Richard Williams
Encyclopedia
Richard Williams is a Canadian animator
. He is best known for serving as animation director on Disney
/Amblin
's Who Framed Roger Rabbit
and for his unfinished feature film The Thief and the Cobbler
. He was also a film title sequence designer and animator
; his most famous works in this field included the title sequences to What's New, Pussycat? (1965), title and linking sequences in The Charge of the Light Brigade
(1968). He also animated the eponymous cartoon feline for two of the later Pink Panther films.
Richard Williams emigrated from Toronto to Ibiza in 1953 and then to London in 1955. In 1958 he produced the work that boosted his career which won the BAFTA
award in 1959 for Best Animated Film, The Little Island
. In the Thames Television
documentary "The Thief Who Never Gave Up", broadcast in the late 1980s, Williams credits animator Bob Godfrey
with giving him his start in the business, "Bob Godfrey helped me...I worked in the basement and would do work in kind, and he would let me use the camera...[it was] a barter system". After his noted work in the mid-1960s he went on to direct the Academy Award
-winning A Christmas Carol
(1971), the full-length feature Raggedy Ann & Andy: A Musical Adventure
(1977) and the Emmy-winning telefilm Ziggy's Gift
(1982). He also served as director of animation on Who Framed Roger Rabbit
(1988), winning two more Oscars for his work. He has written an acclaimed animation how-to book, "The Animator's Survival Kit
", published in 2002 (expanded edition, 2009).
, a painstakingly hand-animated epic inspired by the Arabian Nights and with the production title The Thief and the Cobbler
, was begun in 1968 and was initially self-funded. As a largely non-verbal feature meant for an adult audience, The Thief was initially dismissed as unmarketable. After over twenty years of work, Williams had completed only twenty minutes of the film, and following the critical success of Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Williams sought and secured a production deal with Warner Bros.
in 1990. However, the production went over deadline, and in 1992, with only 15 minutes left to complete, The Completion Bond Company, who had insured Warners' financing of the film, feared competition from the similarly themed Disney film Aladdin and seized the project from Williams in Camden, London. Completion Bond then had the animation completed in Korea under the direction of animator Fred Calvert. New scenes were also animated to include several musical interludes. Calvert's product was released internationally in 1994 as The Princess and the Cobbler. Miramax then acquired rights to the project and extensively rewrote and re-edited the film to include continuous dialogue, as well as many cuts to lengthy sequences. Miramax's product was released in 1995 under the title Arabian Knight. Ever since its release and negative reception, Williams prefers not to discuss the film at all. In 2006, a fan of William's work named Garrett Gilchrist released a bootleg
DVD titled The Thief and the Cobbler: The Recobbled Cut with a restored version of the movie he made himself, mixing the original audio track, finished scenes, low quality images, pencil tests, and even pieces of the storyboard.
Following the publication of "The Animator's Survival Kit
" in 2000, its 2009 expanded edition and 16 DVD animated companion set, Richard Williams has completed a 9 minute short film titled Circus Drawings. The silent film, with live accompaniment, premiered at the Pordenone Silent Film Festival in Italy in September 2010.
in Toronto
. Currently, Williams lives in Bristol
with his fourth wife (Imogen Sutton) and two children (Leif and Natasha). Williams also has four children from two of his three previous marriages, including animator Alexander Williams and painter Holly Williams-Brock.
Animator
An animator is an artist who creates multiple images that give an illusion of movement called animation when displayed in rapid sequence; the images are called frames and key frames. Animators can work in a variety of fields including film, television, video games, and the internet. Usually, an...
. He is best known for serving as animation director on Disney
Walt Disney Pictures
Walt Disney Pictures is an American film studio owned by The Walt Disney Company. Walt Disney Pictures and Television, a subsidiary of the Walt Disney Studios and the main production company for live-action feature films within the Walt Disney Motion Pictures Group, based at the Walt Disney...
/Amblin
Amblin Entertainment
Amblin Entertainment is an American film and television production company founded by director and producer Steven Spielberg and film producers Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall in 1981. Amblin is only a production company, and has never distributed its own movies, nor has it fully financed its...
's Who Framed Roger Rabbit
Who Framed Roger Rabbit
Who Framed Roger Rabbit is a 1988 American fantasy-comedy-noir film directed by Robert Zemeckis and released by Touchstone Pictures. The film combines live action and animation, and is based on Gary K. Wolf's novel Who Censored Roger Rabbit?, which depicts a world in which cartoon characters...
and for his unfinished feature film The Thief and the Cobbler
The Thief and the Cobbler
The Thief and the Cobbler is an animated feature film, famous for its animation and its long, troubled history. The film was conceived by Canadian animator Richard Williams, who worked 28 years on the project. Beginning production in 1964, Williams intended The Thief and the Cobbler to be his...
. He was also a film title sequence designer and animator
Animator
An animator is an artist who creates multiple images that give an illusion of movement called animation when displayed in rapid sequence; the images are called frames and key frames. Animators can work in a variety of fields including film, television, video games, and the internet. Usually, an...
; his most famous works in this field included the title sequences to What's New, Pussycat? (1965), title and linking sequences in The Charge of the Light Brigade
The Charge of the Light Brigade (1968 film)
The Charge of the Light Brigade is a 1968 British war film made by Woodfall Film Productions and distributed by United Artists . It was directed by Tony Richardson and produced by Neil Hartley....
(1968). He also animated the eponymous cartoon feline for two of the later Pink Panther films.
Richard Williams emigrated from Toronto to Ibiza in 1953 and then to London in 1955. In 1958 he produced the work that boosted his career which won the BAFTA
British Academy of Film and Television Arts
The British Academy of Film and Television Arts is a charity in the United Kingdom that hosts annual awards shows for excellence in film, television, television craft, video games and forms of animation.-Introduction:...
award in 1959 for Best Animated Film, The Little Island
The Little Island
The Little Island is a 1958 British animated short film directed by Richard Williams. It was Williams' first film. Williams wrote, produced, directed and animated the short film. Self-financed, it was a half-hour philosophical argument without words...
. In the Thames Television
Thames Television
Thames Television was a licensee of the British ITV television network, covering London and parts of the surrounding counties on weekdays from 30 July 1968 until 31 December 1992....
documentary "The Thief Who Never Gave Up", broadcast in the late 1980s, Williams credits animator Bob Godfrey
Bob Godfrey
Roland Frederick Godfrey is a British animator whose career spans more than fifty years. He is probably best known for the children's cartoon series Roobarb , Noah and Nelly in... SkylArk and Henry's Cat and for the Trio chocolate biscuit advertisements shown in the UK during the early 1980s...
with giving him his start in the business, "Bob Godfrey helped me...I worked in the basement and would do work in kind, and he would let me use the camera...[it was] a barter system". After his noted work in the mid-1960s he went on to direct the Academy Award
Academy Awards
An Academy Award, also known as an Oscar, is an accolade bestowed by the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize excellence of professionals in the film industry, including directors, actors, and writers...
-winning A Christmas Carol
A Christmas Carol (1971 film)
A Christmas Carol is an Academy Award-winning animated cartoon adaptation of Charles Dickens' venerable 1843 novella which was a made-for-television production originally broadcast on ABC in the United States.-Cast and characters:...
(1971), the full-length feature Raggedy Ann & Andy: A Musical Adventure
Raggedy Ann & Andy: A Musical Adventure
Raggedy Ann and Andy: A Musical Adventure is a 1977 American animated film directed by Richard Williams. It was produced by the Bobbs-Merrill Company, and released by 20th Century Fox...
(1977) and the Emmy-winning telefilm Ziggy's Gift
Ziggy's Gift
Ziggy's Gift is a 1982 American animated TV special short film directed by Richard Williams, based on the comic strip Ziggy. It was written by Ziggy's creator Tom Wilson and Animators included Eric Goldberg and Tom Sito with music by Harry Nilsson...
(1982). He also served as director of animation on Who Framed Roger Rabbit
Who Framed Roger Rabbit
Who Framed Roger Rabbit is a 1988 American fantasy-comedy-noir film directed by Robert Zemeckis and released by Touchstone Pictures. The film combines live action and animation, and is based on Gary K. Wolf's novel Who Censored Roger Rabbit?, which depicts a world in which cartoon characters...
(1988), winning two more Oscars for his work. He has written an acclaimed animation how-to book, "The Animator's Survival Kit
The Animator's Survival Kit
The Animator's Survival Kit: A Manual of Methods, Principles, and Formulas for Classical, Computer, Games, Stop Motion, and Internet Animators is a book by award-winning animator and director Richard Williams about various aspects of animation...
", published in 2002 (expanded edition, 2009).
The Thief and the Cobbler
Richard Williams' magnum opusMasterpiece
Masterpiece in modern usage refers to a creation that has been given much critical praise, especially one that is considered the greatest work of a person's career or to a work of outstanding creativity, skill or workmanship....
, a painstakingly hand-animated epic inspired by the Arabian Nights and with the production title The Thief and the Cobbler
The Thief and the Cobbler
The Thief and the Cobbler is an animated feature film, famous for its animation and its long, troubled history. The film was conceived by Canadian animator Richard Williams, who worked 28 years on the project. Beginning production in 1964, Williams intended The Thief and the Cobbler to be his...
, was begun in 1968 and was initially self-funded. As a largely non-verbal feature meant for an adult audience, The Thief was initially dismissed as unmarketable. After over twenty years of work, Williams had completed only twenty minutes of the film, and following the critical success of Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Williams sought and secured a production deal with Warner Bros.
Warner Bros.
Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc., also known as Warner Bros. Pictures or simply Warner Bros. , is an American producer of film and television entertainment.One of the major film studios, it is a subsidiary of Time Warner, with its headquarters in Burbank,...
in 1990. However, the production went over deadline, and in 1992, with only 15 minutes left to complete, The Completion Bond Company, who had insured Warners' financing of the film, feared competition from the similarly themed Disney film Aladdin and seized the project from Williams in Camden, London. Completion Bond then had the animation completed in Korea under the direction of animator Fred Calvert. New scenes were also animated to include several musical interludes. Calvert's product was released internationally in 1994 as The Princess and the Cobbler. Miramax then acquired rights to the project and extensively rewrote and re-edited the film to include continuous dialogue, as well as many cuts to lengthy sequences. Miramax's product was released in 1995 under the title Arabian Knight. Ever since its release and negative reception, Williams prefers not to discuss the film at all. In 2006, a fan of William's work named Garrett Gilchrist released a bootleg
Bootleg recording
A bootleg recording is an audio or video recording of a performance that was not officially released by the artist or under other legal authority. The process of making and distributing such recordings is known as bootlegging...
DVD titled The Thief and the Cobbler: The Recobbled Cut with a restored version of the movie he made himself, mixing the original audio track, finished scenes, low quality images, pencil tests, and even pieces of the storyboard.
Following the publication of "The Animator's Survival Kit
The Animator's Survival Kit
The Animator's Survival Kit: A Manual of Methods, Principles, and Formulas for Classical, Computer, Games, Stop Motion, and Internet Animators is a book by award-winning animator and director Richard Williams about various aspects of animation...
" in 2000, its 2009 expanded edition and 16 DVD animated companion set, Richard Williams has completed a 9 minute short film titled Circus Drawings. The silent film, with live accompaniment, premiered at the Pordenone Silent Film Festival in Italy in September 2010.
Personal life
Williams is one of a number of successful people in the entertainment industry to have come from Northern Secondary SchoolNorthern Secondary School
Northern Secondary School is a public high school in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It teaches grades 9 through 12.Northern's football team, the Red Knights, have won numerous titles in Toronto's high school league...
in Toronto
Toronto
Toronto is the provincial capital of Ontario and the largest city in Canada. It is located in Southern Ontario on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario. A relatively modern city, Toronto's history dates back to the late-18th century, when its land was first purchased by the British monarchy from...
. Currently, Williams lives in Bristol
Bristol
Bristol is a city, unitary authority area and ceremonial county in South West England, with an estimated population of 433,100 for the unitary authority in 2009, and a surrounding Larger Urban Zone with an estimated 1,070,000 residents in 2007...
with his fourth wife (Imogen Sutton) and two children (Leif and Natasha). Williams also has four children from two of his three previous marriages, including animator Alexander Williams and painter Holly Williams-Brock.
Filmography
- The Little IslandThe Little IslandThe Little Island is a 1958 British animated short film directed by Richard Williams. It was Williams' first film. Williams wrote, produced, directed and animated the short film. Self-financed, it was a half-hour philosophical argument without words...
(1958) (director, writer, producer, animator) - The Dermis ProbeThe Dermis ProbeThe Dermis Probe is a book by the writer Idries Shah published Octagon Press in 1970. A paperback edition was published in 1989 and again in 1993. The stories presented in the book are also available in an audio format....
(1965) (director, writer, editing) - The Sailor and the Devil (1965) (producer)
- A Christmas CarolA Christmas Carol (1971 film)A Christmas Carol is an Academy Award-winning animated cartoon adaptation of Charles Dickens' venerable 1843 novella which was a made-for-television production originally broadcast on ABC in the United States.-Cast and characters:...
(TV movie) (1971) (director, producer) - Raggedy Ann & Andy: A Musical AdventureRaggedy Ann & Andy: A Musical AdventureRaggedy Ann and Andy: A Musical Adventure is a 1977 American animated film directed by Richard Williams. It was produced by the Bobbs-Merrill Company, and released by 20th Century Fox...
(1977) (director, production supervisor, animator) - Ziggy's GiftZiggy's GiftZiggy's Gift is a 1982 American animated TV special short film directed by Richard Williams, based on the comic strip Ziggy. It was written by Ziggy's creator Tom Wilson and Animators included Eric Goldberg and Tom Sito with music by Harry Nilsson...
(TV movie) (1982) (director, producer, voice of Crooked Santa) - Sesame StreetSesame StreetSesame Street has undergone significant changes in its history. According to writer Michael Davis, by the mid-1970s the show had become "an American institution". The cast and crew expanded during this time, including the hiring of women in the crew and additional minorities in the cast. The...
("These Are Your Parts" animated sequence) (1985) (director, producer) - Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (1988) (animation director, voice of Droopy)
- The Thief and the CobblerThe Thief and the CobblerThe Thief and the Cobbler is an animated feature film, famous for its animation and its long, troubled history. The film was conceived by Canadian animator Richard Williams, who worked 28 years on the project. Beginning production in 1964, Williams intended The Thief and the Cobbler to be his...
(1993) (director, screenplay, producer, lead animator, voice of Laughing Brigand) - Circus Drawings (2010) (director, animation)
External links
- How to Survive-and Thrive-in Animation - A review of Richard's acclaimed book, The Animator's Survival Kit
- Screen Online