Category ArchiveRichard Williams



Articles on Animation &Richard Williams &Tissa David 02 Sep 2012 04:21 am

Labor Day



Steve Fisher
returns from his Summer with the perfect picture for Labor Day 2012.

Tomorrow is Labor Day. The photo shows a flag which at its base is in focus and grows more and more wildly out of focus as it moves from that base. That’s the American political system at this point in 2012. In the most important speech of his life to-date, Paul Ryan, Vice Presidential candidate, lied openly. When confronted by the obvious lies on CNN, he admitted it, rode right over the lies, defending what he’d said even though there’s no truth there and no reality to it. The man rides on the border of the insane, convinced that he’s right, and having no proof of it, makes it up. Somehow this makes sense to him but not to those of us who prefer honesty. The old media (not the “liberal media”) report their findings to him and he merely mocks them. Their basinc discoveries are irrelevant to him. He wants only to dupe his base and capture other simpe minded folk ot there. We, the bigger audience, can only take it in and vote when it gets to be our turn.

Just the same . . . _______ . . . Happy Labor Day

By the way, Labor Day exists as a celebration of the Labor movement, meaning the U-nions. They are the enemy of the political right, and those on the right should stand by their principles and go to work. Or, at least, shut up while they take the day off from work with salary. There’ll be plenty of time tomorrow for more lies.

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Jones Doc to Air

- Tomorrow morning, at 10:15 am, Turner Classic Movies will air the Chuck Jones documentary, Chuck Jones: Memories of a Childhood. Undoubtedly, this is in conjunction with the Jones Centennial Celebration currently in progress. This film was directed by Peggy Stern, the producer who worked with John Canemaker on his Oscar winning film, The Moon and the Sun. Canemaker is a producer on this film.

It’s a 30 min film which will be followed by the Jones short, The Dot and the Line.

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Grim Writes About Tissa

Here’s an interview Tissa David did with her mentor, Grim Natwick, for Cartoonist Profiles magazine.


Magazine Cover

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Animation &Errol Le Cain &Richard Williams 09 Apr 2012 08:23 am

The Sailor and the Devil – repost

- There was a documentary about Richard Williams that I saw many years ago on PBS. It made me an ardent enthusiast of Williams’ work, and I followed his trajectory over many years. Eventually, I worked with him.

The show was called The Creative Person: Richard Williams and was made in 1966. Within the show was a very small section about one of Williams’ artists, Errol LeCain. He was given the task of making a film by himself. As Williams explains, this would teach him all the aspects of animation filmmaking and the studio would gain a short film in the end.

The film was called The Sailor and the Devil. This is probably the only film done by the Williams Studio that I haven’t seen. It’s still not on YouTube. Hans Bacher gave some color images on his site, one1more2time3, a year ago. Wanting more, I went back to the special and made frame grabs of some of the film, and I’m posting them here.

Dick was so young, as was Errol LeCain. He went on, of course, to become a world-class children’s book illustrator and the original designer of the backgrounds for the ill-fated Cobbler and the Thief.


Errol LeCain


A glimpse at the storyboard on the wall.


(Click any image to enlarge.)


Another shot of LeCain.

Animation Artifacts &commercial animation &Richard Williams 04 Mar 2012 08:24 am

Williams/Frazetta/Bakshi – Recap

– Having given images of both Dick Williams‘ work and Bakshi‘s, I thought it’d be a good time to post the cel below. It reminds us of what an extremely talented animator and draftsman Richard Williams was – and still is.
This is a cel from his commercial for Jovan done in Frank Frazetta‘s style.

Of course, Williams captures the illustrator’s work better than Bakshi did in Fire and Ice (although to be fair Bakshi had an enormously lower per second budget.) There’s a gallery of some art from Bakshi‘s film here, and there’s a trailer for it on YouTube.

Dick Williams‘ beautiful commercial ran briefly in 1978.

An image scanned from the cover of Funnyworld #19 runs beneath the cel to give an indication of what it looked like in the final. It appears to be a cel from the __________Frazetta’s original.
same scene – a bit closer on the character.

The cel was given to me by Dick. (I also have another which matches the other Funnyworld illustration from this spot.)


(Click on any image to enlarge.)

Dick animated the spot directly on cel with his Mars Omnichrome pencil (no longer available, of course.) There were six weeks for the entire production. Illustrator Rebecca Mills painted the backgrounds in oil. I remember Dick telling me how brilliant her work was while this commercial was in production.

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- Lets go even beyond Frazetta and Bakshi with the Richard Williams‘ studio in the heyday when he was about to prove himself with The Cobbler and the Thief. Let me share another image with you.

When Raggedy Ann & Andy was winding down, Richard Williams asked me, over dinner, whether I would be interested in working in London on his feature, The Cobbler and the Thief. He had in mind one sequence which he said would be all mine. This was the film’s opening – a slow truck into the island where all the action of the film would take place.

(Click on any image to enlarge.)

This was a photostat of this island. The original drawing, Dick had said, was enormous. It was composed of many smaller segments that were pinned together on a wall in his studio. If you look closely you can see those dividers in this photostat. To give a better indication of the detail in this drawing, I’m posting, below, a second image of a small portion of it.

The idea of it exhilarated me. I believe he said that Roy Naisbitt was involved with it, and that was something to get me going. I’d read about many of Dick’s staff and had already placed them on pedestals – including Roy’s work. I would not only get to meet them but work with them as well.

I decided not to take the job. I thought it would be better to remain friends with Dick than to continue working with him. That decision is something I don’t regret. It would have been fun to have been involved with that film, but so much has happened in my life by staying put, that I have no regrets.

The storyboard for the original cut of Dick’s film included these panels which led into the image of the animated city. A still of the city remained in the Miramax/Fred Calvert version, but that’s all.

Animation &Commentary &Independent Animation &Richard Williams 18 Feb 2012 08:56 am

Sheldon Cohen & John Gaug and Arrietty and NAACP Image Award


Tissa David‘s enormous seminal Raggedy Ann scene.
The rest of the film was built on the back of this one.

- Back in 1976, I was lucky enough to get hired onto Raggedy Ann and Andy, a feature film Bobbs Merrill was financing with Richard Williams as the newly employed director. I was the first non-animator hired (three animators were hired before me: Tissa David, Art Babbitt, and Emery Hawkins. Corny Cole was designing and doing the storyboard; Gerry Potterton was the assistant director.

When the studio was set up, with its headquarter in New York, they chose a space in a building that had entrances on 45th and 44th Streets just off 5th Ave. The space was enormous and dark. Many of the lights were usually left off. Sometimes the office manager, Bruce , would be there. but for the most part, while the voices were being recorded, I was alone in the space.

I decided to start buying animation desks and discs and other equipment. I did this and worked with someone to get holes cut and lighting set up in the desks. We started prepping partitions and just setting up everything. Once bits of animation started coming in Assistant Animators were hired. Jim Logan was the first, and he and I worked together for several months with little to do but laugh and do bits of inbetweening for animation tests.

Dick Williams gave me a scene of a mirage the Camel with the Wrinkled Knees would have. 97 dancing camels spiraling into the distance would be superimposed over the Camel’s head. I worked for about six weeks on this one scene, and until I had to be taken off it. The scene near completion went to the newly hired John Kimball who was going to do a number of other similar scenes, and he’d build them all into the film. I moved to head of Assistants and Inbetweeners and definitely had a lot of work to do.

Hiring lots of people in New York and training many of the new faces was foremost. We ended up with seven rooms with about 15 Assistants and Inbetweeners in each room. Finding new people wasn’t always easy, and they didn’t all work out.

In 1976, the Ottawa Animation Festival had its inauguration year. (That was when Caroline Leaf took over the animation world, becoming a star with her film, The Street.) It was here that I went to look for talent, and I found it in several people. John Gaug came down from Atkinson Film Arts in Ottawa. He was a gifted talent and a very tight style. Sheldon Cohen was closer to my heart. His sensitive drawings and warm approach to the artwork made him a definite person to hire. After getting back to New York I let the powers-to-be know that I was hiring the two and made the calls. Both moved dpwn to the City.

Both continued on after Raggedy Ann ended.

John Gaug moved on to the Williams studio in London where he became an animator, moved back to Ottawa to direct Trolls and the Christmas Express (where I animated freelance for him). Then he moved back to New York working in the commercial studios (I got to hire him again at R. O. Blechman’s studio) until he died in 1984.

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Sheldon Cohen moved back to Montreal where he became a unique artist for the National Film Board. He directed and animated a number of strong films. His most famous, The Sweater, showed an artist in full bloom seemingly right out of the box. He continues doing a number of children’s books and recently has written a oersonal memoir called This Sweater Is For You! published by ECW Press in Toronto. The book will soon be on the market, I’ll get a copy and will definitely review it. I’d also like to interview Sheldon about his 40 year career of making art.

In the meantime, you can see a number of Sheldon’s films on the NFB site. I’ve linked those films below.


The Sweater is an adaptation of a Mordecai Richler short story.


I Want a Dog is based on the book by Dayal Kaur Khalsa.

Snow Cat starts out with the feel of the book Goodnight Moon
but soon turns to a very graphic and textured look.
It’s a 23 minute film with wonderful narration by Maureen Stapleton.

Pies, a film about blind prejudice, is based
on a short story by Canadian author Wilma Riley.

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Ghibli’s The Secret World of Arrietty opened yesterday to generally positive reviews.

- Manohla Dargis in the NYTimes praised the Ghibli approach to female characters, who often are the leads, but was bothered by some of the elements lost in adapting the original novel, however

    “. . . it’s initially a letdown that Arrietty and Shawn aren’t just friends, as in the book, but also something like impossible romantic foils. Yet this disappointment proves mostly premature because Studio Ghibli and Arrietty have a way of taking you where you may not expect, whether you’re scrambling through rooms as large as canyons or clambering into the safety of an outstretched hand, a simple gesture that says it all.”

- Lou Leminick in his 3 star review in the NYPost writes:

    Studio Ghibli is at the forefront of keeping traditional hand-drawn animation alive — and it works well even for a story that’s less fantastical than Miyazaki’s signature works.
    Many animated and live-action films have dealt with miniature humans, but few have depicted a sheer sense of scale as effectively as this one.

    “The Secret World of Arrietty’’ is a feast for the eyes that will engage the entire family.

- Phillip French in The Observer writes a very positive review:

    At the heart of the film, is the tender, trusting friendship between Shawn, the boy of the house, and Arrietty. Theirs is a beautiful, perfect love, but ultimately doomed like so many relationships in myths and fairytales. This moving, amusing and resonant tale also touches on environmental and ecological concerns, on xenophobia and the fear of the threatening other. And it has taken on new meanings about the respect and preservation of disappearing species and the need to treasure and recycle valuable resources.

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- Finally, the good news, last night, I won the NAACP IMAGE Award for Outstanding Children’s Program. I’m proud of this one, thankyou very much.

Outstanding Children’s Program

“A.N.T. Farm”
“Dora the Explorer”
“Go, Diego! Go! ”
WINNER: “I Can Be President: A Kid’s-Eye View”
“My Family Tree”

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Independent Animation &John Canemaker &repeated posts &Richard Williams &SpornFilms &Theater 15 Jan 2012 06:02 am

Photo recap – Woman of the Year

Recently, I found myself talking about my work on this show. It made me go back in search of this post from January 2007, and I thought I’d recap today. Hope you don’t mind.

Woman of the Year was a project that came to me in the second year of my studio’s life – 1981. Tony Walton, the enormously talented and fine designer, had gone to Richard Williams in search of a potential animator for WOTY (as we got to call the name of the show.) Dick recommended me. But before doing WOTY, there were some title segments needed for Prince of the City, a Sidney Lumet film. (I’ll discuss that film work some other day.)

Tony Walton designed the character, Katz, which would be the alter-ego of the show’s cartoonist hero, played by Harry Guardino. Through Katz, we’d learn about the problems of a relationship with a media star, played by Lauren Bacall.
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It turned out to be a very intense production. Three minutes of animation turned into twelve as each segment was more successful than the last. There was no time for pencil tests. I had to run to Boston, where the show was in try-outs, to project different segments weekly; these went into the show that night – usually Wednesdays. I’d rush to the lab to get the dailies, speed to the editor, Sy Fried, to synch them up to a click track that was pre-recorded, then race to the airport to fly to the show for my first screening. Any animation blips would have to be corrected on Thursdays.

There was a small crew working out of a tiny east 32nd Street apartment. This was Dick Williams’
apartment in NY. He was rarely here, _______(All images enlarge by clicking.)
and when he did stay in NY, he didn’t
stay at the apartment. He asked me to use it as my studio and to make sure the rent was paid on time and the mail was collected. Since we had to work crazy hours, it was a surprise one Saturday morning to find that I’d awakened elderly Jazz great, Max Kaminsky, who Dick had also loaned the apartment. Embarrassed, I ultimately moved to a larger studio – my own – shortly thereafter.

Here are a couple of photos of some of us working:


Tony Charmoli was the show’s choreographer. He worked with me in plotting out the big dance number – a duet between Harry Guardino and our cartoon character. I think this is the only time on Broadway that a cartoon character spoke and sang with a live actor on stage. John Canemaker is taking this photograph and Phillip Schopper is setting up the 16mm camera.


Here Tony Charmoli shows us how to do a dance step. Phillip Schopper, who is filming Tony, figures out how to set up his camera. We used Tony’s dancing as reference, but our animation moves were too broad for anyone to have thought they might have been rotoscoped.


John Canemaker is working with Sy Fried, our editor. John did principal animation with me on the big number. Here they’re working with the click track and the live footage of Tony Charmoli to plot out the moves.


Steve Parton supervised the ink and paint. To get the sharpest lines, we inked on cels and didn’t color the drawings. It was B&W with a bright red bowtie. A spotlight matte over the character, bottom-lit on camera by Gary Becker.

5 6
5. Steve Parton works with painter Barbara Samuels
6. Joey Epstein paints with fire in her eyes.


Joey Epstein paints “Katz.”

8 9
8. Harry Guardino on stage with the creation of “Tessie Kat” developing on screen behind him. This was Harry’s first big solo.
9. John Canemaker gets to see some of his animation with Sy Fried, editor.


One of my quick stops from the lab on the way to Boston? No, I think this is a posed photo.

Animation Artifacts &Photos &repeated posts &Richard Williams 20 Nov 2011 08:29 am

Raggedy Photo Sunday – a repeat

- Yesterday, with a couple dozen other hearty souls, I sat through the screening of the animated shorts to narrow them down to a short list of about ten. The 44 films took ten hours to screen (including a 45 min. lunch break and three other 15 min. breaks.)

The first 1/2 to 1/3 of the program was brutal, and it looked like it was going to be the worst screening of films we’d ever attended. But then things got much better, and a lot of excellent films showed up in the mid third group. Then the end portion of the program turned up even a greater number of brilliant films. The end result was that it was one of the best screenings I’d seen (quality wise.) You can see the full list with some links on Cartoon Brew. The top ten should be a good group (given that a few of the choices usually turn out to be clunkers – there’s no accounting for taste.) I’m looking forward to hearing what will be on the short list.

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I originally ran this piece in November 2006. I’ve made some slight adjustments to bring it up to date.

- Today is photo Sunday.
Having recently pored over some of the artwork from Raggedy Ann & Andy (the NY contingent of the 1977 feature film), I wondered if I had any photos that I could post. There weren’t many that I could find quickly, but the few I did find are here.

The first two stills were taken for the John Canemaker book, “The Animated Raggedy Ann & Andy.” I think only one of the two appears in the book.



(Click any image to enlarge.)

Obviously, that’s Dick Williams with me looking over his shoulder. Oddly I remember being in this position often during the film. It’s probably the first image I have of the production when I look back on it. Dick and I had a lot of conversations (about the film) with him “going” and me listening.


When I did actually grab time to do some drawing, this is my desk. It sat in a corner of a room – across from Jim Logan and Judy Levitow. There were about ten other assistants in my room, and there were about seven rooms filled with assistants on the floor. I had to spend time going through all of them making sure everybody was happy.


This slightly out of focus picture shows Dick Williams (R) talking with Kevin Petrilak (L) and Tom Sito. That’s Lester Pegues Jr. in the background. Boy were we young then!

These guys were in the “taffy pit,” meaning they spent most of their time assisting Emery Hawkins who animated the bulk of the sequence. Toward the end of the film, lots of other animators got thrown into the nightmarish sequence to try to help finish it. Once Emery’s art finished, I think the heart swoops out of that section of the film.


This photo isn’t from Raggedy Ann & Andy, but it just might have been. That’s the brilliant checker, Judy Price showing me the mechanics that don’t work on a scene on R.O.Blechman‘s Simple Gifts. This is the one-hour PBS special that I supervised after my Raggedy years. However, Judy was a principal on Raggedy Ann, and we spent a lot of time together.

Ida Greenberg was the Supervisor of all of Raggedy Ann’s Ink & Paint and Checking. She and I worked together on quite a few productions. I pulled her onto any films I worked on after Raggedy Ann. She was a dynamo and a good person to have backing you up.

I’m sorry I don’t have a photo of her from that period.


This is one of my favorite photos. Me (L), Jim Logan, Tom Sito (R). Jim was the first assistant hired after me – I’m not sure I was an assistant animator when they hired me, but I was being geared for something. The two of us built the studio up from scratch. We figured out how to get the desks, build the dividers, set up the rooms and order the equipment.

To top it all, Jim kept me laughing for the entire time I was there. I can’t think of too many others I clicked with on an animation production as I did with him. He made me look forward to going into work every day.

We frequently had lunch out, he and I, and I think this is at one of those lunches when Tom joined us. It looks to me like the chinese restaurant next door to the building on 45th Street. Often enough, Jim and I would just go there for a happy hour cocktail before leaving for the night.

I should have realized how important that period was for me and have taken more pictures. Oh well.

Animation &Independent Animation &Richard Williams 13 Mar 2011 07:32 am

Dick’s World – recapped

Here’s a piece originally posted back in March, 2007.

- Let me share an image with you.

When Raggedy Ann & Andy was winding down, in 1977, Richard Williams asked me, over dinner, whether I would be interested in working in London on his feature, The Cobbler and the Thief. He had in mind one sequence which he said would be all mine. This was the film’s opening – a slow truck into the island where all the action of the film would take place.

(Click on any image to enlarge.)

This was a photostat of this island. The original drawing, Dick had said, was enormous. It was composed of many smaller segments that were pinned together on a wall in his studio. If you look closely you can see those dividers in this photostat. To give a better indication of the detail in this drawing, I’m posting, below, a second image of a small portion of it.

The idea of it exhilarated me. The conceit of the scene was that the entire city would be animated. Hundreds of moving elements. The piece would be done in parts and optically pasted together. (This was the age berfore computers.)

I believe Dick had said that Roy Naisbitt was involved with it, and that was something to get me going. I’d read about many of Dick’s staff and had already placed them on pedestals – including Roy’s work. I would not only get to meet them but work with them as well.
I decided not to take the job. I thought it would be better to remain friends with Dick than to continue working with him. That decision is something I don’t regret. It would have been fun to have been involved with that film, but so much has happened in my life by staying put, that I have no regrets.

The storyboard for the original cut of Dick’s film included these panels which led into the image of the animated city. A still of the city remained in the Miramax/Fred Calvert version, but that’s all.

Animation Artifacts &Richard Williams 22 Feb 2011 08:18 am

Raggedy Drafts – 7/ seq. 12

- Here we go with the final installment of the Raggedy Ann & Andy: A Musical Adventure drafts. This, of course, was the feature Richard Williams directed (3/4 of the way) in 1977. You’ll note that as we’ve gone on, the drafts have gotten sloppier and sloppier. This last batch (separated from the last installment by 2 sequences of live-action film) included a couple of faux sheets. They were started and redone. I only include the redone sheets.

The animators working on this ending sequence include: Hal Ambro, Dick Williams, Tissa David, Jim Logan, Tom Roth, Spencer Peel, Irv Spence,Art Vitelo, Art Babbitt, Dan Haskett, Cosmo Anzilotti and John Gaug.

The final three sheets are a sequence breakdown – a reduction of the drafts, in case you’ve lost your place and want to find out what sequence to look for.


A Corny Cole rough (above) done with BIC pen and
a Corny Cole clean up (below) done in pencil.

Sequence 12

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Corny Cole storyboard drawings.

Sequence Breakdown

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Animation &Animation Artifacts &Richard Williams &Tissa David 16 Feb 2011 08:15 am

Raggedy Drafts – 6 / seq. 7, 8 & 9

- Continuing on with the Raggedy Ann & Andy: A Musical Adventure drafts, we move onto seqeunces 7, 8 and 9. This involves the Loony King, the Loony Knight and Babette at sea.

Animators for these sequences include: George Bakes, Gerry Chiniquy, Doug Crane, Dick Williams, Chrystal (Russell) Kablunde, Hal Ambro, Charlie Downs, Art Vitello, Jack Schnerk, Corny Cole, Tom Roth, Irv Spence, Bob Bemiller, and Warren Batchelder.

A lot of talent in one place; too bad the film doesn’t hint at it.

To dress up the post I’ve added five of Tissa’s key drawings from an early scene.

Sequence 7

7-1

Sequence 8

8-1

8-2

8-3

8-4

8-5
For some reason this bad drawing of the “Greedy” was attached
to the drafts. So I just iuncluded it here, as well.

Sequence 9

9-1

9-2

9-3

9-4

9-5

9-6

9-7

9-8

9-9

9-10

9-11

9-12

9-13

Commentary &Richard Williams 13 Feb 2011 08:49 am

Steam City – recap

Since I’m currently posting the Raggedy Ann & Andy drafts (on Mondays) I’ve been thinking about the film. One of my favorite stories happened early on in the production. I wrote about it here, September 2009, and I’m recapping it now.

- Steam is the secret energy that runs my city. There’s an article in a local paper called The Gotham Gazette which describes the system in full detail. It’s a good read, so I urge you to go there if you’re interested in further understanding the system.

Atop ground we get to see steam leaking out of sewers, see giant pipes spewing steam into the air, and read about exploding steam pipes that cause damage. (There was a recent explosion at 42nd Street near Grand Central Station. Another in Murray Hill, a couple of years back, destroyed a building and closed a city block for several weeks.)

We pass by these steampipes and stewing manhole covers without thinking about it. It’s like some primeval force out of the Rite of Spring hiding underground.
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(Click any image to enlarge.)

For the times Con Edison is working on the system at specific locations, they construct barber-pole colored pipes which emit large bursts of steam into the air. That wonderful scent you get when walking into a dry cleaners often surounds these pipes.

Back when Raggedy Ann started, there was a very large construction and similar pipe steaming up the entire front of the Brill Building in which we were located. I seem to remember we were originally on the fourth floor, so any offices that faced the front of the building saw nothing more than steam flowing all day long.

Dick Williams had one such office; the conference room was another.

The steam would make a very loud SHUSSSHHH-ing sound as it flowed out. This was often accompanied by workers jackhammering their way underground.

There was a Saturday rush to complete the art for the rough animatic. Dick and Gerry Potterton and I were in the conference room for at least 8 hours madly coloring storyboard drawings with colored pencils. We had a great time laughing and joking and gossipping about everyone under the sun. I was a lowly Asst. Animator, but they treated me like an equal. It was fun, needless to say.

All day long that incessant SHUSSSHHH; all day long that steam flowing up and pass our large bank of windows. It was crazy-making.

Dick finally broke from a conversation we were having to scream out at the steam and the workers. He was sure that New York was ready to burst out and blow up underneath us. Gerry and I had a good laugh at the rant.
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Obviously, not all of these pipes are striped in the Con Edison orange and white. I found
this black, short pipe.

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You can see it coming out the sewer caps. Sometimes heavy, as in the left; sometimes
light, as in the right.

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Often close to invisible. I had to go closer to see the steam coming out of this cap.


This truck trailer has been parked on Fifth Avenue and 8th Street for a while. Apparently Con Edison isn’t supplying all the steam needs for the city.


I found this guide to where things are underground. It gives a good, informative view of what’s flowing underneath us in this town. Maybe it will blow up someday.

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