Richard Williams (animator)

Richard Williams
Williams signing copies of The Animator's Survival Kit at the Annecy Film Festival in 2015
Born	Richard Edmund Lane (1933-03-19)March 19, 1933 Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Died	August 16, 2019(2019-08-16) (aged 86) Bristol, England
Nationality	Canadian, British
Education	Northern Secondary School
Alma mater	Ontario College of Art Royal College of Art (honourary doctorate)
Occupation(s)	Animator, voice actor, painter
Years active	1957–2019
Notable work	Who Framed Roger Rabbit The Thief and the Cobbler A Christmas Carol
Spouses	Stephanie Ashforth ​ ​ (m. 1953; div. 1956)​ Lois Catherine Steuart ​ ​ (m. 1966; div. 1976)​ Margaret French ​ ​ (m. 1976, divorced)​ Imogen Sutton
Children	6, including Alexander
Awards	3 Academy Awards (1971, 1988)

Richard Edmund Williams (né Lane; March 19, 1933 – August 16, 2019) was a Canadian-British animator, voice actor, and painter. A three-time Academy Award winner, he is best known as the animation director on Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988) -- for which he won two Academy Awards—and as the director of his unfinished feature film The Thief and the Cobbler (1993).^[1] His work on the short film A Christmas Carol (1971) earned him his first Academy Award. He was also a film title sequence designer and animator. Other works in this field include the title sequences for What's New Pussycat? (1965) and A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1966), title and linking sequences in The Charge of the Light Brigade, and the intros of the eponymous cartoon feline for two of the later Pink Panther films.^[2] In 2002 he published The Animator's Survival Kit, an authoritative manual of animation methods and techniques, which has since been turned into a 16-DVD box set as well as an iOS app. From 2008 he worked as artist in residence at Aardman Animations in Bristol, and in 2015 he received both Oscar and BAFTA nominations in the best animated short category for his short film Prologue.