RIP Richard Williams (1933-2019)

As you all might have heard, and as a few of you still-loyal readers have reminded me, a week ago we lost one of the titans in the world of animation. On August 16, 2019, Richard Williams passed away at the age of 86. I suppose it's meaningless that I will be writing this over a week after his death, but given the stature as one of the most influential and innovative figures in the world of animation, I'll be remiss if I didn't leave something on my blog, especially given that Williams has won an Oscar in this very category.




Richard Williams was born in Toronto in 1933 to a family of artists. His birth father had left the family when Richard was still young, but he was adopted by his similarly artistic stepfather. He was influenced by his mother, who worked as an illustrator and was even offered a job by Walt Disney Studios. She turned it down, but did take her son to see their first full-length animated feature Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Young Richard marveled at the figures moving on the screen, and set him on the path towards wanting to be an animator. Canada would be at the forefront of the animation industry in a couple of decades through the efforts of the National Film Board of Canada, which generously gave money to support Canadian efforts in the arts, but back when Williams was a lad they were still just getting started, and animation was mostly in the work of a few scattered independent artists.

Legends state that as a teenager in the post-war years, Williams saved up to take a trip to Walt Disney Studios. He had one objective in mind, and that was to get in touch with the animators in the studio. He even brought his own drawings to show the artisans. Unfortunately the tour was only of the facilities, and Williams had to sneak away from the tour group in order to meet any of the animators. He was caught every time, but his persistence caught the attention of a few Disney executives, and he was invited back to meet with some of the animators. Williams was inspired by his trip, but he was told he needed to learn to draw properly, and upon his return to Canada he got a job as a commercial artist. When he turned 20 he emigrated to Ibaza, Spain where he trained to become a painter. During that time he made sketches of circus performers on the streets, and 47 years later he turned those drawings into an animated film Circus Drawings.

Williams never gave up on his dream of animation, and around that time he began working on the storyboards for his first animated film. Finding the opportunities in Spain lacking, he moved to England where he got a job doing commercial animation. He would work on his own film on his own time, and around this time he met Bob Godfrey, another young animator. He would help Godfrey, while Godfrey would offer his assistance as well. The film was eventually completed in 1958, titled The Little Island. The highly allegorical film about three "misguided idealists" performed modestly in the box office, but it caught the eye of BAFTA voters who awarded it the Best Animated Film award. It was similarly submitted for consideration for the Academy Award in America, but it was passed on for more family friendly fare.

The successes of The Little Island allowed Williams to open his own animation studio, Richard Williams Animation. They did commercial work including several animated title sequences as well as Williams worked on his own short films. By the late 1960s they had the cache to hire many veteran Hollywood animators, including Art Babbitt whom Williams likely met at Disney 20 years prior, and Ken Harris, the former Warner Bros. animator under Chuck Jones. Jones would prove to be instrumental in Williams's next big project. He approached Williams with the idea to produce an adaptation of Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol for broadcast on ABC. Williams put his all into the film, with the assistance of Harris, credited as "Master animator." It was a fairly stark retelling of the tale with some surprisingly dark sequences. Alistair Sims came back to provide the voice of Scrooge, a role he had played 20 years earlier in the film Scrooge. Williams was able to recruit Tristram Cary, the composer who worked with him on The Little Island. Cary produced a memorable score that heavily incorporated the song "God Rest Ye Merry Gentleman." The film proved popular when it debuted on ABC in December 1971, so much so that it played theatrically and was submitted for Oscar consideration. This time the film was selected for nomination, and to the surprise of all it won, defeating his former mentor Godfrey's Kama Sutra Rides Again and the surreal Croatian film Tup Tup. The Academy was aghast a film that had initially aired on television had took home the treasured Best Animated Short Oscar, and soon passed a ruling that no film that initially debuted on television could be eligible for an Academy Award. Yet it was too late, and Richard Williams had his Oscar.


With an Academy Award on his mantle, Williams branched out and continued to test the limits of animation. He made his first feature film Raggedy Ann & Andy: A Musical Adventure in 1977 and along the way made some animation history when he hired veteran animator Tissa David to serve as an animator of a leading character when she was picked to animate for Raggedy Ann. The film production eventually dragged, and Williams had to be removed from the project. It ended up getting mixed reviews, but was praised for the animation quality. Five years later he produced another Christmas special for television Ziggy's Gift, based on the comic strip by Tom Wilson. There would be no repeat in Oscar glory, but Williams did receive an Emmy award for Outstanding Animated Program, beating out the likes of Here Comes Garfield, The Smurfs Christmas Special and a pair of Peanuts specials.

In 1987 Disney Studios and Steven Spielberg would approach Williams with his most significant project. Disney had acquired the rights to the book Who Censored Roger Rabbit and envisioned a film adaptation that would combine live action with animation. Williams was the first choice to serve as an animation director. However, while Disney animators were highly responsible for Williams's love of animation, he had become disillusioned with the direction the studio had gone with its heavy bureaucracy. He eventually agreed to take on the project when Disney allowed him to work in London where he had settled. Spielberg's participation meant that Williams could work with not just Disney characters but characters from several other studios including Warner Bros., Fleischer Studios, Walter Lantz studios and more. Animation has been combined with live action since the earliest days of the 20th century, but advancements in technology allowed for more seamless integration of the animation into the live action. Williams and the cooperating animators in Disney's own studio animated the traditional way, after which they were combined into the live action footage through compositing work. The film, now titled Who Framed Roger Rabbit? was a massive success and was nominated with six Academy Awards, including Best Visual Effects. Williams was included in the nominees for the Visual Effects Oscar, and took home his second Oscar when Roger Rabbit beat out Die Hard and Willow. He didn't get a chance to speak, but later he was given a special achievement Oscar for his animation direction.



With the success of Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, Williams thought he would finally be able to focus his attention on what he thought would be his magnum opus. He had been working on a feature length film since 1964, based on a story from the Arabian Nights. He had envisioned a highly elaborate work that featured some of the most dazzling animation that he had at his disposal, but had to produce it independently as he was unable to secure financing. By the 1970s he was able to get some financing for the film now re-titled The Thief and the Cobbler, especially after winning the Oscar for A Christmas Carol. The story was able to coalesce and in the 1980s he was able to produce a 20-minute sample reel he was able to pass around. The treatment had impressed Spielberg, and he promised to provide for funding distribution rights if Williams was able to work on Roger Rabbit. Roger Rabbit was a massive success and Williams got a nice deal from Warner Bros., but by then his vision of the film was extremely ambitious. He had wanted to animate in three dimensions without the use of CGI. Production dragged on into the 1990s, with Williams striving for the perfection he demanded of himself and his artists. Soon the deadline of 1991 came and went, and Disney was working on their own film based on the Arabian Nights, which would be Aladdin. Warner Bros. gave Williams into 1992, but eventually booted the director from the project. A separate animation studio was brought in to finish the production as cheaply as possible, and the resultant film The Princess and the Cobbler was released overseas in 1993. Miramax brought the American rights and made further changes for its release as Arabian Knight. The theatrically released films were critically panned and Williams's visions had crashed and burned.

The failure of The Thief and the Cobbler led to the closing of Richard Williams Studios. He returned to Canada for a few years and taught animation. From that he eventually published the book The Animator's Survival Kit. He moved back to England, and soon got the itch to go back into animation. He finished his film Circus Drawings, and soon began planning for another feature film based off the ancient Greek play Lyristrata. To prepare for the film, he made a six-minute short film Prologue which earned him his final Oscar nomination. Unfortunately, the film would never be completed as Williams was diagnosed with cancer, and passed away a short time later. His passing would be accompanied by an outpouring of tributes for the man who had transformed animation.

And I'll be remiss if I didn't bring up another passing of somebody in the animation industry earlier this year. Kaj Pindal was born in Denmark in 1927 and was an underground cartoonist who drew cartoons critical of the Nazis in World War II. He survived the war and worked in animation in Europe before getting drawn to Canada in 1957 where the National Film Board was up and running. While with the NFB he made the film The Peep Show in 1962, which he later expanded into a longer film titled Peep and the Big Wide World which in turn spawned a PBS show of the same name. His brush with the Oscar came in 1967 when he co-directed a mockumentary What on Earth! which imagined Martians going to Earth and seeing automobiles as Earthlings. It was nominated for an Oscar, but Pindal was not included in the list of nominees. He became an influential teacher of animation in both Canada and his native Denmark before his death on June 28 at age 91.