Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

- There are a couple of sites that I visit regularly and don’t mention often enough in my writing. Let me try to remedy that here.

Tulgey Wood is a fine Disneyana site on which Jim Fanning posts plenty of remarkable material. His posts often get a rise out of me.
Those about actor, Roger Mobley, brought back curious memories. I don’t think I’ve thought about the Disney TV series Gallegher, Boy Reporter in the 40-odd years since it aired.
Likewise, his post of the page from the 101 Dalmatians comic book popped that magazine back into my mind all these years since I saw that strip as a child. This is an appealing site that I enjoy visiting.

Every day I stop off at Alan Cook’s blog, Cooked Art. Alan often posts some of his own fine art and he keeps us up to date with the development of his own film. I enjoy seeing his progress. However, he also directs us to other items he sees out there. He informs of interesting posts, movies and art. I usually like to see what he suggests so that I can keep current with the hot spots.

Most recently, Alan has highlighted Randall Sly’s excellent site Character Design. The most current posts there are worth a look. You can see the development of a couple of recent characters. Ursula from The Little Mermaid slowly takes shape through many rejected forms. It really is informative to see. This site also features a lot of interviews worth checking out, and portfolio reviews of newer designers.

- David Gerstein has an extraordinary site that I haven’t featured often enough. It includes lots of animation history with a number of key pages to scour. I particularly liked one he has which features early animation music.

David has a large number of books on the market that are worth knowing.
His Mickey and the Gang, is an excellent book which was designed initially to collect the Good Housekeeping monthly pages produced by the Disney studio between 1934 and 1944. These pages highlighted the latest Disney release. This book features a lot of information to be found nowhere else. I highly recommend it for any animation or Disney enthusiast.

My strong interest in Russian animated films brings me often to Animatsaya In English. “Niffiwan” hosts this site out of Canada. It features the latest in Russian animation bringing information about many new and excellent filmmakers, all translated into English.

I can’t tell you how much of a resource this site is for someone interested. Currently featured is a film by artist, Aleksey Karayev. He animates with paint on glass. This is his third film, Dwellers of the Old House, and it’s a gem. The photographs on this site illustrating Norstein’s work methods is a gem. Any fan of this master has to treasure it. For a short YouTube moment, you might look at this Russian commercial by Yurij Norstein.

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If you haven’t seen the coke ad featuring the cartoon balloons, Amid Amidi has posted it on Cartoon Brew. Look at it; it’s hilarious. Great use of cgi. Maybe there’s a feature in there?

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- Yesterday, I was pleased to get a ride from Candy Kugel and companion, Chuck Hunnewell, to a memorial service for Jack Zander held in Pound Ridge NY. It was about an hour’s drive to the event, and we ended up being the first to arrive. The first sight on entering the Patterson Memorial Church was this photo of Jack (to the left) posted on the wall.

I’d expected one of those services wherein people seated listen to friends and family tell stories about the bereaved. It turned out to be a bit more of a party atmosphere.

There was a band preparing when we entered the room. They were set on a small stage to the rear of the room. It turns out that Jack had paid them to play at his 100th birthday party, and he died a bit short of that mark. So the band played for Jack at this event.

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In the adjoining room, there was a table set aside for a number of photos and a scrapbook which must have been presented to Jack at his 90th birthday. It was signed by all his friends and family. The book had a marker for the 95th birthday and another for the 98th.

The photos were good ones of Jack at some happy moments in his life. The motorcycle was obviously an important part of his life.

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I was a bit surprised to find relatively few animation people in attendance. It was predominantly family, and he had a large family. Lots of siblings and kids and grand kids. It was nice to see. However, it was the first time I met most of them, and it made me a bit shy about taking photos. I kept it to a minimum and tried not to act like an interloper.

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As I said, Chuck and Candy were kind enough to allow me to tag along with them. The only other animation people we saw were producer Buzz Potamkin, producer J.J. Sedelmeir, animator Doug Crane, and animator/instructor Donald Poynter.

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This is a shot of the band, above.

To the left, Mark Zander (back to us) chats with animator Doug Crane.

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We had to get back to the city for the second of the documentary features being screened for Academy members to vote. We made it just at the last moment. I’m glad I went to the event to see such a large and close family honoring Jack. I really didn’t know him well, but I felt obligated to pay my respects.

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Thanks to Jonathan Annand for pointing me to the upcoming Heritage auction which features a number of oversized animation drawings to the film, Forbidden Planet. This is the 1956 Sci Fi film that featured some magnificent animated effects by Joshua Meador.

Meador was loaned to MGM by Walt Disney to supervise the animated effects. The Id Monster he created is made of shimmering blades of fire. When the film was first distributed to television, they thought the creature was too frightening for children and cut out a lot of the animated scenes. Of course, they eventually replaced them.

The movie is an original take on Shakespeare’s The Tempest although it significantly alters the plot points. The music for the film, created by the married team of Louis and Bebe Barron, is a groundbreaking electronic score – more effect sounds than music. It’s somewhat similar in ways to what Bernard Herrmann did for Hitchcock’s The Birds.

This film runs every so often on Turner Classic Movies, and if you’re not familiar with it, you should be. The next showing will be Feb 2nd at 9:15am.

(Click any image to enlarge.

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Josh Meador was an effects animator at Disney’s. He joined the studio in the 1930′s and quickly rose through the ranks moving to the effects animation department and ultimately supervising the effects on Pinocchio and Fantasia. He shared an Oscar for his effects work on the big Disney feature 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.

He lived in La Crescenta, California for years and was an inveterate painter, an artist represented by numerous galleries.

The Disneyland show, “Tricks of the Trade,” gave me Josh Meador’s name back in the 50′s, and I searched it out ever after. I wrote a piece about sending a letter to him in another post.

While in the Navy, I was stationed in Monterey, California. There was a gallery in Carmel that had a one man show of his artwork. I made numerous trips to the gallery, hoping that he might be there one of those trips. No such luck. And I was too shy to try to seek him out on my own.

He died in 1965 of a congenital heart defect.

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These images were taken from the Disenyland TV show “Tricks of the Trade”. Meador reenacts the study of boiling bubbles for Fantasia’s Rite of Spring segment.
As a teenager, for an early 8mm film of my own, I shot in super-slow motion boiling gravy my mother was cooking. The lens fogged through much of it creating an eerie mist. It ended up being very interesting footage I used for one of my early films.

Here’s Meador flanked by Jack Boyd, on the left, and Dan McManus, on the right.
They were other leading effects animators at the studio.

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- Getting a bit more current, Brad Bird appeared yesterday as a guest on NPR’s news game quiz show, Wait, Wait. Don’t Tell Me !.

You can hear his segment here on the NPR site.

- The great thing about the holidays is that there are a number of parties where you can catch up to and meet with some people you haven’t seen in a while. I had a great time at George Griffin and Karen Cooper‘s New Year’s day gathering. Some of my oldest and dearest animation friends were there.

It was fun catching up with John Canemaker, Emily Hubley, Bill Plympton, Signe Bauman, Debra Solomon, Lisa Crafts, Nina Paley and George, himself. It was a total surprise meeting up with Veronika Soul again. It may have been 15 years or so since we last saw each other. She’s a fantastic artist whose work always gave me a charge. Now that she’s back in NY and I have her contact information, hopefully we’ll see more of each other.

It was also great visiting with John Schnall. He’s one of my favorite people in animation, and we rarely see each other except for the occasional party.

I don’t generally like posting YouTube pieces; I’d rather direct you to their pages. After seeing John Schnall, he followed up with his YouTube link, and I checked it out.
His pieces had me laughing aloud, and I have to share them with you.

John’s been making animation for quite a while. We worked together back in 1987 when he supervised the production of Lyle Lyle Crocodile for me. If I remember correctly he did his first commercial bit of animation on that film when the family decorates their home for the return of Lyle. Anyway, that’s one of the things I was thinking about while watching that movie at the MOMA screening. (I suppose this is what most people do while watching their own films; remember what was going on when the film was being made.)

The piece below, is an hilarious mix of George Bush and another YouTube hit. For me the joke was completely unexpected and well done. There are a dozen pieces on John’s YouTube site; they’re all well done and funny. Take a look. They give Jib Jab a jab by actually saying something.

(Click image to go to John’s YouTube page.)

- Today’s the day the Iowa voters perform their curious voting rituals. I’ll be all eyes and ears tonight. I’m not sure any one President will be able to undo the horrific work this last guy and his team have done. Certainly, the crop electioneering don’t fill me with confidence. Ms. Clinton, for one, is unable to adequately answer any ONE question she’s asked. Consequently, I see her as just an extension of what we’ve already got. A mouth full of non-sequitors and gobbledygook for answers. The only aim they have seems to have little to do with me. Edwards has continuously spoken up for the poor and disenfranchised. Since they’re not the ones who would put him in office, I’m not expecting him to win. Obama looks attractive to me though a bit languid on the campaign trail. Where’s Al Gore when you need him? As for the Republicans, when Romney is leading the way and Huckabee is his big challenge, they have problems.

Christmas balls dangling – live fruit still kicking Jan 1
Photo by Steve Fisher

- Now that the holidays are past us, and we’re ready to pull down the trimmings, we can get onto the new. As it turns out, there were a number of excellent new sites/blogs created toward the end of the year, and I’d like to call attention to a few.

- The Thief, for me, has been a daily must-visit site. It’s written by four people who started out working at Richard Williams’ Soho Square studio. Their experience and stories about working on Dick’s Cobbler and the Thief (or is it The Thief and the Cobbler?) feature are posted for us to enjoy. This feature is probably the last glorious attempt at a cel-aniamted feature without the slightest use of a computer. It’s undeniably brilliant in some of its animation, and reading about the work is so informative to me, that I quite enjoy it._________________A Tissa David Yum Yum from The Thief.

- Toons At War has been an excellent blog has been focussed on this incredible subject since August of 2006. The material that has been posted on this site has been great to view and study. Lots of beautiful art.

Now David, who hosts and writes that blog, has a new and exciting site. Vintage Disney Collectibles gives lots of rare and interesting material showcasing the marketing work of Disney, particularly in the earliest days.

There are plenty of “Disney” sites out there, but David’s specialization, here, is obviously such a work of love that it can’t help be informative.

In the past I gave some small attention to the work of Paul Lasaine. His excellent site reveals some of the incredible artwork he’s done for a number of films.

His matte paintings, poster artwork and design work for some of the newer cgi features is extraordinary. It’s fun seeing strong works of design and planning for some of the backbone work of these films. The detail of the painting above (from Surf’s Up) gives me a small bit of respect for the strong craft that goes into the making of some of these cg films.

This is a beautiful site with lots of examples of artwork from Prince of Egypt, Surf’s Up, Lord of the Rings and several live action features.

- Bob Jaques‘ relatively new site (mentioned here several times) has become one of my favorite daily stops. Popeye Animator ID does just that; it identifies and highlights the work of some of the animators at the Fleischer studio. People like Lillian Friedman, Louis Zukor or George Germanetti would get absolutely NO attention were it not for the detailed, entertaining and revealing posts on this site. Even Bob’s riffs on reuse animation are just compelling.
Between this site and the new_______________Popeye meets the multiplane camera._
Popeye dvd’s out recently, I think
I’ve recently spent more time watching Popeye than I have in my life. And I’m enjoying it.

- Finally, my friend, Joey Hachtman has a new site on My Space. It’s called Three Designing Women, and it showcases the exciting trompe L’oeil murals she’s been producing out of her Point Pleasant location.
I wrote about her in this earlier post.
The caricature of the Three Designing Women, to the left, is by Tom Hachtman, Joey’s husband. Take a look at the site..

- A week ago, I stepped off a train into Grand Central Station to be surprised by the kaleidoscopic carousel of lights that had been arranged in the grand terminal. I tried to take some photos, thinking it’d make a good post for this blog, but wasn’t pleased with the pictures I’d taken. It didn’t do justice to the light show.

Nulla has posted some fine images on her site, Blather from Brooklyn. I urge you to take a look. As a matter of fact, she’s also posted some nice pictures recorded on Christmas Day in NY. You just can’t beat this city for the show they put on. From Grand Central, to the department store windows, to the free ice skating and carousel in Bryant Park, it just gets better each year.

- My favorite Christmas Blog reading this year was the arcana Tom Sito has treated us to on his site. From wasselling to cutting trees for the home to the birth of Santa. I’ve enjoyed reading about it all, and I’ve shared it with plenty of others. Thanks, Tom..

- I’ve just found a free site set up by New Hampshire Public TV
which gives access to a number of Weston Woods films via RealPlayer. Among the many shorts available there are some eight films I’ve done for Weston adapting noted children’s books. If you’d like to see
any of these films:

The Amazing Bone
Doctor DeSoto
Leo The Late Bloomer
The Mysterious Tadpole
Max’s Chocolate Chicken
Max’s Christmas
Morris’s Disappearing Bag
What’s Under My Bed?

They can be found here. You have to scroll down the individual categories until you come to one of these titles. They’re not hard to locate if you’re so inclined.

The Daily Telegraph reworks a piece by Sarah Boxer from The N Y Review of Books to give us this article on Krazy Kat. Herriman: Cartoonist who equalled Cervantes.
It honors Herriman while promoting the Fantagraphics series currently in issue.

- Today officially marks the anniversary of the premiere of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the first US animated feature. Seventy years later, it’s still one of the finest. There’s an excellent article by Wade Sampson about the premiere. If you have the dvd, why not watch it again?

Though Snow White isn’t going to play in a theater soon, a number of other features will.
Here’s your chance to see some great and important animated features on a big screen.
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In January, the Museum of Modern Art will present a month of animation from its collection, ranging from early shorts (including three Dave Fleischer Popeye shorts from 1936, ’37 and ’39) to four features including 2005′s Wallace & Gromit in the Curse of the Were-Rabbit.

The Popeye films and a 1948 Bunin/Bower Alice in Wonderland will both be projected on prints recently restored by the Museum. You can bet I’ll have a lot more to say about Alice as time gets closer.

Still Moving

The Museum continues its regular series derived exclusively from its film collections, featuring works that have been acquired and preserved by MoMA over the last seven decades.
Still Moving features animation, from traditional cel animation to puppets, clay, and CGI. Included are three Technicolor Popeye shorts from the Fleischer studio, recently restored by the Museum, as well as My Neighbors the Yamadas, a disarming chronicle of contemporary daily life by Japanese animation master Isao Takahata. MoMA’s restoration of Alice
in Wonderland, Lou Bunin and Dallas Bower’s deft melding of live actors and puppets, will be screened, as will the feature debut of Wallace and Gromit, and Pixar’s a bug’s life.

Popeye the Sailor Meets Sinbad the Sailor. 1936. USA. Directed by Dave Fleischer. 17 min.
Popeye the Sailor Meets Ali Baba’s Forty Thieves. 1937. USA. Directed by Dave Fleischer. 17 min.
Aladdin and His Wonderful Lamp. 1939. USA. Directed by Dave Fleischer. 22 min. Program 56 min. ________________
Tuesday, January 1, 2:00
(T2); Wednesday, January 9, 1:30 (T3); Thursday, January 10, 1:30 (T3)
(The image above thanks to Animation Backgrounds.)_

Alice in Wonderland. 1948. Great Britain/France. Directed by Lou Bunin, Dallas Bower. Screenplay by Henry Myers, Albert Lewin, Edward Eliscu.With Carol Marsh, Stephen Murray, Pamela Brown. 96 min.
Wednesday, January 2, 6:00 (T2); Friday, January 11, 1:30 (T3); Thursday, January 17, 1:30 (T3)

Wallace & Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit. 2005. Great Britain. Directed by Steve Box, Nick Park. Screenplay by Box, Park, Bob Baker, Mark Burton. Acquired from Dreamworks Animation. 84 min.
Thursday, January 3, 6:00 (T2); Wednesday, January 16, 1:30 (T3); Friday, January 18, 1:30 (T3)

A Bug’s Life. 1998. USA. Directed by John Lasseter, Andrew Stanton. Screenplay by Stanton, Don McEnery, Bob Shaw. 94 min.
Friday, January 4, 6:00 (T2); Wednesday, January 23, 1:30 (T3); Thursday, January 24, 1:30 (T3)

Hohokekyo tonari no Yamada-kun (My Neighbors the Yamadas). 1999. Japan. Written and directed by Isao Takahata. In Japanese; English subtitles. 104 min.
Wednesday, January 30, 1:30 (T3); Thursday, January 31, 1:30 (T3)
(Image above thanks to Conversations With Ghibli _

- Because I was never very involved in the commercial (meaning ads) end of the New York animation world, I didn’t have much contact with Jack Zander. Yet, I do know that he was a significant part of that end of the business in this city. Once you got past the names of Paramount and Terrytoons, Zander’s Animation Parlour was the big studio of my earliest days.

In fact, I probably had more contact with Jack’s son, Mark, over the years. The one interview I had at Zander’s was with Mark. It was one of those interviews where something in the air tells you that you’re never going to work at this place, so why try again. It was nothing Mark did; nothing I did. It just didn’t feel like I was a good fit. I didn’t try again and didn’t have much contact with Jack in the future.

Mark Mayerson let me know, last night, that Jack had passed away Monday at the age of 99. Mark also has one of the best, most succinct bios I’ve seen of Jack’s life on his site this morning. I urge you to check it out.
Tom Sito also has a nice post about Jack on his site today.
AWN has an interview with Jack Zander by Joe Strike.

Jack Zander was a significant figure in New York’s commercial history. He deserves some attention.

- Michael Barrier had a wonderful post at his website, Dec. 17th; it was on Borge Ring, and excuse to print his letter to Mike. I was a pleasantly surprised to see myself mentioned in the piece. Many people have said nice things about me, but this is the first truly poetic quote I’ve read. Borge is a poet of an animator.

He made a small error though in commenting on my film, Dr. DeSoto. Borge said I made the film for $4000. In fact, it was $3500 per minute. I don’t think I could have gotten it photographed for $4000. I’m sure I miscommunicated, as usual, way back in 1984 when we spoke of that film. I hope he doesn’t like the film less.

If you’d like to see some of Borge’s work, Mark Mayerson wrote about him and led us to several films in 2006.

The illustration, above, is by Patrick Mate. I couldn’t resist swiping it for this post; it’s such a great picture and really captures Borge – in my mind, anyway. Patrick’s blog is worth checking into if you don’t know it.

- I just received my issue of Hans Bacher‘s book Dream Worlds. It took a while for Amazon to get it out.
I haven’t read it as yet, but was astonished in carefully thumbing through it. With the same ardent enthusiasm I had for Amid Amidi’s Cartoon Modern and Mike Barrier’s The Animated Man, I encourage you to buy a copy of this book if you’re serious about animation.
It’s stunningly beautiful, filled with excellent art, attractively designed and it looks to be enormously informative. The book shows you what a production designer does in an animated film. I’ve seen no other book like it.

I will have much more to say about this book as I read it.

– Way back in July I posted this piece.
It’s a celebration of the animated segments Eyvind Earle did for The Tennessee Ernie Ford Show. I thought this would be a good time to repeat the post.

“The Story of Christmas” is a piece which is about ten minutes long interspersed throughout this half hour special.
The entire show is a Christian carol sing featuring the Roger Wagner Chorale singing around Tennessee Ernie’s gospel read and sing-along.

The whole is a very reverent piece with no attempt at lightness and comes off as very religious. This would certainly not work on television today, never mind ABC TV which is where it premiered as one episode of the Tennessee Ernie Ford series. Some of you may remember the animated Hubley titles for the show which can be found in John Halas‘ Technique of Film Animation.

Three segments feature the animated graphics with the group singing. The only real narrative tells the birth of Christ in animation. Otherwise the Roger Wagner Chorale, dressed in Dickensian outfits, gather around varied sets looking like the early 19th Century England.
(Click any image to enlarge.)

Earle’s animation was done immediately after Sleeping Beauty was completed. He’d left the studio (or was more probably left by the studio during their massive layoff at the time) and formed his own small independent studio to do work like this. I think this was probably his largest job, and it seems perfectly suited to his style.

Lots of pans and flare effects are built around sliding cells trying to imitate the look of the multiplane camera. There really is no animation here, just the sliding cels of the characters over the pans. It’s still quite attractive for what it is and holds the attention. The piece is well planned and shows off everything Earle had learned at Disney’s studio.

Go here to purchase a copy of the dvd.

The following are frame grabs from many of the scenes:

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The critics are starting to hand out their awards now. Animated Feature has gone in two different directions. As of today:

- Persepolis was named Best Animated Feature yesterday by the NY Film Critics Circle.
- Ratatouille was named Best Animated Feature by the D.C. Film Critics and by the
__National Board of Review.
__The Boston Film Critics don’t have an award for animation (they will next year) but __gave a Best Screenplay award to Brad Bird for the animated feature.
- The LA Film Critics Assn. couldn’t make up their mind. They gave a tie to both films.

Sunday was one of those nightmare days for travelling the subway system in New York. One panhandler was followed by another with nary a break in between. Give me money because I’m sick; give me money to help the poor; give me money to buy my expensive M&Ms. The saxophone guy was followed by the drummer was followed by the gymnasts who smashed into everyone.

On the way home, the train took more than 20 minutes to get into Grand Central Station. For the entire time, the Chinese guy played his one-stringed instrument with depressing, atonal, Asian-sounding music. All the while an older woman sobbed loudly and unremittingly into a stanchion. Numbers of people kept approaching her to see if they could help, but she continuously turned them away. When the train arrived she sat down, continued to cry for half a stop, then perked up. I guess she just had to escape the Asian music and get a seat.

Fortunately, the rest of that rainy evening was better for me. A party for The Kite Runner brought out a lot of the news stars in NY: Pete Hamill, Carl Bernstein et al. It was fun for a short bit. I took a taxi home to avoid public transportation this time.

The Rockefeller Center Tree helped perk up the night;
this was our view from the Kite Runner party.