Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

– One of my favorite videos on the internet right now is this Steve Martin interview with Roz Chast on the New Yorker site. They posted the piece last year, just after the event had occurred, and I saw it then but caught it again recently thanks to the notice at Drawn.

The two of them have a new book about to come out this coming October, The Alphabet from A to Y With Bonus Letter Z! Since they were already doing the book when this interview took place, it was obvious for the New Yorker to team them up at their event.

Here’s the publisher’s description of the book:

The ABCs have never had it so good. Created by two of today’s wittiest, most imaginative minds, The Alphabet from A to Y with Bonus Letter Z! is a sheer delight from A to Z.

In twenty-six alliterative couplets, Steve Martin conjures up much more than mere apples and zebras. Instead we meet Horace the hare, whose hairdo hides hunchbacks, and Ollie the owl, who owed Owen an oboe. Roz Chast contributes the perfect visual settings for Martin’s zany two-liners. Her instantly recognizable drawings are packed with humorous touches both broad and subtle.

At the moment, Steve Martin is in Paris shooting the next Pink Panther film. (I know this because Alfred Molina will be joining him in the film soon, and he’ll stop off in NYC to record lines for my film, POE, on his way to Paris.) Martin also has an autobiography coming out, Born Standing Up, due out in November.

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Garrett Gilchrist continues to work on his recobbled version of Dick Williams’ prime opus, The Thief and the Cobbler. You can read about Garrett’s dedication to this film and to other works by Dick Williams at the forum on his site.

Unfortunately, YouTube has removed the video from their site that Garrett had posted last year. He’d put up The Thief in several parts. This gave you a good view of the entire workcut of the film, prior to the completion Bond company’s halt of the film. They’d pulled it out of the drawing hands of Dick Williams. This labor of love was completed in a truncated way, turned into a musical, and dumped on the market to fail.

Perhaps, the unremittant work of Garrett can bring us a version of the film.

– Well, last night I got to see The Simpson’s Movie. By the time I was in the theater, I was almost tired of it already. There’s been so much publicity about this it’s been hard to avoid. I watched Matt Groening and James Brooks on Charlie Rose this past Monday evening, and I have to say that I fell in love with Brooks but was really irritated by Groening. Perhaps Matt Groening hasn’t done many tv appearances, but he answered every question in a manner that sounded rehearsed and not at all from the heart. His ego seemed front and present, but maybe it was just my interpretation of something that wasn’t really there, and I respect his work enough to give him the benefit of the doubt. TV always seems to add a few pounds.

About the movie. $71 million over the weekend. What more need be said?
A lot, I guess. Ratatouille didn’t perform as well as this one will, but it was a very much better film. This cartoon is the TV show on ones. It’s a laugh riot as expected, but I saw no hint of real character animation. No personality other than what the great voice work gave it. Just a lot of smooth movement mixed with cg movement.

In a sense, like the TV show, you can only judge it by its script. As A.O. Scott, in the NYTimes, wrote, the movie doesn”t live up to its best TV episodes. “It’s no “22 Short Films About Springfield” or “Homer’s Enemy” or “Krusty Gets Busted” or “Lisa the Vegetarian” — and it doesn’t strain to be.”

In short, the film didn’t get under my skin, and I don’t think it wanted to.
It was just a humorous diversion passing through the summer.
South Park: Bigger, Longer, & Uncut did dig deeper and was a much better film, completely separate from the cable TV show.

One comment Groening made on Charlie Rose got me, though. He said that when they started the series, after the short inserts they did for The Tracie Ullman Show, James Brooks told them that audiences had to get caught up in the emotions of the shows and forget they were watching animation. To me this is the start of where the show changed and got smaller.

On the Ullman Show, the characters were graphic creatures that existed both emotionally AND graphically. When Homer strangled Bart, both characters distorted out of their physical forms. It was brilliant, hilarious and completely worked. (The image on the far left comes close to depicting my point but it’s still not quite as far as they’d go in the early days. The other image isn’t even as tame as the stranglehoods done in the movie.)

Once the show was pulled from Klasky-Csupo and sent to Film Roman, the show’s look got slicker, and the artwork suffered. No hint of that graphic distortion appeared again. The Film Roman crew actually tried to reproduce that distorted strangle-hold, but they wimped out and completely lost anything that made me laugh.

The show was best rough around the edges with hints of anything that was great about Groening’s Life In Hell strips. It was able to work emotionally, remind the audience that they were watching graphic hand-drawn distortions, and keep you laughing. Of course, this is just my preference. I’m annoyed by the ones and the slickness and the big-dollar look that removes any hint of the little-cartoon-that-once-could.

The show’s been on forever, and the movie has already made a fortune hitting the $$$ jackpot last weekend. I wish them well, and hope it furthers the success of other animated features. I just wish I had come home with something more.

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– Let me call your attention to what I think is a stunning piece of animation done for Greenpeace. Japanese director, Koji Yamamura has a beautiful short piece on line.
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This artist just keeps doing one great piece of animation after another, and this delicate film is enormous to me. I think this animator is one of our best artists.
Go here to view it.

Yamamura’s most recent film, Franz Kafka’s A Country Doctor was in Cannes, Annecy, Karlovy Vary and will screen in competition at the Ottawa Animation Festival in Sept.

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John Canemaker writes to tell me that the second part of his article on former Disney story artist & children’s book illustrator, J.P. Miller. The article will appear in the new issue of CARTOONS, the International Journal of Animation (Vo. 3, issue 1 Spring 2007), entitled “In Search of John Parr Miller.”

The article is beautifully illustrated with photographs and illustrations by Miller. Several of these images appear below.

J.P. (Jack) Miller ( far right) in 1941 in Mexico with
(l.to r.) Disney publicist Janet Martin, Lee Blair and Herb Ryman.
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J.P. Miller Golden Book illustration from “What If?” (1951)
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“Dr. Squash the Doll Doctor” (Golden Book, 1948)

– Mark Mayerson has a thoughtful interesting website filled with genuinely intelligent animation commentary. I truly enjoy reading much of his writing, hence I’ve so often linked posts to his site.
He has commented negatively on two trailers recently released on the internet, and I think it worth reading if you haven’t already.

I’m often reluctant to make decisions based on trailers I see. I’ve been wrong once or twenty times in my pre-judgement and don’t want to attack films based on trailer-bits I see. I find that with the two films Mark talks about, the Chipmunk feature and Horton Hears A Who, I have prejudged both in different ways than did Mark.

My immediate reaction to the ugly cg chipmunks was absolutely negative. There is nothing that could make me go to that film. The designs of the characters are completely off kilter. To think back to those limited animation but beautifully designed Format film originals, I can only sigh when I look at what a bastardization of ugly design people do today. It’s sad, really. I like Jason Lee, so perhaps he might interest me, but I hate the way they’ve cross cut from him to the chipmunks in the trailer. If the trailer is poorly directed, there’s a good chance the same will be true for the movie. I also know David Seville was a real person, not just the creator of the Chipmunks. (You can see him in Hitchcock’s Rear Window as the pianist/composer in the apartment across from Jimmy Stewart.) Somehow an animated guy might have been more acceptable – though a cg guy would have prompted other complaints.

As for Horton, Jim Carrey‘s name always makes me squirm. I don’t want to see him as Ebenezer Scrooge, and I don’t think he’s perfect casting for Horton. Perhaps the fact that he played the Grinch (shivers go up my spine) makes him eligible for all Dr. Seuss characters. As for Steve Carell, I found myself listening very closely to the readings he gave. I don’t even remember the character he did in the trailer, but I was curious to see more. I do like Blue Sky‘s work. They haven’t hit a bulls eye yet, for me, but their work is always so interesting. I can’t think of any stories they’ve told that I enjoyed completely, but the graphics and the approach are always strong. A film like Robots had so much going for it (despite the presence of Robin Williams‘ voice) that I can’t help but think fondly on the film. I only wish the script had been good. Excellent set-pieces do not make a good film.

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- There’re a lot of new dvds out there for animation fans of golden age cartoons to buy.

Today’s the day that the Popeye dvd’s are released. I’m looking forward to this dvd for all the extras and the brilliant prints that have already been so well promoted on other sites. (See Cartoon Brew 1 and 2.)
Jaime Weinman also reports that there’s a trailer for the new Smurfs dvd included on this Popeye dvd. A collector’s extra worth owning.
The NYPost has a nice little PR article about the dvd.

- Last week the much heralded Woody Woodpecker dvd appeared. I want to own this, but I’m not sure it’s on a rush-to list for me. I already have all those Columbia House Woody Woodpecker Shows that were released years ago on an umpteen number of dvds.

Woody Woodpecker is more nostalgia for me than real animation greatness. It’s not something I’ll watch over and over. (As a matter of fact, I’m not sure there are many dvds I’d watch over and over.)
I am interested in the early work of the Lantz studio. However, once they got into the mid forties, I was never much attracted to their work. Tex Avery did some notewrothy films for Lantz, but I can’t think of any episodes of the “Bearies” that I’d be searching for. Michael Barrier has a good commentary on this dvd at his site.

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- Some sad news hearing of the death of Ingmar Bergman and Tom Snyder. Of course, they are not in the same class. Bergman was a supreme artist and Snyder was a good interviewer. However both made an impact on their times and, in fact, their times overlapped. A whole generation is going too quickly, and I get to feel older every day.

Bergman’s work challenged me in my youth and made me think of the greater side of film and filmmaking. One wonders where this brand of movie making went.

I just recently saw his interview with Dick Cavett. Despite the annoying Cavett, it was interesting watching the master director chat about his work. It was a very odd coupling.

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Kevin Langley has a study of Bobe Cannon’s “smear” drawings in The Dover Boys. It makes for an interesting viewing seeing selected frames YouTubed at 2fps. Kevin’s been offering some excellent material recently on his site, and you should check it out.

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Mark Kausler has an excellent analysis of the varied versions of the animated Krazy Kat. It makes for an excellent read if you’re into KK at all.

– Disney reports that they’re going to eliminate smoking from all their family films. Universal reported that they had already eliminated smoking from their films, but hadn’t announced it until this past Wednesday. U.S. Rep. Edward J. Markey, D-Mass, is spearheading a campaign to assure filmgoers that they won’t have to watch anyone smoking in films, and apparently his campaign is working. I always appreciate it when the government dictates artistic challenges.

It seems like we went through this last year when Tom and Jerry made headlines.

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– The Simpsons Movie officially opens today. The marketing campaign couldn’t be much larger, and it’ll probably be effective over the weekend. I do wonder how many people will pay to see the film when the free tv show plays incessantly on local televisions.

It’s interesting that a large part of the campaign seems to be that this is a hand-drawn 2D animated film, and they put down cg animation. However, there seems to be cg in just about every scene I’ve seen in the ads. I’m sure the film will be funny, in that Simpsons sort of way. I won’t be able to see it until next Tuesday, and I’ll let you know what I think then. (Somehow I think I could probably write the review now.)

Fox has tried to keep reviews quiet, as if there’s a big secret in the plot. However, there are many reviews available now, and none of them seem to reveal any secrets – if there were any. Here are a couple of the local reviews:

- A.O.Scott of the NYTimes says ““The Simpsons,” for all its mischief and iconoclasm, has become an institution, and that status has kept this film from taking too many chances. Why mess with the formula when you can extend the brand?”
-Elizabeth Weitzman of the NYDaily News says “It begins brilliantly and, eventually, loses some steam. But every time you check your watch, a genius gag whizzes by.”
-Newsday“s Jan Stuart says, “In politically repressive cultures, filmmakers often resort to allegory, magical realism and metaphor to sneak painful truths about their society past the government censorship machinery and penetrate the defenses of a populace cowed by fear.
In America, they use cartoons.”

Here’s a list of all the episodes in which the Simpsons smoked cigarettes.

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For those unfamiliar with David Hand‘s Ginger Nutt series of shorts which he produced for Rank, TCM will air three of the episodes of these cartoons on Cartoon Alley, Saturday at 11:30 am. The shorts to air include: Ginger Nutt’s Bee-Bother (1949), Ginger Nutt’s Christmas Circus (1949) and Ginger Nutt’s Forest Dragon (1950).

John Miller provides extensive notes on this series at the TCM site. Look for Cartoon Alley #11. I can vouch that you’ll be safe from images of animals smoking during all of these cartoons.

This series can be bought on dvd (although TCM says no dvd is available.)
There’s an excellent interview with David Hand on Michael Barrier‘s site. This is an important read for anyone devoted to animation.

Thanks to Tom Hachtman for this drawing, “Simpsons and extended family celebrate.”)
(Click images to enlarge.)

- Now that the Harry Potter book is on the market the press seems to have turned to The Simpsons. If you like reading about the show/movie, the PR is flowing, and the articles are out there. Here are some local, NY papers so far:

- The NY Daily News has one by Joe Strike about the return of cel animation.
- They have another by Ethan Sacks about the Simpsons going Hollywood.

- I’ve already pointed to the NYTimes‘ brief interview with Matt Groening.

- A *** star sort-of-review today by Kyle Smith in the NY Post.
- The NYPost has a different twist: an article about Hans Zimmer’s score for the feature film. (The surprise to me is that they didn’t work with Alf Clausen who has done such a brilliant job on the tv show for many years.)
- The Post has another, more generic PR article about the show. (One expects this from the paper that’s the sister organ of FOX TV.)
- Finally, they have another about the history of the show also by Reed Tucker.

- Newsday has a long article by John Andersen that tries to cover it all. The primary focus seems to be cultural references in the movie. Promo Promo Promo.

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- And, of course, now that The Simpsons Movie is about to open, we get to hear about a feature version of The Family Guy. Who says 2D animation is dead?

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– Then, if you’ve had enough of The Simpsons, at this point prior to the opening this Friday, and are looking for other TV animation that’s noticeably different, there’s Rick & Steve, the Happiest Gay Couple In The World on Logo (the all gay cable network).

The NY Times, yesterday, had a review that made it sound interesting enough, though the claims that this is the L&G South Park seems unfounded, according to the review. The show contains “robotic and stop motion animation” (as described by the NY Times review.)

Logo also has other animation to offer. If you go to their site there are numerous clips available.

- I talked about recording Hugh Dancy for POE, my film just getting started. I’d like to put up a bit of a poetry read. Here’s Poe, at the end of his life, reading the first half of Annabel Lee, a poem which talks about the death of his young wife, Virginia. She and Edgar were married a mere 7 years. After she burst a blood vessel in her throat, singing, their inability to buy the proper medication and afford medical help finished the job.

Hugh Dancy reading the first half of
Annabel Lee
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- Matt Jones recently wrote on my blog that he has initiated a tribute blog to Ronald Searle.

This is an excellent new site that I would suggest you visit. Searle is an inspiration as an artist and cartoonist.

As a matter of fact, Matt has a healthy blog of his own that is well worth a look. His somewhat recent sketchbook drawings of Annecy are quite impressive.

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Mark Mayerson‘s blog is as excellent as ever. He has written a couple of posts that are must reads.

. There are some fine comments about Ratatouille unlike others I’ve seen. If you haven’t read this and can still sit through any more about this film, read it. Mark’s written some insightful words about Brad Bird’s films.

. His breakdown of Pinocchio continues moving closer to a climax. Mark’s comments and analysis of this animated gem have to be read by anyone interested in animation.

Speaking of Ratatouille, the box office reports for this past weekend show that the film grossed another $3,360,000 for this past weekend in the U.S. This puts its total at $165,628,000 and makes it the second lowest grossing of Pixar’s films, at this point in its life. Being an excellent film is not everything for a movie; it helps financially if the audiences keep coming back.

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Hans Bacher’s newish site is glorious for anyone even slightly interested in animation design and backgrounds. His relatively new site Animation-Treasures is where Hans posts reconstructions (meticulously done by using multiple frame grabs and photoshop) is a wonder.

I particularly like some of the images that Hans has created from Fantasia‘s Nutcracker Suite. It’s quite beautiful as bacground art and as something new “frame grab” art. I’ve quickly become a regular to this site.

Hans also studies films – both live action and animated – in multiple images taken from the films. Spend some time here.

- I returned from London late last night after a very successful recording with actor, Hugh Dancy. His performance, as expected, was a fine one. I’m pleased, after all these years, to have finally recorded Edgar for my film, which moves foward in leaps and bounds.

On my production blog for this film, I’ll detail the recording in detail later today. Perhaps as soon as we get one of the poems edited down, I’ll put an MP.3 up on that site.

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– The NYTimes Magazine, this coming Sunday will interview Matt Groening for his PR push on the Simpsons. (He’ll be on Conan O’Brien tonight, Thursday. It’ll be curious to see how O’Brien acts with his former boss.) The short Times interview by Deborah Solomon (the art critic not the animator) is, as I said, for the most part PR. However there are one or two questions I’d like to post. The responses have to do with animation.

“The Simpsons Movie,” opening on Friday, reminds us of your substantial role in giving masterpiece status to cartoons and animation. Do you see yourself as an A-level artist?
No. Cartooning is for people who can’t quite draw and can’t quite write. You combine the two half-talents and come up with a career.

How much of the movie is hand-drawn?
We used a combination of cheap labor and computers.

What does that mean? You outsourced the film to animators in China?
No. When I say cheap, I mean there’s no amount of money that an animator can be paid — they deserve our eternal gratitude. I would give them back massages if they would take them.

There are also a couple of questions about politics I found cute:

In your film, a character named President Arnold Schwarzenegger occupies the Oval Office. How did that happen?
We needed a president that would make people laugh. And Schwarzenegger was the obvious choice.

You’re known to be a fairly active Democrat.
I’ve rarely voted for a winner in my political life, with the exception of Al Gore.

Note that he didn’t find George Bush funny. Now that we’re a few weeks into the run, is Comedy Central going to wake up to the fact that Li’L Bush isn’t funny? Or maybe the 18-35 year old males are still coming back for more?

Hopefully, they’re watching for the same reason I used to read the Ernie Bushmiller Nancy comic strip in the daily papers. I knew SOMEDAY it was going to be funny, and I didn’t want to miss it.

Ultimately, looking at all those Nancy strips, I kinda became a fan. I have a book which collects Ernie Bushmiller’s strips, and I like Guy Gilchrist‘s take on the strip. There are a couple of good articles on the site, Interesting Ideas, about the strip and its history. I also found a crazy article on How to Read Nancy. Huh?

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- The excellent site, Blather from Brooklyn has a wonderful post about Piet Mondrian and the influence NY had on him (and perhaps his influcence on the City.)

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- Speaking of art, if anyone out there is interested in who was nominated for prime time animation emmies, here are the nominees:

Outstanding Animated Program (for Programming Less Than One Hour)
Avatar: The Last Airbender • City Of Walls And Secrets
Nickelodeon • Nickelodeon Animation Studio
Robot Chicken • Lust For Puppets
Cartoon Network • ShadowMachine Films
South Park • Make Love, Not Warcraft
Comedy Central • Central Productions
SpongeBob SquarePants • Bummer Vacation / Wig Struck
Nickelodeon • Nickelodeon Animation Studio in ass’n with United Plankton Pictures, Inc.
The Simpsons • The Haw-Hawed Couple
Fox • Gracie Films in association with 20th Century Fox

Outstanding Animated Program (for Programming One Hour Or More)
Good Wilt Hunting (Foster’s Home For Imaginary Friends)
Cartoon Network • Cartoon Network Studios
Hellboy Animated: Sword Of Storms • Starz
Starz Media in ass’n with Revolution Studios
Secrets Of The Deep • Discovery Channel
Impossible Pictures in ass’n with Discovery Channel
Where’s Lazlo? (Camp Lazlo)
Cartoon Network • Cartoon Network Studios

– Continuing my posting of the animation keys from the Popeye Tang commercial done at Zander’s Animation Parlour back in the early 70′s. Jack Zander cast himself to animate the spot since he hadn’t worked with these characters before. (His studio did the animation for The Man Who Hated Laughter for King Features Syndicate via Hal Seeger Prods. back in 1972, but Jack didn’t animate on it.)

(Click on any image to enlarge.)

On Saturday past, I put up the Popeye portion of this scene. Here are the Olive Oyl drawings. Jack has a bit more fun with her, and his drawings are much more loose.

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10 15

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26 29

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40 46

51 54

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– Dave Hilberman has died.

Karl Cohen of ASIFA San Francisco sent me a note to inform me that Hilberman had passed away. Along with his long time partner, Zach Schwartz, he was one of the key founders of UPA, and his death marks a dark moment ending an era. I’d like to lead you to another document I posted a while back;
it’s an interview by John Canemaker which was originally published in Caroonist Profiles. Please check it out. Here.
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– On the entertaining site, A Hole In The Head, Johnny C posts some drawings from an old 1947 Life Magazine article in which some well known cartoonists were asked to draw their cartoon characters blind folded. The results are published and they’re fascinating.

Equally fascinating is that many of these “famous” cartoons are probably not recognizable to a substantial part of the world today. Even the most famous, at the time, Dick Tracy isn’t published any more. Still out there is Gasoline Alley and Blondie, but their hold is a tenuous one.

At first I laughed at the drawings the blindfolded cartoonists had made, and then I got a bit sad at the fragility of fame.

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- We all know George Herriman’s incredible work on Krazy Kat, but Alan Holtz on his site Stripper’s Guide has been hosting completely different work by Herriman. Every Saturday there are several panels of early work by this inspiring artist.

Why do cartoons look so meagre these days in comparison?

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- Here’s the link to a Russian site which features reuse of animation in the Disney features. Apparently, they found another use for xerography in the era of the Nine Old Men. (I wonder if Don Bluth was there at the time.)

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Here’s a nice article about Pixar artist Jason Deamer. He talks about character design for Ratatouille and Cars and examples of his drawings are featured. As a matter of fact there’s a lot of material out there about this film. Lots of drawings and interviews. Just go to YouTube and type in Ratatouille.

– I’ve had an attraction to those junk videos you’d find in bins in Walmart or supermarkets or Woolworths (remember Woolworths – five & dime stores?). You know the type I mean, the badly drawn Bugs Bunny or Porky Pig. Mickey Mouse’s Bizarro twin. The drawing was always so bad you’d wonder what high school art student did this job? Sometimes, once you bought the video for a buck, you got what you paid for; a bad copy of the cartoon you wanted. However, sometimes you got gems.

Well, two of my films have shown up in those bins. At least it looks it. The covers are so pathetic that you have to wonder. Wonderbags. That’s why they call it that. You wonder who drew these replicants that look like bad rip-offs of my films. It’s a long story how they got there, but I found two of my films in horrible packaging in Chinatown. No one dollar package; they cost $10 each. You can buy the real dvd’s on line for nine dollars, and the real ones come with another film and a documentary.
(Click any image to enlarge.)

Let’s take a look at what the dvd cases look like inside those bags.

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These two dvd’s are available in Wonderbag packaging for a
higher price than the real dvd costs from my distributor, First Run Features.

Obviously, those packages were produced in some alternate universe. My draw dropped when I first saw them. I mean, look at that frogs fingers and toes! But, you know, the video transfer is a good one. The packaging is UGLY, and they cost $10!

So why would you buy these things? Is it for the other surprise gifts? Let’s look at what else comes in the Wonderbag.

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There’s a bunch of fish stickers and a rubber frog.

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There’s another rubber thing, what is it a spider? I don’t know. And a rubber band.
I think you get better gifts in Cracker Jack boxes!

I’m hoping you won’t find these collector’s items. But, if you do, all I can say is don’t waste your $10.

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By the way, if you want to see some of those public domain video packages you can go to Tom Stathes’ Cartoons on Film site. They showcase a number of them.

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– Coming soon to the Film Forum in NYC will premiere the German film, Summer ’04. It’s a film with echoes of Roman Polanski’s masterpiece, KNIFE IN THE WATER. This contemporary German drama sketches a love triangle that plays out, in part, on a sailboat.

On the same bill, they’re including the short film, NEVER LIKE THE FIRST TIME!, a Swedish animation in which four disparate people tell the story of their first sexual encounter. Documentary sound tracks lead us into separate stories, all visually different, The film has played at a number of
animation festivals and has won quite a few awards. You can see a short clip from this short here.

I like knowing that this theater continues their excellent programming, including animation in its schedule. However, I do hope they’ll soon put together another complete program of progressive shorts.

Here’s the schedule for the double bill: SUMMER ’04 and NEVER LIKE THE FIRST TIME!
August 1-14, at Film Forum, W. Houston St. (W. of 6th Ave.)
with screenings daily at 1, 3:15, 5:45, 8, and 10:10.