Guest Speaking at "Persistence of Vision" screening at the Toronto Animated Arts Festival Sunday, July 28, 2013

July 23, 2013

When I was in 2nd year Classical Animation at Sheridan a few of us were asked to go to London, England to work on what was to be the final year of Richard Williams' masterpiece "The Thief and the Cobbler". If you don't know the history of this film, there's an amazing documentary by Kevin Schreck called "Persistence of Vision" that explains why some call the Thief, "the greatest animated film never made".

I've been invited to be on the panel following the Toronto screening of Persistence of Vision at the Toronto Animation Arts Festival this weekend along with the esteemed animation heavyweight, Greg Duffell.

The Thief was my first job in animation. I got the chance to assist a lot amazing animators like Dave Byers-Brown, Tim Watts, Alex Williams, Michael Schlingman, Philip Pepper and Steve Evangelatos. It was an incredible experience and a very unique career start. People came from all over the world to work on the Thief. We gathered each morning at 9:30 for rushes and watched in awe as the big screen filled with Dick's incredible vision of something unique that had never been attempted before.