This….is…..AWESOME!!! Now I’m gettin’ really anxious about Richard’s DVDs. Encore! Encore!

Wow, “awesome” is the only word that comes to mind.

I second and third that…WOW!

Did Richard do all the animation himself?

Ravel’s Bolero could fit in nicely with this clip :-)

Dick wouldn’t ever let anybody else animate on a scene of his, never ever.

Holy DAMN, that was awesome! Dick still has it in him . . . :)

I just have one thing to say to him: Please keep doing new stuff? We miss seeing your work!

Quadruple WoW! Super excited for these DVD’s!! Any word yet on their release date?

Good Night! Perfect augmentation to the best animation lecture/class I’ve ever taken, bare none.

Great walk cycles, as expected. Masterful. Too bad he isn’t working on a film. Dick’s too great a director and/or animator not to be putting it into a film.

That’s very cool…but what I wouldn’t give for the man to have relented on his insistence on ONES for all his animation.

Beautiful, surely. Well-drawn-absolutely. But imo it undermines some of these walks to do them on ones, makes them “swim” and in fact seem akin to rotoscoping.

He wasn’t kidding about that whole top-pegging thing.

Awesome, I’ll be picking these up.

i always wondered what that multi colored orb guy was all about.

I had the privilege of attending his masterclass in ‘99 and it really made a signficant impact on my personal and professional work. Mr. Williams is a one of a kind talent and personality and hopefully his sincere and gleefully unhinged sense of humor comes through in these DVD’s.

Brilliant as always. Love love love that man.

For some reason I have the Merry Marvel Marching Society theme song stuck in my head.

Amazing stuff. Was that first duck done in flash? I would love to see what Mr. Williams would do with stop motion. I wonder if there’s a reason he’s never tried it…anybody know?

great. just great.

the young woman was sexy and wonderful.

Awesome! I have that book.

That video goes great to Zongamin’s Bongo Song.

Can’t wait I will give my first born for this :)

That was great. Tis a shame Williams did not make many feature films. He should have made about a thousand. What ? Too little ?

ME WANTS THOSE DVDs!!!! :)

Looking forward to their release! Any idea when…anybody?

Thank you!
Em

amazing animation

Mr. Williams is one of the most interesting people ever to grace our craft… and truly brilliant, besides!

simply cannot wait! :)

Haha that was great! I will never get tired of animated walk cycles. Thanks for the heads up on this dvd lecture series.

I’m glad to see Dick still has it. Breathtaking stuff, Bravo. Nice touch to see the old pegbars.

Dick told me years ago ” Some people may criticize my storytelling skills, but one thing they can never criticize- I CAN DRAW ANYTHING!”

that is a professional secret we can all aspire to.

No other studio had the huevos to do everything on ones. It was madness, it wasn’t good business sense, but Williams always advocated defining rules, then busting them. His results speak for themselves.

Brilliant! I hope that this isn’t a pencil test; it looks perfect as is.

I agree with A Reader, for all the excellence of draughtsmanship I sometimes get a feeling of eveness of movement in Williams’ animation, ““swim”…akin to rotoscoping”. I’d like a bit more snap sometimes.

Clearly I’m in the minority and if I’d done anything of this quality I’d die happy.

Richard Williams is the Master!! Can’t wait for the dvd set!!

A Reader and Bentos may be so accustomed to ubiquitous, modern ‘tweening’ programs that they can’t appreciate the sheer audacity of what Williams’ animation posessed back in the day when full inbetweening on ones simply was not done. One unfortunate effect of the present software’s evenly spaced tween operations on everything they process is to make the backbreaking work done by hand in a nondigital era seem less consequential than in fact it was.

‘makes them “swim” and in fact seem akin to rotoscoping.’

If it looks like rotoscoping but it aint’ (which his idn’t),
then you just reached the pinnacle of this Artform.

Williams could bring the Rarebit panels to life & have it look like Winsor McCay animated it today.

Wow, I don’t agree that making animation look like it was rotoscoped is the “pinnacle of this Artform”. If it looks like it was rotoscoped, then it might as well have been, and rotoscoping is the antithesis of the real ART in animation. No question Williams is a master of that true art, but some of this does look too rotoscope-y for my tastes. But still, it’s impossible not to be in awe of the overall effect of this piece.

Impressive skills at work!

I’m not accustomed to “‘tweening” programs; know nothing about them. I’m not at all a fan of the kind of commercial stuff that pops and zips around so fast & so much it’s unreadable, either. I also adore and revere Dick Williams’ abilities. He’s a fantastic draftsman and a unique stylist. I’ll be excited to watch this dvd.
But even a genius and a veteran can be disagreed with based on the result shown, and I’ve never agreed with his religious conviction about ALL ONES.
To me the proof’s in the examples here-the rabbit, the dancing girl/stripper character and the elegant woman all have an undulating/underwater/evenness thing going on that is the result of ones. It’s his choice and he’s made it his style, but FWIW I don’t believe his mentors agreed with it at all, either, and told him so. For a guy who loves Milt Kahl so much it’s strange to me that he’s so stubborn about that methodology-one that Milt and every other animator at Disney wouldn’t have used in slow action or as much as Dick does. Maybe he goes into his thinking in the masterclass, which I’ll be happy to buy.

He’s still a seminal figure in animation with a beautiful body of work, ones or not.

Simply amazing.. Richard’s book helped me personally in the past few years, he’s pure genius a master, and this trailer shows how details matter, specially the anticipation, I loved it!

“Again”… Happy birthday Richard :)

A Reader, Richard Williams doesn’t insist on ones for everything although he does admit he thinks they usually work better than twos. This piece does look very smooth though. I’m wondering if we’re seeing all the intended frames though as we’re viewing it on the net. Maybe it’s meant to look even smoother!

There’s a section in his book where he talks about the advantages of ones and twos and the different instances in which they should be used. Pages 78-79.

Have been to a Williams lecture and loved it. I think it’s great that there’s going to be a permanent record of at least some of what he can pass on to us.

Dickens Finster, I think fully ‘tweened’ stuff looks godamawful and rotoscoped stuff looks bloody aweful too. The 2D, UPA/50s style guy near the end is my favourite animation here.

Wow ! Check it out :

http://www.theanimatorssurvivalkit.com/about.html

The Animator’s Survival Kit web site has been updated as of June 8 and is now fully functional. Lots of info about the multi-DVD set , more video examples.

I can’t wait to get this.

From the previews on his website the series looks great. At $1200+ (at the pre-order, 20% discount) I really hope they’ll let us make payments. (uh… interest free, of course) ;-)

That was great!