Articles & Texticles

Here’s the second post arising from the discovery of a group of documents published by the animator Richard Williams sometime in the late 1970’s.

He’s making a strong bid for the high ground in this document, elevating himself (and his studio staff) to being the natural successors to the skills and craft base of the Walt Disney animation studios of the 1930’s.

The main body of the document has its roots in 1937, and it appears to me after several readings, that it’s probably the result of mashing two prior documents together. One would have been a general outline of Disney’s animation theory and practice, and the second source document consisted of a sort of question and answer internal training document that dealt with procedures between animators and checkers.
Much of the discussion of levels, overlays and cut-outs might appear arcane and irrelevant to today’s CGI animation students, but remember that all of our working methods in the new digital media are based on the old studio practices, so it’s worth paying attention.

Whatever its roots, the publication of this memo reflects the stance of the Richard Williams studio at the time, and how it was positioning itself in the hierarchy of world studios. The first paragraph of Dick’s introduction resounds with a cocky arrogance that, in the gentle glow of hindsight, now seems justified and hard to deny.

As usual, click the images to make them bigger.

There’s a pdf file of the whole text after the pictures, so continue to the end of this post after the fold.

Read the rest of this texticle here >>

Click this link for the pdf download: