Michael Sporn, 67, Film Animator, Dies Michael Sporn in the early 1980s. Weston Woods Studios Michael Sporn, an animation artist whose award-winning work included film adaptations of beloved children's books like "Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile" and "Goodnight Moon" as well as stories he conceived, died on Sunday in Manhattan. He was 67. His wife, Heidi Stallings, said the cause was pancreatic cancer. Mr. Sporn started drawing his own versions of popular cartoons when he was growing up in Jackson Heights, Queens. "Popeye" was an early favorite. By the time he was 12 he was making animated films, enlisting his brothers and sisters to handle voice-overs. After working for several years in the 1970s with the noted animation producers and directors John and Faith Hubley, he seemed destined to find his place in the rising industry of animated feature-length films being made at Disney and in Hollywood. Instead, he stayed in New York and, in 1980, set up Michael Sporn Animation, an independent studio in Manhattan. It soon became known for distinctive short films that were ostensibly intended for children but that spoke, often movingly, to adults as well. Animation from the short film "Doctor De Soto," directed by Michael Sporn. Several were adaptations of books by William Steig, including "Doctor De Soto" (1984), "The Amazing Bone" (1985) and "Abel's Island" (1988). "Doctor De Soto" was nominated for an Academy Award, and "Abel's Island" was nominated for an Emmy. For more than two decades his studio made films based on well-known children's books for HBO, including "Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile," "Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel," "The Marzipan Pig," "Ira Sleeps Over" and "Goodnight Moon and Other Stories." For many of these films Mr. Sporn would replicate the drawing style of a book's illustrator while adding sound effects, voices, music and other creative elements. Mr. Sporn also made many films not based on others" books or illustrations. Among the more notable of these is "Whitewash," a short film shown on HBO in 1994. Conceived by Mr. Sporn from a true story and written by the playwright Ntozake Shange, "Whitewash" tells of a young black girl whose face is spray-painted white by a group of white bullies. It won an Emmy Award. John Canemaker, an Academy Award-winning animator and animation historian who teaches at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, said Mr. Sporn had "the skills of an actor in terms of timing and communication with an audience." He added: "He was extraordinarily gifted in terms of the craft and the art of it. But he also should be judged by the material he chose to do. He could have made a career out on the West Coast, but he chose to be an independent animator, to make films his own way. Michael Victor Sporn was born in Manhattan on April 23, 1946. His father, William, left the family when Michael was a toddler. His mother, the former Amelia Young, later married Mario Rosco, a building superintendent and air-conditioning repairman who helped young Michael with some equipment he needed to make his first films. Among his early influences were "Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color" and "The Woody Woodpecker Show." Mr. Sporn graduated from Cardinal Hayes High School in the Bronx and, in 1967, from the New York Institute of Technology. He then enlisted in the Navy, where over five years he learned Russian and was stationed on the Aleutian island of Adak decoding Russian communications. In his spare time he studied animation from mail-order books. In 1972, shortly after his discharge, his career began in earnest when what was supposed to be a brief stint with the Hubleys lasted several years. In addition to his film work, he did animation for Broadway shows, including the 1981 musical "Woman of the Year," in which cartoon characters on a screen interacted with live actors. He also provided titles for several live-action films, among them "Prince of the City" (1981) and "Desperately Seeking Susan" (1985). Besides his wife, who was a voice actor on several of his films, his survivors include his sisters, Patricia Sherf and Christine O'Neill, and his brothers, Jerry Rosco and John Rosco. Even after Mr. Sporn learned he had cancer four years ago, he remained devoted to writing a popular blog about animation, "Splog," which he began in 2005. He filed posts nearly every day, sometimes providing how-to lessons for putting scenes together, sometimes sharply critiquing works he had recently seen - or not seen. He told his many readers that animation had the highest artistic potential, and he urged them not to settle for less. "Yes, it's Oscar time," he wrote in November. I've already commented a bit about the short films seen and how I missed half of them after getting quite ill midway through the lot of them. Sorry I can't properly report, but not sorry I missed most of them.