The Animator's Survival Kit: Dialogue, Directing, Acting and Animal Action

The Animator’s Survival Kit is the essential tool for animators. However, sometimes you don’t want to carry the hefty expanded edition around with you to your college or studio if you’re working on just one aspect of it that day. The Animation Minis take some of the most essential chapters and make them available in smaller, lightweight, hand-bag/backpack size versions. Easy to carry. Easy to study.

This Mini focuses on Directing, Dialogue and Acting. As a director, whatever your idea is, you want to put it over, so the main thing with directing is to be clear – very clear. The Director’s job is to hold everything together so that the animator can give the performance. Richard Williams shows how that performance can be achieved with flexibility and contrast. With Acting and Dialogue, the temptation is to try to do everything at once – Williams’ advice: do one thing at a time.

Author Biography

Richard Williams is best known as the Director of Animation and designer of the new characters for Who Framed Roger Rabbit, for which he won two Academy Awards, including a Special Achievement Award.

Canadian-born Williams has won three US Academy Awards, three British Academy Awards, and an Emmy among 246 international awards – starting with his first film The Little Island in 1958.

Williams has also animated title sequences for Return of the Pink Panther, The Pink Panther Strikes Again, What’s New Pussycat, Casino Royale and linking sequences for The Charge of the Light Brigade, as well as countless prize-winning commercials.

In 1990 he was voted by his peers as ‘The Animator’s Animator’, and in 1995 he started giving the Richard Williams Animation Masterclass for professionals and students worldwide.