How to use this Page

"Prologue," he says, "is the only thing so far in my career that I've ever been really been pleased with."

The post Interview: Richard Williams Talks About His Oscar and BAFTA-Nominated Short ‘Prologue’ appeared first on Cartoon Brew.

Annecy is taking over San Diego Comic-Con as the place for Hollywood to preview its major projects.

The Annecy International Animated Film Festival has confirmed that animation legend Richard Williams will attend the festival this year.

"I do think that animation can have a language of its own, rather than simply mimicking live action."

This Sunday at the BFI Southbank in London, the British Film Institute, in association with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, will present the UK/European premiere of the reconstructed work print of Richard Williams' "The Thief and the Cobbler." Williams will discuss the film afterward with film critic David Robinson.

Today marks the 80th birthday of legendary animator, director and educator Richard Williams. Born on March 19, 1933, in Toronto, Canada, Williams may be (along with Hayao Miyazaki) the most important and influential living animator today.

His credits stretch across decades and include features (Raggedy Ann & Andy: A Musical Adventure, The Thief and the Cobbler, Who Framed Roger Rabbit), TV specials (A Christmas Carol, Ziggy’s Gift), movie titles (The Charge of the Light Brigade, The Pink Panther Strikes Again), shorts (The Little Island, Love Me Love Me Love Me) and thousands of TV commercials.

He is the bridge between the Golden Age of hand-drawn animation and today’s endless stream of computer-generated blockbuster features. He has spent decades imparting the knowledge that he learned from the greats (Art Babbitt, Grim Natwick, Milt Kahl, Ken Harris, Emery Hawkins) to younger generations. For decades, he ran a studio that was as much a school as it was a production studio. Later, he traveled around the world to teach masterclasses, and more recently, he has reached his largest audience through the bestselling book The Animator’s Survival Kit.

His legacy in animation will be debated for decades to come, as will his inability to finish his most ambitious feature film project, but I would argue that his greatness does not stem from any single project. More than any film he made, it is Williams’ lifelong commitment to craft and his pursuit of excellence that will be remembered. He has unwaveringly promoted and upheld a standard of quality throughout his career, even during eras when such standards were considered unfashionable.

Williams’ ambition to create spectacular animation has always trumped all other considerations. Take the following commercial he single-handedly animated in six weeks:

In another animator’s hands, this would have been another instantly forgettable TV spot, but Williams turned it into one of the most breathtaking pieces of action animation ever committed to film, complete with moving camera, animation on ones, and exquisite rendering. In comical contrast to the prosaic product being advertised, the animation is an epic achievement.

Williams’ best work, be it commercials or fragments of Thief and the Cobbler, offer an indescribably exhilarating thrill. It is the stuff that animation lovers live to see and of which we see far too little. One of Williams’ mentors, Art Babbitt, said, “Everything we’ve done up till now hasn’t even begun to scratch the surface of what animation can do.” Williams has been scratching away at that surface for the past sixty years, and has time and time again revealed new possibilities that were previously inconceivable. You can spend hours exploring Williams’ career output at the indispensable Thief Archive on YouTube, including this peerless sequence of pure visual excitement from Thief and the Cobbler:

Richard Williams’ current project is a soon-to-be-released interactive iPad app version of his Animator’s Survival Kit which will also include a copy of his new animated short Circus Drawings.

Happy Birthday to Richard Williams, an animation rebel and master.

This Friday, November 9th, New Yorkers can see the East Coast premiere of Kevin Schreck’s new documentary Persistence of Vision, about Richard William’s never-completed-as-envisioned The Thief and the Cobbler. Williams worked on the film from the mid-1960s through the early-1990s before it was taken away from him and finished by producer Fred Calvert.

I’m really looking forward to seeing Schreck’s film, which includes interviews with many people who worked on the film, though not Williams who declined to participate. If the film is playing at a festival near you, see it! The documentary likely won’t be released on home video anytime soon because Schreck didn’t obtain permission from the copyright holders whose animation appears in the film. Sadly, this is just about the only way nowadays to do honest projects of a historical nature since the handful of conglomerates that own vast film libraries don’t understand the value of cooperating with historians and researchers to present an accurate portrait of animation history.

The film screens on Friday at 9:15pm at the SVA Theater (333 W. 23rd Street, NY, NY). The director will do a Q&A after the film. Tickets cannot be purchased at the theater. They must be purchased in advance, either at the IFC Center or online HERE. There’s also a Facebook page for the film where you can bug the filmmakers to bring a screening to your city.