Wednesday, November 12, 2008

Interview with Dick Williams

Fellow animator Andrew Gordon and I just did an interview with Dick. Here is a link to the Spline Cast: (LINK).
During the interview Dick shared anecdotes, some of his views on animation and talked about his new DVD set (LINK).

I enjoyed the talk with him very much. Before the interview he was kind enough to pose for a photo with me.

13 comments:

Anonymous said...

Nice. Thanks for doing this.

Anonymous said...

Great interview. Thanks!

Anonymous said...

Great stuff, but I have some dire requests for a particular new entry.

1) I want to know what Emery Hawkins contributed to "Thief and the Cobbler". I am aware of his work on Prince Bubba in his one deleted scene, but if he didn't do anything else I doubt his name would be on the credits of the Fred Calvert version.

2) I'm wondering if there were any veterans of the "Golden Age", other than the four Richard has always mentioned (Ken Harris, Art Babbitt, Grim Natwick, Emery Hawkins), who were employed by Richard to animate on "Thief and the Cobbler".

Thanks for your time.

Andreas said...

As far as I remember, Emery animated a lot of the witch character, a lot of which was unfortunately cut.Holger, correct me if I'm wrong. Was nice to see Dick again when he was lecturing at disney. He said I look all californian...whatever that might mean..lol

Holger said...

Other veterans - I think Cliff Nordberg might have done some work, maybe on the brigands, but I'm not sure if that made it to film.
I don't really know or remember what Emery did on the Thief. I know that Grim worked on the witch early on, but I'm not sure if Emery did.

Anonymous said...

grim natwick was a contributor???! i can't believe i never knew that! if he started in cartoon biz as an artist for w.r. hearst in 1916, that means he must've had at least 52 years of experience when he joined this project, and he must've been at least 78 years old (born 1890)! when exactly did he join? when did he retire from this project? did he do anything other than (as i've just found out) the old witch? this is cool!

Anonymous said...

Yeah, that is interesting. When did Grim Natwick retire? Or did he retire at all before he died at 100? By the way, I just remembered about Richard's secluded feature-film project of a play by Aristrophanes, and I'd like to wish him luck. Is there any chance we (the animation community) could know which Aristrophanes play he's doing? Is it just Richard animating as some say, or is Alex or someone else helping?

Holger said...

Grim worked on Raggedy Ann and Andy. I would guess that he started working on the witch after that, late 70's. Dick's secret project should remain secret until he chooses to talk about it. There was a time on the Thief when he tentatively invited us to work on it. He recently has mentioned in public that he is animating it by himself. Check out his Ottawa radio interview (link in Oct. 11 post). He talks about a short film that he will do first.

Anonymous said...

The audio file with the Ottawa interview won't work on my computer.

So what is this short film that Dick described?

Anonymous said...

I think you might need realplayer. I just opened it again. Click link, don't save, just open with realplayer.
Williams talked about a "Circus" short that he never finished decades ago.
He plans to finish it, before going back to work on his secret feature.

Anonymous said...

I'm sorry but it still didn't work. The news of Richard's coming product, however, is already satisfactory.

Matt Jones said...

I posted a print interview with Dick in the animation thread of the Drawin Board where mention is made of his future projects-
http://www.drawingboard.org/viewtopic.php?t=66306

Anonymous said...

It's not only his circus film that that dated back 50 years ago. According to a blog called Monotreme Dreams, he said to the poster that he is working on another project based on an idea which according to others he had at age 15 that he tried to adapt since 1958,which is also the year Circus Drawings was made but he never had the skill to complete a feature during that time so he shelved it.Then, he revisited both projects.

Link:
http://monotremedreams.blogspot.com/2008/11/richard-williams-lecture.html