Legendary three-time Oscar-winning animator Richard Williams, who died in 2019, was finest recognized to the world for Who Framed Roger Rabbitand to the animation trade for The Animator’s Survival Equipmenthis definitive educational e book that later turned a DVD set and iPad app. Primarily based on masterclasses that Williams gave in america and Europe, the e book gives the essential ideas of animation that each animator, in each style, must know. Go to any animation studio and also you’ll see copies on cabinets subsequent to virtually each workstation.
If the e book had one downside, it was that, at virtually 400 pages and three-and-a-half kilos, it wasn’t precisely the sort of factor you possibly can toss in a backpack and carry round with you. Now that downside has been solved with a brand new sequence of brief guides that current the Survival Equipment’s most important chapters in easy-to-carry, easy-to-study guides.
“There was a e book undertaking Dick and I had been engaged on simply earlier than he died that has now come to fruition,” says his widow and longtime collaborator Imagen “Mo” Sutton. “We took key chapters from the e book and made them into 4 ‘minis’ – handy-dandy, easy-to-throw-in-a-bag-or-backpack-sized books.”
Revealed by Faber to commemorate the twentieth anniversary of the unique e book, the minis at the moment are accessible within the UK and will probably be printed internationally later within the yr. “Dick was in a position to hand-write the introductions to every one in all them earlier than he turned too unwell,” Sutton provides. “So it’s a slightly beautiful commemoration occasion.”
The 4 volumes (with hyperlinks) are:
Walks
Walks are filled with persona. Walks reveal the character, they inform the story of the individual. On this mini, Williams gives the constructing blocks of the way to assemble walks, utilizing stick figures to make it straightforward to be taught, copy and perceive.
Directing, Dialogue and Performing
As a director, no matter your concept is, you wish to put it over, so the primary factor is to be very clear. The director’s job is to carry the whole lot collectively in order that the animator may give the efficiency. Williams exhibits how this may be achieved with flexibility and distinction. With regard to performing and dialogue, Williams’ primary recommendation is straightforward: do one factor at a time.
Flexibility and Weight
How will we get snap and vitality into our efficiency whereas additionally maintaining the determine steady and strong? The reply: successive breaking of joints to present flexibility. On this mini, Williams stresses the significance of understanding the place the load is in each drawing – to take heed to the place it’s coming from, what it is touring over, and the place it is going.
Runs, Jumps and Skips
As with walks, the way in which we run exhibits our character and persona. Williams demonstrates how the whole lot you are able to do with walks, you can too do with runs.
This mini features a assortment of Williams’ runs, jumps and skips, impressed by a number of the cleverest artists from the Golden Age of animation.
