Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

- Yesterday, I referred to the MMPAA screening of Sleeping Beauty which is up and coming. For information about the event, let me post the invitation I received the other day from the Academy.

________________________________(Click any image to enlarge to a legible size.)

I’m going to try to get the NY chapter of the Academy to screen the film here. You never know, the power of the Disney publicity machine might be helpful.

Here’s the Academy’s website page about this event for more info: Academy

There’s also another exciting event, “The Art of Hand Drawn Animation,” on display at the Academy. This is a free exhibit on view in the Academy’s Grand Lobby Gallery. Here’s the info from the Academy monthly bulletin.

- Here’s the Academy’s website page for this exhibit: Academy
- Here;s the Academy’s link to some photos in the show: photos
- Here’s a good review of the show: Alternate Film Guide

Exhibitions like this are the difficulty with living on the East coast. There are many that I’ve missed. (I even missed one I participated in.)

- Yesterday, I had the opportunity of meeting Satoshi Kon prior to the first screening of the retrospective being held at the Walter Reade Theater in NYC.

In the brief 10 minute interview I was given, I had prepared a number of questions to send in advance for the sake of the interpreter. We brought along a small camera to video tape and record the session. I had hoped to transcribe the interview and post it today. Unfortunately, we had a bit of a problem. The interpreter’s voice was just above a whisper and barely recorded. We have to redigitize the track and work on it to get her voice audible enough to transcribe. We’ll post the interview later this week.

There was some still art framed and mounted in the hall, though. I photographed it and caught a lot of reflection off the lights in the hall. Regardless, here are some of the images I shot. The photographs don’t do justice to Mr. Kon’s beautiful artwork. There are plenty of others I didn’t have time to shoot.

Go see the exhibit and films if you’re in NY. The full schedule is posted in my initial writing on this series. Here.

(Click any image to enlarge.)

The above three images are all “Key Art” for Millenium Actress.

Me, the interpreter and Mr. Kon

The two images above and the two below are from
the storyboard of Tokyo Godfathers.

My apologies to Mr. Kon for the poor reproductions. I’m hardly what I would call a photographer, however I did want to give a sample of what fine work visitors would see at this exhibit and program.

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Sunday’s NY Times features a good article on Tom Sito ‘s new animation series for PBS, As The Wrench Turns. The show premieres July 9th.

- Thursday night I went to the Academy screening of Get Smart (which turned out to be a zero of a movie. I should have expected that despite the J. Hoberman/Village Voice rave.) There was another film playing that evening, Brick Lane, a small British movie about an Indian woman who is sent to England at age 17 to marry a cousin she has never met.

That short synopsis was all I knew about the film. Rotten Tomatoes gave it a 63% on the “tomatometer,” and I expected something small and hoped for the best. I was in the mood.

The film turned out to be great. The music by Jocelyn Pook virtually lifted this film to one of the best films of the year. It’s excellent, and I thought I should tell you all to look out for it. If you’re thinking of going to Get Smart, don’t. Go to see Brick Lane, if it’s available near you. If it isn’t, keep the film in mind for the future. There’s real poetry and heartbreak there, and it’s a fine film.

I’ll get to see Wall-E next Tuesday and will probably comment on it afterward.

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- I don’t have to repeat myself. I like Animal Farm a lot. That’s why I like to visit Chris Rushworth‘s excellent site, animalfarmworld.

Chris regularly posts lots of images from his collection of artwork from this film, and continually adds to it. I amazed at the number of cels and drawings up on this site. He has recently added some new pages for links to other sites and posters.

I’ve added Animalfarmworld to my list o’ links.

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– Almost as a companion piece, Thad Komorowski has complimented my posts of the storyboards for Alice In Wonderland. He’s posted David Hall’s boards for sequence 1 and sequence 2.

This film, Alice In Wonderland, has generated a lot of beautiful artwork. David Hall’s boards are so illustration-like as compared to the energetic boards roughed out by Joe Rinaldi. (At least I think they’re Joe Rinaldi’s work.) Compare both to the amazing color styling of Mary Blair. (Check out Canemaker’s book, The Art and Flair of Mary Blair.

Note: after I post the third and final of the boards John Canemaker has loaned me I’ll post a bunch of Mary Blair images.

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Lynda Barry has an interesting essay on “the power of the paintbrush” on the Tricycle archive. Read it. After you read that go out and get her new book, What It Is.

I was sent to the article via a link on Drawn. I learned of the book from Matt Clinton, a principal animator in my studio, who stood on line for a while to get Barry’s signature. She spoke at length to each of those on line, so there was a bit of a wait. She drew a cartoon for Matt, making it all worth waiting for.

Lynda also recently spoke at NYU as part of a symposium on the cultural importance of comics. Annulla tells the tale on her great blog, Blather from Brooklyn.

– Coming to Lincoln Center Film Society, a complete retrospective of the works of Satoshi Kon. All of his films will be screened, from the first film Perfect Blue to his last, Paprika. Included will be the 13-part tv series, Paranoia Agent, which has not been previously screened here.

The highlight of the retrospective will be a chat with the director on the opening night following the 6:15 screening of Paprika.

The films of this director are extraordinary works that hue closely to live action but remainly, distinctly, animated films. My introduction to his work was Tokyo Godfathers which was another variant on 3 Godfathers, the John Ford film. (As was Three Men and A Baby and Ice Age.)

The complete schedule is as follows:

Satoshi Kon: Beyond Imagination
June 27 – July 1, 2008

June 27
2:30PM Perfect Blue
4:15PM Millennium Actress
6:15PM Paprika followed by A Conversation with Satoshi Kon

June 28
2:30PM Tokyo Godfathers
4:30PM Perfect Blue
6:15PM Millennium Actress / Sennen joyû
8:15PM Paranoia Agent (Part One: Chapters 1-7)

June 29
1:00PM Paranoia Agent (Part One: Chapters 1-7)
4:15PM Paranoia Agent (Part Two: Chapters 8-13)
7:15PM Tokyo Godfathers
9:15PM Perfect Blue

June 30
2:00PM Tokyo Godfathers
4:00PM Paprika

July 1
2:30PM Paprika
4:20PM Millennium Actress / Sennen joyû
6:15PM Paranoia Agent (Part Two: Chapters 8-13)
9:10PM Paprika

Michael Barrier posted a good review of Paprika back in Aug 2007 when it opened in the US. He also had an extensive feedback page on Kon’s other films.

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- Speaking of Tokyo Godfathers , it is part of an all animation programming week at Ovation TV. The shows featured this week include Tokyo Godfathers, The Triplettes of Belleville, Spirited Away, The Ub Iwerks Story, Dante’s Inferno (a puppet film), and Wallace and Gromit Go To Hollywood (a making-of documentary).
Check their schedule here.

Tokyo Godfathers is featured tonight and replays several other times this week. This is the schedule:
Today -June 17/2008 8PM 11PM
Wed – June 18/2008 2AM
Sat – June 21/2008 8PM 11PM
Sun – June 22/2008 5PM

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- The Annecy animation festival sounds as if it were a good one.

I’m pleased as punch that Nina Paley‘s feature, Sita Sings the Blues, received the prize for best feature. I hope it leads to distribution; the film’s a gem and deserves all the attention it can get.
Congratulations, also, to Bill Plympton for the Special Prize he received for Idiots and Angels

Oswald Iten‘s fine, new blog gives a good account of the festival and celebrates a number of events and films.
This site looks to be one to save; I linked to it last week when I first came across it: Colorful Animation Expressions.

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- I tend to get excited when a new, young filmmaker gets some attention with the fruits of their labor – a crisp, new short film. Elizabeth Hupcey‘s short, The Unopened Door, was one of only two animated films selected for presentation in the WMHT (PBS – Albany, NY) film festival. The film will air Thursday June 19th at 10 pm. I saw the film a while back, and it deserves all the attention it gets. Congratulations to Elizabeth.

- On Monday, the Museum of Modern Art will continue its series of Jazz on Film (Jazz Score)with their first all animation program. This is a program of classic Hubley shorts. which feature jazz by such classic composers/musicians as Dizzy Gillespie, Quincy Jones, Benny Carter and others.

The program will be presented by Emily Hubley, Benny Carter’s biographer Ed Berger, and Benny’s widow Hilma.

The highlight of the program are MoMA’s newly and beautifully preserved prints of Adventures of an * and The Tender Game. Having seen the print of Adventures of an *, I can tell you it’s a treat. I saw the film originally projected back in 1963 when it was just seven years old, and this version is significantly better. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Tender Game in a good copy in all the many times I’ve seen it, so this is what my Monday will be about.

The show will start at 6:30pm in Theater 1 (The Roy and Niuta Titus Theater 1). It’ll run 100 mins.

Come to the theater a bit early and take a look at the exhibition in the lobby outside the theater. There’s an enormous amount of art beautifully displayed for you to see. It’s a treat, believe me. (I wrote about the opening of this exhibit and posted photos here.)

This is not the end of the animation in Jazz Score. These and other shorts will be screened with feature films:

Carmen D’Avino’s Pianissimo – screening on June 5 and 9
John Canemaker’s Bridgehampton – screening on July 2 and 5
Zbigniew Rybczynski’s Plamuz (Music Art) – screening on August 7 and 9
Adam Beckett’s Sausage City – screening in September
Pierre Hebert’s Population Explosion – screening in September

You can check MOMA’s calendar to find out exact times.

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- There are two sites I’d like to point out – again.

- I have to say that I’m just loving Mark Mayerson‘s breakdown of 101 Dalmatians. He has a lot of informed commentary to offer about the film giving some real statements about this excellent Disney feature. If you’re not watching this site regularly, get to it.

You should also check out Mark’s post of the FMPU Motion Picture Unit. Wow!

- Then, we also have to promote, once more, the excellent site A Film LA, Hans Perk’s blog. This is where the drafts for 101 Dalmatians orginally made it to the web, and there’s plenty more there as well. The more you dig, the more you’ll find. Where else could you find a photo of the Disney cafeteria shot in the 30′s? There’s always a great surprise.

Tee Bosustow has been making podcasts of the many interviews he recorded for the documentary he has in progress. This is a history of the UPA studio. Slowly these interviews are appearing on his site.

You can hear Tee’s interviews with the likes of Dave Hilberman, Barrie Nelson, Bill Melendez, Tissa David, Derek Lamb, Mark Kausler, Howard Beckerman and many others. Go here and pick your poison. More interviews are added weekly.

One he recorded with me has just gone up. I seem to speak at an enormous speed and giggle throughout. The recording was done as we’d just completed our film, The Man Who Walked Between the Towers. To hear it go here.

Tee is also selling, on this site, a good book edited by Amid Amidi, Inside UPA. If you’re a fan, you have to search out a copy of the book. It’s a beauty. The book is predominantly a collection of amazing photographs of the studio and artists of UPA in its heyday.

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Just to fill out this post, here’s a Grim Natwick drawing of Nellie Bly from Rooty Toot Toot (minus a face.) It seemed appropriate to match it with Tee Bosustow’s site.

- After all the artwork from Fantasia that I posted in the past week or so, I received an email from Howard Penner. He had a beautiful sketch of Zeus looking down from the clouds.

Howard wondered whether it could have been drawn by James Bodrero, who did other storyboard sketches in a series I posted on loan from John Canemaker.

It looked somewhat different in style to me, so I asked John. He wasn’t able to affirm that it was Bodrero’s work, though he suggested it also might be by Martin Provenson or Jack Miller, both of whom also worked on this same sequence. It has more the cartoony look that I would expect from a Provenson drawing, so that’s where I’m siding. Any other guesses?

Here are some closer scans:

(Click any image to enlarge.)

Having written “A-Spied” shouldn’t
he have written “A-Nymph”?

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- Ken Priebe has written me to inform about the Vancouver Art Gallery’s program called Krazy!. It’s a show of original sketches, notes, concept drawings, animation cells, and 3-D models.

Ken writes in depth about it on his blog The Boundaries of Fantasia.

Ken also informed me that the brilliant animator, Tony White, has just posted a number of his films and reels on YouTube. Go here to see all of these short films. Don’t miss Hokusai; it’s a great film which won the BAFTA in 1978. Tony’s commercial work can be seen here.

Ken Priebe is the author of The Art of Stop-Motion Animation.
Tony White has written Animation from Pencils to Pixels and the classic book The Animator’s Workbook.

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- Sony Classic Pictures bought the distribution rights of Waltz with Bashir before the Cannes Festival closed yesterday. This assures that the film will eventually be released in the US. The film did not win any awards at the Festival as was predicted by a couple of reporters. Juror Natalie Portman commented on this, “I think it’s a testament to the amazing selection (in the Festival) that a film as good as ‘Waltz With Bashir’ didn’t win an award.”

- This week, I enjoyed posting the article by Ross Care on the music of Bambi.
I have been a film music fan almost as long as I have been an animation enthusiast. When I was 12, I bought my first soundtrack, the score to To Kill A Mockingbird, by Elmer Bernstein. What a way to start! This was almosts immediately followed by Lillies of the Field by Jerry Goldsmith. I subsequently bought every score I could find by either of them and stayed a devotee of both. (Animation fans might recognize Goldsmith’s brilliant score for The Secret of Nimh and Mulan or Bernstein’s for The Black Cauldron and Heavy Metal.)
______Ed Plumb in a break between
______recording sessions on Fantasia.___________I have spent quite a bit of interest
__________________________.________________searching down any bits and pieces of information written about film scores and film musicians. I virtually absorbed Roy Pendergast‘s book, Film Music: A Neglected Art, with its interview with Scott Bradley and discussion wiht Gail Kubik (who wrote the score to Gerald McBoing Boing.) I subscribed to Film Score Monthly and Soundtrack Collector’s Newsletter, and I belonged to collector’s groups that would introduce Japanese versions of many scores that included cues that weren’t included in US releases or offered records that weren’t available here. In short, I was obsessed.

That obsession has quieted somewhat, though I still pay close attention to soundtracks and scores. Goldsmith and Bernstein are gone now, but there’s still Tom Newman and James Horner and John Debney (who did the score for my film, Goodnight Moon.)

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Ross Care, who wrote the article on Bambi and has written and performed much of his own music – concert as well as filmusic – wrote to tell me that he has a concert upcoming in LA.
Letter to the World – Poets to Song,
Original Songs by Ross Care
June 8, 2008 2pm

First United Methodist Church
1338 E. Santa Clara St.
Downtown Ventura
805-901-2697
Suggested Donation, $15

Featuring the poems of Lewis Carroll, Edward Lear, Christina Rossetti, Frank O’Hara, Emily Dickinson, James Joyce, William Blake and A.E. Housman

Ross Care, Composer/Pianist
Diana Burdick, Soprano
Molly Kohler Pei, Soprano
Steve Perren, Baritone
Philip Vaiman, Violin
Maksim Velichkin, Cello

Notes on the Music
Care has always been interested in the fusion of music and poetry in a somewhat
neglected form, the modern art song. “Letter To The World” draws from both classic
and modern texts. The settings in this concert are written for voice and piano and
voices with piano, violin, and cello.

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- Nina Paley is interviewed in depth on Film & Video‘s site. The subject is how she animated a feature length film, Sita Sings The Blues, in Flash. The film just recently finished playing in the Tribeca Film Festival and will soon show at Annecy.
You can read Variety‘s very positive review here.

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- I enjoy Mike Barrier‘s essays built around “A Day In The Life” of someone or some animation studio.

These are extraordinary little commentaries on moments in time. His most recent details a trip Walt and Lillian Disney made to New York in 1938 where they met a young Robert Taylor on the train.
Disney: June 20, 1938

These pieces really give you a feel for the time and place of the event. This is something too often left out of animation history and an aspect that I demand of good history (even if I have to supply it myself.)

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- The fine blog, The Thief, has two excellent pieces on Roy Naisbitt. Roy was one of the keys to the Richard Williams Studio. The two posts feature some of the elaborate and exceptional art Roy did for Dick’s feature, The Cobbler and the Thief. Roy was probably the closest thing Dick had to a computer back in the ’70′s. The post calls him a “certified genius,” and I’d have to agree. For years I knew about Roy’s work; The Thief gives us some of his drawings.

There’s some amazing art here.
Roy Naisbitt pt 1
Roy Naisbitt pt 2

- Hans Perk has been the source for much of the animation history we’ve been sharing on these blogs. His posting the drafts to Pinocchio and numerous Silly Symphonies led Mark Mayerson to prepare “Mosaics” which visualized these drafts and gave Mark an excuse for some detailed comments on that film. At the same time, I was able to post some of the storyboards from John Canemaker‘s collection which joined well with the two.

Recently, the same has been true of material for 101 Dalmatians. For this film, Hans not only posted the drafts but the legendary script by Bill Peet, as well. Mark is currently posting his Mosaics.

Now, I’d like to call attention to what I consider an enormously valuable post by Hans. He calls it Synchronizing Mickey and its follow up, More on Synchronizing Mickey. There you’ll find some historic patent documents which help to describe the Disney studio’s development of synchronized sound. Hans writes in clear detail how the few at the studio were able to go from silent film to Steamboat Willie at the Colony Theater in 1928.

It’s an informative and instructive piece well worth your look.

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- Harvey Deneroff offers an extended and informative piece on the Independent animator, Joanna Priestly. It’s an older article but worth the read. Harvey’s site is unlike most others and should be explored if you haven’t already, and it’s nice to see Joanna’s work given a nice appreciation.

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- In the past couple of weeks I’ve posted some images sent to me by Robert Cowan from his collection of cels, artwork and memorabilia. They’re all astounding pieces. I’m pleased to say that he’s created a new website around this collection, and I encourage you to visit if you want to look at some beautiful animation art.

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- There’s another excellent animated piece by Jeff Scher on the NYTimes website. This month’s edition is certainly one of the better films in the series. These are not Flash films that are knocked out in an afternoon; they’re obviously the product of good hard work, and Jeff is providing some real creativity to the Times’ OP ED page. To quote Jeff from the post:
___“All the Wrong Reasons” is an experiment in making a film
___that feels as if it has percolated up from the subconscious;
___a dream you can watch with your eyes open. It’s one of
___those big cathartic dreams, a labyrinth of fleeting moments
___full of metaphor and mischief. I wanted it to feel like a bumpy roller coaster ride in
___and out of the dark side of the brain where all the wrong reasons reside. And, as with all
___dreams, the meaning and significance are open to interpretation.

___There are almost 3,000 paintings and collages in this film. I used rapidly changing color
___to give a shimmer to the animation and lots of collage to create a visually percussive
___texture.

The score by Shay Lynch perfectly captures the mood of the piece. They’re so in synch that I wondered which came first the score or the animation. Take a look and a listen.

- I recently received an email from Sky-David. He has a a small animation company in Carlsbad, California. He’d written that he enjoyed my blog and particularly liked one quote from an old interview with me.

“I like a pencil dragging across a piece of paper and the problems you get with that.” That is largely what my business does, it is just me and one computer assistant. I got the degree in animation from Cal Arts 1972 – 74 and later got a degree in Physical Therapy and Life Sciences my second loves. That gave a firm financial base to keep my first love, animation going. By circumstance I got animation jobs for the bio-information technology sector, that pays very well. Not anything to see in a film festival yet it opened doors. Then an educational animation THE LUMINOUS RADIANCE OF THE LYMPH SYSTEM. And then a client asked me to do naturalistic animation of the development of the human embryo as seen from inside the womb. Then a woman who wrote a story with 4 animals saw two of my early 1970′s films, AURA CORONA and SONOMA and hired my company to animated her short story THE WOLF AND THE SNOW OWL because my early films are in the same style as the drawings for the original story. _____________(Click any image to enlarge.)

And my animated documentary, FIELD OF GREEN: A SOLDIER’S ANIMATED SKETCHBOOK that is based on a sketchbook diary that I made during the late 1960′s in combat won the grand prize for animation at the 2008
Black Maria Film Festival.

After reading this letter and doing a small bit of reading, I realized I’d known Sky-David as Dennis Pies back in the early 80′s when he was teaching animation at Harvard. Actually, I’d known his films and was a strong admirer, though we met only a couple of times back then.

His earlier films felt like beautiful, animated landscapes though they were distinctly abstract. His absence was felt when they stopped appearing on the festival circuit, and I often wondered where he’d gone. One of these films, Ace of Light, can be found on YouTube. This is a film that was animated with light, shot on an Oxberry using an arial image projector.

Newer films are shown on the Sky-David site.
Other older film titles include: Nebula (1972), Merkaba (1973), Aura Corona (1974), Luma Nocturna (1974), Sonoma (1977), Surface Work (1978), Hand Piece (1979), A Hard Passage (1981), Ace of Light (1984), Dissolve in Light (1984), Sky Heart (1988), and The Green Child (1992).

There’s plenty of information and movies on his studio’s site Sky David Studio. Here are some stills he sent me.

_____________Field of Green

_____________Field of Green

_____________Field of Green

_____________Wolf – Snow Owl