The 2008 “2D OR NOT 2D Animation Festival” kicked off to a fabulous start last night with its superlative ‘preview event’… the RICHARD WILLIAMS masterclass lecture at the DigiPen Institute of Technology main campus in Redmond, WA.

As Richard Williams' own assistant in the formative years of my career, I was both proud and delighted to share with the audience something of this great teacher's infectious knowledge and charisma.

Richard Williams is undoubtedly the world’s most knowledgeable animator alive today. He captivated the 100+ professional audience that filled the Plato lecture theater with stories of his life, his animation universe and his hilarious encounters with many of Disney’s legendary ‘Nine Old Men’. His seamless presentation of a number of the core principles of animation was inspirational too of course.

Dick explains his hilarious 'pitcher' action sequence from one of the DVD lectures.

The seemingly tireless 75 year old master of animation had already conducted two private sessions to DigiPen students on the art campus earlier that day and yet he rose to the occasion in the evening with a tireless presentation of his captivating material, easily exceeding the 90-minute time slot that had been originally anticipated. The audience was full of admiration and enthusiasm when Dick opened the floor to Q&A throughout his talk and shared his impromptu advice and amusing anecdotal story illustrations in response. He actually remarked to me afterwards how intelligent and well informed he thought the Redmond animators were.

Dick explains the principle of forward motion with anticipation.

Central to Richard Williams’ presentation was the launch of his fabulous and unprecedented 16-disk, boxed DVD series of lectures and demonstrations that has effectively brought his firmly established ‘bible’ of animation… “The Animator’s Survival Kit”… to animated life. Initially planned as a 3-month animation exercise with filmed lectures added, the project took several years to complete. The result of this selfless dedication to spreading the word of top-level animation techniques is a remarkable lecture series collection of just about everything anyone would ever want to know about animation at the very highest level of its expression.

(Boxed sets of “The Animator’s Survival Kit ~ ANIMATED” can be ordered at the “2D OR NOT 2D Animation Festival” with a 20% discount from the listed price if a minimum of 20 orders can be generated at the event!)

A limited number of "The Animator's Survival Kit ~ ANIMATED" promo DVDs will be given-out as prizes during festival events.

Those privileged enough to hear Richard Williams speak last night clearly went away in awe of this animation master’s knowledge, as well as his undeniable skill in the art of animation. I am sure that every animator present also went away with a renewed determination to raise their game in terms of their own skills… but also with a greater appreciation of the fine artform that animation will forever be with inspirational masters like Richard Williams at its helm. The future looks very assured for the animation industry if this effect is felt wherever “The Animator’s Survival Kit ~ ANIMATED” DVD lecture series… or indeed the great man himself… are seen!

The maestro answers questions from an extremely well-informed audience, including several ex-Disney artists and animators who now teach at DigiPen.

No-doubt too, attendees at this event can now but only wonder what the other amazingly talented speakers appearing at the main festival event on November 14^th/15^th will have to offer. Richard Williams will be a hard act to follow but I have absolutely no doubts whatsoever there will be further wonders to dazzle and inspire us all when the time comes!

Tony. :^{)}=-