Michael Sporn Animation - Splog

Tonight, ASIFA-East is presenting an evening with John R. Dilworth. This means that John will be there with a number of surprise guests from his past and present, including Howard Beckerman, who taught him; me, who hired him; and Courage the Cowardly Dog, who was drawn by him. Given John’s affinity for the unexpected, it’s doubtful that it’ll be the typical Q&A.

Some of his shorts will be shown as well as several of his films. I could tell you which ones they are, but that would spoil the surprise.

The festivities begin at 7pm at the School of Visual Arts, 209 East 23rd St, 3rd floor amphitheatre. The admission price is free and worth every bit of it.

Of course, if you insist on buying some things, ASIFA calanders will be sold as will John Dilworth goodies.

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- Once again, let me promote The Fantastic Mr. Fox, an animated feature that I just love. There was a good interview with director, Wes Anderson, on Charlie Rose 11/30/09. There’s no direct link from here, but you can see this clip by going to Charlie Rose ’s website, then typing in Wes Anderson on the search box. You can see the whole interview (about 30 mins) there._______________
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- Now for something different. Just for the opportunity of showing off some beautiful blue-pencilled ruffs by Frank Thomas, loaned to me by John Canemaker, I’m going to post them here. They’re from Sleeping Beauty, of course.
1

2

3

4
This last one is from Ichabod and Mr. Toad -
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. Ichabod and Katrina.
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- The most peculiar news story of the week was the headline at the top of Sunday’s NYTimes. It talked about a Taiwanese company that was creating their own videos of the news using cgi animation. The Times reports that the “. . . Taiwanese newspaper, Apple Daily, has dozens of programmers, designers, animators, even actors on its staff . . . responsible for scripting the videos.” We were shown a poorly created video of Tiger Woods (they admit that it didn’t really look like him, but they were happy over the color of his skin and his hair.) Maybe Robert Zemeckis could help out.

The question is how long it’ll take for ALL newcasts to include animated stories because they’re too lazy to do the actual reporting. Get rid of newspapers and make up your own videos. Apparently, MSNBC’s Keith Olberman made some sly comments about it. When he needs to make up the stories, he uses his “finger puppet theater.” In Taiwan they use cgi.

The world’s gone berserk, but now there’s a whole new line of work for animators of the future.

Here’s the YouTube presentation of that newscast.

- I’m a bit cranky. Having just come from Disney’s The Princess and the Frog, I’m not sure how to comment on it fairly. There were moments when I just relished the hand-drawn animation done at such a high level. I treasured the levels of technical depth being executed on the screen. I enjoyed whole sequences of animation and overall design choices. However, the story has such deep problems. I don’t intend to drag the film down with negatives.

I hope the film does well. 2D animation needs a boost. Would that someone had pulled the film in a straight-arrow direction and told the story more directly. But that isn’t the case.

I won’t complain about the incessant violence and loud actions in the film, but I will tell you something else that’s irritating the hell out of me. PR people have released information that I’ve seen repeated a few times. Anika Noni Rose repeated it on Jimmy Kimmel Friday night. They’re saying that she’s the first princess ever to sing and act the part, herself. Prior to her it was done by two people.

I suppose Adriana Caselotti as Snow White’s singing and acting voice doesn’t count. Nor does Ilene Woods as Cinderella, or Mary Costa as Sleeping Beauty, or Paige O’Hara as Belle. Can’t they even get their facts right about their own movies! Do they have to take away from the brilliant talent of some of the past films?

The two illustrations above come from Jeff Kurtti’s book, The Art of The Princess and the Frog. The pencil drawing was by Ruben Aquino, and the color sketch is by James Aaron Finch and Armand Baltazar.

The Fantastic Mr. Fox - Did I tell you often enough that I really like this movie? One director - one voice. Independent spirit. Relatively low budget - $40 million. See it for fun.

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- There’s a solid interview with Wes Anderson on the always enjoyable Onion’s AV CLub. His comments are worth reading, expecially if you’ve seen the film.

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- Rotten Tomatoes, on the arrival of Disney’s The Princess and the Frog, has created a listing of Disney animated features and organized them into a list of titles. The order of the list is determined by some shaky criteria. Per Rotten Tomatoes: We used a weighted formula that takes into account the Tomatometer, number of reviews, and release year of every film included. We excluded all Disney subsidiaries and companies through which Disney has distribution deals hence, no films from Pixar, Studio Ghibli, or DisneyToon Studios are on the list.

Here’s their listing. Each title is followed by the Tomatometer rating:

1. Pinocchio 100%
2. Snow White 98%
3. Fantasia (1940) 98%
4. 101 Dalmatians 97%
5. Dumbo 97%
6. Beauty & the Beast 93%
7. Lion King 92%
8. Aladdin 92%
9. Cinderella 92%
10. Sleeping Beauty 91%
11. The Little Mermaid 90%
12. Bambi 89%
13. The Jungle Book 89%
14. Bolt 88%
15. Tarzan 88%
16. Lady and the Tramp 87%
17. Mulan 86%
18. Emperor’s New Groove 85%
19. Lilo and Stitch 85%
20. The Rescuers 84%
21. Fantasia 2000 82%
22. Hercules 83%
23. Peter Pan 83%
24. Alice In Wonderland 81%
25. The Hunchback of Notre Dame 72%
26. The Sword in the Stone 73%
27. Treasure Planet 70%
28. Meet the Robinsons 66%
29. Dinosaur 65%
30. The Aristocats 65%
31. The 3 Caballeros 87%
32. The Fox and the Hound 71%
33. Pocahontas 56%
34. Home on the Range 55%
35. Robin Hood. 55%
36. The Black Cauldron 58%
37. Atlantis: the Lost Continent 46%
38. Oliver and Company 44%
39. The Adventures of Ichabod & Mr. Toad 89%
40. The Rescuers Down Under 60%
41. The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh 91%
42. The Great Mouse Detective 79%
43. Brother Bear 38%
44. Chciken Little 36%
45. Saludos Amigos 70%
46. Melody Time 88%
47. Make Mine Music 67%
48. Fun and Fancy Free 67%

Just to amuse myself, I sought out all the Don Bluth films and compared their Tomatometer ratings to see which would be hightest. No surprises, except maybe that American Tale was rated so low. These aren’t graded the same way the Disney films were, above. Some of Bluth’s films weren’t rated:

The Secret of NIMH 94%
Anastasia 85%
An American Tale 63%
Titan AE 51%
All Dogs Go to Heaven 44%
The Pebble and the Penguin 36%
Thumbelina 25%
Rock-A-Doodle 20%

Continuing the process let’s look at Ralph Bakshi’s films. He didn’t fare as well as Bluth; some of Bakshi’s films weren’t reviewed either:

Heavy Traffic 88%
American Pop 56%
Fritz the Cat 53%
Wizards 53%
The Lord of the Rings 47%
Cool World 6%

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- After posting Tom Hachtman’s Renaissance Masters the past four weeks, I’m sort of out of sorts to not have any more of it. Let me post a couple of Gertrude & Alice cartoons to fill the void:

This one could be a comment on the “Twilight” experience.

This week I heard about the after-show auction going on
at A Steady Rain’s Broadway performances. Hugh Jackman &
Daniel Craig are raising cash for Broadway Cares by having
after-show auctions of their “sweaty” T-shirts.

Gert & Alice can do it for the environment.

And while I’m at it, let me post one of my favorite strips (which I’d posted once before.)

(Click any image to enlarge.)

Is there a more powerful god than the cartoonist?

Svetlana Rockwell, the daughter of Alexandre Alexeieff has recently sent out a letter to several people worldwide. I was fortunate to have received a copy of this via Karl Cohen, the ASIFA-SF president.

I am very pleased to be able to let you know that my father Alexandre Alexeieff’s DVD has been produced in this country by FACETS in Chicago.
The DVD was originally put together by my agent Dominique Willoughby ,CINEDOC in Paris. It took him two years to do it.
The result is excellent. It was a work of love!

Years ago, when I read and re-read the Halas/Mavell book Technique of Film Animation, I was particularly curious to see films by Alexeieff & Parker. They were hardly available - even in New York. The best I could do was to see the titles to the Orson Welles’ film The Trial. I had to wait years to see others. These days, of course, like everything else they can be seen relatively easily thanks to such DVDs.

The disc includes their most important films including the renowned adaptation of Moussorgsky’s tone poem, Night on Bald Mountain. Over 30 films are featured, including short animations, stop-motion animated advertisements made for French cinemas, and photographs of Alexeieff’s still artwork.

It also includes The Pinscreen, a documentary by Norman McLaren; Mindscape, a film by Jacques Droulin; Alexeieff and Parker Making Three Moods, a documentary; and a gallery of photos and prints.

You can order the DVD directly from Facets in Chicago.

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To give more information about the noted duo, whose work is probably not as well known today as it was even 10 years ago, I post this article by Alexeieff written for Animafilm #3, Jan. 1980:

Creative art
as a profession

by Alexandre Alexeieff

Does a country exist which would not seem to believe that it must possess a Museum, a School of Fine Arts teaching painting, sculpture, engraving and architecture, a Music Conservatory and an Opera House?

As if there were at any time and in every country great painters, sculptors and musicians… and yet History testifies that the reality is quite different: there are many countries which have never had any great painters, or else have had some, but for a limited time. ________________Claire Parker & Alexandre Alexeieff

For instance a country may have had a great poet hut never a great composer, and so on. A closer study of the history of culture shows that a period during which a given country enjoyed the flowering of one or several particular arts is hut of limited duration. Such a period is invariably followed by a gradual decline consisting of dreary routine due to an excessive respect for stereotyped rules imposed by the elders.

I am particularly impressed by the singular case of Russian classical literature, limited to the first decades of the 1 8th century. It so happened that before 1806 literate Russians spoke and wrote in French. The patriotic feeling engendered by the Napoleonic aggressions resulted in the new fashion of speaking and writing in the native tongue which, until then, had been used mainly by illiterate peasants. A handful of writers (among whom only Pushkin’s name is familiar to the West) ‘ lacking any national tradition, had to create the very language itself, in which they were’to write. Rut never since has Russian literature attained such grandeur. One is tempted to remember the famous line of the French playwright Racine: “.. .qui d’un coup d’essai font un coup de maltre…” What seemed to Racine an exception - an apprentice succeeding as if he were a master - is it an exception or, perhaps, a general rule?

THE NOSE - (1963) .
If I remember rightly, it happened around 1922, after the summer vacation was over, that the Cafe du Dome on Montparnasse, which by that time had supplanted the “Rotonde” as the meeting place of painters, opened its redecorated rooms. Its walls were ornate with new polychrome bas-reliefs of a most abominable design prevailing at that time on French banknotes. This discovery gave me immediately the strange certitude that French easel painting was dead for good. And indeed it so happened that after that year paintings of a frankly decorative character supplanted easel painting in everything but name.

I listened nevertheless to the teachings of the new masters with reverence. According to them the utmost care had to be bestowed upon COMPOSITION. Yet one had to care also about TEXTURE. Subsequently it was the preoccupation with texture, which I practised in my engravings, that resulted in the invention of the pinscreen (which is to my mind the purest example of what an engraved plate tends to be).

The year after that sad opening of the Cafe du Dome, when the pinscreen built by Claire and me empowered us to animate my engravings, I conceived that the forthcoming film of “animated engravings” was to show for the first time an image which would remain constantly composed in spite of its movement.

The very first screening of our first rush demonstrated that COMPOSITION was an affair of monumental painting and had nothing to do with movies.

PICTURES AT AN EXHIBITION - (1972) .
Forty-five years have elapsed. It no longer looks scandalous to read that easel painting exists no more. In private houses the SINGLE MOVING IMAGE tends to replace static paintings. The rich no longer buy bronze or marble, or paintings in their frozen frames: they buy instead trips to the inhabited inslands of the South Seas. As if humanity were discovering movement and time. As if the ephemeral, the transitory were taking the place of the eternal, the solid, the permanent. One no longer cares about the Seven , Wonders, one bids farewell to Antiquity.

Leaving the three-dimensional, humanity is entering into the fourth dimension.

One may suppose that animation’s destiny is to take the place of painting. Whether decorative or easel painting, does not matter - painting being lost in a maze of sterile scholastic speculations.

Is animation going to live side by side with that sort of animated photography which people call the cinema? Probably - yes, and yet the cinema will have to make some room for animation.

NIGHT ON BALD MOUNTAIN- (1933) .
It was in the early 1930s that I saw Renoir’s film showing a white horse galloping on a background of dishevelled clouds. Apparently it was a double print: there were two shots, one of a horse and one of clouds. One of the prints was printed over the other… but I wondered what Renoir’s role was in all that. Dtdn’t he have to accept both horse and clouds such as they were? Certainly it was Re’noir who decided to print the two shots one over the other… was this all he did? Was his part of creation no more than combining recorded real events?

After 45 years, as I understand it motion picture animation is an acceleration of images and events entirely created by the imagination of the artist. These he has to slow down during the step-by-step process of creating the film.

When it crossed my mind to count the days, weeks and months which Claire and me had to spend under the lens of our camera in order to cumulate that time into no more than eight and a half minutes of film, I realised that this was a ratio of about 30,000 to one; reciprocally it might be said that we slowed down an 8 minute long action to some 540 days. There were days when I lived only a fraction of a second during the whole 6 hours of work. This required a discipline yet unknown to me in spite of the pretty hard training I was familiar with as an engraver. The thing looks to me like a sort of slow motion, but now not applied to film hut to human life itself: my life. This had to he so drastically slowed down in order to endow with life an image conceived and made hy me - an image or images of things which (unlike Renoir’s horse) never existed anywhere except in my mind.

ACCELERATION? I had to examine that. From the start it occurred to me that ACCELERATION is the reverse of SLOW MOTION.

Who can remain indifferent hefore the grace of human and animal movements slowed down?

And yet, why does an acceleration (even a slight one, which is undergone by old films shot at 16 frames per second when screened at 24 f.p.sec.) -why does even so minimal an acceleration invariably look funny.

And more: are there other mechanical accelerations known among the arts? Yes, there are gramophone records of funeral marches which, if recorded at 33 revolutions per minute, sound like gay polkas when speeded up to 78 r.p.min. And in the reverse: a polka, recorded at 78 r.p.min, sounds grave and majestic if played at 33 r.p.min.

It is also illuminating to ponder over the instructions for the speed and character of the interpretation of musical scores: “moderato pesante” or “allargando” or “perdendosi” or “tranquillo”, if not “scherzando” or “andante grave”, even “con dolore” or “allegretto vivo” as well as “feroce” or “maestoso”.

But how about “30,000 times faster”? This is much more than simply faster than “twice as fast”… Here the acceleration is so tremendously out of proportion -could quantity perhaps change the very quality? We cannot answer such a question, but we may note the general trend of animation to rush out of the control of the animator, who is invariably suprised on seeing his shot screened for the first time.

But let us admit also that it is monstrous to spend 18 months for 8 minutes of movement… And then there is that absence of slow motion, which animation ignores… that lack of gravity… that perpetual agitation… that compulsory burlesque… Is it possible that animation cannot do SOMETHING ELSE, as music can?

If I took the liberty to thus speak my mind, it is because I’ve been thinking along these lines for a very long time, I wonder whether some other people do not think like this as well. It is for them that I’m writing.

Doubtless I am not alone in wishing for an evolution. Others than me - Szczechura for instance - are revolutionizing animation admirably.

I also admit that serious subjects have never been well paid for, although burlesque brings in cash. But is big money so important? Impressionist painters did not make money during their lifetime.

The history of the fine arts is like the card game named “patience”. A solitary game where the cards open their faces one after the other. The future will show what animation can do.

By the way - is there an animator who wouldn’t wish to speed up his production process? This implies the reduction of the ratio between production time and screening time (speeding up production spells out slowing down the acceleration). Therefore Claire and I are presently trying to reduce the speed of out animation to the tempo of slow motion, and I believe we can do it… at least sometimes. Last spring we succeeded in going 50-timcs slower. If we were shooting NIGHT ON BARE MOUNTAIN these days, we might reduce the ratio of 30,000 times to 600 which is almost tolerable.

English version corrected by Claire Parker
©1979, by Alexandre Alexeieff and “Animafilm”

ALEXANDRE ALEXEtEFF AND CLAIRE PARKER: BIO-FILMOGRAPHY .
Claire Parker collaborated with Alexandre Alexe’ieff in the production of all his films made on pin screen. She took part in the animation of all his films, excluding three commercial films which he made in Berlin, and LA PLUME DE F1N1ST - CLAIR FAUCON, made in Rome. The film biography covers their joint work.

1931 - work on the first pin screen: 500,000 little rods sharpened at one end, with a diameter 0.9mm. Surface: I x 1.20m.

1933 - first film, UNE NUIT SUR LE MONT CHAUVE (The Night on Mount Bald). Extremely warm reception of audiences, but poor distribution; six weeks at Pantheon (Paris) and two weefcs at the Academy (London).

1934-LA BELLE AU BO1S DORMANT (The Sleeping Beauty), the first color puppet film starring puppets used for advertising “Nicolas” wines. Cooperation with Jean Aurenche and Francis Poulence. Alexe’ieff gives up puppets and script writing for professionals.
1935-1940 - commercial films (color) with object animation. Cooperation with top European composers. New effects included in ads films of up to three minutes. Friendship with Bartosch.

1937 - an attempt at making a smaller pin screen: 50×65 cm with a simplified structure - a failure.

1940 - A.A. and C.P. find refuge in the U.S.A. Friendships with Canadians, especially with N. McLaren.

1943 - second pin screen. Dimensions 1×1.70 m, 1,400,000 sharp-pointed rods. Diameter 0.45 mm. EN PASSANT (Incidentally) - a film commissioned by the National Film Board of Canada. Lack of interest in this film in the U.S.A. Walt Disney imitates “The Night on Mount Bald” and A.A.’s GRAND FEUX POUR ARTHUR MARTIN (Great Fire for Arthur Martin), but the Americans are somehow distrustful towards Continental artists.

1947-back to Europe; problems: shortages of paper and electricity.

1951-TOTALISATION(Totalization), fortheBel-gian producer Paul Delpire, originates. The film FUMEES (Smokes).

1956 - Films: SEVE DE LA TERRE (Earth Juices), MASQUERS (The Disguised), PURE BEAUTE (Pure Beauty). Admission to the Cineastes Associes.

1963-LE NEZ (The Nose).

1964 - last, 31st commercial advertising film, DE L’EAU (The Wafers,). The producer congratulates A.A. and C.P. on the film but fails to screen it.

1968 - new pin screen with a- more complicated construction. Dimensions: 45×55 cm., 250,000 sharp-ended rodlets. Diameter: 0.45 mm.

1972 - the film TABLEAUX D’UNE EXPOSITION (Pictures at an Exhibition), made on two pin screens. National Film Board of Canada purchases the new screen made by A.A. and C.P.

1975 - an exhibition at the Annecy Castle.

1977 - another pin screen completed. Dimensions: 50×60 cm.; 275,000 rodlets pointed at both ends. Diameter: 0.49 mm. A new film in store, TROIS THEMES (The Three Themes).

Color Images #5-#8: Graphics by Alexandre Alexeieff

The Renaissance Masters - 4 will conclude tomorrow, Sunday.

- There have been a number of newspaper articles about the released short list of Academy Award entrees for Best Documentary. Many of the more popular films - such as Michael Moore’s Capitalism: a love story and The September Issue - have been left off the list. This has caused some feedback for the Academy.

The short list of entrees for the Best Animated Feature film has also gotten a lot of attention in newpapers and on blogs. A record 20 films have been entered and are probably eligible - meaning there may be as many as 5 nominees this year.

The Academy has never previously released the short list of the nominees for the Best Animated Short.

Until today.

These are the ten films vying for the Oscar nomination for that award. They’re listed below in alphabetical order by title, with their director and production company:

The Cat Piano
Eddie White and Ari Gibson, directors (The People’s Republic of Animation)

French Roast
Fabrice O. Joubert, director (Pumpkin Factory/Bibo Films)

Granny O’Grimm’s Sleeping Beauty
Nicky Phelan, director, and Darragh O’Connell, producer (Brown Bag Films)

The Kinematograph
Tomek Baginski, director-producer (Platige Image)

The Lady and the Reaper (La Dama y la Muerte)
Javier Recio Gracia, director (Kandor Graphics and Green Moon)

Logorama
Nicolas Schmerkin, producer (Autour de Minuit)

A Matter of Loaf and Death
Nick Park, director (Aardman Animations Ltd.)

Partly Cloudy
Peter Sohn, director (Pixar Animation Studios)

Runaway
Cordell Barker, director (National Film Board of Canada)

Varieté
Roelof van den Bergh, director (il Luster Productions)

The following were all of the films that were eligible and competed for the short list. Congratulations to all for having produced films of such high calibre.

1. GETTING OVER HIM IN 8 SONGS OR LESS - 28mins - Debra Solomon
2. KANIZSA HILL - 8min - Evelyn Lee
3. ALICE’S ATTIC - 3mins - Robyn Yannoukos
4. HE’S BARACK OBAMA - 2mins - JibJab
5. SEBASTIAN’S VOODOO - 4mins - Joaquin Baldwin
6. THE KINEMATOGRAPH - 12ins - Tomek Bagiński
7. HORN DOG - 5mins - Bill Plympton
8. VARIETÉ - 5mins - Roelof van den Bergh
9. ALMA - 6mins - Rodrigo Blaas
10. BIRTH - 12mins - Signe Bauman
11. CAGES - 10mins - Juan Jose Medina
12. CHROMA CHAMELEON - 5mins - Marc F. Adler & Warren Grubb
13. ClKORJA AN’ KAFE (Chicory ‘n Coffee) - 8mins - Dusan Kastelic
14. ESTERHAZY - 23min - Izabela Plucinska
15. JACINTA - 9mins - Karla Castañeda
16. LA INCREJBLE HISTORIA DEL HOMBRE SIN SOMBRA - 9mins - José Esteban Alenda
17. LEONARDO -10mins - Jim Capobianco
18. LIVE MUSIC - 6mins - Hugh Hart
19. LOGORAMA - 17mins - H5, a French design collective,
20. A MATTER OF LOAF AN DEATH - 29mins - Nick Park
21. PARTLY CLOUDY - 6mins - Peter Sohn
22. PATIENCE OF THE MEMORY - 7mins - Vuk Jevremovic
23. PIGEON: IMPOSSIBLE - 6mins - Lucas Martell
24. RINKY DINK - 5mins - John Dilworth
26. RUNAWAY - 9mins - Cordell Barker
26. SLAVES - AN ANIMATED DOCUMENTARY - 15mins - David Aronowitsch & Hanna Heilborn
27. THE SPINE - 11mins - Chris Landreth
28. TABLE FELLOWSHIP - 2mins - Robert Colon
29. VALISE - 7mins - Isabelle Favez
30. VIVE LA ROSE -5mins - Bruce Alcock
31. WHEN APPLES ROLL -7mins - Reinis Kalnaellis
32, YOU’RE OUTA HERE - 3mins - George Griffin
33. THE BIRTHDAY GIFT - 8mins -
34. THE CAT PIANO - 8mins - Eddie White & Ari Gibson
35. FRENCH ROAST - 8mins - Fabrice O. Joubert
36. THE LADY AND THE REAPER (La Dama y La Muerte) - 8mins - Javier Recio
37. GRANNY O’GRIMM’S SLEEPING BEAUTY - 6 mins - Nicky Phelan

Short Films and Feature Animation Branch members will now select the five nominees from among the 10 titles on the shortlist. Branch screenings will be held in Los Angeles, New York and San Francisco in January 2010. The 82nd Academy Awards nominations will be announced on Tuesday, February 2, 2010, at 8:30 a.m. EST in the Academy’s Samuel Goldwyn Theater.

Thanks to Karl Cohen for the information.

- When I was a kid, there were few resources one could turn to for information about animation and the process of making these films. Before computers, information was somewhat more difficult to acquire.

I couldn’t afford many books on the subject. Of course, I owned the Preston Blair book and that other Walter T. Foster book about Making Animated Cartoons (the one that wasn’t drawn very well and included animation examples that just didn’t work.) My treasure was the 1958 Bob Thomas book, The Art of Animation, with its technicolor focus on Sleeping Beauty.

I also clipped every magazine/newspaper article or image I could find about cartoons and saved it in a homemade scrapbook. It would be years before I came upon Mike Barrier’s Funnyworld Magazine or any other mag, for that matter, that focused exclusively on animation or cartooning.

There were other books, and I went to the library to check them out monthly. I treasured that library copy of Robert Field’s The Art of Walt Disney that I read over and over again. I appreciated Nat Falk’s How to Make Animated Cartoons.

There was one book The Complete Guide to Cartooning by Gene Byrnes that had a chapter on MGM cartoons. This book had some of the greatest photos in it. Animators, inkers, directors, cels and sound effects. The pictures were great in that forties kinda way that just had me drooling animation when I looked at it. (It was published in Jan, 1950.)

This came to me years ago when I found the animation section of this book on line. I haven’t been able to locate the site again; if I do, I’ll post the link or scan the section myself to post.
It came again recently when friend, Tom Hachtman, visited and brought a copy he owned to see if I knew about it. Of course, opening the whole book was like going home again after dozens of years. I knew every page intimately.

Two pages that stood out followed the MGM section and had the same effect within the book of seeing a Terrytoons cartoon after seeing one from MGM. Low rent. The pages look like left overs from Nat Falk’s book (and may, in fact, have been part of one of his books.)

However it amused me to look them over and actually run the peculiar walk cycle through AfterEffects to watch the motion. There are no registration marks, so I had to guess. (I didn’t take a lot of time with this, believe me.)

(Click any image to enlarge.)
.

Here’s the QT of the odd pupwalk:

Pupwalk on two’s
I’m not sure who animated this - my guess Connie Rasinski
Click left side of the black bar to play.
Right side to watch single frame.

- I remember in 1962 going to the movies to see Gay Purr-ee, the very first showing - a late morning matinee. It was a bus ride away, but I was a fan big fan of UPA at the time. A 15 year old child who knew a bit about the impressionists and had read a lot about the early incarnation of this animation studio. The only shorts I’d seen were on the original Gerald McBoing Boing show, back in the fifties (when I was much younger.)

1001 Arabian Nights with Mr. Magoo had impressed me in some of its parts, but the notion of animating in impressionist art was more exciting to me.

I remember being impressed with the voice cast and soundtrack (which I quickly bought), some of the imagery and some bits of the animation. I loved the thick/thin outlines of the characters. I went back the next day to see the film again at a closer theater. This time I went late afternoon, which was a mistake. The kiddee matinee had brought a glob of ice cream melting down the center of the theater’s screen. It was hard to enjoy the beautiful painting with this dark, moving scar gracing the middle of the screen.

Despite seeing the film another half dozen times, since then, I didn’t really know much about the film’s production other than the credits I was able to view on screen. The Abe Levitow site offers a number of background paintings by the original designer, Victor Haboush, as well as Corny Cole and Bob Inman.

Here are two by bg’s Victor Haboush that are featured on the Levitow site.
I just earned from Tom Sito’s blog that Mr. Haboush died on May 24th at 85.
He was a gifted designer and artist.
.

.The paragraph written on that site tells about the layoffs at Disney after Sleeping Beauty and how this brought an influx of talent to UPA. Many had worked on the Dick Tracy and Mr. Magoo tv cartoons that were produced but the feature better utilized their talents.

This isn’t much different than the story Jack Kinney tells in his book, Walt Disney and Other Assorted Characters. After he was pushed out of Disney, he ended up directing Magoo’s Arabian Nights. (He talks so little of it that he gives the impression he didn’t enjoy the experience.)

This is a Corny Cole model of the “Money Cats” from the film.
.

This is an animation drawing I have of one of them.
It’s not as angular or graceful as Corny’s drawing, but I still like it.
.

And this is an animation drawing I have of
Meowrice, the film’s villain.
.
I have lots of the press material from the period stuffed into a scrapbook I have in storage. Not much of this is available on line, but I did find these two pieces in the NYTimes:
(Click any image to enlarge.)

Here’s the review that was published in the NYTIMES

GAY PURR-EE
By BOSLEY CROWTHER
December 6, 1962

MOVING (for the second time) into the animated feature domain created by Walt Disney, U.P.A. Productions has contributed a pretty, pleasant, seasonal package for family audiences called “Gay Purr-ee.” The contents of this Warner release, which opened yesterday in neighborhood theaters, should make anybody’s mouth water, including Mr. Disney’s.

Consider: Judy Garland, no less, and Robert Goulet providing the singing and speaking voice tracks for the leading cartoon roles in a cute fable about a little country cat who goes to Paris. Add a battery of technical wizards who create a fetching color canvas that blends some truly lovely pastels with classical works by art masters. Add also eight new tunes by Harold Arlen, including one knockout. But the picture, hélas, is not.

At the risk of sounding like Scrooge, one U.P.A. fan feels that the film has everything but real wit. And what an opportunity, especially with Mewsette, the dainty little fugitive from Provence (Miss Garland), naïvely involved with some purring city slickers before being rescued by hel stalwart country swain, a champion mouser named Juane-Tom (Mr. Goulet).

Now, with all due respect to the film’s good-natured tone and diverting backgrounds, the first half is rather studied and even familiar, as directed by Abe Levitow and written by Dorothy and Chuck Jones. In contrast to the pictorial wizardry—rearranged Von Gogh landscapes and a tilted, spangled City of Light flavored with Toulouse-Lautrec, Modigliani, Matisse, Cézanne and others—the characters almost pale by contrast.

Mewsette, a nice enough little lady cat, is most interesting when Miss Garland is warbling — superbly — such ballads as “Roses Red” and “Take My Hand, Paree.” The same goes for the villainous Meowrice (Paul Frees), a fairly standard menace with a fine, jazzy theme song, “The Money Cat.” Furthermore, the snug, simple plot is needlessly stretched. Even with little Mewsette pining away in Paris, her would-be rescuer and his sassy, furry sidekick Robespierre (Red Buttons) are way off in Alaska.

The nearest thing to spice is the heroine’s jowly, pink “chaperone,” a shady lady named Mme. Rubens-Chatte (drolly spoken by Hermione Gingold). Even with the songs and the brilliantly stylized backgrounds, one can’t help wondering what a Disney crew would have concocted in earthy slyness and spontaneity.

In the final reel, though, things hit high gear in an old-fashioned chase scramble, against a superbly imaginative panorama of Paris, while the cats prowl the quays and the Notre Dame gargoyles toward a final, funny free-for-all. This portion also contains the film’s visual highlight, as Miss Garland sings one of Mr. Arlen’s great blues numbers written for the screen, “Paris Is a Lonely Town.”

So who needs eggnog for Christmas? “Gay Purr-ee” is a nice, soft drink for all the family.

‘Gay Purr-ee’ Cartoon , screenplay by Dorothy and Chuck Jones; directed by Abe Levitow; produced by Henry G. Saperstein for U. P. A. Productions; presented by Warner Brothers.

At neighborhood theaters. Running time: 86 minutes.
Voice of:
Mewsette . . . . . . . . . . . Judy Garland
Juane-Tom . . . . . . . . . . Robert Goulet
Meowrice . . . . . . . . . . . Paul Frees
Robespierre . . . . . . . . . Red Buttons
Mme. Ruben-Chatte . . . . Hermione Gingold

- Back in 1959 Sleeping Beauty wasn’t the only animated feature to hit theaters. Universal had adapted The Snow Queen, a 1957 Soyuzmultfilm production, adding the voices of Tommy Kirk, Sandra Dee and Patty McCormick to the English language version. (Dave Fleischer got credit for “Technical Director” whatever that was.) A new score by the excellent composer Frank Skinner was added including a couple of key songs.

The original Russian film was directed by Lev Atamanov
a significant figure in the history of Russian animation. Several of his films
had been adapted and distributed to American television, including
The Golden Antelope which had received an award of merit at Cannes.

The odd bit about The Snow Queen is that it included an introduction
by a narrator which was voiced by Paul Frees in the English version.
This narrator, calld “Dreamy,” walks around a statue of Hans Christian Andersen
and is flanked by a number of books.

He tells of two umbrellas he used to give Andersen his tales via dreams.

If “Dreamy” waves a black umbrella, Andersen doesn’t dream; if he waves
a colorful umbrella, the dreams are big ones.

This leads us into the very big dream, “The Snow Queen.”

The overall feel of the lethargic and talky piece is that it is very similar
to Jiminy Cricket’s appearance in Pinocchio.

a href=”http://www.michaelspornanimation.com/splog/wp-content/Q/26pan.jpg”>

The animation of “Dreamy” was very slow and, I guess, “dreamy.”
You can feel Paul Frees trying to mouth the character’s limited mouth actions
and get all the words into the time allotted. It couldn’t make for a good performance.

Comparing this to the excellent reading of Cliff Edwards, who mouthed Jiminy Cricket,
the acting in Pinocchio had to, and did, come off better.

Yet, in saying all this, I have to admit a fondness for “Dremy.” I think it
may be that the film hit me at a very susceptible period in my young life.

Animated features I saw in this period - I was 12ish - stuck with me.

Sleeping Beauty, 1001 Arabian Nights with Mr. Magoo, 101 Dalmatians. They all mean a lot to me and have deeply affected my tastes.

Somehow, even “Dreamy” comes off in a good light.

Perhaps he used the colorful umbrella on me.

Now let’s take a look at Jiminy’s entrance in Pinocchio.

The masters at Disney, by the time they’d made Pinocchio, knew what they had to do.

A beautiful song, a great voice with a perfect performance
even though he only had one umbrella.

A real character introduced up front in all his glory.

They knew how to keep things . . .

. . . short . . .

. . . sweet . . .

. . . “dreamy.”

- For some reason I have always loved the simple structure of a brick wall. I’ve often included them in the paintings I’ve done, and I’ve been fascinated by the many and varied differences you see in every structure made of brick. It was wonderful to hear Eyvind Earle discuss the architect’s tricks he used in Sleeping Beauty to detail all the brickwork in the castle backgrounds. Just another reason I enjoyed his artwork in that film.

- There’s a lot of material, much of it very amusing, on the Snow White dvd. On disc 1 of the two disc set, there’s a documentary about the hostory and making of the film. In it the images make a lot of sense as they detail the history of the first Hollywood feature-length cartoon, but some of those images are just too precious for me to allow them to slip by without my singling them out and giving my two cents.

_____(Click any image to enlarge.) ________Here are frame grabs from this documentary.
.

Walt is presented as a bumpkin in the early days.
I suppose he was directing if not filming this material,
so that’s the image he sought to create as well.

This has got to be one of the wackiest pictures in their archives.
The popularity of Mickey Mouse in the early 30’s.

Snow White brings a change to the studio,
which you can well understand.

Though there’s still the problem about what to do with Mickey.

Disney was supposedly inspired by a silent filmed version
of Snow White he saw in his younger days.

One wonders if there was also an eerie creepiness to the performance
that Walt gave to all of his animators one night as he acted out the film.

I’m curious about the pose of Snow White with her head back
and her hands behind the head.

Here, Walt tries to get his animators to bite into an invisible apple -
the future of animation - as they thoughtfully smoke their pipes.

The bed building and the soup eating scenes weren’t the only ones that were
excised from the finished film. It seems the prince, initially had a larger role.

The path into the castle was a bit more difficult. First you had to
get past the moat with the help of your horse. Here the prince looks
a bit like Robert Benchley.

“Romeo, Romeo, Wherefore art thou, Romeo?”

Getting caught. Obviously, the Queen and Snow White didn’t live in that
castle by themselves. There were henchmen we didn’t know about.

This almost looks like an early version of the seven dwarfs
carried the prince to prison.

They had big rats in that prison. Scary.

This is an obvious precursor of Malificent going to visit Prince Phillip some
20 years later in Sleeping Beauty. Both wicked Queens got more attractive.

Lots of stars showed up to the grand premiere.
These actors in costume were there, too.

In all seriousness, the film was a masterpiece. I’m still studying it some
70 years later. Walt had reason to be proud and happy. He also had enough
money to move onto other challenging films, and he took the challenge as
opposed to making Snow White 2 or 3 (as they probably would do today.)