appreciation

The deeper you go, the deeper you go.

Hwood CtnssmIn reviewing the two J.B. Kaufman books on Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, I found them impeccable in their attempt to reconstruct the making of this incredibly important movie. They followed a strict pattern of analyzing the film in a linear fashion going from scene one to the end.

Dwarf fight3However, the analysis Kaufman offered brought me back to the bible, Mike Barrier‘s Hollywood Cartoons. Rereading his chapter on Snow White, you realize how much depth he offers in a far shorter amount of space. Of course, there are few illustrations in Barrier’s book, but what writing is there is golden. He meticulously analyzes the work of different animators using a very strict code of principles. If you can agree with him, the book he’s written opens up enormously.

StromboliScOnce you get to the chapter, post-Snow White, which catalogues the making of Pinocchio, Fantasia, Bambi and Dumbo you are in the deep water. Mike pointedly criticizes some of the greatest animation ever done. His analysis of Bill Tytla’s Stromboli is ruthless. Though I am an enormous fan of this animation, I cannot say I disagree with what he has to say. Though I think differently of the animation.

Here’s a long excerpt from this chapter:

    No animator suffered more in this changing environment than Tytla. His expertise is everywhere evident in his animation of Stromboli—in the sense of Stromboli’s weight and in his highly mobile face—but however plausible Stromboli is as a flesh-and-blood creature, there is in him no cartoon acting on the order of what Tytla contributed to the dwarfs. At Pinocchio’s Hollywood premiere, Frank Thomas said, W. C. Fields sat behind him, “and when Stromboli came on he muttered to whoever was with him, ‘he moves too much, moves too much.’” Fields was right-although not for the reason Thomas advanced, that Stromboli “was too big and too powerful.”
    In the bare writing of his scenes, Stromboli, more than any of the film’s other villains, deals with Pinocchio as if he were, indeed, a wooden puppet—suited to perform in a puppet show, and perhaps to feed a fire—rather than a little boy. But the chilling coldness implicit in the writing for Stromboli finds no echo in the Dutch actor Charles Judels’s voice for the character. Judels’: Stromboli speaks patronizingly to Pinocchio, as he would to a gullible child, and his threat to use Pinocchio as firewood sounds like a bully’s bluster. As Tytla strained to bring this poorly conceived character to life, he lost the balance between feeling and expression. The Stromboli who emerges in Tytla’s animation is too vehement, “moves too much”; his passion has no roots, and so he is not convincing as a menace to Pinocchio, except in the crudest physical sense. There is nothing in Stromboli of what could have made him truly terrifying: a calm dismissal of Pinocchio as, after all, no more than an object.
    To some extent, Tytla may have been overcompensating for live action that even Ham Luske acknowledged was “underacted.” But Luske defended the use of live action for Stromboli by arguing that it had kept Tytla on a leash: “If he had been sitting at his board animating, without any live action to study, he might have done too many things.”

I agree, as Barrier says, that Stromboli is a flawed character, and I agree that the movement is broad and overstated. However, I think that this was Tytlas’s only possible entrance into the material, into trying to further the characterization. No, it could not be as deep as the work he’d done on Grumpy in Snow White, but the character of Stromboli isn’t as small as that name, “Grumpy”. A lot more was offered and had to be circled to simplify as best as possible for the small amount of screen time he would have in Pinocchio. And, yes, he comes off like a blowhard with a lot of bluster. But that’s not the way Pinocchio sees him. Pinocchio is made of wood, as Stromboli reminds us, but he is also an innocent, a child learning about the world.

Barrier’s chapter, as I said, moves quickly through this material covering four of the greatest Disney films; no, four of the greatest animated features ever done. In relatively few pages you feel as though he’s gotten it all in there and has even said more in depth than almost any historian about this period of Disney animation. I’ve read this chapter at least a dozen times, and it continues to grow richer for me. I think it’s possible the greatest piece ever written about animation.

Barrier’s writing, vocabulary, choice of phrase is all charged to keep the material tight. He’s writing a large book, and he has to get a lot in.

wildHarePerhaps some day he will have one of those big picture books to write where he will have the freedom to expound on the material. I did once read such a book. Mike Barrier had been employed to write a history of the Warner Bros. studio, and I got to read the first draft of the manuscript. I had a couple of hours and sat in a chair, thumbing pages. The images that were to be in the book were on large chromes. It was all an extraordinary experience for me, and I remember it somewhat hazily, as if remembering a golden afternoon. Of course that book was cancelled when management changed hands, and the world lost a great book.

Can there be any wonder that I go to the Barrier website daily, knowing full well that it’s often months between posts? I just keep looking for new material from him, and will continue my daily routine hoping for the small brightly colored package on his site. It’s almost important for there not to be frequent posts or the new ones wouldn’t always shine as well. However, two or three times a year, there is something rich there, and my search has brought the golden fish. (Yes, I’m exaggerating somewhat like Tytla did in his animation of Stromboli. But the point gets made.)

Even if there’s nothing new there, there’s plenty old. Many old Funnyworld articles or interviews done with Milt Gray. It’s a deep site full of deep writing.

Commentary &Disney 22 Jan 2013 08:28 am

Rambling on some Disney Features

- A stash of Disney animated features were on television this Sunday. Hercules, Lady and the Tramp, Alice in Wonderland, Aladdin, Cinderella, and The Lion King all followed each other immediately, one on top of the other. Actually some of them even overlapped each other. The credits for Hercules (miniscule and too tiny to read) played on the left half of the screen while the opening credits for Lady and the Tramp played on the right half of the screen. They were going to milk every ounce of Disney Family viewing they could for the money.

I was pretty sick on Sunday, the flu has struck our little home hard, and I’m not yet down for the count but feel pretty close. So I could see how much of this 2D mania I could stomach – flu and all. I didn’t come in to it until the very end of Hercules, which is probably the one film I would have liked seeing again, but virtually missed.

Some quick notes: It was nice to see Lady and the Tramp letterboxed for Cinemascope. The opening is still as tender as ever, and the Siamese cats are beautifully layed out for scope. The layout, backgrounds and animation – particularly the effects animation of the chase for Tramp in the dog pound wagon is exceptional. I think it’s probably one of the best sequences in the film. “Bella Notte,” of course, works well, but except for the sentimental emotion the sequence was never one of my favorites. There isn’t much for the dogs to do while the singing continues. They do pull a lot out of the spaghetti, but for much of it, the dogs just sit there, or in closer shots chew their food.

Alice seemed loud and aggressive though some of the coloring seemed inspired, and it’s amazing to see how much of Mary Blair is still in there in some parts – particularly the end of the caterpillar sequence. I found the Cheshire Cat a blessing in the wilderness. A lot is done with little subject matter, and it’s all in the excellent animation, of course. It’s obvious that Alice is a tough character to animate, but she’s done brilliantly. Essentially, she’s the “straight man” for everyone else in the film. She just sits there while the other characters bounce their schtick off of her. As I noted in a past post I am intrigued by the use of shadows in the transitional parts of the film. It works stunningly well , and this device virtually holds a lot of the film together in some odd quiet little way. I’d be curious to see more of this done with other films. You need a director with a big vision watching out for the film as a whole. I’m not crazy about a lot of the wild animation of the many zany characters that seem more cartoon to me than do they feel like Lewis Carrol creatures. There’s an interesting little scene where Alice sits down to cry in the woods. At first, she’s alone, then like Snow White in a similar situation feels sorry for herself and lets go. Little woodland creatures, deer and squirrels and rabbits and birds surround Snow White. Alice greets the odd little cartoon characters which feel as though they’d escaped from Clampett’s Porky in Wackyland. The woodland characters in Snow White serve the purpose of moving the heroine forward in the story to the dwarfs’ cottage. The zanies in Alice just disappear before she stops crying. Essentially, they’re pointless little creatures that offer nothing to the film. Fortunately the Cheshire Cat returns at this point. He fades in just as all the others have faded off.

Aladdin has always bothered me. It feels more like a Warner Bros film than a Disney feature. The wild animation and even the style of the animation gives me good reason to feel this way. However, I think I came to terms with that in watching it again (maybe my 12th time?) mixed in with these other movies. The film is what it is and does it well. Eric Goldberg’s genie is a classic combination with the Robin Williams voice over, and Eric gets full use of that voice and the business happening on screen. The material presented has dated some, though not as bad as I expected. How lone before kids don’t know who people like Ed Sullivan are? Though I suppose this is similar to the personalities left over from the celebrity cartoons of the 30′s & 40′s. Mother Goose Goes Hollywood needs a program of its own to tell us who half of those caricatures represent. And they are great pieces of art that Joe Grant did for them. The villain in Aladdin tries hard but he’s not menacing just threatening. There was never anything that I worried about with him, and this feeling goes back to my very first viewing of the film. I do like the tiger in the film, Jasminda’s pet. That cat makes up for the ineffectual father. His character is not anything I can really associate with.

Cinderella is a very interesting film. I go into it thinking I hate it and get completely tied up with the extraordinary pacing of the film. Every scene is so exact and tight. They really knew what they were doing. I’m not the biggest fan of the human animation, but at the same time I’m in awe of it. It isn’t really rotoscoping, but it’s so beautifully pulled off the live action they shot, that it feels completely fresh. The cartoon animals play off the humans as the dwarfs did in Snow White. They look as they they come from different films and the style of animation is so different. The set pieces are exquisite. That entire piece with Cinderella locked in her room, the animals fighting to release her all those stairs away and the final reveal of her own glass slipper. It’s so beautifully melodramatic and so perfectly executed. Yes, this is an odd film for me to watch.

I didn’t make it to The Lion King. I’ve seen that about half a dozen times in the last few months so preferred watching my soap opera – Downton Abbey.

Watching these films back to back to back like this sort of lessens them but at the same time one is overwhelmed by the amazing craftsmanship held so high for so long. For years I felt the modern films, Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast, Hercules were lesser efforts compared to what the “masters” did. But now I’m sure they’re every bit as good as some of the later classics. No, I don’t think Snow White, Pinocchio, Fantasia, Dumbo and Bambi can be beaten today, but the new films are definitely equal to Lady and the Tramp, Cinderella, Alice In Wonderland and anything later than that. (I actually think Sleeping Beauty is in a class of its own and haven’t seen the equal to that from the more recent people. Actually, I take that back. I think Prince of Egypt is right up there. That’s a magnificent film, and it’s one I’d like to discuss more in depth sometime soon.)

Oh, of course, this is all my own opinionated nonsense. Someone else would have a completely different list. I’m, obviously, leaving cg films out of this discussion. To be honest, I can’t even find a story there that I think measures up to most of the Disney classics. I’m also not thinking much about non-Disney works, but there’s an obvious reason for that. However, some of those Dreamworks 2D films are exceptional and deserve a lot of attention. Attention they haven’t received. Spirit has stunning animation, as do a number of others. They really need a bit of time.

I had some bigger thoughts brought on by watching them all, but I’ve gone on too long already. So I’ll let this rambling post fizzle out. Hope you don’t mind, but I’m getting to enjoy writing these diatribes.

Bill Peckmann &Books &Comic Art &Disney &Illustration 18 Jan 2013 08:33 am

H2O, Donald and Mickey via Paul Murry

Water water everywhere and Paul Murry gets to draw it all. Here are two stories starring Disney’s greatest characters, Donald and Mickey. The two stories have three years apart from each other, but Murry gives us plenty of a stylized water, drawn slightly differently from one story to the next. How appropriate of Bill Peckmann to send us these tales when Congress finally got off their butts and voted the victims of Hurricane Sandy some financial relief. Here’s Bill’s comments:

    Here is another Paul Murry story containing H2O hi-jinks. It’s a ‘Walt Disney’s Comics and Stories‘ Donald Duck 10 pager from 1950. (It was the only year that DD regular Carl Barks missed doing a number of his signature character stories. There’s another great Murry Duck story that deals with an overnight flood; sorry, I just can’t remember what comic book it’s in.)


The comic cover from1950. This cover art is by Carl Buettner.

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If we jump three years to 1953, we’ll find another Paul Murry story with a strong focus on water. Here our intrepid artist adapts The Sorcerer’s Apprentice from Fantasia. (Perhaps there was a re-release of the film that year.)
Part of the cover.

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- Speaking of Paul Murry, let me end by giving another pitch for the excellent collection of The Adventures of Buck O’Rue and his hoss, Reddish by Dick Huemer & Paul Murry. This is a rip roaring (you’ll be roaring with laughter) classic of a brilliant strip.
No, no one is paying me for this or prompting my wanting to remind you of the perfect Valentine gift. I just like this book and this strip, and I think you might like it, too.

Animation Artifacts &Commentary &Independent Animation &John Canemaker &Layout & Design 08 Dec 2012 06:23 am

Elements, Chemistry and Odd Bits

A Fishinger Exhibition


Oskar Fischinger, still from Allegretto, 1936-1943 © Center for Visual Music

- On Dec 16 in Amsterdam there will be a major exhibition of the work of Oskar Fischinger, a pioneer of animation film and abstract cinema. This opening will be an exhibition featuring various items including the films, the animation drawings, process material, the documents, correspondence, clippings, color charts, sketches, diagrams, patent drawings, and some of the sketches done (but not used) for Fantasia. Also exhibited will be notated graphic scores, material from the making of An Optical Poem, unshot animation drawings, and various other materials.

John Canemaker wrote about Fishinger for the New York Times, “Decades before computer graphics, before music videos, even before Fantasia (the 1940 version), there were the abstract animated films of Oskar Fischinger (1900-1967), master of “absolute” or nonobjective filmmaking. He was cinema’s Kandinsky, an animator who, beginning in the 1920′s in Germany, created exquisite “visual music” using geometric patterns and shapes choreographed tightly to classical music and jazz.’


Oskar Fishinger in his Hollywood studio with panels from “Motion Painting”.

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Consuming Sprits


Art Under Camera

This coming week, Wednesday Dec. 12th, Christopher Sullivan’s independent, animated feature will make its New York premiere with a week-long run at the Film Forum.

Described in the Film Forum’s press material: “The animation took 15 years of work… The characters were hand-drawn onto layers of glass which were then moved with needles and pins. The film seamlessly combines cutout animation, pencil drawing, collage, and stop-motion animation to create the haunting atmosphere of a self-contained world… (most of whose) characters walk shakily between self-medication and a bad trip… ugly characters (who) make up the most beautiful spectacle you’ve ever seen.”

I’ve been looking forward to seeing this film for quite some time. Finally, I’ve been able to confirm arrangements to see it, and I will review it. I’m ready, given all the mediocre work I’ve seen lately.

Meet the film maker

Christopher Sullivan will be there IN PERSON! at the following screenings:
December 14 | 6:30pm
December 15 | 6:30pm

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MoMA in Europe

This week, upcoming, the Museum of Modern Art will present a program of older European animation, and quite a few great classics will be screened in one very powerful program that will be shown three times. Trust me, if you don’t know these shorts, they are brilliant – all of them – and there is not one you should miss. Here’s a list of the films in the program:

Animation Abroad, 1946–59

Arie Prerie (Song of the Prairie)
1948. Czechoslovakia. Directed by Jiri Trnka. 21 min.

A Litte Phantasy on a 19th Century Painting
1946. Canada. Directed by Norman McLaren. 3 min.

Fiddle-de-dee
1947. Canada. Directed by Norman McLaren. 4 min.

Charley’s March of Time
1948. Great Britain. 1948. Directed by John Halas and Joy Batchelor. 9 min.

A Phantasy
1952. Canada. Directed by Norman McLaren. 8 min.

Blinkity Blank
1955. Canada. Directed by Norman McLaren. 5 min.

Thumbelina
1955. Great Britain. Directed by Lotte Reiniger. 11 min.

Concerto for a Submachine Gun
1958. Yugoslavia. Directed by Dusan Vukotic. 13 min.

Les Astronautes
1959. France. Directed by Walerian Borowczyk with Chris Marker. 13 min.

Program 87 min.

Wednesday, December 12, 2012, 1:30 p.m., Theater 2, T2
Thursday, December 13, 2012, 1:30 p.m., Theater 2, T2
Friday, December 14, 2012, 1:30 p.m., Theater 2, T2

Nest week, and I’ll post the list next Saturday, there will be a number of Hollywood Cartoons that will be screened. Chuck Jones, Robert McKimson, Hanna & Barbera, Jack Hannah and Ward Kimball. They’re all represented.

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Pups for Sale

– As of yesterday, Friday, the Pups of Liberty became available for sale to teachers as well as the public, If you go to izzit.org or Amazon.com, you’ll see the assets that are available; indeed, they both link to an educational video, entitled The Pups of Liberty.

Perhaps you’ll remember the posts I published a while back on this short film produced by Bert and Jennifer Klein. I put those several articles together into one here to best showcase the story of this video. With the help of an all-star animation team (artists including: James Lopez (Hercules, Emperor’s New Groove, Flushed Away and Princess and the Frog), Eric Goldberg (Aladdin, Fantasia 2000, and Princess and the Frog), Barry Atkinson (Prince of Egypt, American Tail and The Lion King), and Mark Henn (The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, Muland and Princess and the Frog) Jennifer and Bert created this Revolutionary War-based film. It offered history as entertainment and allowed audiences to learn from a very entertaining series.

Now, the Kleins are not only making the video available for sale but have a new activities website which expands on that video.

This is a smart idea as Bert and Jennifer Klein seek to develop a new market and a new way to sell a creative product. If you’d like to learn more, take a look at these few clips of the animation. Here or here or here.

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This Week’s Films

The schedule continues with our watching a lot of films on the run up to the Oscar nominations. By “us” I mean the people of the Academy, those who elect to see the films on a big screen before they vote. I’m sure a lot of members take the easy way out and watch DVDs of the current movies. I won’t hear this way out. As a matter of fact, they’ve asked us to accept the films via download. We’d watch the movies – the movies we’re voting for as Oscar contenders – via download over the internet. Sort of like NETFLIX. I still want to think of them as “movies”, I want the burden of going to a theater to watch them in a public place with other differing viewers, all inconvenienced at the same time. That is part of the experience, isn’t it?

So, anyway, this week started off with Zero Dark Thirty. (I guess that’s supposed to mean 12:30 am – or half past midnight, in the dark.) On Tuesday the movie got the NYFilm Critic’s award for Best Film of the Year. I was hot to see the movie.

Turns out, to me, it was just one step above a TV movie version of the raid on Osama Bin Laden campsite to capture the guy. This film had no poetry in it and wasn’t about much other than the raid we watched. I didn’t like it. Dull. I did like Kateryn Bigelow’s last film, The Hurt Locker. But this film wasn’t that. I thought Jessica Chastain was miscast even though I am a big fan of hers. In fact there’s a Thursday luncheon where I’ll meet Ms. Bigelow and Ms. Chastain. I’m looking forward to that but have to lie if they ask what I thought of the film.


top – Dustin Hoffman, Bill Connolly
bot – Maggie Smith, Tom Courtney

On Wednesday, there was the fllm directed by Dustin Hoffman, The Quartet. This one was great. No miscasting here. Maggie Smith and Tom Courtney were brilliant. Billy Connolly couldn’t have been better, and it was easy to love Pauline Collins. She’s always great. The script by Ron Harwood from his own play was sparkling and always alive. The film was funny, warm, about people and always alive. Just great and human. Top drawer work. After the screening there was a penthouse cocktail party with a nice view, good free vodka or wine, and a chance to tell Dustin Hoffman and Billy Connolly about how good they were. Heidi told Mr. connolly how much she hliked his voice work in Brave, I just told him he was great, great, great. If I didn’t realize how stupid I sounded, I probably would have said a couple more “greats”. See this film for all the brilliant talent on display and the fun you’ll have watching it.

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UPA

– Thursday night, I skipped the screening of Hyde Park to attend the lecture across town. Adam Abraham was speaking on the back of his book, When Magoo Flew: The Rise and Fall of Animation Studio UPA . The book was remarkable to me, and I was looking forward to meeting the author. At first there were very few people in attendance, but it soon filled up. I was happy to see friends, John Canemaker and Amid Amidi there.

Adam’s talk was well done and ended with the screening of five films: Gerald McBoing Boing, Magoo Express, The Tell Tale Heart, Rooty Toot Toot and a rarely seen live action promotion for Magoo’s 1001 Arabian Nights, called: A Princess for Magoo.

I enjoyed the program and was pleased to meet Adam after the talk. Amid Amidi and I walked the few blocks to the subway and went home. A nice evening.

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Back to the Routine

– On Friday, I attended a luncheon for the film Argo. Ben Affleck, and several key people from the film attended and answered our questions about the movie while we ate at the Four Seasons Restaurant.

The movie is promoted as some kind of recreation of actual events, and I’m sure it is. However, the film we see on the screen works just too well as a typical action-adventure sort of film, that it’s hard to accept its believability, regardless of how much is true. The climactic scene as the hostages are flying away from the Iranian police is just too Hollywood to be a reality, and Mr. Affleck admitted as much, making a joke of the idea. As an action film it works, but I wished for it to dig a little deeper.

A quick steak lunch and a return home. There was a screening of a documentary called West of Memphis which I was scheduled to attend last night, but I just didn’t feel up to it. So I stayed home. Enough movies for one week.

Commentary 19 Nov 2012 06:55 am

A Short List

Many are called but few are chosen

Let’s look a bit more closely at those films which have fallen onto the short list as potential nominees for the Oscar. Of 56 films, ten have been selected for this honor. In the past, this list would never have been released, now it’s part of the process, and a good one, I think. Let’s make the most of the feast.

Back in 1984 when I was nominated, I learned of the nomination the night before the full list of three nominees were announced. Prior to that I had no clue I was even being considered. As a matter of fact, after submitting the film, Doctor DeSoto, I virtually forgot about having entered it. I’d considered it such a ridiculous long shot that I knew there was no chance of it happening.

The nominees have two short periods of glory, and the most has to be enjoyed when you’re on the list. On January 10th 2013, the nominees will be selected. That gives those who are on this list now a good six weeks to cherish the moment. First and foremost, promote yourself and the film. Go out there and let everyone you know hear that you’ve been selected for the list, and seek out every potential way of publicizing the event. Call any local paper and remind them. Getting your name in the Pennysaver is as important as getting it on your own blog. Speaking about blogs, contact everyone you know who has one and make a pest of yourself. This is an opportunity to promote yourself, and you have to take it. God willing, you’ll get to do it all again when you get on the nominee list.

When I was nominated, Entertanment Tonight did no stories on the Best Animated Short. I contacted them so often that they did one (which aired the night of the Awards Show) and they’ve continued to do one every year since. Maybe you can convince TMZ of the importance of the event.

Oh, yes. Back to the list.
These are the ten films that have been selected to move forward from the original list of 56.

Adam and Dog

Minkyu Lee is a Disney veteran, as are many of the animators who worked on this film; on that took over two years to make. The anmated short takes the Adam and Eve story, allows it to happen off screen, and focuses on a dog who befriends Adam. The character animation is well oned and finely produced, the graphic design is beautiful, and Joey Newman’s music shows his relation to the famous and talented Newman family. The film is a winner, especially, I would guess, in Hollywood where they crave such beauiful animation. Several friends questioned the Christian sub themes, but somehow I missed that as I just watched the animation and movement. It’s a gorgeous old-school film and could do well. It won the “Annie” award last year as Best Animated Short.
Click here to see a clip of the film.

Combustible

Katsuhiro Otomo, the director of this 21 minute short has a large reputation among Anime directors. His film, Akira, is almost legendary among Japan’s feature length animated films. I find that film’s craftsmanship enormously successful despite the complexity built into just about every single scene. Combustible adds a delicacy to that craftsmanship and a story that, without dialogue, tells a complicated tale. It’s an enormously attractive film and I’d like to know who the audience is that such a short, albeit a long short, obviously has a big budget. The film is a triumph for Otomo, and I rather expected it to show up on this list.

Dripped

Léo Verrier, the director of Dripped is part of a production company named ChezEddy. The company was created in 2002 in Paris; the in-house animation studio is just a part of the company. The film, Dripped, is the story of an art thief, an artist searching for a style. He eats and breathes the art he steals until, finally, something original comes out of him. The film has often been described as an homage to Jackson Pollack. Romanticizing Pollack’s intentions seems to indicate that art history ended back in the early fifties. Perhaps it’s just that he was a convenient stopping point, but I would think if you’re taking “Art” to another level, it should end with something new and vibrant in THIS film. Perhaps the marriage of 2D and 3D cgi is the medium – the dripped art that the title indicated. Unfortunately, for me the story felt marginally dated, though it is graphically interesting and the telling of the story is arresting.
Go here to see a clip.

The Eagleman Stag

Mikey Please, directed this extraordinary 3D stop motion short at the Royal College of Art as a thesis film. Immediately, it was a success on the Festival circuit, ultimately winning BAFTA’s 2011 award as the Best Animated Short. The story is intelligent, the technique feels original (though it reminds me of some of Michel Ocelot’s early films), and the approach is funny. My guess is that this is one to beat on the way to the gold.
Go here to see a clip from the film.

The Fall of the House of Usher

Raul Garcia has been dedicated to teling Edgar Allan Poe stories in cg animation. His first film, The Tell Tale Heart, was a somewhat cheeky effort given that the UPA, James Mason film was a classic of the form. However, Garcia’s short was received very well and won a mass of awards from many International festivals. He’s worked on many international features including Asterix and Caesar, The Land Before Time and The Chipmunks Great Adventure. His work on Who Framed Roger Rabbit brought him into the Disney fold working on a number of their recent features, Beauty and the Beast, Hercules and Fantasia 2000. He left Disney to become a sequence director on numerous non-Disney features. In 2002, partnering with Manuel Sicilia he joined Kandor Graphics which became Kandor Moon with the participation of Antonio Banderas. They produced the Oscar nominated short, The Lady and the Reaper. Both The Tell Tale Heart and The Fall of the House of Usher will be part of the feature, The Extraordinary Tales, the title of the Poe feature.
Click here to see a clip.

Fresh Guacamole

The animation artist known as PES has finally made the short list after doing about a thousand tiny films. They’ve all bee stop motion pieces employing odd objects to replace other objects. In “Fresh Guacamole,” a hand grenade, a pool ball, a baseball, dice, a green golf ball, and christmas tree lights all replace the ingredients in the making of guacamole. He’s done other such films as Western Spaghetti. I find his films clever, smart and usually just about the right length. However, after seeing a couple of them, a sameness starts to set in. Go here if you want to see a bunch of them. Usually the Academy goes for short and funny and clever. Possibly a good chance for the nominations. Showtime had financed a number of these shorts, and it looks like Fresh Guacamole was theirs as well. Michael Eisner‘s The Tornante Company has just hired PES to direct Garbage Pail Kids movie. This will be his first feature (and probably his first film over ten minutes.)
See Fresh Guacamole here.

Head Over Heels

Timothy Reckart directed this clever stop motion 10 minute short film. In it, a man and his wife are obviously at odds with each other as each lives on separate planes. He’s on the floor, and she’s on the ceiling (or is it the other way around?). The film was done at the National Film and Television School in Ireland. It took 11 students about 14 months to complete under Mr. Reckart’s supervision. Timothy Reckart seems to be currently involved with the company Dragonframe.
See a clip from Head Over Heels here

The Longest Daycare

David Silverman, who has been connected with The Simpson’s for many years, directed this short film featuring Maggie, as a theatrical film, just as he directed the theatrical feature a couple of years ago. This short is quite funny in the best way of The Simpsons’ television show. I’m not sure it goes very far beyond the best of the TV show, but it is funny. I hope it’s also an indication that there may be another Simpson’s feature in the mix. The last one was a real treat, and it’d be great to see it go into production NOW when the material is still relatively fresh.
See the trailer for The Longest Daycare, here.

Paperman

I first saw Paperman at a screening of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs at the recent NY Film Festival. There I briefly met John Kahrs, who seemed nervous but proud of his excellent effort. The film is an odd combination of 2D flat animation and 3D cgi. I feel like I’m missing something whenever they describe what they’ve done. It seems like they animated in cgi, flattened the art and rotoscoped it placing some hand-drawn bits over the cgi bits (such as hair).I’m not quite sure why it wasn’t just animated flat; there doesn’t seem to be anything THAT special about the movement that couldn’t or wouldn’t have been done with any of the good 2D animators they work with. But as I say, I must be missing something. As it is, the film is nice with a great musical score by Christophe Beck, who previously had done The Hangover, Cedar Rapids and The Muppets – all fine scores.
The clip for Disney’s Paperman can be see by clicking here

Tram

Michaela Pavlátová is a Czech director who worked in France for Screbleu Productions. The film won the Cristal Award at the recent Annecy Animaton Festival. I’s the story of a tram operator who has numerous sexual fantasies while piloting her vehicle. The animation is bouncy fun, as is the musical score. It’s a light film that would have offended me had the director been a male. As it is it just seems dated to me in its sexual override. But those are just my prurient thoughts on the movie. Not quite grown up.
Watch a clip from Tram here.

Articles on Animation &Richard Williams &Tissa David 01 Oct 2012 06:37 am

Raggedy Ann and Andy

- On Tuesday, October 23rd a memorial service for Tissa David will be held at the Lighthouse Academy Theater at 111 East 59th Street. It will begin punctually at 7pm. Seats will be available on a first-come first-served basis. To continue celebration of Tissa’s work, here’s an article that appeared in Cartoonist Profiles Magazine, No.33, March 1977. No writer’s name is credited.

We thank Mike Hutner. of Twentieth Century-Fox, for the production notes about this new full-length animated film, RAGGEDY ANN & ANDY, which is having its world-premiere in New York on March 20th.

Raggedy Ann is a caricature of a rag doll, with stringy red hair, button eyes and a painted triangular nose.

Harold Geneen is the Chairman of the Board of the ITT Corporation, an industrial empire which includes hotel chains, construction companies, the Bobbs-Mcrrill book publishing house and a car rental lirm which tries harder.

It was hardly destined that they would be linked in one of the year’s most ambitious entertainment ventures. But the proof is on 35mm Panavision film, in the form of “Raggedy Ann and Andy,” the feature-length animated musical from 20th Century Fox.

The genesis of the full-length am mated musical—one of the few such projects attempted during the past few decades without the Disney insignia—is a story which has its own touches of fantasy. In addition to ITT’s Board Chairman, the principals include:
• A team of Broadway theatre-owners and producers, who never before made a movie, lei alone an animated feature.
• An Emmy-winning composer, one of whose songs was a hit for both “Kermit the Frog” and Frank Sinatra.
• An Academy Award winning director who thought he was out of the picture until he look part in an all-night jam session at his Soho studio.
• Several legendary cartoonists, including the originator of “Betty Boop” and the man who gave Disney—and the rest of America—the beloved “Goofy.”

How they came to join forces really begins in Silvermine, Conn, in the early 1900′s. when newspaper cartoonist John Gruelle took a few minutes away from his drawing board to help his daughter fix a discarded rag doll. The toy was named “Raggedy Ann” by combining characters from two poems by James Whitcomb Riley — The Rag Man and Orphan Annie.

When Marcella Gruelle became desperately ill, her father sat by her bedside, making up stories about the doll’s adventures after everyone in the house was asleep. Marcella died on March 21st, 1916. after which her father determined to share with the world the stories he had not had time to tell her.

By the early 1970′s. Raggedy Ann was part of American folklore, a character whose exploits had sold some 80 million books and hundreds of millions of toys and games. That was when Lester Osterman. a former stockbroker who brought Sammy Davis Jr. to Broadway in “Mr. Wonderful.” and Richard Horner an ex-actor who had appeared in the Oberammergau “Passion Play” became involved. The producers of such Broadway successes as “Butley” and “Hadrian the Seventh,” they had just completed a live-action television special for the Hallmark Hall of Fame, based on the children’s classic. “The Littlest Angel.” Now they were searching for a similar property . . . for the same showcase.

A casual lunch with a merchandiser of children’s toys proved crucial. “Would you believe that after all these years. ‘Raggedy Ann’ is -.till one of the biggest sellers?” inquired the friend rhetorically. Within a few days. Osterman and Horner were on the doorstep of the Bobbs-Merrill Company, which publishes the “Raggedy Ann” stories, requesting development rights to the character.

An equally informal meeting with Joe Raposo. Emmy-winning composer-conductor of “Sesame Street,” brought music to the project. Horner and Osterman found themselves seated with Raposo at a Friars’ Roast for Johnny Carson. Somewhere between the broiled chicken and dessert, Raposo agreed lo score the “Raggedy Ann” tales.


Animators Tissa David and Art Babbitt with director Dick Williams.

Next to join the troupe were writers Max Wilk and Pat Thackeray. True to Gruelle’s imagination, they created a fantasy world in which toys spring joyously to life. When Raggedy Ann discovers that the pixieish French doll, Babette, has been kidnapped by a pirate known as Captain Contagious, they set out to free her. That takes them into the “deep dark woods”, inhabited by such personalities as the “Looney King,” “the camel with the wrinkled knees” (one of Gruelle’s personal favorites) and the “Greedy,” a kind of confectionery version of the La Brea Tarpits. “We thought we were writing a live television special,” recalls Ms. Thackeray. “So much so that we began casting Raggedy Ann in our minds, alternating between personalities like Liza Minnelli and Goldie Hawn.”

But Raposo was having second thoughts. “It won’t work,” he finally admiitted. “Put a red fright wig and a painted mouth on an actress— any actress—and do you know what you’ll have? A circus clown.”

The obvious alternative was a full-length animated musical cartoon. Which is like saying the obvious alternative to your reliable family car is to go out and buy a Rolls Royce. There is a reason, as director Richard Williams would later point out, why animated features are almost exclusively the province of the Disney organization. “And even Disney turns out several live comedies and nature films for every animated movie.” Williams notes.

To create 90 minutes or more of full animation (as opposed to the jittery short-cuts of television cartooning) requires more than one million preliminary and final drawings. From inception to “answer print” lakes three years or more. “And the cost,” adds Williams, “is tremendous.”

“Since the Hallmark people had discussed a live musical, they were perfectly justified in walking away from a more costly animated feature,” says Horner. The producers now had a cartoon without a cartoonist, a television special without a sponsor, and a project without investors. But it was no time to think small. Why settle for a television special? Why not make “Raggedy Ann and Andy” as a movie?

It was back to Bobbs-Merrill with the suggestion that Osierman-Horner and the publishing house become partners in the proposed film. That, the publishing executives said, was up to their parent company, ITT. A meeting was arranged with Board Chairman Geneen. which developed into a corporate backers audition.
Pat Thackeray later described the “incredible afternoon” to author and critic John Canemaker, whose book, “The Animated ‘Raggedy Ann and Andy’-The Story Behind Ihe Movie,” will be published at the same time as the 20th Century Fox release.

“Geneen came into the room, asking questions, his mind like a laser,” she said. “He remembered a stage version of ‘Raggedy Ann’ he’d enjoyed as a youngster, in the I920′s. We made our presentation. Then, as we were going down in the elevator, a guard told me, ‘I don’t know who you are but you’ve got it made.’
“I asked why.

“The guard said, ‘Because the old man stuck his head out of the door and asked what I thought of the music coming from his office. I said it sounded pretty good to me. That wasn’t just good, Harry,’ he said, ‘that was terrific.’”

With financial backing assured, the next problem was simple. Who would draw the million-plus pictures which would make up the finished movie? And who would piece them all together with wit and style?

Firsl choice was Richard Williams, the Canadian-born, London based head of his own animation studio who had won an Academy Award for “A Christmas Carol” and a host of admirers for the “Return of the Pink Panther.” Despite a commitment to his own project, “The Thief and the Cobbler” Williams listened to Raposo’s score, and said yes.

“But my business manager said ‘no,’” Williams recalled. “Or to put it more accurately. he priced my services so high, there was no way the picture could have come in on budget.” What happened to the business manager? “He’s not with me anymore,” Williams replied with British sang-froid.


Tissa David’s rag doll

Osterman and Horner began negotiations with a New York cartoon “factory” which specialized in limited animation for television. Within a short period (according to Canemaker), the newcomers had virtually thrown away the Wilk-Thackeray script, replacing Gruelle’s characters with a “Love Fairy” and a “Cookie Giant.” Outraged. Raposo walked out of a story conference (“before 1 threw up from all that treacle,” he recalls) and caught a plane to London to make a last-ditch attempt at hiring Williams.

Discovering a shared taste in jazz, the two men opened a bottle of Scotch and during an impromptu jam session, past misunderstandings vanished in a vapor of 12-year-old malt and good will. The animated movie finally had an animator.

It was Williams who formulated the approach to the picture. “Disney’s contribution to animation is colossal,” he said. “The technique of bringing a cartoon character to life would slill be in the dark ages without Disnev. But to copy the ‘look’ of his films would have been disastrous.

“Instead, 1 said, ‘let’s be as rich and lush as Disney in a totally different style … in the style of Johnny Gruelle.’”

A remarkable team of animators was assembled in New York and Hollywood lo carry out that mission. Included were several men and women who can legitimately be termed ‘living legends’ in the field of motion picture cartooning.

There was Grim Natwick, a spry octogenarian, who had designed the first of the “Betty Boop” pictures for producer Max Fleischer in the thirties and animated the majority of Snow White’s scenes for Disney. Another Disney veteran was Art Babbitt, the co-creator of “Goofy” and the dancing mushrooms in “Fantasia,” whose verbal donnybrooks with Disney during the I940′s had been peppery Hollywood gossip.


85 year old animator Grim Natwick
with young animator Crystal Russell

To draw the “Greedy,” a ‘monster’ made of whipped cream, cherry banana taffy, chocolate fudge and other sugary delights. Emory Hawkins—a veteran of Disney as well as the MOM and Warner Brothers cartoon studios -was summoned from his New Mexico ranch. “Raggedy Ann” herself was drawn by Tissa David, a Transylvanian-born artist who had worked with Natwick at UPA Productions during the heyday of “Mr. Magoo” and “Gerald McBoing Boing.”

From Canada came Gerald Potterton, head of his own animation studio. whose credits include the Peabody Award winning “Pinter People” and key sequences in the Beatles’ “Yellow Submarine.” The design of the vital storyboards and layouts which gave the picture its graphics stamp was up to Cornelius “Corny” Cole, both an animator and a renowned painter.

The musical routines for the “Twin Penny Dolls,” whose movements are perfectly synchronized with each other, were drawn by Gerry Chiniquy. who looks like Gene Kelly and specializes in “dance animation.” During a ten year period at the Warner Brothers Studios, whenever Bugs Bunny or Daffy Duck were called on to trip the light fantastic, Chiniquy got the nod.

Soon, the sketches began mounting—at the unit’s bustling New York headquarters (which are wag dubbed “Raggedy Ann East”), a California studio and director Williams’ home base in London. Williams’ job was clearly defined.

“I was in charge of catching airplanes,” he laughed. Spending ten days to two weeks in each city, Williams would check the work of dozens of illustrators, pencil in his own suggestions, hold story conferences, review preliminary sound-track recordings, analyze the “Leica Reel” (a rough compilation of the motion picture in progress, pieced together as new drawings and backgrounds were added “like a jigsaw puzzle”), then rush to the airport.

“I became one of the world’s great authorities on jet lag,” he added.

Choosing the voices of Captain Contagious, Suzy Pincushion, the zany “Gazooks” and other denizens of Raggedy Ann’s fantasy world became a crucial problem. Tradition says the voices for a feature-length cartoon should be box-office names whose unseen presence will enhance the picture’s publicity and promotion. Raposo and Williams chose to defy tradition, backed by co-producer Horner. “We were treating the picture as a big, lavish Broadway musical—in the form of an animated cartoon—so we looked to Broadwav for vocally gifted actors,” said Raposo. Casting sessions were held in a New York studio, where hundreds of performers went through their paces.

“I knew the long hours were getting to me when 1 walked through the hall, outside the studio, and saw a man reading our script, who really looked like a camel,” said Williams. Ironically, the actor was dour-faced Fred Stuthman, who eventually did provide the voice for the “Camel With the Wrinkled Knees.”

Another actor’s reaction set the whimsical tone of the casting sessions.

“You want me to play what?” said Joe Silver, veteran of such movies as “The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz”, in utter disbelief.

“An enormous pit of taffy, filled with gum-drops and maraschino cherries and covered with chocolate sauce,” answered casting director Howard Feuer.

“Is this a gag?” asked Silver. He was quickly persuaded it was not and even more quicklv rose to the chocolate covered challenge.


Emory Hawkins Taffy Pit

Virtually all of the “Raggedy Ann and Andy” voices are better known to their peers than to the general public. Included are Didi Conn of the television series, “The Practice.” whose voice has been likened to that of a “sexy frog” as Raggedy Ann: Mark Baker, co-star of Leonard Bernstein’s “Candide” as Andy: Allan Sues from “Laugh-In.” Arnold Stang, Mason Adams and George S. Irving. The “sockworm” is vocally portrayed by a man with more impressive credentials in another phase of show business—Sheldon Harnick, lyricist of “Fiddler on the Roof.”

Only one performer is seen on film, during an introductory sequence about Marcella Gruelle. Casting the role, director Williams, recalls, was a thorny problem. “I needed a little girl on whom 1 could impose a 12 hour work day, to stay within schedule.” Rather than face some other lot’s outraged parents, he elected his own six-year-old daughter, Claire. “My presence made it a kind of game for her.” he adds.

Meanwhile, the pressure at Raggedy Ann East. Raggedy Ann West and the London base was mounting. Williams and his associates had promised a finished movie to Bobbs-Merrill in time for the film to be launched nationally by Easter, 1977. The million-plus drawings had been completed, and now the inkers, opaquers, “in betweeners,” and other technical craftsmen, vital to an animated movie, were working double and triple shifts, to meet the deadline.

The only rule, Williams paradoxically demanded as he fired memos to the tripartite staff (“usually dictated somewhere over Kansas,”) was that there must be no compromise in quality. Typical of the fine detail necessary to achieve “full animation” was an incident which occurred in the office of veteran supervisor Marlene Robinson. An “inbetweener”-responsible for linking the animators’ drawings, frame by frame—was frustrated. Several strands of Raggedy Ann’s hair refused to move in rhythm with the rest of the character.

The next hour was devoted to re-drawing the wisps of hair, over and over, until there was perfect synchronization.

“It seems like such a little thing,” Ms. Robinson said afterward. “But blown up to Panavision size, anything which distracts the eye of the moviegoer—shapes that vary, colors that fade, even a recalcitrant strand of hair, is enough to destroy the ‘illusion.’”


Babbitt’s “Camel with the wrinkled knees”

In another room, Cosmo Pepe, working with complex equipment designed by cameraman Al Rezek, was transferring the drawings onto sheets of transparent celluloid—by shooting 13.000 volts of electricity through them-prior to putting them through a Xerox enlarger. “We developed a special toner, for the enlargements, to Dick Williams’ specifications,” Pepe revealed. “The toning is vitally important: it affects the way the characters stand out on the big screen. The formula for this toner is as closely guarded as a three star chefs award winning recipe.”

By the lime “Raggedy Ann and Andy” was completed, and ready for release by 20lh Century Fox more than five years had passed from the date on which Osterman and Horner first solicited the rights from Bobbs-Merrill. More than two years had been spent in production.

Richard Williams summed up the feelings of everyone involved by quoting Johnny Gruelle. “It does pay to do more work than you are paid for, after all,” Gruelle once told an interviewer. “Someone, somewhere, sometime will see it and appreciate it.”

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