Richard Williams, RIP

Richard Williams, artist, animator, director, story-teller, died on Friday of cancer. He was 86. USC professor Tom Sito, one of his former employees/students, remembers:

... It is hard to sum up how much Richard Williams meant to me, and many animators of my generation. He gave me my career, my approach. Oh, I probably would have etched out some kind of living in animation anyway. But certainly not as much. Over 40 years, at key moments, connecting with him supercharged my development, like a spark plug. He taught me to strive to be better than I thought i could be. To never stop learning. He introduced me to Chuck Jones, Art Babbitt, Emery Hawkins, Vincent Price, Osamu Tezuka, and many many more. You who worked for him, consider what your lives would have been like had he never existed.

Most people I know who worked for Dick can spontaneously do a credible impersonation of him. High voice. Glasses on forehead. Arms waving about frantically. All manic energy and enthusiasm. Hard to think that energy could ever be stilled. We say in animation you have your biological fathers and your animation fathers. Dick was an animation father to me. ...

Richard Williams was not just one of the best animators ever. He was one of the greatest animation students ever. He just didn't admire a great animator. He studied them. He analyzed their technique. He would clean up a Ken Harris or Grim Natwick scene. " Because when you assist someone," he'd say," You get into their minds and watch them solve problems."

Once in LA, I was working on a milk shake commercial for him. A mutual friend in the Disney training program had xeroxed a Milt Kahl Shere Khan scene for Dick. I walked over to Dick's office to confirm a field size. And when I walked in, the xeroxes were spread our all over the floor, Dick on his hands and knees studying them like Napoleon going over battle maps. "Look! Look at what Milt is doing. He labored over this pose.... and this pose...and the other keys are breakdowns...."

He also gave some of the best portfolio critique ever. He could go right to the center of your problem. He once went over my samples in 1978. He went on to London, and I went to New York and Toronto. Four years later I was back in town and showed him my stuff. " I see you took my advice.." He smiled.

There was an animator on ['Raggedy Ann and Andy"] named George Bakes, who used to work with Bill Tytla when Tytla had a commercial studio in New York City in the 50s.

One day for lunch, Bakes offered to show us where Tytla liked to eat lunch. Dick joyfully led us all to the spot, a dingy greasy spoon luncheonette on w. 46th St that had seen better days. That didn't matter to Dick. As soon as he heard it was Tytla's favorite, Dick stood in the doorway, then dropped to his knees and began to bow, chanting "TYTLAAAA...TYTLAAA...!"

One of my favorite maxims of Richard Williams: "In the end, the best way to do something is the Hard Way. Too many people waste too much valuable time thinking of cheats and short cuts. Just F**king DO IT. DRAW! You'll find much fewer retakes too."

Richard Williams was working at his chosen profession to the end of his long life. (Lucky man!). He'll be remembered, of course, for his work on Who Framed Roger Rabbit, and so deserves credit for super-charging classical, hand-drawn animation at a time it was floundering.

But he'll also be remembered for commercials and title sequences of live-action films (his work on The Charge of the Light Brigade -- 1968 version -- remains especially vivid), and for his his uncompleted masterwork, The Thief and the Cobbler. (Also for all the animators, story artists, and designers he inspired and gave careers to over the decades.)

So rest In peace, Mr. Williams. You have earned it.