RICHARD WILLIAMS STRIKES AGAIN!
Posted by tonymaticus at 6/5/2008 6:24 PM and is filed under uncategorized 
I just found some very incredible new animation recently created by Richard Williams
and posted on You Tube. It seems he is about to launch his new
'Masterclass' series and has animated the figures from the cover of his
'The Animator's Survival Kit' to promote it. Be amazed at...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EeJiteHiNKk
It seems that he will possibly launch the tour at this year's Annecy festival, and so we wait with baited breath to hear what he has to say. This marks a major departure from his exile from the industry for many years and so it will be interesting to see what all that pent-up frustration and suppressed talent will amount to. I had heard that he was working secretly on a film with a number of friends in Wales, also that he was bringing out an animated version of the 'Survival Kit'. Whatever it is, its certainly going to turn heads after all this time!
Be prepared to admire what traditional animation can still do! Bravo!!!
Tony. :^{)}=-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EeJiteHiNKk
It seems that he will possibly launch the tour at this year's Annecy festival, and so we wait with baited breath to hear what he has to say. This marks a major departure from his exile from the industry for many years and so it will be interesting to see what all that pent-up frustration and suppressed talent will amount to. I had heard that he was working secretly on a film with a number of friends in Wales, also that he was bringing out an animated version of the 'Survival Kit'. Whatever it is, its certainly going to turn heads after all this time!
Be prepared to admire what traditional animation can still do! Bravo!!!
Tony. :^{)}=-
I saw this the other day... all I can say is WOW. This will be a "must have"!
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I agree Brett... definitely a 'wow' factor piece! I can't wait to see what else is to come.
I don't know if you know but I was Richard William's assistant for two years and then was a director/animator at his studio for a further 5 years... and I'm still blown-away at what he produces at times. This one's been a long time coming however, but well worth the wait.
And for all you animators out there who don't know about the Richard Williams' "The Animator's Survival Kit" book... shame on you! It's truly the animator's 'bible' and should be on every self-respecting animator's desk, whether they be a 2D or a 3D animator... or even a Claymation/Stop Motion artist!
The mind boggles as what else we might see animated from that book as time goes by!
Tony. :^{)}=-
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Yes, you worked on the 'Christmas Carol' special from the 70s, right? Something I remember with delight from my childhood.
I know some 2D animators who kind of poo-poo the Williams book and find his approach to walks too formulaic. I disagree, I learned a lot from the book. Even stop-motion and Flash or CG animators use it as THE animated walk bible. Once you learn the formula, you can go way beyond it when designing walks, and you start noticing how people walk in real life and you start thinking "Now, let's see, if I were going to make a 16 frame walk out of that, I would..." .
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Yes, I started as Dick's own assistant on that film! I arrived at the studio knowing that I'd been hired but didn't actually know what job I'd been hired for. When they told me that I was to be based in Dick's office, and be his personal assistant, I was blown away... he was my college hero! Anyway, I can tell great stories about the production... we call can... but suffice it to say that when I joined the studio it was many weeks behind schedule with something like three months to go. We all worked 14 hours a day, seven days a week for the last few weeks and four days and four nights without any sleep whatsoever at the very end. We made the deadline by just one hour on the last day... we were standing in the lobby of the studio at 7:00 am, drinking champagne and celebrating the last scene that had just gone to camera and was being shot at the time. Heady days! This was the very beginning of December and most people took off as he officially closed the studio till the New Year. However, I came in every day on my own for that month and started my "Hokusai" film... specifically I animated the 'big crane' shot at the beginning of the film at this time.
I think there is always a danger of animators being a slave to 'formulas' (look at the Disney movies over the last few decades for example... although that's more the fault of management than the wonderfully talented artists involved!) but unless you know the rules you can't break them consistently and successfully. I will never, for one moment, regret the incredible disciplines and formulas I learned from Dick, Art Babbit and Ken Harris in the studio at that time. Now I can animate to all the rules or break them, but with complete knowledge. If I want to create boiling, random, straight-ahead animation that is not slave to keys, breakdowns and inbetweens I can, and do it well. But if the same time if I have to analyze precisely and space precisely an action that is required to fit within tight timing and action parameters, I can do that too. Its all a matter of being a master of your craft and I thank Richard Williams for giving us all the opportunity to become that.
Tony. :^{)}=-
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