(19 March 1933 - 16 August 2019)
The Canadian film animator Richard Williams, who has died of cancer aged 86, was very much an outsider in the world of cartoons. He had his own style unlike any other animator, that was independent, personal and totally original. He was recognised at the Academy Awards who gave him two Oscars for his magnum opus in 1988, Who Framed Roger Rabbit which was the culmination of a lifetime’s work, mixing hand-drawn animation and live action with superb skill. Brought up in Toronto by his painter father and commercial artist mother – influences on his drawing – as a child he was impressed by Disney’s Snow White and eventually met Walt and his animators with whom he eventually worked. Feeling hemmed in, however, he carried on drawing and inventing his own stories. He moved to the UK in 1955 and joined fellow Canadian animator George Dunning at TV Cartoons Ltd. Apart from making TV commercials Williams created his first film, The Little Island, which won a Bafta in 1958. Next came Love Me, Love Me, Love Me and then he worked on many title sequences for films such as What’s New Pussycat?, Casino Royale (1967), The Charge of the Light Brigade, 30 Is a Dangerous Age, Cynthia, Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush, and some of the Pink Panther films, etc. His animated features include A Christmas Carol (1974), which won him another Oscar, and The Thief and the Cobbler, the last undergoing many rewrites over the thirty-one years it took to complete. It was later released as Arabian Knight. Williams wrote a cartoonist’s manual, The Animator’s Survival Kit, and towards the end of his life he held workshops on animation. He was married four times and is father to six children
MICHAEL DARVELL
