Richard Williams (animator)
| Richard Williams | |
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Williams at the 2015 Annecy International Animated Film Festival
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| Born |
Richard Edmund Williams March 19, 1933 Toronto, Canada |
| Nationality | Canadian |
| Alma mater | Northern Secondary School |
| Occupation | Animator, actor, animation director, writer, illustrator, animation teacher |
| Years active | 1957–present (animation career) |
| Spouse(s) | Margaret French Imogen Sutton (current wife) |
Richard Edmund Williams (born March 19, 1933) is a Canadian–British animator, voice artist, and writer, 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) and 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.
Williams was born in Toronto, the son of Kathleen (Bell) and Kenneth D. C. Williams. Williams emigrated to Ibiza in 1953 and then to London in 1955. In 1958 he produced the work that boosted his career and won the 1958 BAFTA Award for Animated Film, The Little Island. In the Thames Television documentary "The Thief Who Never Gave Up" (1982), 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 early work in the mid-1960s he directed the Academy Award-winning A Christmas Carol (1971), the full-length feature Raggedy Ann & Andy: A Musical Adventure (1977) and the Emmy-winning television film Ziggy's Gift (1982). He was 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). Following this, he 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.
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