Throughout the history of animation, there has been a lot of famous figures. Many of which can come people’s mind when talking about the entertainment medium such as Winsor McCay, Walt Disney, Chuck Jones, Max Flesicher, Ray Harryhausen, and Hayao Miyazaki. But there is one animator that is also well-known but has push the envelope with the techniques in traditional animation. His name is Richard Williams. Richard Williams is a Canadian born Animator, who worked on famous projects such as ‘A Christmas Carol’ (1971), and ‘Who Framed Roger Rabbit’ (1988). However in-between those two works, he has also worked on his ambitious unfinished masterpiece, ‘The Thief and the Cobbler’ (1993), which has been in the works from 1964 to 1993. He was not only an animator, but also teacher of the medium sharing his knowledge he has learned from the great animators of the past to students who want to get into animation. Williams has even published a book featuring his knowledge on how to create animation called ‘The Animator’s Survival Kit’. Richard Williams’s work in was inspirational and has created some well-known works throughout his career in animation.
Richard Williams was born in Toronto, Canada, in 1933. At a young age, he had inherited the graphic talent from his father, who was an artist. When he was five years old, his mother (who was offer a job at Disney, but turned down) took him to see ‘Snow White and Seven Dwarfs’ (1937), which ultimately changed his life. Which other children in the audience were either laughing or being scared during the film, Williams was surprised when he saw drawings that were able to move. From there on, his mother along with other family members encouraged him to draw. At the age of 10, he would buy a book called ‘How to Make Animated Cartoons’. From the information, it made him understand how animation would work at that age and start doing some Five years later, he saved up some money for a bus trip from Toronto, Canada, to Hollywood, California. When arriving in California, Williams took a tour of the Walt Disney Studio and met Disney himself. While he wasn’t all that interesting with Walt, he met the animators who worked there and show him how animation worked. During the 1940s, Williams worked at Disney for their advertising department as well as work at United Productions of America, or more commonly known as UPA. During the 1950s, He would then move to Spain for two years to study and paint after going to a Rembrandt exhibit. While being in Spain, he felt like his drawings wanting to be moved, but never got around to it. In 1955, Williams settled in England, where he would remain for the rest of his life. He would begin his animation career with director George Dunning as freelance animator and worked on commercials for television. While working as freelance animator and getting help from animator Bob Godfrey, he had an idea for animated film. It would take three years to make and the result would become into the film, ‘The Little Island’ (1958). The film gave Williams some instant recognition and would win a BAFTA for his film. During the 1960s, Williams would establish his own studio called Richard Williams Animation and by the late 60s, he would hire some legendary animators from the golden age such as Ken Harris, Art Babbitt, Emery Hawkins, and Grim Natwick. Throughout the 1960s, he would continue to do commercial work, several shorts namely ‘Love Me, Love Me, Love Me’ from 1962 as well as do some animated sequences for certain features like ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’ (1968) and ‘The Pink Panther’ (1975-76).
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By the end of the 1960s, things were going well for Williams. However, in the mid-60s period he would work start on a film that would become his most ambitious project. It would be known as ‘The Thief and the Cobbler’. It all started in 1964, when Williams was reading some stories about Mulla Nasrudin. He enjoyed reading the stories and got in contact with the writer of the stories named Idries Shah. When the stories were being translated to English, Williams would supply the illustrations for them. The illustrations would cause a spark of the idea of a motion picture. The title would go under various names until finally setting on ‘The Amazing Nasrudin’, but it would be changed to ‘The Golden City’, according to Edward Summer. Work on the film would begin in 1967 and when, things took a turn for the worst. Idries Shah’s sister made a claim that she had the right for the stories. After a few years of work, the original film idea was abandoned in favor of a new film idea keeping the setting that Williams had in mind. And the title of the film was change to ‘The Thief and the Cobbler’. Throughout the 1970s, he would work on various other projects that would raise the funding for the new film such as the Oscar-winning short, ‘A Christmas Carol’ (1971) and ‘Raggedy Ann and Andy: A Musical Adventure’ (1977). He finally gets his big break when the 1980s came into the scene. Steven Spielberg and Robert Zemeckis choose Williams to be the animation director of their upcoming film of ‘Who Framed Roger Rabbit’. With that film, Williams along with his team of animators manage to pull some groundbreaking techniques as well as fixing the issues when it comes to combining traditional animation with live action. When the film was released in 1988, it became a huge success and Richard Williams would receive some notable recognition from his work on the film. Several projects came to his attention, but he declined them all as he was focused on getting ‘The Thief and the Cobbler’ completed. He would soon get his chance with Warner Bros., as they would help Williams and give him the remain funding for the film. Unfortunately, things would take a turn for the worst. As Williams was continue working on the film, another film was announced and had some similar aspects to ‘The Thief and the Cobbler’ and that was Disney’s ‘Aladdin’. Warner Bros. became worried upon hearing the news and when Williams couldn’t make the deadline, the studio withdrew from the project and the Completion Bond Company ended up taking the film away from him. In his place was Fred Calvert who ended up finishing up the film in 1993 as ‘The Princess and the Cobbler’. When the film was released by Miramax Films in the United States, it was renamed to ‘Arabian Knight’ and it was a flop upon release. 30 years of work went down the drain.
As the final product of ‘The Thief and the Cobbler’ wasn’t the success that Williams had hoped, he wanted to find a way to get his version out to public. A workprint of the film had surfaced during the 1990s. A couple of years later at the Annecy Festival, Williams showed Roy Disney the workprint he had made. Disney loved what he has seen from the workprint and decide to restore the version of ‘The Thief and the Cobbler’ the way that Williams had intended. However, things would fall apart as Roy Disney would leave the Walt Disney Company after a decline from their lineup of traditional animated films at the time. Williams had decided to throw in the towel with ‘The Thief and the Cobbler’ and work on other ideas. During the 1990s, he decided to use all his knowledge he had learn and hosted a series of classes on animation. Later in 2001, he would create a book called ‘The Animator’s Survival Kit’. The book features everything that the person needs to know on how to create animation. In 2006, he would adapt his book into a 16-part series on DVD. That same year, a fan of Richard Williams named Garrett Gilchrist, created a fan-made restoration of Williams’ unfinished masterpiece under the name, ‘The Thief and the Cobbler: Recobbled Cut’. Utilizing various surviving materials, ‘The Thief and the Cobbler: Recobbled Cut’ was created to be as close to what Williams had originally intended. During the 2010s, Williams would go back into making animated shorts starting with ‘Circus Drawings’ (2010). The film was based on a couple drawings of a circus that he had made while in Spain during the 50s. Five years later, he would create that would become his last film with ‘Prologue’ (2015). The idea with the film was that it was meant to be the start of a new feature, but it was never finished. Tragedy would later strike on August 17, 2019 as Richard Williams would pass away because of cancer.
Richard Williams’ work in the animation industry was inspiring and has created some of most influential works ever made. There have been many animators that have left an impact, but mainly in a specific era in animation. Richard Williams is one of the few that have not only have showcase a vast of knowledge that he has acquired over the years, but also blend the old days of animation with the modern era of the medium. While there a handful of films made by Williams that are very well-known today in entertainment, his contributions overall will never be forgotten.
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