Working in the animation industry, it’s almost impossible to not have heard of Richard Williams. His Animator’s Survival Kit is a bible for most character animators. Every studio that I have worked at, had at least a half dozen copied floating around. A few years ago, Richard also made his live lectures available on DVD. The price is now down to just under $1000 USD. Wiki says that this animator/director was born in Toronto, Canada in 1933.

Richard Williams is best known as the director of Who Framed Roger Rabbit.

Apparently, Williams had also directed 3/4 of the Raggedy Ann & Andy, “A Musical Adventure“. Here’s a great clip of the iconic dolls floating around in a living lake of sugar, via Scribble Junkies.

According to the Scribble Junkies thread, the primary animator for this shot was Emery Hawkins.

If you liked that, I recommend checking out Michael Sporn’s blog, where you can find pages and pages of behind the scene materials, including the original timing sheets. There is also a “The Animated Raggedy Ann and Andy: An Intimate Look at the Art of Animation Its History, Techniques, and Artists” book, that sounds like a good collector’s item.

Finally, it’s difficult to talk about Richard Williams without mentioning his film, The Thief and the Cobbler. If you appreciate his work, I recommend taking 2 hours to see the mostly finished Recobbled Cut“, which is available, in it’s entirety on Youtube.