So today I went to the Richard Williams event at the Meuseum of Modern Art here in NYC, accompanied by the likes of Mike Luckas, Chris Zito and Mike Ruocco. A few more folks from Newgrounds wanted to make it, but sadly the tickets sold out incredibly fast so I'm not completely sure if they even got in. We were lucky enough to get ours super-early.
So the event was hosted by John Canemaker and went on for a good couple of hours. Essentially, the panel was a smooth switch between the discussions of John and 'Dick' and the questions that were posed to him (none were taken from the audience, though that may have been a good thing in retrospect) and a nice collection of clips from his work. We were shown the opening sequence to Roger Rabbit, the Title Sequence to the original Pink Panther movie as well as "The Charge of the Right Brigade" (the latter of which was REALLY neat), his own original cut of the Thief & the Cobbler trailer, the "Greedy" scene from the Raggedy Ann & Andy movie as well and one short scene from his version of A Christmas Carol.
Near the end, we also saw a few clips from his upcoming DVD version of the Animator's Survival Kit (I FINALLY picked up a copy of the original book for myself), specifically routines regarding lipsynch/dialouge and walk cycles/general fluid movement. I can already it's -very- in depth and comprehensive, so I'm hoping my school will manage to snag a copy. Along with that we were shown the last few bits of his commercial animation, which in this case, were LITERALLY commercials! In comparison to his other work I could tell they were kinda rushed jobs, but even on their own they put tons of animation done today, online or broadcast, to absolute shame.
As many would expect, he's also a very genuine and wise individual. Very humbling, accepting, but doesn't screw around at all, as I could tell from a few of the stories he shared with the audience about his work with various "interesting" producers, as well as other animators that NOW do some of the best stuff out there, or in a few cases, already have. It was incredibly inspiring and I'm more than certain SOMEBODY caught the entire thing on video, so keep your eyes peeled on the yootubb for a recording.
Afterward, my group 'o chums and I mingled around with a few of the people who attended. No luck finding any NG folk but plenty of teachers from my school were around and it was nice to interact with a few of them in that type of setting. We got a couple quick autographs after a 15 minute wait, and I got my sketchbook signed as well as a quick convo with the guy. He was very responsive and encouraging, so that was pretty spiffy.
Tommorrow another event will be going on, albeit not to the same level of extremity as the Richard Williams event, but a roundtable of animators talking about the state of the industry at my school. Hopefully I can see some NG folk there for that one. That's all I got for ya!
sonikuu1
Lucky. Sounds like you had a great time.... wish I lived in New York.