Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

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.

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(Click on any image to enlarge.)

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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.

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

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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.

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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.

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Animators, Lu Guarnier and Tony Eastman

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Animators, Lu Guarnier and Ed Smith

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Editor, Neil Lawrence

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Young animators, Candy Kugel and Russell Calabrese

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Stop-motion animator, Jimmy Picker and girlfriend

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Caeraman, John Rowhalt and Producer, Buzz Potamkin

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Animators, Vince Cafarelli and Ed Smith

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

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

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Anmators, Vince Cafarelli and Vinne Bell

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Animators, Jan Svochak and Howard Beckerman

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

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3 Animators, Vinnie Cafarelli, Jack Dazzo & Vinnie Bell

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(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.

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An inbetween by Dick Williams.
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A cleaned-up extreme by Grim Natwick.
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Dick Williams clean-up.
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Grim Natwick (sorta) cleaned-up rough.
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Grim Natwick rough.
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Williams inbetween.
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Natwick ruff, cleaned up.
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Dick’s clean-up inbetween.
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Definitely a Grim Natwick drawing – cleaned up by Dick (his handwriting).
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Drawings 44-47 are all Grim’s roughs with minor CU.
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Here’s a QT movie of the complete action from the scene.
The scene is exposed on twos per exposure sheets.

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

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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.

It’s time to put up some more Sporn Studio art. I had a couple of posts that celebrated BG art of Bridget Thorne. I’m putting a couple of these together and posting anew. Personally, I love this stuff and can’t get enough of it. I want to see Bridget doing BGs again; it’s been a while.

Bridget Thorne did the storyboard for
The Hunting of the Snark with me back in 1980.
We didn’t finish the film until 1989. She also painted the
backgrounds for the last third of the movie.

Bridget Thorne is someone who has been an invaluable part of the history of my films.

She has been an extraordinary Art Director and Background painter on quite a few of my favorite films produced within the studio, and I’ve put together a random sampling of some of those films.

(Click image to enlarge) Lyle, Lyle Crocodile (1987)

This painting is a key transition point in Lyle, Lyle Crocodile. The film had a looseness that Bernard Waber‘s original book art had engendered. I felt very much at home in Waber’s style, and I think Bridget did as well.

She worked out a color scheme for the film, and we both agreed to follow it closely through the film. Liz Seidman lead the character coloring. Bridget, of course, had a strong hand in all those character models, as well.

The scene pictured above follows the introduction of Autumn on “East 88th Street”, and the background brings us full force into it as we get “the girl’s first song” – Mrs. Primm’s report on what it’s like to have a crocodile living in your house.

– Ira Sleeps Over was the second children’s book by Bernard Waber that we adapted. This is a very sweet story which involves a sibling rivalry; it focusses on a teddy bear and a sleep-over party. I pulled composer, William Finn, into the film and he wrote some great tunes for it. Prior to doing the script, I gave him the book and asked him to figure out where he would like the songs. In a week he had already written all the songs for the film, and they were brilliant. It turned out he used all the words of the book in his songs, and now I had to find a way of telling the same story using past, present and future tenses, as he did in the songs. It was a good challenge that worked out well and created a fabulous construction for the story.

The style in this book was, if anything, looser than in Lyle. Waber did a lot of his illustration featuring duplicating printing techniques. Lino cut enabled him to repeat decorations throughout the settings. Bridget played with the lino cuts and was able to succesffully duplicate the technique in the backgrounds. In this one bg, at the beginning of the film, the foliage is a good example of this technique, printed over watercolors. The characters are markered paper drawings cut out and pasted to the cel overlays.

The book, like Lyle, featured a lot of white space, so we followed suit. When a book’s been in circulation for over 25 years, you have to realize there’s been a reason for it; find the reason and the heart, and take advantage of it. This use of white space made the actual backgrounds oftentimes little more than abstract shapes of color with a solid object on the screen. Here, for example, we see Ira and his friend, Reggie, playing against a blast of green and a bicycle.

– At the end of the film, Ira and Reggie talk in the dark at the sleep-over. To get the look of the dark Bridget had to come up with something clever. The book resorted to B&W washes of gray and wasn’t very helpful. She came up with some dyes that were used for photo retouching. By quickly painting these lightly onto cel levels with a wide brush, she was able to get translucent cels with the brush strokes imbedded in the color overlays. By placing these overlays over the characters and backgrounds, we got the desired effect that let it feel connected to the very loose style of the film.

-Abel’s Island is one of the few films we did that I treasure for its artwork. Bridget’s work on the backgrounds was, to me, extraordinary. The looseness I love was developed into enormously lush backgrounds using shades of green that I didn’t know could be captured in the delicate watercolors.

This film was a complicated problem that seemed to resolve itself easily and flow onto the screen without much struggle. The book had won a Newberry Award as best children’s writing of its year. It was not a picture book but a novel. The more than 120 pages featured fewer than 20 B&W spot drawings by author/illustrator, William Steig. We were on our own with the color.

However, we had adapted Doctor DeSoto and The Amazing Bone as shorter films and could use what we’d learned from Steig on Abel. Bridget topped herself.

Several of the animators gave us more than I could have expected. Doug Compton‘s animation of Abel sculpting his statuary and living in his log was heart rending; Lisa Craft‘s animation of the big pocket watch, the big book and the leaf flying sequences was nothing short of inspired; and John Dilworth‘s animation of the owl fight was harrowing. This was all set up and completed by Tissa David‘s brilliant animation of Abel in the real world with wife, Amanda. She established our character.

– At the end of the film, Abel, who has been separated from his new bride, trapped on an island for over a year, finally gets to come home. He sees Amanda in a park at twilight but decides to hold back. He races on ahead of her to greet her, privately, at home. The park sequence has a busyness as an acute counter to the lonliness we’ve watched for the previous 90% of the half-hour program. Setting it at early evening gave an opportunity for rich, royal colors. Bridget took full advantage of the opening, and underscored it all with a regal green not seen earlier. It was stunning and is one of my favorite backgrounds in the film.

Here are two more films Bridget Thorne designed for me.

A Child’s Garden of Verses presented new and different problems to explore.
It was a project generated by HBO. Charles Strouse and Thomas Meehan were going to write the book and song score. We met several times trying to discover a way into the book of poems. I’d suggested we use the verses in Robert Louis Stevenson‘s book to illustrate the author’s early childhood.

(Click on any image to enlarge.)

Stevenson was a sickly boy who was always confined to his dark room. He was not expected to live long. The only visitor for days on end was his overprotective mother.

For much of the film, we had only the dark, child’s bedroom to explore. Artistically, I asked Bridget to delve deeper into the photgraphic dyes that she had discovered and used so well in Ira Sleeps Over. These dyes would allow us to keep the style, once again, loose while exploring dark areas and brush strokes to simulate the darkness “Robbie” lived in.

For the wallpaper throughout the house, Bridget used real wallpaper which was photostated; scaled down and reshaped to fit the backgrounds. Then watercolor washes colored these backgrounds and overlays were mixed and matched to get the desired results.

I was never quite pleased with this film. The elements that worked well worked really well. Bridget’s work was a highlight. The acting was extraordinarily good. Heidi Stallings performed with an enormous amount of emotion yet barely raised her voice above a whisper. Jonathan Pryce was brilliant as Robert Louis Stevenson, the narrator and even sang a song when asked at the last minute. Gregory Grant as the young “Robbie” was vulnerable, sweet and all we could have hoped for.

However, there was too much of a rush given the delicacy of the piece, and the exterior backrounds done by me for the end of the film are poor. The animation is also hit and miss. Oddly enough, my favorite sequence used little actual animation but intense camera work. Ray Kosarin was the animator in charge of it, and it’s an impressive sequence.

- The Talking Eggs was done for a PBS series called Long Ago & Far Away. It was an adaptation of a Creole Folk Tale which Maxine Fisher updated for me. (Lots of discussion between WGBH, Maxine & me about what distinguishes a Folk Tale from a Fairy Tale. It seriously impacted the story we were telling and I wanted what I wanted and got.)

Bridget chose to use pastels and we searched for a paper that would bring out the most grain. I loved the end result. The characters, to match the look of the Bgs, were xeroxed onto brown kraft paper and colored up from there with prismacolor pencils. This was cut out and pasted to cel.

Danny Glover was the narrator, and we chose to make him an on-screen character appearing intermitently in the film. His narration was recorded on a rush as he stopped off in LA from SF on his way to direct a film in Africa.

There’s a focus in these backgrounds that matches the content and mood of the piece, and it worked wonderfully for my purposes. I always like it when the medium is front and center; I want audiences to know that they’re watching animated drawings, and texture usually helps to do this. Of course, I also want the films to have a strong enough story that the audience gets past the point of knowing, to enter the film. It works some of the time, and I’m in heaven when it does.

Bridget altered the color of the paper on which she was coloring with the chalks, and the different colored papers represented varied moods from sequence to sequence.

Naturally, there were some problems with the chalks under camera. All the fixative in the world didn’t stop the chalks from bleeding onto the cels or platen on the camera. (Lots more cleaning involved than usual.) We heard constantly from our cameraman, Gary Becker. The extra effort was worth it; the look was unique and successful.

The following is a short interview that we did in a publication I generated back in the ’80s.

Bridget Thorne is a background designer who has been an important part of Michael Spom Animation for more than fifteen years. In that time she has enhanced the look of MSA films with beautiful backgrounds that are, in a way, part of the characters rather than just a scenic backdrop.

DG: How long have you been working with Michael Sporn?
BT: I first started working for Michael in 1979 on Byron Blackbear And The Scientific Method, a fifteen minute short for the Learning Corporation of America. It is actually one of my favorites. I started out as a scenic painter for plays. I worked with a designer and basically dressed the set. We’d paint the exteriors, lay in wallpaper, marbleizing floors, etc. I started at Williamstown and at Playwright’s Variety in New York, I did a lot of off Broadway and off-off Broadway.

DG: Do you see background painting as a complete picture or as a supplement to animated artwork?
BT: It’s a supplement.

DG: How do you take that into consideration when you start the backgrounds?
BT: Ideally, I take into consideration how the characters are designed. I like the characters to be part of the picture, not stand out like they do in Saturday morning cartoons. It all fits into a stylistic sensibility or pace more than anything else. I’m not a cartoon snob, I’m more of a two dimensional artist than a filmmaker. I design my backgrounds and line style according to the way the characters are designed. What I used to try and do was color the backgrounds, to match the colors of the characters. You work out of your home rather than at the studio. What are the benefits or drawbacks of working this way? I’ve just started doing this and yes, there are benefits. I can get into my own head, and I take off more with ideas because I’m not interrupted as much. But I like being in the studio and staying with the rest of the production as it goes along.

DG: Do you prefer working on original stories or from an existing book?
BT: It depends on the story. Let’s say IRA SLEEPS OVER, it was great working out here on that because with an existing story you have a style to imitate, and it is easy for a whole bunch of people to follow that when they’re all working in different places. So as far as production goes, that makes it easier. The great thing about original scripts is that they allow for an incredible amount of individual input. What do you take into consideration when designing the look of a film and what preparation is involved? It depends on the story. I tend to have a knee jerk reaction at first or an impulse. I have a Fine Arts background, and I tend to rely on painters. I find fine artists are more in tune stylistically with Michael’s films than the more hard-edged graphic cartoons. (Though I will look at Disney inspirational drawings.)
Then I look at the layouts and the character design, so I sort of work on intuition and impulse. Then I look at the existing elements and put those all together and come up with a design. As far as preparation goes, what I consistently do is make 5×4 sketches of design ideas. For ABEL’S ISLAND I did lots and lots of little paintings of winter and fall and spring.

First three illustrations pictured above:
1. BYRON BLACKBEAR AND THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD.
2. A CHILD’S GARDEN OF VERSES.
3. IRA SLEEPS OVER

DG: When designing the film do you take into consideration that this will be seen by a child?
BT: I’m not a cartoony person so I don’t think about that. I tend to think more — sometimes I run into trouble this way — I think of it in a frame and ideally what I really want is a balanced look on the screen. A lot of times that’s hard because what I see in front of me is so different when it is filmed.

DG: What do you consider to be the best example of your work thus far?
BT: I guess ABEL’S ISLAND. I was able to abstract a little. I wasn’t confined to chairs and bureaus. I was able to match the mood of the movie to the backgrounds. If Abel was in trouble, I could put colors that indicated that, or I could abstract it. If something was calm I could paint it calmly. Abstraction, or looseness, is more my personal style. This is true of Michael’s style, as well.

A scene toward the end of ABEL’S ISLAND.

DG: Have you ever worked on a film you couldn’t connect with?
BT: I’d say yes. It’s a hard question to answer off the top of my head. I sort of think of movies like they were kids; they are either noisy or funny or quiet or sad. They all have their own characteristics, and it is really the process of making the movie that attracts me to animation. I tend to have different feelings about each movie. But yes, sometimes a story irritates me or something comes in and it doesn’t suit my style or what I imagined. It can be very difficult. That’s an interesting thing about animation; there is really a sense of compromise; you are compromising all the time.

A scene of the narrator at the end of THE TALKING EGGS.

A background from A CHILD’S GARDEN OF VERSES.

home from school in WHITEWASH.

- I was asked by Kevin Schreck to introduce, on Thursday at the 92Y Tribeca; it was the second of two evenings celebrating the work of Richard Williams. The three day program was timed to celebrate Dick’s 80th birthday. On March 19th he becomes an octogenarian.

Kevin is the film maker who has produced and directed a documentary about the history of Dick’s magnum opus, The Thief and the Cobbler. Kevin’s documentary, called Persistence of Vision, was unveiled on Friday night.

AS I said, I introduced Thursday’s program (commercials, movie title sequences and the short, The Little Island) with a short telling of how I first heard of Dick Williams, then came to meet him, work for him, befriend him and, finally, sit at a distance from him. Dick’s one of the more interesting personalities I’ve met in my life. He’s one of those few characters you get to know who lights up a room whenever he walks in. Energy just overflows the room, and everyone is happier for their presence. In all my years I’ve known possibly three people who filled this description, and it always was enriching for me. Bedazzling.

The program included a number of sample reels from Dick’s Soho Square studio. Mostly humorous commercials, all excellently animated. I wish there had been some of the earlier ones mixed in; the Pushkin Vodka commercial shown was not the one I think of as genius; it was the 2nd of two spots they did. The original 2 minute spot was everywhere back in the 70′s; now you can’t see it. The film that was shown is well done but doesn’t soar like the original. Both were designed and animated by Rowland B. Wilson and Russell Hall; they did a bang up job on it. Several of the commercials animated by Eric Goldberg were among those screened; naturally they were funny pieces. There was the cat who uses 8 lives trying to get his hands on a beer product (can’t remember the brand). There was the baby, animated by Russell Hall, and his Q-tips commercial; done in a thick/thin line with watercolor. These are brilliant when compared to today’s live action babies speaking for E-trade.

The spots turned into the title sequences for Charge of the Light Brigade. The print for this was significantly better than that of the commercials. This was followed by other title sequences including What’s New Pussycat?, and Return of the Pink Panther. No Murder on the Orient Express newspaper sequences with the glorious music by Richard Rodney Bennett; no Prudence and the Pill. I’ve always had a small problem with Williams’ work on title sequences. It’s hard to read the titles/credits on display. That’s the purpose of the job, and yet the type is always at war with what’s behind it. It’s all beautifully, no . . . brilliantly done. Except for that legibility problem.

This show ended with the half hour long The Little Island. A very good print, this was the short Dick did virtually by himself with the help of Tristram Cary‘s strong musical score. The film is at least twice the length it should be, and feels somewhat dated. However, one can understand its success when it was originally screened at the early animation Festivals where it won many awards and brought Dick Williams some fame.

Then last night we saw Kevin Schreck‘s documentary, Persistence of Vision. This was the story behind Dick’s feature, The Thief and the Cobbler. A 70 minute tour back through more than a decade’s worth of history on the making of an animated feature that never really was completed. Some patches and staples were added at the end so it could be released in the most shameful way possible, but that’s the way Dick’s “master piece” ended up.

Not all of the footage in the documentary was of the best quality. Some of the shots were a bit on the dark side. The information passed on was wholly there, though. Very good. The film gives us interviews with a number of truly fine artists. Roman Modiano, Richard Brett, Greg Duffell, Julianna Franchetti all spoke with Schreck’s camera about their history and involvement with Williams feature. They paint a relatively positive pickture of Dick Williams, though somehow bits of his blustery side come across clearly.

The film only barely touches on Omar Ali-Shah‘s financial games on Dick’s studio. He cooked the books, and didn’t do a very good job of it. Everyone was aware of his discrepencies. A hurtful separation with the Idres Shah (Omar’s brother) who wrote the book on Nasrudin which Dick had illustrated and was now animating as an animated feature. They left with any permission to do a feature starring their character. Dick had to completely overhaul his animated feature and rework the script as well as most of the completed animation. A setback.

The Thief and the Cobbler emerged, and Dick worked his tail off, destroying several marriages in the way of his work. He worked through The Christmas Carol, Raggedy Ann, Ziggy and Roger Rabbit all in pursuit of financial stability. He finally got the budget he asked for to produce The Thief, and sure enough, it wasn’t sufficient. Dick ran out of money without completing the movie, and the insurance company, the Completion Bond Co, was forced to step in and take possession of Dick’s movie, which now belonged to the Completion Bond Co. They hired 2nd rate all the way to rework the film, trying to make what they felt would be a success out of it. A friend who was a final checker on the movie, had to visit the morgue for drawings that could be reused. She came upon a mass of broken and crushed boxes with artwork spilling out covering the warehouse’s entire cemnt floor. This was the artwork that took many hours to color since its rendering was so delicately done in England.

That, to me, was the sad ending. Tissa David had worked for more than a year animating the twin sisters, Yum Yum and her twin sister, Mee Mee. Tissa was left behind, and Dick cut Mee Mee from the film, reworking some of Tissa’s animation. I sat next to Tissa watching the Fred Calvert version of the film; I was aghast. Tissa was quietly sad as if a friend had died. It was a bit reminiscent of our watching Watership Down together after Hubley had been fired and had died of heart complications. We both cried during the “Bright Eyes” sequence of that film. Watchya gonna do?

Kevin Schreck captured the feeling of that film -The Thief and the Cobbler, I mean -in all its disappointment. He’s a young film maker, and seems to have caught Dick Williams in this documentary. That’s plenty.

Signe Baumane shared this film with me yesterday; a friend of hers in Latvia. had sent it to her, and she wanted to see what I thought. The film went to Clermont Ferrand and 70 other festivals. It’s a real beauty and I couldn’t help but share it with you. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Jim Hill has a piece in The Huffington Post about The Croods talking about its history – when it was to be done by Aardman and was co-authored by John Cleese. How and why it’s changed is revealed in this article.

Though in one sweeping sentence Hill says, “… Aardman Animations stepped away from its five-picture deal with DreamWorks Animation.” I question whether that’s what happened and if it can be so casually dismissed for the purpose of this puff piece. But it’s Jim Hill, so we’ll not get a full story.

Pictured to the right The Croods directors, Chris Sanders and Kirk DeMicco.

Speaking of Dreamworks, they are performing a “crood” measure. They’ve promised to lay off some 350 of their 2200 employees by the end of the year. I doubt this has anything to do with what is happening in Washington, but certainly that isn’t helping. Perhaps Katzenberg can help get some of the idiots in congress to “lose their jobs” by 2014. Maybe that’d help our economy. This news of the layoffs came from a Hollywood Reporter story and really has all to do with the poor performance of The Rise of the Guardians.