And so dies the last master animator.

Seeing Raggedy Ann & Andy, The Thief and the Cobbler, Roger Rabbit and all his commercials and interviews and documentaries about him was probably the single most inspiring thing in my life up until that point, I spent hours watching TheThiefArchive channel and reading all I could about the film, it motivated me and I'm sure it motivated thousands of other artists too. Shame about that animation industry, though.

For me, the only reason I kept drawing, editing, restoring and researching was because of him. The only reason I never began animating was because I never had the right equipment to do it, I'm afraid of starting now, but even then the few times I do animate something literally ALL of the animator's Survival kit comes back to me, it's basicaly burned into my brain. Of the few things I am, an artist, an editor, a researcher/historian, I owe it to him and his legendary will to keep working on what he enjoyed. Here was a man who fully achieved the most a man could in his craft.

I have The Thief and the Cobbler burned into my brain. The whole thing. all the multiple versions too, every single shot, every single line of dialog, it's never going to leave me. I downloaded the Mark 3 from Youtube back when it was big and watched it over and over again. Incessantly. I think I must've watched it over a 100 times and I'm not joking.

God bless you, Richard Williams. Thank you for everything.