Richard Williams

Richard Williams is a British animator who has won 3 Oscars, 3 British Academy Awards and over 250 other international awards. He worked with Disney and Steven Spielberg to create the hit film 'Who framed Roger Rabbit?' he created the main characters Roger and Jessica Rabbit, Baby Herman and all the new characters.

Roger and Jessica Rabbit

Williams has had more than a 50 year career in animation which includes The Return of the Pink Panther, The Pink Panther Strikes Again, What's New Pussycat, the James Bond Casino Royale, The Charge of the Light Brigade, and Oscar winning A Christmas Carol. In 2001 Williams released his best selling book 'The Animators Survival Kit' in which you can get a 16-DVD box set of master classes from his 50 years of experience, his teachings are used around the world by different studios such as Disney, Pixar, ILM,Dreamworks/PDI and Warner Bros. His entire knowledge that he teaches go from the basics of traditional animation in the beginning to more modern computer animation and will go down in history for being a helping hand in sharing his knowledge and for helping current animators take the medium in a new direction.


Bibliography

Information found at: 

• http://www.theanimatorssurvivalkit.com/biography.html

Bill Plympton

American, animator, cartoonist, graphic designer, and film maker Bill Plympton best known for his animation short 'Your Face'. He studied Graphic Design at Portland State University from 1964 and in 1968 left there and started attending the School of Visual Arts in New York where he was a cartooning major, he graduated there in 1969. 

Bill Plympton's 'Your Face'.

His illustrations and cartoons have been published many times in over 20 newspapers and many magazines, his original style is easily recognized. He has a published book called 'The Sleazy Cartoons of Bill Plympton' and by 2012, Plympton had created over 40 animated short films and six animated features. Bill Plympton animated the opening couch gag for the Simpsons episodes "Beware My Cheating Bart" in 2012, "Black Eyed, Please" in 2013 and "Married to the Blob" in 2014. Also at the Academy Film Archive, there's a collection of more than 180 Plympton items held there. 

The Sleazy Cartoons of Bill Plympton

All his life Plympton was interested in animation, when he was fourteen, he sent Disney some of his cartoons and offered up his services as animator. They wrote back and told him that while his drawings showed promise, he was too young. It wasn’t until 1983 that he was approached to animate a film. The Android Sister Valeria Wasilewski asked Plympton to direct and animate a film she was producing called 'Boomtown'. Immediately following the completion of “Boomtown,” he began his own animated film, “Drawing Lesson # 2.” Production of the live action scenes was slow due to inclement weather, so Plympton decided to start on another film - this was 'Your Face' (1987) and in 1988 won the Oscar nomination for best animated short. 

After this his career really got going, he started working for clients such as Trivial Pursuit, Nutrasweet, Taco Bell, AT&T, Nike, Geico, United Airlines and Mercedes-Benz. His work also started appearing with more and more frequency on MTV and in the increasingly popular touring animation festivals. After a string of highly successful short films (“One of Those Days,” “How to Kiss,” “25 Ways to Quit Smoking,” and “Plymptoons”), he began thinking about making a feature film. His shorts were winning prizes like crazy and he wanted a new challenge and it was his dream to make a full length film which was 'The Tune' and after this many other feature films were made during the space of his career - even today he continues to work under his own production name 'Plymptoons'.

Bibliography:

Information found at: 

• http://www.plymptoons.com/about/
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Plympton

Lotte Reiniger

German film director and animator, Lotte Reiniger born in 1899 and died 1981 leaving behind her original invention of silhouette animation, which she used to make many animation shots such as Cinderella, Hansel and Gretel,  The Adventures of Prince Achmed etc. She goes down as a pioneer in animation history and in avante-garde.

Cinderella: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kku75vGDD_0

Silhouette animation is cutting out card and putting it against a screen, recording each movements sequenced together to create an animation. She wrote a book on her invention called 'Shadow Theatres and Shadow Films'. Her films are beautiful to watch as they have a particular charm, like puppetry in the movements and the still frames individually are a work of art, Dan North of Spectacular Attractions as “evocative and engrossing.” 

When Reiniger was younger she had an affinity with fairy tales and at school experimented with shadow puppet productions - she was inspired by the Chinese art of puppetry and used to make her puppets act out scenes from Shakespeare. However getting into industry was difficult for Reiniger because at the time women did not have the same rights as men to follow whatever career path they desired, because of her signature style and talents she had the opportunity to work for the Berliner Institut für Kulturforschung experimentation studio where she met other avante-garde artists and her husband, there she worked more of an artist rather than film maker and began making her animation shorts.

During the 1930s her and her family fled Germany due to the world war and travelled from place to place where they finally settled down in London after the war, she made films for 'GPO Film Unit' but later on Reiniger made a dozen films for 'Primrose Productions' which sparked her career again lasting another decade.

Bibliography

Information found at: 

• https://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/jun/02/lotte-reiniger-the-pioneer-of-silhouette-animation-google-doodle 
• http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2016/06/01/lotte-reiniger-the-pioneering-film-maker-whose-shadow-puppets-in/

Don Hertzfeldt

Don Hertzfeldt is an award nominated and a self taught animator, born in California 1976, studied at University of California, Santa Barbara and graduated in 1998. Hertzfeldt has done many animation shorts that have competed in festivals/competitions and is best known for his traditional pen and paper, stick figure styled animations my favourites being the more absurd humoured ones (that are slightly sadist) like 'Wisdom Teeth' and 'Billy's Balloon'.

Wisdom Teeth: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9W-VGUOiVDc 

Billy's Balloon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jksRQcI9NA

Other than stick figures, Hertzfeldt has done other animation shorts like answering The Simpsons' fans question of what would The Simpsons look like way into the future? 

Facts/achievements:

• Voted in 'Filmmaker Magazine' as one of the "top 25 directors to watch".
• Self taught animator
• Co-founder of the animation festival "The Animation Show" that put animated short films into more American movie theatres.
• His animations have been featured in over a thousand theatrical film venues and film festivals worldwide.
• Holds festival record for having seven films complete at the Sundance Film Festival. (Rejected, The Meaning of Life, Everything Will Be OK, I Am So Proud of You, Wisdom Teeth, It's Such a Beautiful Day, and World of Tomorrow).
• Winner of the San Francisco International Film Festival's Lifetime Achievement Award for his "unique contributions to film and animation" and for "challenging the boundaries of his craft."
• The only filmmaker to have won the Sundance Film Festival's Grand Jury Prize for Short Film twice in 2007 for "Everything Will Be OK" and in 2015 for "World of Tomorrow".

Bibliography:

Information found at: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0381116/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm

Videos found at: https://www.youtube.com/user/t1i1b