Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

- Last week, I posted a stash of photos taken by John Canemaker for the book he wrote called, “The Animated Raggedy Ann and Andy.”

John Canemaker took all the photos, himself, which led to a more intimate look at an animated film. There were no photo decisions by committee; it was decided to use a photo if it told the story John was trying to relay. For that reason, the book really is one of the best “Art of . . .” type books on the market. (I’m not just saying that because there were photos of me in there – though that would be a good reason, too.)

The book was as exciting – in the making – as was the film. Too bad at the last minute the train of a film ran wildly off the tracks. In a way, I wish the book were written after the film was completed so that we could read the true story of what happened in those last six months of chaos.

The decision was slow in growing and fast when it finally fell, that the movie was enormously over budget. I was in on all the morning production meetings where managers and supervisors and directors would all meet. Those had started off nicely, at the beginning of the film, and went insanely wrong before long. There was the time when I was ordered to fire – that day – two inbetweeners. I was told that we had to give the staff a lesson that they had to work harder. (That might have been hard to do since everyone was giving it their all.) It so happened that one new inbetweener, on her first scene, ignored my instructions (and her immediate supervisor’s) by erasing all of Jack Schnerk‘s drawings. She felt she could animate the scene better, and she set out to prove that.

One down. The second person to fire was someone I was told (by Dick Williams, himself,) that I had to fire. It was obvious that there was a personality conflict since the guy was a great artist and definitely someone who should have stayed on. I was able to arrange for him to be switched to the BG department, thus fired by me from doing inbetweens and hired by them, in the same day, to do watercolors. He continues on, even today, working at a top position in design at Blue Sky. I don’t know about the woman, but I hope she gained a little humility that day 30-something years ago. That story didn’t make it into the book.

What there was in the production was a great first year of production where the art of animation was treated in its highest form. We were all out to make the greatest film of all time and bring it to the big screen. We had some of animation’s finest animators gathered to work on it. Assistants and Inbetweeners in New York were offered classes, after hours, which tried to teach animation to the new. With teachers like Tissa David and Art Babbitt and more experienced Assistants; a lot was conveyed. I was usually too busy to make it to many of these classes, but I always kept a close eye on what was taught. It really was fun and incredibly valuable to many of us.

At some point along the way, the LA studio was closed and key people from there came here. All of our space was overcrowded and uncomfortable. The Xeroxing in NY, a sweet grey line that took a while to construct, was replaced by a thick back line, when management sent work to Hanna-Barbera to outsource the xerography and some of the painting. Shadows were eliminated. Color copiers were rented. Scenes that had been animated in a non-photo blue pencil on 16 fld paper were being copied and reduced, at the same time, in B&W so that they could use 12 fld cels to color the art. A penny saved is a penny gained; I guess. This meant that a number of my inbetweeners were used to put 4 sets of crosses on the animation drawings so that there’d be some form of registration on the reduced artwork. Certainly the registration went all to hell in the process, thus allowing the latter half of the film to have a lot of slippage on the big screen. Lots of weaving animation in scenes that were rushed.

Emery Hawkins‘ amazing taffy pit took a big hit when it was animated more like a limited animation movie. All that beautiful rolling motion Emery had created on the cinemascope screen suddenly hits the wall and stasis sets in. The film was never going to be a classic of he silver screen, but it should have been a hell of a lot better.

1
Here I am doing what I did most of the day.
I talked on the phone. Ennervating stuff.
A young Kevin Petrilak is in the rear left. He was an inbetweener
in the Taffy Pit. Dan Haskett ran that group of people.

2
Here’s Art Babbitt teaching. He loved doing that. Dick tried to
recreate the classes he’d had in London a couple of years earlier. We – all New York -
sure appreciated the two weeks of lessons. I have Dick’s notes from these sessions.

3
This is a beautiful doll. Babette. She was at the film’s center.
The Pirate kidnaps her and takes her to sea. Raggedy Ann & Andy
take off in pursuit of her to bring her back to the playroom.

4
This is a wall of stats. It represents footage counts produced in
every department working on the film. This hung in Mike Sisson’s office.
He was the production manager who tried to usurp the entire production.

A couple of weeks before everything changed, managerially, on Raggedy, Sissons
approached Cosmo Anzilotti and me at lunch. He saw us at the restaurant and came
over to us. He wanted to lead a take over cutting Dick out of the film and
putting Cosmo in to finish directing the film. I’d be made Cosmo’s assistant.
I had no intentions of being another Iago, and said as much.

5
This chart covered the animators footage counts. A running record.

I told Cosmo that Dick had brought me onto the film, and I’d do anything for
him. If it meant leading a large group to quit the show, I’d do that. Cosmo
seemed relieved. He wanted to do the same and we both told Sissons how we
felt. He greeted our news with an ass’ smile and thanked us. We were no
longer on the winners’ side, and I watched closely to know when to exit.

6
This was where the NY headquarters were planted. In the middle of 45th Street.
Most studios in the forties and fifties had places on 45th Street. Paramount,
Hal Seeger’s studio, lots of other smaller studios such as Pablo Ferro or Ray Seti’s.

7
Didi Conn was the actress who voice Raggedy Ann. When the VOs were coming
to an end, Didi worked late and her mother was with her. They needed help
getting home (Long Island.) The mother was afraid to drive. I volunteered
and drove them home. I took the Long Island Rail Road back to the City.

8
This is Sue Butterworth with Dick Williams. She was the watercolorist who
led the BG department and designed the wc style of the film. I thought her
work a bit inconsistent and often lacked the dynamic look good BGs require.

9
Here’s a picture of Dick Williams with his daughter,Claire.
Claire played the part of Marcella, the little girl at the film’s start.
They shot the live action in Boonton, NJ during the first days of the
production. All those hours they were out filming, I watched the shop.
Alone in an enormous darkened most of the time in the enormous office,
I could only spend time reading and rereading the script and sketching
my idea of some of the characters.Infrequently, the financial manager
of Lester Osterman Prods., the production company, would pass through.

10
George Bakes was a fiercely independent animator who worked a short
while on the film. He must have started at Disney on Sleeping Beauty. He’d often
show a lot of Milt Kahl drawings he’d had from that film.

11
Baskes animated many of the cereal commercials of the day -
Trix, Honey Bee, Sugar Crisp bear, etc. For Raggedy he did the “gazooks.”

12
Gerry Chniquy was a brilliant animator straight out of WB.
He’d done a lot of Yosemite Sam animation for Friz Freleng.
It wasn’t far to go to cast him as the blowhard of a King, King Coo Coo.
Marty Brill voiced the character. Gerry Chiniquy,of course, did a fine job,

13
John Celestri had a style all his own although he idolized Bill Tytla.
Not a bad person to pick for a role model. John was an Assistant on
the film. Here he’s working with inbetweener, Amanda Wilson. Amanda was
the daughter of the great cartoonist and animation designer, Rowland Wilson.

The last of these photos will come next week. Many thanks to John Canemaker for the loan of the images. Any opinions tossed about here, are all mine and John is not to blame for them.

- 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.

1
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.

2
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.

3
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.

4
We heard this at least once a week as the animatic/story reel
grew into a full animated feature shot completely in Cinemascope.

5
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.

6
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.

7
This is one of the dolls in the play room,
Susie Pincushion. She was charming.

8
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.

9
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.

10
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.

11
This is a very rough planning drawing that Grim Natwick did on
the Jack-in-the-Box he animated. See the scene here.

12
Here’s a close up of that very same drawing.

13
Mark Baker did the voice of Raggedy Andy.
He’d won the Tony Award as Best Featured Actor in the musical, Candide.

14
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.

15
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.

16
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.

17
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.

18
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.

19
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.

20
Jan Bell, Carl’s wife, was the West Coast Office Manager.

21
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.

22
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.

23
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

.

I thought for my birthday, today, I’d start with a recapped post. This is a story I’ve told a lot of times, however this is the only time Tissa told it, and I think it’s her version of my version.

- Today’s William Shakespeare’s birthday. It’s an odd choice of date given that there’s so little information about the guy. But since today’s also my birthday, I’ll enjoy the association by accident.

I’ve decided to post something that’s been floating around my studio for the past couple of years. It’s one of those things that never got properly put away once we moved into the new digs. But since I like seeing it, I also like stumbling across it in the morass of paper in my office.

Tissa David did a birthday card for me for my 50th birthday. She recounted, in storyboard, our first meeting. I was on my second day working for the Hubleys – my first animation job.

It’s close to being accurate, but not as nasty as the version in my head. Here’s Tissa’s board.

Helen, is Helen Komar, a lifelong assistant working in NY first at Paramount then onto lots of other places. She managed the animation area for John and Faith for a couple of years. Another great person who slips through the history books.

I had inbetweened two of Tissa’s scenes on the first day of work. Tissa came in the next day while I was busy working on more. She went to Helen’s desk and the two of them talked for a short bit. Then I heard, “Who has made these HORRIBLE inbetweens?” spoken in the most definitive Hungarian accent you’ll ever hear.

When I sheepishly admitted to it – since only Helen or I could have done them, and there was no doubt Helen hadn’t – Tissa offered to give me some lessons in how to make a proper inbetween. Those lessons seem to have been ongoing most of my life. I’m not sure I can do a really good inbetween to this day. But I sure have gained a lot of knowledge via Tissa and her caring for animation enough to spend a lot of time looking over my shoulder.

- 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.

12
(Click on any image to enlarge.)

34

M’friend, Steve Fisher, sent a really nice little essay (not for posting but just something he wanted to share with friends). Unfortunately, anyone who sends me anything has to be prepared for it to end up in the public’s hands. It’s a quick read:

Once upon a time, far, far away… actually, it was really yesterday, and it was at the nearby Metro Mall in Middle Village.

I found that I was early for a meeting of Weight Watchers because I was confused as to what day it was, but that’s another story. In any case, I decided to walk around the area until the meeting time rather than return on another day for a different meeting. As the correct meeting time neared, I sought the men’s room of the adjoining Kmart.

As I completed using the facilities there, I heard someone enter the room. When I left the stall, I saw a young, black man standing alongside the lavatories. I have to admit that a hint of racial-profiling stirred to a conscious level. In my defense, though, I believe I would have been suspicious of this individual regardless of race because he was just standing there in a men’s room, not using the sink, the urinal, or the second vacant toilet stall; my New Yorker wary mind asked myself, What is this guy up to?

I walked past him in order to use the lavatory and he said, “Good morning.” This seemingly innocent comment raised more red flags, Who chats it up in a men’s room with total strangers? In a tone that did not invite further talk, I grudgingly responded, “Morning.”

As I began to wash my hands, he said, “Can I ask you a question?” I looked up to face him, trying to judge just what was going on, sensing a dangerous situation developing. I took a closer look at him for the first time; I saw that he was probably not yet twenty years old. He wore a long-sleeve white dress shirt which hung out almost to the knees of his black jeans; a baseball cap was cocked at an angle on his head. I said, with hesitation undoubtedly palpable in my voice, “Okaaay.”

He pointed to his own shirt and inquired, “Should I tuck this in?” “Do you work here?” I asked. “Interview,” he responded. “Yes,” I said definitely, relieved to finally understand where this fellow was coming from. “Thank you,” he replied, and proceeded into a stall, presumably to tuck his shirt into his pants. Here was not a threatening pervert, but a polite young man concerned to make a good impression at his upcoming appointment. As I left the men’s room I called out to him, “Good luck,” and he rejoined, “Thanks.” I hope he got the job.

The reports started flying fast and furious on Thursday late afternoon. “Disney 2D animation had been gutted!” “Sad day for hand drawn animation.” As it turns out, the theatrical division of Disney, which has a small remaining staff of 2D animators finally let go of the majority of their staff. These are people who have not worked on any real projects since Winnie the Pooh. Everything done has been exploratory in the past year. Iger, himself, announced at the Disney board meeting that here was no 2D animation in progress, to his knowledge.
What did people think was going to happen? The studio was not going to continue to finance a division that wasn’t in production. Since Winnie the Pooh, the only real 2D division has been the television production staff.

There were announcements all last week about 150 people being let go at Disney’s studio. No one cried for the marketing people that were let go. I guess letting go the 2D theatrical people became an obvious symbol. A symbol that was too juicy for the likes of the chefs at Cartoon Brew and other internet muckrakers. Yet the obvious was just that. Wasn’t it clear that there was a real reason that Andreas Deja and others left the studio last year? Why is anyone acting surprised?

Sequester anyone?

- Kathleen Quaife is an animator working in feature animation in Hollywood. Point of fact is that she’s an EFX animator. She’s done a lot of water in studio films of the 21st Century. She offers a couple of sample reels on her blog. I really enjoy animated effects, especially the hand-drawn kind. Computer animation seems, to me, to be an animation effect, in itself. Drawing all those waves and bubbles and cascading ripples by hand gets my attention.

I suggest you take a look at the extraordinary samples on her blog here (lotsa clips from Disney). While you’re there, if you have the time, there are links to specific effects you can watch (e.g. water, fire, rain etc.).

Her resume is full: Hercules, Tarzan, Pocahonatas and Ferngully. Tummy Trouble, The Runaway Brain, and Pups of Liberty. The Land Before Time, Rockadoodle, Dragon’s Lair and An American Tale. She’s been doing great work for a long time, and she deserves a bit of attention.

She also has this entertaining video showing her drawing an animated splash.

Yep, it’s real. The new animation site, Animation Scoop, was publicly announced by webmeister, Jerry Beck, and sure enough it was still there the next day. And Thursday, and Friday and today. I guess that means it’s lasted longer than most of the blogs out there, so we’ve got to say it’s a real thing. Let me jump to the front of the line to say I’m glad. I wouldn’t want any of the mass of animation news to pass under our noses, and another blog will certainly help us to keep track of it all. On top of that, it’s from Jerry Beck. You’ve got to love it. All we need now is some real animation. All we seem to have is product that’s been dredged up by a computer somewhere. We need something animated, something with dignity.

But seriously, congratulations Jerry, and more power to you. I love having another stop in the mornings.

I thought of this story while responding to a comment on the Splog:

There was the day at the Hubley Studio when we knew that John had gotten the position of directing the film version of Watership Down. He’d take off for England in a few months and they’d set him up not too far from the office in an apartment.

At one point during the day he and I were alone in my room. I told him I was glad he was doing it, Watership Down; I enjoyed the book. I went on about it saying it seemed like a more current version of Animal Farm. John said that he thought that Halas had really screwed up that film, and it was too bad. There was a lot of meat there, and he didn’t think they got it all in the film version. John felt that he wouldn’t make the same mistakes with Watership Down. We talked only briefly about Animal Farm.

I made plans to move on to Raggedy Ann & Andy. I had been writing to Dick Williams for years about my possibly working for him. Tissa David (the very first person Dick had hired; she did a 30 second sample Pencil Test which clinched the film for Dick) had broached him about hiring me, and I was offered a job as an inbetweener. (That turned into supervising all of the Assistant Animators and Inbetweeners.)

Several weeks later, after John Hubley had made a few trips to England preparing to start on Watership Down, he called me into his room. John said that he wanted to keep the US office going, at the very least doing a short that he had in mind. Tissa would animate it. (The short was going to be an extension of the section in Everybody Rides the Carousel which Tissa had animated. The piece where the two young lovers argue over her having cut her hair without getting his permission.) John wanted to know what it would take for me to stay on supervising the NY production work. I thought about it overnight and asked for him to match what Raggedy Ann was going to pay me to inbetween. It was about $20 a week more than I’d made working on the “Carousel.” John offered $5 less, and I decided to say, “No.” We parted amicably, and John didn’t keep his studio going for the time he worked on that feature.

I went back to work for him immediately on leaving Raggedy Ann. They were about to start Doonesbury, and I would supervise the production. I started at the same salary I’d made as an inbetweener at Raggedy Ann, including that extra $5.

Unfortunately, John was to have an urgent operation some three weeks after I’d started work on the new film. It was arranged that I’d leave and come back once he’d recovered and we could get back to work. John died on the operating table.

Richard Williams, when he had his own studio, was known for doing everything in a LARGE way. All of the commercials, title sequences, shorts were all done with a large, elaborate vision.

The Charge of the Light Brigade was a collection of 19th century graphics that are completely wrong, stylistically, for animating. All those cross-hatched lines. God bless the artists that pulled that off. The same was true for The Christmas Carol.

If the rendering style wasn’t impossibly difficult, then the animation was complex. Think of any of the scenes from Dick’s dream-feature, The Thief and the Cobbler. The many scenes where backgrounds were animated, with those backgrounds complete with complicated floor patterns or an entire city to be animated. Raggedy Ann was covered in polka dots and Andy was clothed in plaids. Both of the characters had twine for hair with every strand delineated. The commercial for Jovan featured a picture-perfect imitation of a Frank Frazetta illustration. Even the mountain on the background had to be animated and rendered.

Well, when it came to Christmas cards, Richard Williams was the same. Enormous and beautiful cards were printed and signed by anyone who knew the recipient of the card. You were lucky being on the receiving line for these stunning cards. Tissa David once gave me a number of these cards. I held onto my copies of the cards until my space was flooded and the cards were damaged. I thought I’d post a few.

Suzanne Wilson sent in a Pink Panther Chistmas card; it was drawn by her late husband Rowland Wilson:

Below is a close up of that same card.

And this is the final card:

Johnny (Gentilella) Gent had the hardest time on the Letterman series done for the original Electric Company. He could never get the characters and kept trying to add 3D form to the 2D characters that John Hubley had created.

It was my first job, and I was in awe of every animator that walked through ________A very early John Hubley model of Spellbinder.
the door. We had 2½ months to do
all the artwork on the 20 spots that were 2½ mins each. A total of 50 mins in 10 weeks. (That’s about right these days for a 30 second spot!)

I did all the assisting, inking and inbetweening and had to do it quickly. (I estimated about 18 secs. per drawing. The game I played with myself to keep up was to keep one eye on the drawing and another on the clock.)

As I said, it was my first animation job. What did I know! I had to take Johnny’s drawings and reshape them into Hubley’s characters, and I had to do it in ink. No pencil tests. Just do it. Whatever came out, was the final artwork (and I use that word loosely.) I felt, even while I was doing it, that I was killing Johnny’s work, so it went as it did.

Here’s a cycle of Johnny Gent’s Spellbinder rowing a boat.

1
(If you click on any drawing it’ll show you the full animation page.

3

4

5

7

Johnny Gent’s Spellbinder rows a boat
on two’s per drawing indicated
Click left side of the black bar to play.
Right side to watch single frame.

Six months later, I was on a lay-off from the Hubley Studio in need of a job. At NY Institute of Technology, a school in Long Island, they were starting work on a feature animated film that the school’s dean, Alexander Schure, was financing. He had decided to create the world’s largest computer animation department, and they were just barely starting to get a reputation for the incredible people they were employing (Ed Catmull, Alvy Ray Smith and other pioneers among them), but first they were going to do this hand-drawn feature.

Out of the blue, I got a call from Johnny Gentilella. He was now the head of animation at Tubby the Tuba and was offering me a job as an Asst. Animator. NYIT was my alma mater, so I was curious to see what the place now looked like. Assistant was a promotion with a pay raise. I took the job right quick.

The staff included about ten people in those early days, and we worked in what seemed like a log cabin. I was given a seat directly across from the front door and handed a scene of Tubby the Tuba to clean-up and inbetween. I did it. Then another, then another, then another.

A few weeks later, at lunchtime, Johnny and I were alone in the space eating our sandwiches. I took the opportunity of apologizing to him for what I did at Hubley’s studio. I was taking Johnny’s sculpted drawings and flattening them. To make up time I skipped a step by not working in pencil. I’d clean up with a Sharpie on heavy paper. In the process flattening and taking all of the life out of the drawing. I apologized to John for what I felt was destroig his work. I was also only days into my first job and didn’t really know what I was doing. But I did it anyway.

He said that he hadn’t even noticed. Because of the schedule and the budget on the Letterman series, he knew I was doing what was best for the work. There was nothing I needed to apologize for. He appreciated how I felt but told me not to worry about it.

At the same time, I pointed out that I had just done a scene of Tubby the Tuba giving a speech at a lectern. It was identical, drawing for drawing, of a scene Johnny had done at Hubley’s. There it was Spellbinder, here it was Tubby. How and why did John do that?

He explained that on films like Letterman they were done so fast that there was no time for Pencil Tests. Animators couldn’t do as they did in the old days, animate a scene then see a PT of the scene and correct it if it needed the work. They had to knock out the scenes. If anything went wrong it was the animator’s fault and he’d be out of a job and a future contact for further work. So animators did what they knew would work. Better to be stale and save face, keeping your job, than to be daring and without a job.

The following Saturday, I told Tissa David this story. She was giving me lessons in animation and inbetweening on Saturday mornings at her apartment. I let Tissa know about Johnny’s cheating to make it work. Tissa’s response – “How lucky Johnny is! I wish I had such luck!” She said she was unlucky to have a memory that couldn’t remember how to do such a scene and to catalogue the work, math and all, in her memory. Obviously John could do that. Tissa, instead, had to approach every scene as wholly new. She had to ____________________Tissa’s Letterman”
animate from scratch whereas John could
pull the scene from his memory.

I got Tissa’s point.

.

.
Note: the drawing of Tubby, above, was done by the
animator, Ed DeMattia, many months later in the production.

I continue to pore through the remains of work materials after Vince Cafarelli passed away over a year ago. A lot of artwork went to the Museum of Modern Art and a lot has been returned temporarily. Consequently, I’m poring quickly over the boxes searching for anything I’ve missed first time out. And I know there was a lot.

I’ve come upon a stash of photos. Many of them were taken at a screening Candy Kugel had given at Magno Screening room. It was for her personal short, “Audition.” This was a short film done in 1980 which talked about her life as an artist. This is a theme of many of the shorts she and Vince did together. Whether discussing making a commercial or a personal film, the topic has stretched through many of their very personal films.

At any rate, Candy had finished the short and was celebrating with a host of screenings at Magno with a warm reception going on in Magno’s anteroom, next door. I can still remember the event clearly even though it took place over 30 years ago. Others of the photos were obviously taken in the Perpetual Motion studio during the day. A chance to renew acquaintance with some old faces, these are some of the photos taken. I thought it’d be fun to share.

1
Animators, Lu Guarnier and Tony Eastman

2
Animators, Lu Guarnier and Ed Smith

3
Editor, Neil Lawrence

4
Young animators, Candy Kugel and Russell Calabrese

5
Stop-motion animator, Jimmy Picker and girlfriend

6
Caeraman, John Rowhalt and Producer, Buzz Potamkin

7
Animators, Vince Cafarelli and Ed Smith

8
Animators, Candy Kugel (sitting) and Vince Cafarelli (standing),
Producer, Buzz Potamkin and Designer/Producer, Hal Silvermintz

9
Animator, Vince Cafarelli, Cameraman, John Rowhalt and Expediter, Marty Weinbaum

10
Anmators, Vince Cafarelli and Vinne Bell

11
Animators, Jan Svochak and Howard Beckerman

12
Chig Kugel (Candy’s mom), Candy, Tina Hirsch (Candy’s sister), and Animator, Tissa David

13
3 Animators, Vinnie Cafarelli, Jack Dazzo & Vinnie Bell

14
(unk), (unk), Maxine Fisher, Candy Kugel (in rear), and hirsuite Me

- Yesterday I focused on a couple of scenes Grim Natwick animated in his early days at the Fleischer studio. He was obviously experimenting with distortions, breaking of the joints, the visibility of inbetween drawings and how much he could get away with in “Rough drawings.”

This, of course, isn’t the animator that Grim became, but gives us some light to understand what did make up that animator. The scene here today is something I’d posted on my blog once before, in 2010. It features a lot of Grim’s ruffs as well as the clean ups by Richard Williams, himself.`

You can see Grim’s drawings erased and cleaned up. (The semi-erased semblance of Grim’s very large numbers remain on many of the drawings, as do Grim’s notes. The inbetweens were all done by Dick. (It’s Dick’s writing in the lower right corner, and I remember him doing this overnight.)

The scene is all on twos. There are two holds which Dick changed to a trace back cycle of drawings for a moving hold. It actually looks better on ones, but there was a lip-synch that Grim had to follow. It is interesting that both Tissa David, one of the five key animators on this film, and Grim Natwick, who Tissa had assisted for at least 20 years, both shared the one assistant on key scenes in this film – Richard Williams. Eric Goldberg assisted on many of Tissa’s other scenes.

1
.
2 3
.
4 5
.
6
An inbetween by Dick Williams.
.
7
A cleaned-up extreme by Grim Natwick.
.
8 9
.
1011
.
1213
.
14
Dick Williams clean-up.
.
15
Grim Natwick (sorta) cleaned-up rough.
.
1617
.
18
Grim Natwick rough.
.
1920
.
2122
.
2324
.
25
Williams inbetween.
.
26
Natwick ruff, cleaned up.
.
2728
.
2930
.
3132
.
3334
.
3536
.
37
Dick’s clean-up inbetween.
.
39
Definitely a Grim Natwick drawing – cleaned up by Dick (his handwriting).
.
3940
.
4142
.
4344
.
4546
.
47
Drawings 44-47 are all Grim’s roughs with minor CU.
.
_____________________________

Here’s a QT movie of the complete action from the scene.
The scene is exposed on twos per exposure sheets.

_____________________________

Here are the folder in which the two exposure sheets
are stapled (so they don’t get separated.)

1 2

Folder

I know I’ve written about some of this stuff before (repeatedly), and I hope my take on it here is a bit different. At least I’m leading somewhere different, so please have a bit of patience with the opening.

- When I was a kid, animation was in the dark ages for the general public. By that, I mean there wasn’t a hell of a lot of material available to allow you to know how it was done or learn how to do it. There were maybe a dozen or so books available.

- Of course the 40s Rob’t D. Feild book, The Art of Walt Disney. Some great information but not many illustrations. What are there are GREAT.

- The Preston Blair book, Animation, good and cheap. Very helpful for an amateur like me.

- Halas and Manvell‘s The Technique of Film Animation had more to do with animation as done in Europe, but it is extraordinarily helpful.

- Eli Levitan, an animation cameraman, had written several books. Animation Art in the Commercial Film is one of the better books.

There were a few others. My local library had them all, and I borrowed them endlessly and just about memorized them all. I owned the Preston Blair book (of course and my parents bought the brand new Bob Thomas Art of Animation for me Christmas 1958.

On ABC you had the Disneyland TV show which became The Wonderful World of Color when it moved to NBC. The Mighty Mouse Show was the staple on Saturday morning. Local channels featured Popeye and B&W Warner Bros cartoons.
I was completely intrigued with some silent cartoons that were run on the local ABC affiliate on early Saturday mornings. Every once in a while a sound Van Buren cartoon would pop up or a Harman-Ising MGM cartoon..

The show that also intrigued me was this horrible “Big Time Circus” starring Claude Kirschner (normally a VO announcer) as a ringmaster who talked to a $5 clown hand-puppet named “Clowny.” They showed cartoons, some B&W Terrytoons with Barker Bill and other early 30s things. They also showed a lot of foreign cartoons badly dubbed into English. They even had Russian features like The Golden Antelope serialized. They had a horrible title on the top of the film and a “The End” title pasted onto the end of the film. I used to tune in to see these B&W European and Russian cartoons. They moved so differently from what I was used to with the cartoons from the US. At 12, I could definitely see the difference and watched closely.

When I started collecting 16mm films I picked up a bunch of these shorts. The timing didn’t get any better.

On my second day at the Hubley Studio, I met the notorious Tissa David who dug into me quickly for my bad inbetweening. She offered to teach me after hours, which I certainly jumped to accept. In that first contact with her, I mentioned that I had a potential job offer from Richard Williams and I might go to England. She immediately said to me, “Oh, please don’t go there. Stay here. Only the Americans know how to animate properly.” After all those years of watching Russian and European cartoons, I understood what she was saying. (I was also working for my real hero, John Hubley, so I had no real plans to go anywhere.) Dick Williams came to me a couple of years later with Raggedy Ann. By then, I was knowledgeable enough to run the Asst. & Inbtwng dept – about 100-150 people.

But then Dick Williams was changing everything. He was teaching his people in England how to animate the way Disney people did it. He brought those people into his studio to teach: Art Babbitt, Ken Harris, John Hubley, Grim Natwick, and others. I believe Williams changed animation throughout Europe. Mind you, the problems of all those years of history is still there, but it’s enormously better.

What do I call “European Animation”? Well, it’s all about the timing. The characters often move at such an even speed that there is no sense of weight or real character movement. Basically, all characters move the same. The Golden Antelope is all rotoscoped, so the movement is on ones and all traced off the live action. You can tell when it’s not; there’s a sameness in the motion. It’s almost like there are no extremes just motion.

In Europe’s first attempt to imitate the US in a feature, The Tinderbox a 1946 film from Denmark, they were obviously trying to imitate the Fleischers of Gulliver’s Travels. Wild distortions and odd extremes but a lot of the evenly spaced timing. Consequently, with the distorted extremes moving in and out of position at an even pace, it’s doubly peculiar.

Halas and Batchelor‘s Animal Farm is so lethargic in its movement, it’s difficult to watch. However, whenever a Harold Whitaker scene pops up, it’s something to study. The guy was a fine animator. His work definitely sands out. He came from the Anson Dyer Studio, and had somehow learned to animate in the US methodology.

The Disney studio was having its effect , though as animators such as Borge Ring pretty much taught himself to go well beyond the basics of he European mold. He was close with a number of the Disney animators and studied Disney films religiously. His own personal style is definitely constructed from the US mold.

Even through The Yellow Submarine (1968), you see this flat style of animation. Of course, with the more graphic style of George Dunning‘s feature, the even pacing is better hidden in the mood of the piece.There’s also a lot of music that hides the timing problems.

After Dick Williams, began his effort to alter the look of work coming out his studio, there was a big change in the look of work coming from all over Europe. Sure they slipped into and out of the old school of animation, but now they had learned from Art Babbitt and Ken Harris. (I wish they’d had more of Grim Natwick.) Take a look at the marvelous animation done for Bruno Bozzetto in the Ravel Bolero section of his 1977 feature, Allegro Non Troppo. To some extent, now, the best animation worldwide is coming out of England and France, especially from the younger animators.

So let’s take a look at the differences between the two styles..

- The best of the US style can be seen in those dwarfs in Snow White or the Siamese cat song in Lady & the Tramp or Scar in The Lion King. It’s all in the timing.

- The European style is very obvious in Jiri Trnka‘s 2D animation as in The Four Musicians Of Bremen or Spring-heeled Jack. You can see it in about half of Sylvain Chomet‘s The illusionist (the other half was wonderfully done US style), or, as I’ve already written, Animal Farm – the entire movie.

The US tradition came directly from the wonderful work done mostly after hours at Disney’s studio in the 30′s. They learned how to time animation for weight, for mood, for expression and for balance. Bill Tytla, Marc Davis and Frank Thomas were brilliant at it (though they all did it). The word reached outside the Disney studio and others came into the fold: Ken Harris and Bobe Cannon, Grim Natwick and Rod Scribner, Jack Schnerk and Abe Levitow, Hal Ambro and Tissa David. There are another couple of hundred people I could include if we were naming names. These people all mastered their timing. They knew what they were doing and did it as planned. The animation never does what IT wants to do, but it is controlled by the animator and his (her) timing.

The European style is a very different animal. The timing is flat. It’s usually even paced and moves robotically forward, not always by going in a straight line. The weight is always soft; the emotion is almost nil. The drawings are often beautiful, but there’s no real strength behind that movement.

Things have changed quite a bit since the advent of Richard Williams and his work, but even there I see it at times. In Dick’s work, I mean, I sometimes see it. (Not surprising since I infrequently see it in Art Babbitt‘s animation. – and lest you think I’m biased, I often see it in my own work and have to rework it. (I’m not trying to hurt anyone here, I’m just reporting what I sense and see and feel.) Just talkin’ animation here. It’s basic and can so easily be bypassed. Animation is ALL ABOUT the timing. Norm Ferguson couldn’t draw very well at all, but he was one of the GREAT animators of all time. There was no even-paced timing in his makeup; the same has to be said of Tytla or Grim Natwick. Babbitt did do it. He was one of our great animators, but he infrequently paced his work in a very dull way. I could give you examples, but I won’t look for yourself, because when he’s good, he’s brilliant. Take the scene he did in The Thief and the Cobbler where the evil Vizier, Zig Zag, shuffles the playing cards.

A great example of what I’m talking about has all to do with Tom & Jerry. Take a look at some of those produced by Gene Deitch out of Czecheslovakia in the early 60s. Don’t compare this with the fully-animated shorts produced by Hanna & Barbera at MGM. No, compare it to the films done by Jack Kinney using a pickup studio. Most of the staff was free lance California employees. Turks without a space to work in the studio. Those Kinney films, badly animated though they are, are pure US-styled animation. The Deitch films are equally, poorly animated, but these also are animated with a European staff that animated the way a European would. The timing is rigidly even in its pacing.

You often get that European feel in the cgi work done today.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen scenes where things suddenly go slack and move, seemingly, of their own accord in cg films. Perhaps the two arms will complete a motion that was started by an animator, and (s)he will allow the rest of the motion continue on its own to a final rest stop. It’s not animation anymore, it’s just a completion. I do quite dislike this when and if I see it. (Thought, admittedly, too often I’m not paying attention enough.) There’s a scene somewhere in Paperman where the male, standing in profile, has his two arms moving forward to a rest. They move at exactly the same speed, doing exactly the same thing, and it bothers me. Tissa certainly would have scolded me for allowing such a move to happen. I have to hope and believe that that’s what the animator wanted.

I had actually intended to keep going. One can’t really just say US and European animation styles. After all, there’s also the work out of Asia. The Japanese market, of course, is very different than the rest, and, thanks to what Miyazaki has been doing and his success in doing it, things are changing radically. Where he once blended in with the Anime animation that was all present, things are now changing to more of an emotional, Western appeal. My Neighbor Totoro started something, that changed wildly when he did Spirited Away and Ponyo. When I saw The Secret World of Arrietty, I knew things had changed completely. There was real character animation on the screen. One character was different from the next, and a lot of it had to do with the movement.

I was also fascinated with the work of Satoshi Kon, before his untimely death. His work was growing enormously with each and every film. The movies he made were adult in every sense of the word, and they were beautifully constructed, drawn and animated. I still go back to watch copies of his films. ________“Arrietty”

I was going to write about Katsuhiro Ôtomo, but I realize I’ve taken a sidestep. These are directors, and this article is about animators. In short, there is an Eastern style, and I’m glad to see that because of a couple of directors, they’re doing thier own take on the US version of animation character developement. It’s good to see it happening.

Essentially, the world is becoming smaller. Global animation styles are settling in, and I hope there will be a 2D animation so that the job can be complete in a few more years.