Section:GDN 1J PaGe:8 Edition Date:190821 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 20/8/2019 18:02 cYanmaGentaYellowbla
- The Guardian Wednesday 21 Aug ust 2019
8 Obituaries
T
he two Oscars
awarded to the
fi lm animator
Richard Williams,
who has died aged
86, for his work
on Who Framed
Roger Rabbit
(1988) marked a fi tting recognition
of his mastery of his craft. The
fantasy-comedy mixed live action,
led by the cartoon-hating detective
Eddie Valiant ( Bob Hoskins ), and
animation, with a cartoon rabbit in
need of Hoskins’ help when he is
accused of committing a murder.
It was set in 1947, in the age of
the Hollywood fi lm noir and classic
cartoons, and the interaction
between its two worlds – calling
for an unprecedented use of
perspective in the animation – made
it a box offi ce and critical success.Richard Williams
Innovative animator
best known for Who
Framed Roger Rabbit
of animating animal and human
movement with new generations.
From his masterclasses there
resulted The Animator’s Survival Kit ,
in both print and digital versions.
A native of Toronto, Dick was
the son of the British painter Leslie
Lane and Kay (Kathleen) Bell, a
commercial artist, but took the name
of his step father, Kenneth Williams,
after Lane left. Dick considered
that he inherited his graphic talent
from Kay, who in her leisure time
did fairytale illustrations that heAn earlier Oscar had gone to Dick- Canadian-born but based in Britain
for much of his life – as director of
the animated short A Christmas
Carol (1971) , at a time when his
studio was in demand for animated
titles for feature fi lms, among them
The Charge of the Light Brigade
(1968) and two fi lms in the Pink
Panther series (1975-76).
His recent Prologue (2015),
nominated for an Oscar, depicts
a ferocious hand-to-hand battle
between ancient Spartans and
Athenians, and serves as a prelude
to his intended realisation of
Aristophanes’ antiwar sex-strike
play Lysistrata. For this project Dick
continued to the end of his life to us e
traditional hand-drawn animation to
achieve eff ects that had never been
attempted before for human bodies.
He liked to share his knowledge
felt compared with those of Arthur
Rackham and Edmund Dulac.
When he was fi ve she turned
down a job as an animator at Disney,
and around the same time took Dick
to see Snow White and the Seven
Dwarfs, which changed his life.
While the other children laughed at
the dwarfs and cowered at the witch,
he was more thrilled to recognise
that he was watching drawings that
were somehow made to move.
At 15 he saved up for the fi ve-day
bus trip from Toronto to Hollywood,
and took the Disney studio tour
three days in succession, each time
being thrown out because he broke
away from the guide and tried to
talk to the animators. Subsequently
the public relations people thought
better of it and asked him back to
meet Walt Disney in person, which
did not interest him much, but he
met the animators, showed them his
drawings and spent time seeing how
things worked.
When he was 20 he saw a
Rembrandt exhibition and was
moved to tears. He settled in Ibiza
to dedicate himself to painting
and found an exciting subject in
the performers and audience of a
local circus. He soon felt that his
drawings were “wanting to move”
and planned to turn them into a
fi lm – though he did not get round
to completing Circus Drawings until- At the same time he found
himself scribbling storyboards for
a cartoon fi lm about the relations
between three misguided idealists.
This was to be his debut fi lm,
The Little Island , which he fi nanced
by working for London companies
making television commercials. He
might sign on with them as a humble
paint mixer, but within days would
invariably be promoted to animator.
The Little Island won the 1958
Bafta award for best animation and
it was then when, working as a critic,
I had the good fortune to become a
friend of this ebullient, funny and
brilliant 25-year-old. In the early
1960s he set up Richard Williams
Animation, which achieved huge
success with its production of some
of the best TV commercials of the
period, as well as Dick’s own fi lms.
By the late 60s, some of the great
Hollywood animators from the 30s
were taking retirement. Williams
hired them to work for his studio:
they included Art Babbitt , who had
shaped Goofy, Grim Natwick , who
had drawn Betty Boop, and Ken
Harris , who had spent 26 years with
Warners. Though Babbit gave formal
masterclasses, most of these tough
veterans instructed only by terse but
devastating criticism.
When he fi rst met Milt Kahl , who
had animated the Lion in The Jungle
Book, Dick symbolically knelt to
clean his shoes. Kahl told him: “You
can stop cleaning my shoes because
you draw better than I do; but then
you can clean them some more
because you can’t animate for shit.”
Kahl became a friend, but never
worked for Dick.
In 1984 he met the fi lm-maker
Mo (Imogen) Sutton , the daughter
Bob Hoskins in
Who Framed
Roger Rabbit,
1988, above, for
which Williams,
right, won two
Oscars
MOVIESTORE/REX/
SHUTTERSTOCK;
AGENCIA EFEHe soon
felt that his
drawings
were
‘wanting to
move’ and
planned to
turn them
into a fi lmRELEASED BY "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS TELEGRAM: t.me/whatsnws