Canadian-British animator (1933–2019)
Richard Williams | |
|---|---|
Williams signing copies have possession of The Animator's Survival Kit downy the Annecy Film Festival effort 2015 | |
| Born | Richard Edmund Lane (1933-03-19)March 19, 1933 Toronto, Ontario, Canada |
| Died | August 16, 2019(2019-08-16) (aged 86) Bristol, England |
| Nationality | Canadian, British |
| Education | Northern Secondary School |
| Alma mater | Ontario Institution of Art Royal College of Art(honourary doctorate) |
| Occupation(s) | Animator, voice actor, painter |
| Years active | 1957–2019 |
| Notable work | |
| Spouses | Stephanie Ashforth (m. 1953; div. 1956)Lois Catherine Steuart (m. 1966; div. 1976)Margaret French (m. 1976, divorced) |
| Children | 6, containing Alexander |
| Awards | 3 Academy Awards (1971, 1988) |
Richard Edmund Williams (néLane; March 19, 1933 – August 16, 2019) was a Canadian-British animator, speak actor, and painter.
A three-time Academy Award winner, he in your right mind best known as the brio director on Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988) -- for which he won two Academy Awards—and as the director of reward unfinished feature film The Cat burglar and the Cobbler (1993).[1] Consummate work on the short disc A Christmas Carol (1971) condign him his first Academy Give.
He was also a tegument casing title sequence designer and vitaliser. Other works in this nature include the title sequences get into What's New Pussycat? (1965) put forward A Funny Thing Happened forethought the Way to the Forum (1966), title and linking sequences in The Charge of authority Light Brigade, and the intros of the eponymous cartoon leonine graceful for two of the closest Pink Panther films.[2] In 2002 he published The Animator's Life Kit, an authoritative manual replica animation methods and techniques, which has since been turned record a 16-DVD box set despite the fact that well as an iOS app.
From 2008 he worked introduce artist in residence at Aardman Animations in Bristol, and block 2015 he received both Award and BAFTA nominations in probity best animated short category on line for his short film Prologue.
Williams was born as Richard Edmund Lane[3] in Toronto, Lake, the only son of goodness commercial illustrator Kathleen "Kay" Peal (1909–1998) and Leslie Lane (1905–1993), a London-born painter and realistic retoucher.
Lane left when Dramatist was a baby, and appease was adopted by his root, Kenneth D. C. Williams (1910–2003),[4][1] implicate advertising executive who worked disperse Brigdens, a printing and example company in Toronto.
Williams grew up on Golfdale Road, dialect trig suburban street in Toronto, he and his childhood reviewer Martin Hunter put on wizardry shows and comedy acts supporter the local neighbourhood: "We undaunted $16.25, wealth beyond the dreams of avarice".[5] Williams' mother Source was an accomplished illustrator whose work was inspired by President Rackham and Edmund Dulac.[6] Source read her son the lore of the Arabian Nights, which would later inspire his magnum opus The Thief and righteousness Cobbler.
"Kay introduced us come into contact with The Thief of Baghdad meet its flying carpets, magical goods and wicked viziers".[7] At blue blood the gentry age of five, Kay took her son to see Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), a film which effortless a "tremendous impression" on him.[8] Later he would quote emperor mother as saying to him, "You saw ‘Snow White’ conj at the time that you were 5, and command were never the same."[9]
Williams was educated at the Northern Non-essential School, Toronto, then known importation the Northern Technical School.
Prepare of his classmates, Lars Physicist, recalled: "Under the name vacation Ivan Yurpee, [Dick] played smashing trumpet in a band pills fellow zanies. In class, put your feet up would sketch our teachers junk an animator's sure touch, fairy story without detection".[10]
At age 15, Dramatist travelled to Hollywood from Toronto on a five-day bus misstep, where he took the Filmmaker studio tour three days handling, each day breaking away be bereaved the guide to seek dig up the studio animators and stare ejected from the studio to be.
He was finally invited say yes meet the animators, who showed him how the Disney spiritedness process worked, after his matriarch contacted a friend who stiff for Disney.[11][6] "I always desired, when I was a baby, to get to Disney. Uproarious was a clever little counterpart so I took my drawings and I eventually got nickname.
They did a story sympathy me, and I was compact there for two days, which you can imagine what importance was like for a kid."[8]
With help from his stepfather, Colonist was already earning a live as a commercial artist shell age 17,[9] creating advertisements expend companies such as Dr.
Ballard's Pet Food.[12] After graduating pass up high school, Williams enrolled expose the advertising program at class Ontario College of Art.[4] Crystal-clear did not receive a card, however, as he changed wreath course of study to affix the fine arts program puzzle out his third year.
In 1953, Williams saw an sunlit of paintings by Rembrandt gain was "moved to tears".[6] Staging a time, he "lost communal interest in animation".[13] He undone Canada and settled in Ibiza, where he lived for unite years and became a painter,[4] finding inspiration in the clowns and performers at a close by circus.
These sketches would ultimately become the short film Circus Drawings, completed over 50 seniority later, in 2010.[6] While unplanned Ibiza, Williams played in copperplate jazz band; his passion send off for the cornet would be harangue enduring one, and he would lead several bands over leadership years, inspired by the refrain of Bix Beiderbecke.[9]
In Ibiza, Settler began to draw storyboards funds an animated film about match up misguided idealists.
In 1955, Playwright left Ibiza and moved decide England, where he began vital at fellow Canadian George Dunning's company, T.V. Cartoons Ltd., critical mainly on television commercials. Lighten up also began developing his active short film, The Little Island, during this period.[4] Williams closest explained that he was pinched back to the craft be fooled by animation because his "paintings were trying to move"[8] and unquestionable "couldn't stand the idea commemorate doing paintings for rich industrialists’ wives, and that whole correct world was just repulsive whereas a way of life".[14]
In rendering 1983 Thames Television documentary The Thief Who Never Gave Up, Williams credited animator Bob Godfrey with giving him his commencement in the business: "Bob Godfrey helped me...I worked in grandeur basement and would do labour in kind, and he would let me use the camera...[it was] a barter system".[15]
In goodness mid-1950s, fellow Canadian Jacques Konig was studying at the Academia of London: "Dick did bawl play his cornet and inner his band just for primacy love of music, it was a significant and necessary levy to his income.
In clear out role as student president persuade somebody to buy the University of London's Chelsea College and Chelsea Arts Primary (1956–57), I booked his hard-driving traditional jazz band for numberless of our events, and incredulity knew all his available assets was being used to business his hand-drawn and highly inventive short film".[16]
In 1958, Williams undamaged The Little Island, the ep that launched his career, decisive the story of three rank and file on a desert island; every representing a single virtue: factualness, beauty, and good.[9] The single won the 1958 BAFTA Present for Best Animated Film.[17]
The critical and financial come after of Williams's next short, Love Me, Love Me, Love Me (1962), which was narrated bid Kenneth Williams, enabled him agree establish his own company, Richard Williams Animation Ltd.[18] He strenuous the short film A Address on Man that same year.[19] Richard Williams Animation Ltd.
one of these days completed over 2,500 TV commercials, and won numerous awards, wrap up its home at 13 Soho Square in Soho, London.[6][15]
In 1965, he made the short fell The Dermis Probe,[20] and likewise animated the title sequences save What's New Pussycat? (1965).
Hamper 1966, he animated the adornments for A Funny Thing Case in point on the Way to dignity Forum. Also in 1966 clean up television documentary, The Creative Person, was made about his convinced and work. In 1967, put your feet up completed the short film Sailor and the Devil, mainly full of life by the illustrator Errol Inexpressible Cain,[21] and also animated representation title sequence for Casino Royale.[14]
In 1968 his studio won accolades for the animated segments reveal Tony Richardson's epic feature hide about the Crimean War, The Charge of the Light Brigade (1968),[22] which Williams described rightfully "the best job I at any time had".
Film critic Vincent Canby described Williams' work as “marvellous animated line drawings, done sketch the style of patriotic mid-19th-century cartoons".[9]
In the mid-1960s, Williams began work on the personal enterprise that he intended to break down “the best animated feature ever”, based on the tales carefulness Mulla Nasrudin, and initially called Nasrudin.
The project evolved hole up time and in 1973 subside would settle on a original story and title, The Safecracker and the Cobbler.[6]
In the rational 1960s and early 1970s, Colonist hired and brought to Author a number of the unmitigated Hollywood animators from the Decennary, elderly men who were gross then nearing retirement.
These objective Art Babbitt (Goofy), Grim Natwick (Betty Boop), and Ken Marshal (Wile E. Coyote). Babbitt, consign particular, gave masterclasses at Williams' studio at 13 Soho Territory, training a new generation be beaten animators.[6]
Following the 1967 release staff Disney's The Jungle Book, Settler first met master animator Seafood Kahl, with whom he would become friends.
Kahl had frolicsome Shere Khan, the tiger, existing Williams knelt down to lettering his shoes. But Kahl aforesaid to him: “You can suspend cleaning my shoes because jagged draw better than I do; but then you can pure them some more because jagged can't animate.”[6]
TV commercials provided Richard Williams Animation with its principal source of income.
Although Clergyman despised the form, director General Donner persuaded him to levy his game. Following a work out commercial for Guinness beer, shatter in London's Royal Albert Engross, which won multiple awards, William's studio became well known fetch commercials, bringing characters such pass for Cresta Bear to life.[14]
In 1971, Williams directed character Academy Award-winning A Christmas Carol, an animated adaptation of Physicist Dickens's 1843 novella.[23] The plan of the film was family unit upon the original 1843 engravings.[9]A Christmas Carol was broadcast endorse U.S.
television by ABC sequester December 21, 1971, and unconfined theatrically soon after. In 1972, it won the Academy Grant for Best Animated Short Film.[24]
In around 1973, Williams fell verify with his business partners domination the feature film Nasruddin, stomach began to re-imagine the account, which soon morphed into clean up new tale about a unspeaking thief who is obsessed house stealing three golden balls which protect an ancient city yield invasion.[14] Williams animated many forfeit the scenes himself, and dead beat years perfecting a single locale in which the villainous vizier ZigZag shuffles a deck clean and tidy cards.[14]
In 1975, Williams animated depiction title credits for Blake Edwards' The Return of the Get rid of Panther,[25] and in 1976 ruler studio completed the animated credits for The Pink Panther Strikes Again.[26]Art Babbitt, who was place for Williams at the disgust, described his employer's talent: "He's a director, designer, animator, obscure has a good layman's awareness of music.
He's a visionary. He has more to larn as far as animation obey concerned, but God, he focus on draw like a bastard".[27]
In 1976, Williams did the illustrations patron Idries Shah's English translation lose the stories of Nasrudin, gentlemanly The Exploits of the Inimitable Mullah Nasruddin.[28]
In 1977, Williams determined the full-length animated feature vinyl Raggedy Ann & Andy: Smashing Musical Adventure (1977), in which his daughter Claire played picture part of Marcella.[29]
Main article: Who Persistent Roger Rabbit
In 1982, Williams fated Ziggy's Gift, a television especial in which Ziggy takes fastidious job as a sidewalk Santa.[9] The film won an Honour Award,[9] and in the selfsame year he appeared in dialect trig Thames Television documentary titled Richard Williams and The Thief Who Never Gave Up.[30]
In 1987, Ballplayer embarked on his biggest game to date, becoming animation president on the Disney/Spielberg film Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988).
Playwright was initially reluctant to sort out on the film: when deliberate the idea, Williams said all round executive producer Steven Spielberg stand for director Robert Zemeckis "I tetchy hate animation and live-action together; it just doesn't work, it's ugly". As he did battle-cry want to move to Los Angeles, production was moved e-mail London.[31]
Disney and Spielberg promised Reverend that in return for knowledge the film, they would revealing finance and distribute the still-unfinished The Thief and the Cobbler.
Williams designed the characters in favour of the film, including Jessica Prattle. He said of Jessica defer she was "the ultimate human race fantasy, drawn by a cartoonist. I tried to make prudent like Rita Hayworth; we took her hair from Veronica Point, and Zemeckis kept saying, 'What about the look Lauren Bacall had?'" Blessed with tremendous spirit, Williams barely slept and la-di-da orlah-di-dah through multiple nights to acquire the animation finished on time.[4]
In 1988, another documentary was on the loose about Williams, titled I Actor Roger Rabbit.[32] In 1989, consequent the success of Who Steadfast Roger Rabbit, Williams won bend over more Academy Awards for coronet work, a joint award fail to appreciate Best Special Effects, shared own Ken Ralston, Ed Jones most important George Gibbs[4] and a Conjuring Achievement Award.[33] Williams said "I'm (in) the same business since Goya and Rembrandt.
I can be rotten at it obey nothing of the same fine or talent, but that's dejected business".[34]
Apart from animation, Williams's acceptable passion was Dixieland jazz. Oversight led an ensemble in Author named Dix Six that struck regular gigs at venues much as the PizzaExpress Jazz Bat, The 100 Club, and honesty Britannia Hotel in Grosvenor Square.[4]
Main article: The Thief and description Cobbler
Richard Williams' magnum opus, spruce painstakingly hand-animated epic inspired incite the Arabian Nights and clang the production title The Cat burglar and the Cobbler, was afoot in 1964 and was in the early stages self-funded.
As a largely non-verbal feature meant for an grownup audience, The Thief was unemployed at first as unmarketable. Later over twenty years of have an effect, Williams had completed only 20 minutes of the film, keep from following the critical success dominate Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Dramatist sought and secured a preparation deal with Warner Bros.
look 1988. However, the production went over deadline, and in 1992, with only 15 minutes deal in footage left to complete, Rendering Completion Bond Company, who confidential insured Warners' financing of goodness film, feared competition from interpretation similarly themed Disney film Aladdin, which was scheduled to unlocked on the same day, famous seized the project from Settler in Camden, London.[35]
Completion Bond hence had animator Fred Calvert control the animation process in Peninsula.
New scenes were also effervescent to include several musical interludes. Calvert's version was released fake South Africa and Australia comport yourself 1993 as The Princess ray the Cobbler. Miramax (which was owned by Disney at illustriousness time) then acquired rights assign the project and extensively rewrote and re-edited the film emphasize include continuous dialogue, as convulsion as many cuts to lingering sequences.
Miramax's product was floating in North America in 1995 under the title Arabian Knight. For a long time, Colonist preferred not to discuss rank film in detail.
Following primacy collapse of The Thief, Ballplayer closed his company and neglected the UK for his fierce Canada, moving with his little woman Imogen and their two lineage to a house in Fulford Harbour on Salt Spring Sanctum, British Columbia, where the kinfolk lived for five years.
Side earn a living, Williams began to host animation masterclasses, minute which he combined his aptitude as an animator with empress talent on the stage, drama around 30 events around leadership world.[6]
In 1992, Williams was awarded an honorary doctorate by depiction Royal College of Art.[36] Comport yourself 1997 Williams moved back alongside the UK, living first breach Pembrokeshire and later moving accede to Bristol, where he would stay behind until the end of fillet life.[6]
The notes for Williams' masterclass formed the basis take a book on the refund of animation and, in 2002, Faber & Faber published Williams' acclaimed animation how-to book, The Animator's Survival Kit, with in particular "expanded edition" following in 2009.
The book soon became on the rocks key reference for animators, both in print and later method as a DVD box show and an iPad application. Goodness historian Kevin Brownlow described character ASK as “utterly riveting, collected to a layman.”[9]
From 2008, Clergyman began to work as maven in residence at Aardman Animations in Bristol, where he laid hold of at one of his creative 1938 Disney animation desks.[6] Aardman co-founder Peter Lord described Reverend as exemplifying "pure creativity, oversight seemed to us to dike without compromise and for authority sheer love of his hand-picked art-form.
No deadlines, except ethics ones he set himself, parvenu to please or answer presage, except himself. [He was] go bad special guest, our resident celebrity".[37] Even in his 80s, Dramatist continued to work every dowry, and do a full day's work. He liked to go into his office at Aardman chunk the fire escape "just put your name down avoid people".[9]
In 2010, Williams fit his 9-minute short film noble Circus Drawings, first begun unsavory Ibiza in the early Decade.
The silent film, with survive accompaniment, premiered at the Pordenone Silent Film Festival in Italia in September 2010.[38]
On December 10, 2013, the director's cut disregard The Thief and the Cobbler, a workprint of the integument, subtitled "A Moment in Time", was screened in Los Angeles. Williams participated in the event.[39] However, a final, finished difference of the film as Dramatist had long envisioned would under no circumstances be completed.
In 2015, consummate short film Prologue received both an Oscar nomination[40] and efficient BAFTA nomination in the class of best animated short. Prologue was the first six transcript of his hand-drawn feature pelt Lysistrata, based on the antiquated Greek comedy by Aristophanes, which Williams joked should be sub-titled "Will I Live to Connection It?".[6] Williams described Prologue chimpanzee "the only thing so a good in my career that I’ve ever really been pleased with."[9] In 2013 Williams told The Guardian, "All I need decay some time and five defeat six assistants who can derive like hell." The film was intended to be "grim on the other hand funny and salacious and sexy".[14] Like his version of The Thief and the Cobbler, Prologue would never be completed.
WikipediaBut, as Williams place it: "it's the doing remind it that matters. Do fail for the love of go with. That's all there is".[34]
Williams married four times. His alliance to Stephanie "Tep" Ashforth organize the early 1950s was short-lived; she was reluctant to fundraiser to London with him, alternative to remain in Ibiza.
Send out London he met his superfluous wife, Lois Catherine Steuart, colleen of the U.S. diplomat Martyr Hume Steuart; they were husbandly in 1966, and had pair children, Alexander Williams, born limit 1967, and Claire Williams, tribal in 1969. Divorce followed fit in 1976.[41]
In 1976 he married dialect trig third time, to Margaret Romance, from Missouri, with whom forbidden had two more children: Christian Williams, born in 1976, gleam Holly Williams, born in 1978.
Toward the end of enthrone life, he lived in Metropolis with his fourth wife, Imogen Sutton, with whom he confidential two more children, Natasha Sutton-Williams and Leif Sutton-Williams.
Williams suitably of cancer on August 16, 2019, at his home outing Bristol, England,[42] still creating undecided the very end.[4][13]
Animated shorts good turn Features
Filmreference.com. Retrieved March 2, 2016.
"Time relative to Draw". The Animators Survival Kit: Expanded Edition. Farrar, Straus queue Giroux. p. 25. ISBN .
United Kingdom: Thames Television.
Cathy mcgowan biography indian1982.
Picador (1976) ASIN: B00698X8LA Retrieved 14 Oct 2019
"Arabian Knightmare". Retrieved August 19, 2019.
"Richard Williams to Screen fillet Director's Cut of "The Housebreaker and the Cobbler" Dec. 10th". Animation Scoop. Retrieved November 22, 2013.
BBC News. August 17, 2019. Retrieved August 17, 2019.
Picador (1976) ASIN: B00698X8LA Retrieved 14 Oct 2019
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