Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

Ward Kimball once gave me the advice that I should forget animation and go into something more lucrative . . . like, Dairy Farming. Not one to listen to my elders I pushed on with the animation plans.

The passing of the animation bloc voting for the animated shorts made it all the nearer to dairy farming than I’d like. On Saturday they ran 60 shorts for us; on Sunday the remaining group. We were supposed to intelligently narrow the groups down, and I guess we did. How dull it all seems when you post then all one-on-top-of-the-other. Eyes start to water and turn blookdhot, and a decent coversation is abnormal.
Over the corse of the first 60, I found myself getting ill and frequently having to run to the bathroom.By the time we hit 45 I was a goner. The stuff just kept coming out and wouldn’t stop. no help immodium, Live with it my body screamed, You got yourself into this mess, now get yourself out of it,

On Sunday I was still out of it and couldn’t make it back. I called a voice of support every once-in-a-while, big deal that did.

There were replacement films for some of the past. One about an underground war vs a machine. It reminded me so much of Consumption (a film from last ear) that I decided it must be a follow up of sorts. There was the cgi Courage the Cowardly Dog, so interesting an exercise – but just that. So many others my head’s been blogged shorted out – though, I’m getting over it.

Canndy Kugel had a nice little dinner for some remaining Canadiens who came down to vote. Heidi and I joined them for anoth-*****************************************************************er large meal rousted together by Candy’s Chuck. We stayed about two hours not wanting to overstay our welcome.

I’ll meet up with Jacques Droin for an interview for the blog and I’ll go with them, Candy and Jacques to see FROST. The more the merrier for these mass screenings. I’d already seen THE WIND RISES last Thursday; and had hoped to see it again next weeek, That’s a very strong film.

A number of years ago I’d made a short trip to LA. During that visit, a man came up to introduce himself. It was John Wilson. He told me that he had just nominated me for an ASIFA Hollywood Award because he’d loved my work. I’d learned so much from watching Mr. Wilson’s films that it was wonderful to see that the mutual admiration society ran both ways.

John Wilson died yesterday. His son, Andrew, wrote to tell me of it. My feelings go out to the family and am enormously sorry that animation loses another one of its masters.

He was a director, designer and animator about whom I’d done a series of posts on his career. Out of respect for Mr. Wilson, I’d like to post all of those articles together (and hold them there for the entire weekend.)

Hope you’ll enjoy.

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Let me start by sharing some bio information about John Wilson and his company Fine Arts Films.

- John Wilson was born in Wimbledon in 1920. He attended the Royal College of Art and was working by age 18 as a commercial artist with Willings Press Service. In WWII he served with the London Rifle Brigade in African where he was seriously wounded. Recuperating in hospital, he drew many cartoons of which several were printed. Eventually he would recover and get work at Pinewood Studios in the art department where he worked on GREAT EXPECTATIONS and THE THIEF OF BAGHDAD, among other films.

By the time he was 25, he was working in animation at Gaumont-British Animation, a newly formed division of J. Arthur Rank’s studio, working under the direction of David Hand on the “Animaland” series starring “Ginger Nut.”

In 1950 he moved to the United States working in layout and animation at UPA. He found himself working with Bobe Cannon, Pete Burness, Jules Engel, and Paul Julian. Eventually he left for the Disney studio working in Les Clark’s ‘Tinkerbell’ unit on PETER PAN and with Ward Kimball on TOOT WHISTLE PLUNK & BOOM.

He tried to sell Disney on the film Tara, the Stonecutter, but they weren’t interested. He completed it himself in 1955 using a Japanese style to tell the story. Wilson was impressed with the UPA style of modern art in animation, and that’s the route he took for his personal film. Thus his studio was born, called Fine Arts Films, in 1955. Tara had some success playing theatrically with the successful Japanese feature film, GATE OF HELL by Kinugasa (which had won the Oscar for Best Foreign Film.)

Wilson in Korea with the Bob Hope Tour to entertain the troops.

This film led to his producing a verion of Stravinsky’s Petroushka for NBC which aired in 1956 as part of The Sol Hurok Music Hour. Notably, Stravinsky, himself, arranged and conducted the shortened version of the score suing the LA Philharmonic Orchestra. The film was designed by John Wilson and Dean Spille with anmation by Bill Littlejohn, Art Davis, and Phil Monroe. Chris Jenkyns, Dean Spille and Ed DeMattia designed the 16 minute show from Wilson’s storyboard.

Fine Arts Films had produced ‘Journey to the Stars’, a project for the 1961 World’s Fair, an animated voyage through space for NASA, which was seen in 70 mm Cinerama by ten million visitors to Seattle.

Billy Wilder employed Wilson to do the titles for Irma La Douce after which they did a six-minute trailer for this Jack Lemmon, Shirley McLaine feature. It was all about Parisian prostitutes romping about in Montmartre, and animation could apparently make it acceptable. Artists Ron Maidenberg, Sam Weiss, Sam Cornell and Bob Curtis caught the vivid nightlife of Paris in a sexually charged animated short. It was a huge success in promoting the feature.

In 1970 Wilson flew to Chicago to see Carol Channing and Eddie Bracken appearing in “archy and mehitabel in Shinbone Alley”. On the basis of this theatrical musical, Wilson bought the screen rights to the book “archy and mehitabel” by George Herriman and began work on an animated feature which was released by Allied Artists in 1971.

Fine Arts Films was also responsible for many animated commercials as well as weekly music video segments for the weekly CBS-TV series “The Sonny and Cher Show.” The songs included Joni Mitchell’s “Big Yellow Taxi” and Jim Croce’s “Leroy Brown.”

Here are some storyboard sketches by John Wilson for his initial short film, Tara, the Stonecutter. This film started it all for Wilson.

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I haven’t seen the finished film, but I understand that Japanese decorative papers were used in the backgrounds and costumes of the characters.

Here are two press clippings for this film from California papers.

(Click any image to enlarge.)

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- After completing the film, Tara the Stone Cutter in 1955, John Wilson and his newly formed company,Fine Arts Films, was able to sell the idea of an animated version of Stravinsky’s Petroushka to NBC. They aired the 16 min. film in 1956 as part of The Sol Hurok Music Hour. Stravinsky, himself, arranged and conducted the shortened version of the score using the LA Philharmonic Orchestra.

The film was designed by John Wilson and Dean Spille; animation was done by Bill Littlejohn, Art Davis, and Phil Monroe. Chris Jenkyns, Dean Spille and Ed DeMattia designed the show from Wilson’s storyboard. This is considered the first animated Special ever to air on TV.

Here are some stills from that film and its artwork.

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Petroushka – model 1

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Petroushka – model 2

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Petroushka – model 3

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Bill Littlejohn drawing

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film still #1

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John Wilson and Igor Stravinsky preparing for recording of Petroushka
with the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra (1955).

Here are copies of two reviews:

Los Angeles Time review (1956)

Hollywood Reporter review )1956)

(Click any image to enlarge.)

Petroushka was released on VHS tape combined with a number of the song pieces he did for the Sonny and Cher program. This tape, John Wilson’s Fantastic All Electric Music Movie, can still be found on Amazon but is pricey.

Thanks to Amid Amidi for the loan of this material.

3.

Irma La Douce was a racy film written and directed by Billy Wilder that starred Shirley MacLaine as a Parisian prostitute and Jack Lemmon as a French policeman who falls in love with Irma (Shirley MacLaine.) The film, for its time was daring, and came up with (heaven forbid) a “C” for Condemned rating from the Catholic church. This made it off limits for anyone under the age of 18. I was determined to go see the film, so I ignored the ban and went by myself. Naturally enough, no one tried to stop me. I wasn’t jaded by the movie anymore than I had been disturbed by the violence in all the Warner Bros. cartoons I’d seen. Looking back on Irma La Douce, it really is an innocent film, hardly risqué in any way shape or form.

The film started with some nicely drawn animated credits which were done by John Wilson’s studio. Until recently I hadn’t known that Wilson also produced an animated short promoting the feature for the Mirisch Company. I have some preproduction art from that short as well as the color storyboard. The board is large enough that I’ve decided to break it into two parts. We’ll see part one today and the second part next week.

Each section of three images is long enough that unless I post one drawing at a time, it’ll be too tiny to see unless enlarged. I’d like to post each storyboard sketch a nice viewing size and still give you the option of enlarging it.

Let’s start with some production and post production stills so you can see what it looked like.

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A couple of pre-production drawings:

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Then, there’s the storyboard. I’ll give an example of the three panel pull out and follow that with each individual image.

You can see why I’ve decided to enlarge the images.

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John Wilson created this storyboard for the Mirisch Corp. It was an animated trailer to promote Billy Wilder‘s coming film, Irma La Douce. The board comes in 18 pages of three storyboard drawings. Rather than post the sets of three images (and only being able to show them at a smallish size) I’ve taken each individual drawing and have blown them up to see them better on this blog.

Again, these were for a lengthy trailer for the film not the opening credits. The film’s credits do not use animation.

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Here’s a YouTube version of the trailer. Not the brightest quality, but you can see it.

5.

- Don Marquis‘ book, Archy and Mehitabel, garnered fame quickly and not least because of the extraordinary illustrations of George Herriman, the creator of Krazy Kat.

The first book was published in 1927 and others followed in 1933 and 1935. It wasn’t until the third book that Herriman took over the characters created by Marquis in his book of short stories, developed mostly, in poetry. An on-again off-again love affair, the story had two principal characters: a cat, Mehitabel, and Archy, cockroach. (You can read these poems on line here.)

In 1953, writer Joe Darion along with composer George Kleinsinger (the creator of Tubby the Tuba) wrote a musical theater piece. Tenor Jonathan Anderson played Archy and soprano Mignon Dunn was Mehitabel. At about the same time a recording of the showtunes was recorded with Carol Channing as Mehitabel and Eddie Bracken as Archy. The record was a success.

With the help of the young writer, Mel Brooks, they were able to get their show to Broadway in 1957, but it was now named Shinbone Alley. After 49 performances, the show closed, but the original cast album was recorded that same year. The songs stayed in the permanent repetoire of Carol Channing and Eartha Kitt.

In 1971, John Wilson directed an animated feature starring the voices of Channing and Brackett and using the songs from the musical. The love affair between Archy and Mehitabel was penned by Archy, the cockroach; his poems tell their story.

The film suffers from its music. The songs are simple and sound as if they’re written for children, but the lyrics pull from the poems which are definitely designed for adults. It gets a bit confusing, as a result, and is a bit picaresque; the poems are short and illustrating them in animation would take more adaptation than seen here.

John Wilson had developed his studio, Fine Arts Films, on the back of the weekly, animated, music videos he did for The Sonny and Cher Show, an enormous hit in the early 70s.

These music videos were loose designs animated quickly and lively around the songs Sonny & Cher would schedule each week. There would always be one or two of these pieces, and they were highlights in the weekly one-hour musical/variety program.

The graphics of Shinbone Alley aren’t too far from these Sonny & Cher videos. Loose design and animation with a design style not too far from the Fred Wolf’s made-for-ABC feature, The Point. This was the first feature made for television and featured the songs and story of Harry Nilsson, although Shinbone Alley featured a wilder color pallette.

Jules Engel, Corny Cole and Sam Cornell all worked in design on the film. The long list of animators included Barrie Nelson, John Sparey, Spencer Peel, Eddie Rehberg and Jim Hiltz. Mark Kausler was an assistant on the show.

The film wasn’t an enormous success, but that was probably explained much by the limited distribution and the poor marketing of the film. I saw the film when it came out; I was living in Washington DC at the time (in the Navy). I was very disappointed. The animation is very limited and the style was a real let-down having known the George Herriman illustrations from the Don Marquis book. We’d already seen those limited animation Krazy Kat cartoons from King Features, so I knew the style could be done adequately – even on a budget. The style in this film just seemed a little too Hollywood cute, at the time, and it felt dated when it came out. I don’t feel too differently about it watching the VHS copy I own.

the film’s poster

Here are some frame grabs from the first 1/4 of the film:

We’re introduced to Archy right off the bat as he
flies out of the river onto the dock. He realizes that he,
the poet, tried to kill himself and was sent back as a cockroach.

He soon finds a typewriter and goes straight back to work.

Mehitabel is a performer – with Carol Channing’s voice.

The two meet cute.

She has another boyfriend, voiced by Alan Reed,
who is also the voice of Fred Flintstone.

A song video takes us outside.

pan down.

Another music video brings us into Peter Max’s style.

Life in Shinbone Alley.

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- This final post featuring the work of John Wilson and his company, Fine Art Films, covers many varied film projects. Unfortunately, I found relatively few images available for posting especially considering the amount of film done.

The Sonny and Cher Show was a long running Variety program on television in the 70s. Most weeks featured an animated music video as done by John Wilson. Some examples of this include:

Helen Reddy’s song “Angie Baby”

Joni Mitchell’s “Big Yellow Taxi”

Sonny Bono’s version of “The Candyman”

The Kinks song “Demon Alcohol”

Fine Arts Films also did some movie titles and trailers. We saw, recently, the long theatrical trailer done for Irma La Douce. Here are a few stills done for the main title sequence for the 1978 musical, Grease.

storyboard sketch for Grease.
Produced and Directed by John Wilson
Story and Layout by Chris Jenkyns
Music by Barry Gibb

John Wilson also directed a number of short films which appeared on television on the NBC program, “Exploring” between 1964-1966.

“Casey At the Bat”
Narrated by Paul Frees

“Johnny Appleseed”
Narrated by Dan Blocker

“The Fish and the Burning Stones”
Narrated by E.G. Marshall

Finally, for MTV’s “Liquid Television” in 1992 John Wilson directed some of the 10 episodes of a series called “The Specialists.”

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MTV Shows

Go here to see other episodes.

We haven’t quite finished with the collection of photos John Canemaker loaned me; these were the images he took for his Raggedy Ann book. Not all were chosen, but all were snapped by John.

I’ve chosed to post the photos and use them as a way for me to reminisce on the subject at hand. Lots of looking back, memories and other photos in my mind.

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Here we have animator, Doug Crane. Doug has always specialized
in the details animated. Animated roads, moving crowds or
animated news papers. doug has animated these all as his forte.
In Raggedy Ann, Doug was to do much the same as those scenes that
were animated by Corny Cole. Lots of moving sea, ships and cross
hatching. His scenes all have the necessary dynamic of a vast sea
of lines.

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Harry Chang was a number 1 editor of animation in NYC prior to
his being hired by Dick WIlliams for this job. Harry maintained
his status, though they did pull an older editor out of retirement
to do the track readings. Max Seligsman was so
brilliant at the track reading that I still haven’t found anyone who
did the job as meticulously as he. His music readings broke all the
sounds of the orchestra down to color-coded frames. Unfortunately,
there were no photos of Max in this collection.

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This is the editing table of the NY editor, and the film’s
lead editor, Harry Chang. He was very particular
and kept a very neat editing room. I often spent hours working
with him and Dick as we analyzed what was wrong with some of the
early animation scenes.

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This is Lee Kent. She was the West Coast’s animation editor.
She came to New York toward the end of the production when
it was decided to house the East & West Coast Units under the
one roof. Lee had to work with Harry to get everything in sync
and in place for the ever-growing movie.

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Paulette(assistant animator) and Charlie Downs (animator).
I looked forward to meeting Charlie. When Ward Kimball had
to pull a number of assistants up to being animators for
the Disneyland TV shows he had to rush out for Disney,
Charlie Downs was among that group. He made the rise just
slightly faster than he might have. There’s no doubt he was
ready for the promotion.

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A photo from the West Coast’s group of people:
Animators Art Vitello (foreground) and John Bruno (middle),
and assistant animator, Paulette Downs (in rear).

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Animator, Crystal Russell rose quickly on Raggedy Ann. Her animation
style beautifully blended with Tissa’s animation of Ann & Andy.
Crystal became important for picking up many of the scenes that Tissa
couldn’t get to. She did many rich, ad strong scenes bringing a
lyricism to the work. Dick brought her to London on completion of
Raggedy Ann & Andy. She worked there for about six months before
heading back to LA where she did some great work on Lord of the Rings.

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Ida Greenburg (right) and Nancy Lane (left).
Ida was the head of Ink and paint on the film. There were about
150 people working for her. Nancy Lane was Ida’s 2nd in command.
I had worked closely with Ida at the Hubley studio on a few
projects. I really liked her enormously and enjoyed going down
to the I&Pt det to help clarify some problems their checkers would
find. I’d spend about an hour or two there each day depending on
complications they’d locate.

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Nancy Lane. I’d been there when Nancy got her first promotion
to supervising a project. She was a real go getter who absolutely
took charge of anything job she was given.

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A wall of cels from Art Babbitt‘s sequence.
The Camel with the Wrinkled Knees. He also had bad feet.

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Art Babbitt with Dick Williams.
I always felt that they’d had similar animation styles. They
took different paths getting there, but the work was not too different.
That’s production manager, Carl Bell, on the phone.

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The storyboard. Andy has a problem in the taffy pit.
That was Emery Hawkins’ sequence. He only made one
short trip to NY, and I didn’t get to meet him. We
did speak on the phone a couple of times.

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Andy lands on the floor to end a musical number. The days
when cels were painted. Here, an inker is doing touch up
work on the Xerox line. She’s using a “lumograph” pencil.
These pencils were able to draw on cel. Dick would animate
on cel with these pencils. This is what he used to animate
the Jovan commercial.

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Here a checker makes a small touch-up on a cel.

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Here camera supervisor, Al Rezek, is shooting a scene
on the Oxberry camera.

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The camera was tricked out with a Panavision lens which was
rented from Panavision. At first there were a lot of problems
with the Cinemascope format, and a lot of tests were done for
the larger screen. However, when I saw it at a local theater.
They reduced the image and cut off the top and bottom.
Ultimately, the screen size was smaller – not larger.

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This is Jim Petries. He was this sound effects guy who
specialized in animation. He’d show up and would foley
the entire film on the spot in the mix studio. The film
makers got to watch quite a show a he pulled it off.

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I believe Jim also did some work on Everybody Rides the
Carousel for John & Faith Hubley.

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This shows two young inbetweeners that rose within the industry.
Mary Szilagyi is drawing at the desk, and Carol Millican is in
the foreground. Mary stayed in NY ultimately doing children’s books
and Carol went to the West Coast working for many studios.

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The Asst Director, Fred Berner, looks over the shoulder of
Associate Director, Cosmo Anzilotti. Fred left animation
and produced a number of excellent theatrical features before becoming the
lead producer on Law & Order: Criminal Intent. Cosmo went
out to the West Coast to take a lead position at Hanna Barbera before they
closed their doors. He helped during the transition period as the turned into
Turner Animation Studio. He retired notlong after.
They were both good friends. I still run into Fred every once in a while,
usually at Academy meetings.

- John Canemaker recently loaned me a stash of photos of the Raggedy Ann crew. These were pictures that were used in his book on the “making of”. It was a better book than movie (as they often are). There are also some photos that didn’t make it to the book. John Canemaker shot all the photos, himself and all copyright belongs to him.

I thought I’d post the pictures and add some comments that pop off the top of my head. Hopefully, a couple of interesting stories will show up in my memories.

There are enough photos that it’ll probably take about three posts to get them all in. The next two Sundays are booked, I’d guess.

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Johnny Gruelle (artist, writer) and William H. Woodin (song writer)
Dec.28, 1930 Indianapolis Star – “Raggedy Ann’s Sunny Songs”
This was apparently a theatrical piece Johnny Gruelle
put together with his very successful characters.

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It all started with Joe Raposo, the composer of “Bein’ Green”
and many other hit Sesame Street songs. He wrote a musical for “Raggedy Ann
and Andy” and was made to see that it would make a wonderful animated musical.

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He wrote a lot of songs for the slim script and they prerecorded
the songs for the animation. We lived with a soundtrack of about
a dozen musicians playing this very nice score to the delicate voices
that sang the tuneful pieces.

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We heard this at least once a week as the animatic/story reel
grew into a full animated feature shot completely in Cinemascope.

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When the final film was released, that 12 person orchestra
became 101 strings and a big over-polished sound track.
No matter where you went the music was there and in the way.
It was too big, and the movie was too small. It was bad.
The track was incredibly amateurish. The composer had too much control.

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This was Richard Horner. He was one of the two producers of the film.
Stanley Sills (a Broadway producer and Beverly’s brother) was the
other producer who didn’t know what he was doing.
They represented Bobbs-Merrill who owned the property.
I really liked Mr. Horner. We met again a number of years later
when Raggedy Ann was distantly behind us. I’d offered to take Tissa to church,
one Easter Sunday; Richard Horner and wife were there. He asked to meet with me.
He sought advice on some videos of artists and their work that he was producing,
and hoped I could offer my help in leading him to some distributors.

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This is one of the dolls in the play room,
Susie Pincushion. She was charming.

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This is Cosmo Pepe; he was one of the leaders of the Xerox department.
It was Bill Kulhanek‘s department, but Cosmo really did great work.
They had this room-sized machine that they converted drawings into cels.
It was all new to NY, and the whole thing was so experimental.
Especially when Dick decided to do the film with grey toner rather than black.
The film always felt out of focus to me (even though it wasn’t.)
In the end when they rushed out the last half of the film, Hanna Barbera
sub-contracted the Xeroxing, and it was done in a sloppy and poor black line.

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This is Corny Cole. He was the designer of the film, and all the great art
emanated out of his Mont Blanc pen nib. Or maybe it was a BIC pen.
Whatever, it was inspirational.
I wrote more about him here.

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The gifted and brilliant animator, Hal Ambro. Can you tell that
I admired the man? I wanted badly to meet him during this production,
but that never was to happen. Now, I can only treasure his work.

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This is a very rough planning drawing that Grim Natwick did on
the Jack-in-the-Box he animated. See the scene here.

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Here’s a close up of that very same drawing.

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Mark Baker did the voice of Raggedy Andy.
He’d won the Tony Award as Best Featured Actor in the musical, Candide.

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Didi Conn, the voice of Raggedy Ann, with Chrystal Russell, an animator
of Raggedy Ann. She backed up Tissa David who was the primary actor for
that character and did most of the film’s first half. Chrystal did many
scenes in the first half and most of the second.
She had a rich identifiable style all her own.

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Sue Butterworth, head of the BG dept who designed the watercolor style
of the film. Michel Guerin, her assistant, can be seen in the rear.
Bill Frake was the third part of that BG department.

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Painter, Nancy Massie. A strong and reg’lar person
in the NY animation industry. She’d been working forever for a reason.

On the average, I spent about an hour a day down in the Ink & Pt dept.
Often they had problems to resolve with some animator’s work. Either the
exposure sheets were confusing or they didn’t match the artwork, or there
was some question that they found confusing. My being available made it
helpful to them, and I did so without hesitation.

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Checker, Klara Heder. Another solid person
within the NY industry.

Generally, before a scene left my department for the I&Pt dept., I’d
have studied the exposure sheets and felt I knew the scenes before
they were handed out to the Inbetweener or Assistant. It meant taking
a lot of time with the work in studio so that I was not only prepared
to answer questions of a checker but the Inbetweener as well.

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Sorry I don’t know who this is. If you have info,
please leave it for me. For some reason, I’d thought
he was an inbetweener (which would’ve made it odd for
me not to recognize him by name.) Apparently he’s a painter.

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Carl Bell was the West Coast Production Coordinator.
We spoke frequently during the making of the show.
When I left the film, I went to LA for a couple of weeks.
Chrystal Russell threw a small party for me, and Carl came.
(I think he might have brought Art Babbitt, who was there.)
The group was small enough that we could have a talk that we all
participated in. We talked for some time (though not about
Raggedy Ann.) It was great for me.

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Jan Bell, Carl’s wife, was the West Coast Office Manager.

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Maxie Fix-it. This was a great doll that wound up to get the legs going.
He rolled around the floor beautifully. The “Twins” in the back were animated
by Dan Haskett. though I’m not sure they gave him credit for it. I was a bit
embarrassed by these characters. They were just a naked bit of racism running
about our cartoon movie for very young children.

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Gerry Potterton (left) and John Kimball (right).
Gerry was one wonderful person. I always enjoyed spending time with him.
He produced/directed a number of intelligent, adult animated films.
This includes an animated Harold Pinter‘s Pinter People.
After Raggedy, I tracked Gerry down to get to see Pinter’s People. It was
rather limited but full of character. Gerry knew how to handle the money
he was given, unlike some other directors.
John Kimball was, at the time, not in the caliber of Babbitt or Ambro or
David or Hawkins or Chiniquy. However, he did some imaginative play
on a few scenes which were lifted whole from strong>McCay’s Little Nemo
in Slumberland. One of these scenes I animated but was pulled
from it before I could finish it. I had too much else to do with the
tardy inbetweens of Raggedy Ann (an average of 12 drawings per day)
and the stasis of the taffy pit (an average of 1 inbetween per day).
Too many polka dots on Ann and too much of everything in the pit.

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Fred Stuthman, the voice of the camel with the wrinkled knees.
He did add a great voice for the camel, though for some reason
I remember his being a dancer, predominantly.

All photos copyright ©1977 John Canemaker

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- Today I’m posting a special issue of Top Cel, the NY animation guild’s newspaper. Dated August 1967, it celebrates the Montreal Expo animation conference and exhibition held that summer. Obviously, this was the place to be that year if you were an animation lover.

Just take a look at that list of signatures of attendees. Some of them are:
Chuck Jones, Peter Foldes, Manuel Otero, Edith Vernick, Abe Levitow, Don Bajus, Bill & Fini Littlejohn, John Halas, Ward Kimball, Ken Peterson, Shamus Culhane, Carl Bell, Pete Burness, Ub Iwerks, Gerald Baldwin, I. Klein, Gene Plotnick, Ian Popesco-Gopo, Carmen d’Avino, Bill Mathews, Len Lye, June Foray, Bill Hurtz, Spence Peel, Paul Frees, Steve Bosustow, Dave Hilberman, Stan Van der Beek, Les Goldman, Jimmy Murakami, Mike Lah, Robert Breer, Tom Roth, Art Babbitt, Feodor Khitruk, Fred Wolf, Ivan Ivanov-Vano, Paul Terry, J.R. Bray, Walter Lantz, Otto Messmer, Dave Fleischer, Ruth Kneitel, Bruno Bozzetto, Bob Clampett, Karel Zeman, Dusn Vukotic, Bretislav Pojar, Jean Image, Grim Natwick, Tissa David, Barrie Nelson, Andre Martin, Ed Smith, Dick Rauh, and John Whitney.

I guess they don’t make Festivals like they used to. There doesn’t seem to be much written about this event, and I wish some of those in attendance would write about it.

From the Wikepedia entry for Bill Tytla, there’s the John Culhane quote: On August 13, 1967, the opening night of the Montreal Expo’s World Exhibition of Animation Cinema, featured a screening of Dumbo as part of an Hommage Aux Pionniers. Tytla was invited, but worried if anyone would remember him. When the film finished, they announced the presence of “The Great Animator.” When the spotlight finally found him, the audience erupted in “a huge outpouring of love. It may have been one of the great moments of his life,” recalled John Culhane. I’m sure there were many such moments.

Just to make it all personal, let me tell you a story, although this has nothing to do with Montreal’s Exhibit.

Pepe Ruiz was the u-nion’s business manager. In 1966 – the year prior to this expo – I was a junior in college, determined to break into the animation industry. Of course, I knew the military was coming as soon as I graduated, but I called the u-nion to have a meeting with Pepe. I wanted to see what the likelihood of a “part time job” would be in animation. This took a lot of courage on my part to see what the u-nion was about. I pretty well knew part time jobs didn’t exist. There was no such thing as interns back then.

Pepe was an odd guy who kept calling me “sweetheart” and “darling” and he told me that it was unlikely that I could get something part time in an animation studio.

However he did send me to Terrytoons to check it out.
I met with the production manager, at the time, Nick Alberti. It was obvious I was holding up Mr. Alberti’s exit for a game of golf, but he was kind and said that part time work wasn’t something they did. (He moved on to Technicolor film lab as an expediter after Terry‘s closed. I had contact with him frequently for years later, though I never brought up our meeting and doubt he would have remembered it.) Ultimately, I was pleased to have been inside Terrytoons‘ studio before it shut down shortly thereafter. A little adventure that let me feel as though I was getting closer to the world of animation.

The photos of the Expo are worth a good look. I’ve singled out those above to place around my text. The picture of Tissa and Grim is a nice one of the two of them together.

Ed Smith was the Top Cel editor at the time, and he put together a creative publication.

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(Click on any image to enlarge.)

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- On the DVD of Alice in Wonderland, there’s an extra little short that supposedly gives you a tour of the studio and a lesson in how animated films are made. (Do you think we’ll ever see one about Dreamworks or Pixar? I’d like to get a video tour of either studio.)

Since I’ve been focussing on Alice’s Milt Kahl scenes, I thought it’d be interesting, as an accompaniment, to post some frame grabs from this theatrical short that was done to promote Alice.

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(Click any image to enlarge.)

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Of course, the film has to start with Walt
riding a toy train around the studio.

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Two storyboard guys sitting in the middle of the studio.

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Storyboard: the walrus grabs a clam.

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Ward Kimball in a funny jacket.

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The actor posing as the Walrus for the camera.

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Walt in a funny pose.

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The Walrus & Carpenter sequence.

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Walt and Winston Hibler. Hibler eventually narrated
most of the Disneyland shows and True-Life adventures.

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Flowers from storyboard to final film.

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Walt gives a demo of the animation camera and
seems to be wrinkling the cels as he does this.

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Walt operating an animation camera. Ludicrous.

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Walt and Kathryn Beaumont (who’s
supposed to be doing schoolwork.)

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Kathryn Beaumont and Ed Wynn.

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Les Clark.

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John Lounsbery on the right. The other animator looks to be
Fred Moore. Older and heavier than we’ve seen him in the past.

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Ed Wynn as the Mad Hatter.

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More of wacky Ward Kimball pretending to draw.

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Kathryn Beaumont and Jerry Colonna.

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Jerry Colonna leads us into pencil test of the scene.

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This scene was animated by Ward kimball & Cliff Nordberg.

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John Lounsbery is on the left.
I’m not sure who the other two are.

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The cards in action in the film.

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One of the highlights of the film is this dancer doing
march steps for the cards – to be studied.

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The multiplane camera in operation.

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The cameraman at the top always looks a bit devilish.

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No “how animation is made” film would be complete
without the sound effects guys making a racket.

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Walt and Wilfred Jackson.

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Walt going over some artwork with
John Hench (L) and Claude Coats (center)
Thanks to Hans Bacher and Gunnar Andreassen for identifying them.

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Before riding his toy train into the sunset, Walt sits
in front of his real toy, the multiplane camera.

If anyone can identify any of those I couldn’t, or if you think I’ve mistakenly identified anyone, please leave a comment.

There’s an art gallery of images, many of which are by Mary Blair (and I’ve already posted her pictures a while back.) I’ll finish this post with some more of the images on the dvd.

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Mary Blair in B&W.

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More of the same.

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Thiis looks like it comes from HOPPITY GOES TO TOWN.

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Lots of David Hall designs, here.

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More Mary Blair.

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To see more Mary Blair designs for Alice go here.

- Back during the black out of Hurricane Sandy (when we had no electricity or heat), John Canemaker invited us up to his apartment to use his computer so that we could check email etc. I spent a nice couple of hours with John that day, and one of the things he pulled out was the DVD of the Mickey Mouse Club. (One of those expensive, tin boxes I didn’t own.) On the extras of the program was a colored version of the animated opening to the show. The original Mickey Mouse Club aired in B&W, which is how I remember it. It was fun sitting through that piece of animation, and I was charmed by a somewhat abstract section, a musical interlude that was rarely shown in the B&W version. It reminds me of Toot Whistle Plunk & Boom in its styling.

I recently bought a copy of that DVD and went directly to that extra. I’ve pulled some frame grabs of the center sequence and will post those here. But then I couldn’t stop there. I went back and did the entire piece. The abstract sequence stands away from the poorly designed Mickey, Donald & Goofy. Those thick outer lines against the thin inner lines reminds me of the bad imitation UPA art that was going on at the time. It was their idea of “modern art,” I guess.

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Pluto’s drums burst in a B&W flash.

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To the stylized abstract.

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Mickey comes back in with an awkward optical.

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. . . and the song continues.

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I wonder if Ward Kimball had anything to do with this.
Ken O’Connor was the Art Director for Kimball including:
Mars and Beyond, Man in Space and Man and the Moon

Victor Haboush was the Asst. Art Director, and he had an important role
in the Mr. Magoo TV show as well as the Dick Tracy show back in 60s.
He was also the Art Director on Gay Purr-ee.

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.

I have a problem. The hurricane, Sandy I mean, left me without electricity or heat. Fortunately, I have hot water and a gas oven. However, I don’t have access to a computer or the internet. Friends have been posting material I’d prepared, and those are running downhill quickly (material prepared, I mean, not friends.) I’ve decided that I’d post this today, and it would have to hold until I get electricity back. Maybe by the weekend, please Mr. Mayor.

So I leave you with Our Mr. Sun, hoping he comes to warm us all, soon. It shouldn’t be more than a couple of days. If I get to another computer, I’ll add something more. Best, Michael

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- Back in the 50′s the film director, Frank Capra, produced, directed and wrote four specials for TV which were sponsored by Bell. Our Mr. Sun (1956), Hemo the Magnificent (1957), Unchained Goddess (1958) and The Strange Case of the Cosmic Rays (1957) were devoted to explaining basic science to family home audiences. Capra was educated as an engineer, so he had a lifelong interest in science and he initiated these prorams.

Capra also had a long time interest in animation. He was responsible for securing a distribution contract for Disney with Columbia back in the early 30′s. Animation became a large part of these four programs, and Capra found different animation houses to do them. UPA, Disney, Shamus Culhane‘s studio and WB all were involved.

UPA did the artwork for Our Mr. Sun, the first of these programs. (You can watch it here.) I have a copy of the script marked up by Grim Natwick, so I know he animated on it out of the NY studio of UPA.

The shows play a bit like Ward Kimball‘s “Tomorrowland” episodes of the Disneyland television show. Perhaps these are a bit less joke oriented. The animation is just as limited and design oriented. This format has forever affected many who grew up watching them. Check out the new Pixar 2D piece, You’re The Rat, currently on YouTube (it’ll probably be removed soon.) There’s an obvious link.

Here are some frame grabs from this first show of the Bell Science Series: Our Mr. Sun.

(Cllick any image to enlarge.)

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Tissa David Memorial

- We’ve planned a memorial for Tissa David that will take place in New York at the Academy Lighthouse Theater on Tuesday October 23rd at 7pm. The program will include five speakers and will have a fair share of clips from the many films Tissa animated. The studios that will be rimarily represented include: The Hubley Studio, Raggedy Ann & Andy, R.O.Blechman/The Ink Tank and Michael Sporn Animation.

The films will include: Eggs, Everybody Rides the Carousel, Cockaboody, Raggedy Ann & Andy, Candide, The Soldier’s Tale, The Red Shoes, Lyle Lyle Crocodile, The Marzipan Pig, The Dancing Frog and POE.

Where: Academy Lighthouse Theater, 111 East 59th Street, lower level
When: Tuesday, October 23rd, at 7PM

Photo by Mate HidvegiAdmission: free
Seating: first come, first served

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It’s been very interesting for me to prepare all this material for the program. As a matter of fact, just developing the program has been interesting.

In the last month or so, working out of Buzzco studio, I watched Candy Kugel and Rick Broas prepare the material for their ASIFA East program celebrating the work of Perpetual Motion Studios, a commercial animation studio where a number of people got their start. A lot of film had to be prepared for DVD projection and people had been organized to act as a panel where they would reminisce in front of the audience that came to see the show. Essentially, what Candy and Rick were doing was developing a theatrical program of mixed media which would celebrate this studio and hopefully entertain the audience that came to revisit the studio, one that meant a lot toone contingent of NY animation workers and was a curiosity for younger workers. The organizers of the event not only wanted to reunite with old friends, but they wanted to entertain an audience at the same time.

For me, it was quite informative watching all the work that went into the program as well as seeing the final results and assessing what, to my mind, worked or didn’t work.

Now I’m doing something similar. I’m working a lot of material from Tissa David‘s life into a program that will hopefully entertain an audience while impressing them with the enormous talents of the woman who’d so affected my life. In short, I’ve been trying to develop a mixed media theatrical event, but I’ve been hoping not to let Tissa down since this will be the final farewell to her for many of those who will come. Needless to say, it won’t be my final farewell to her. She’s been a great and close friend, an animation wizard and something of a cherished advisor on many things. She was always there to talk to, to share films with and to chat about animation as well as our lives. Her memory is more than alive in the front of my mind.

In short, I want to get this show right. That is, after all, what I am doing . . . putting on a show.

For the past week I’ve been working and reworking clips that’ll be screened, and going through many, many still photos of Tissa and her artifacts to prepare a little slide show that will get the crowd into the right mood as they enter the theater. Once you pick out the right pictures to present, there’s a delicate order to select them, tie them to a piece of music and try to create a short bit of a movie. Speaking of music, that alone is something difficult
Photo by Mate Hidvegi to select. Certainly, with Tissa,
it meant sticking to classical as opposed to
popular music. Even then, I knew she didn’t like Beethoven so I couldn’t use “Ode to Joy,” for example. (Wouldn’t that have made some kind of memorial song!) I listened to a lot of Kodaly and pulled back since I’m not crazy about his music, I didn’t want anything at all Romantic. I listened to a lot of music that I like. No, I’d be too tempted to pull something from John Adams or Phillip Glass’ catalog. That most definitely is not Tissa. Ultimately, I settled on Bach. I found a nice version of his prelude from Bach´s Cello Suite No. 1 as performed by Yo Yo Ma.

I want to offer a giveaway to the audience, a little program that they’ll have for review after they’ve left. The slide show has been completed (and I think successfully), and the decisions for all the cuts and clips have been made for the screening, and all the speakers have sent me their pieces on Tissa. Now I have to write a program and will have to get a couple hundred copies printed over the weekend.

All in all, it’s been a formidable month, this last one. A lot’s been done, and I’m looking forward to the event. I just worry a bit that now I’ll have to say goodbye to Tissa.

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Order of Merit to Tissa’s Sister

- On the 56th anniversary of the 1956 Hungarian revolution the memorial conference was held.

Yesterday, one of Tissa’s sisters, Szaniszla, was decorated with a very highly prestigious medal – Order of Merit of Hungary.

After the revolution in 1956, Szaniszla was jailed because she participated and supported the revolution.

(Tissa had escaped Hungary and fled, ultimately, to Paris some seven years earlier in 1949.)

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Why Obama Now

I saw this excellent piece of anmation on the Animation Guild Blog this past week, and I couldn’t help but pass it forward. Lucas Gray did a fine job of illustrating a talk by Barack Obama and executed it with style and intelligence. It’s a flash work that exploits the program for all it’s got. If John Sutherland were making films today, this is probably what they’d look like.

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Hans’ Dream

- Hans Bacher in a new post on his site, one1more2time3, is invading Eddie Fitzgerald territory with an imagined construction, a dream of the future from a child of the past if he had this present. A peculiar description, but it’s probably apt. Take a look for yourself.

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A Dancing Kickstarter

I received this note this week and found it interesting enough to post:

Hi Michael,

My name is Betsy Baytos and my colleagues, I am writing to see if you could kindly help post my Kickstarter Film project, on your site and blog. ‘

FUNNY FEET: The Art of Eccentric Dance‘

A brief introduction: A former Disney Feature Animator and Eccentric ‘comedic’ Dancer, my work now focuses on animation choreography (i.e.:’Emperor’s New Groove‘ & ‘Princess and the Frog‘). I have also performed as the Muppet Show’s ‘Betsy Bird’, teaching/lecturing Eccentric ‘character movement’ at Disney and Cal Arts animation classes, Oxford University’s ‘Fred Astaire Conference’,consulting for Cirque Du Soleil, Universal Studios Japan and the Ringling Bros. Alumni.

I have just launched a Kickstarter campaign to finance the completion of my film research, for a Documentary, ‘FUNNY FEET: The Art of Eccentric Dance‘, with over 45 celebrity filmed interviews:(i.e.: Red Skelton, Jerry Lewis, Dick Van Dyke, Shirley MacLaine, Mrs. Buster Keaton, Chuck Jones, Al Hirschfeld, Joe Grant, Ward Kimball, Joe Barbera, Frank & Ollie, Myron Waldman, Richard Fleischer and many more….) All with a focus on how eccentric dance inspired the visual arts and especially animation, as many of the great eccentric dancers were models for our most beloved cartoon characters. .

My entire research & film collection will be donated to the Motion Pic Academy of Arts & Science here, as a final home when all is said & done.

To see the Kickstarter proposal go here.


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NY – Comi Con – NY

Tom Hachtman is a good friend. I love his art work and have supported it from the time I first saw his comic strip, Gertrude’s Follies, in the SohoNews, an extant paper from the lower rungs of Manhattan’s coolest neighborhood. Tom and I spent a lot of time storyboarding a very low budget animated feature pulled from his strip. If nothing else it made me laugh for months while we were drawing it.

Well, Tom was at the NY version of the ComiCon held Oct. 11-14 at the Javits Center on NY’s far West side. Tom was promoting a couple of books Gertrude’s Follies, Fairly Grim Tales (which he illustrated). I’m pleased that Martin Kozlowski pushes to keep Tom published; obviously the man has good taste.

Tom wrote a funny account of his four days there:

I was there for all four days of the event that opened Thursday 10/11/12.
Directly across from us there was a booth promoting something called ‘The Mr. Gray show. They were showing (on a laptop) a pilot episode that included an interview with David Lynch where he talks about his Jack Russell terrier Sparky. There is some ANIMATION at the beginning.

(LtoR) Salvina Vitali starring as Agent BJ, Mister Gray the alien puppet
from planet Zeb, the show’s creator Dusty Wright holding a drawing of
Gertrude and Alice meeting Mr. Gray, and, in the red hat, yours truly.

For four days I watched a parade of comic book fans in costumes depicting their favorite characters. I don’t know who these people are and I often don’t know who the character is they have dressed up as. Day four Larry pointed out an approaching Poison Ivy and said, “You must be tired – you don’t even look.”
Then along came Red Sonja to put me out of my misery – best shot of the day.

Since I love redheads I had my picture taken with Poison Ivy, Black Widow, Red Sonja and many more terrifying creatures I can not identify.

w/Poison Ivy

Red Sonja kills Jorz Strooly

“Fangs 4 D Memories”

Seriously

Anyone who bought a book got a drawing. Here are a few that I didn’t give away.

Gertrude and Alice at Comic Con dressed as Wonder Woman and Harley Quinn –
these were two very popular costumes at Comic Con.

Alice taking a photo of Gertrude with her iPhone –
both in Harley Quinn costumes.

Driving across America looking a little bit steampunk.