Animation &Errol Le Cain &Richard Williams 09 Apr 2012 08:23 am
The Sailor and the Devil – repost
- There was a documentary about Richard Williams that I saw many years ago on PBS. It made me an ardent enthusiast of Williams’ work, and I followed his trajectory over many years. Eventually, I worked with him.
The show was called The Creative Person: Richard Williams and was made in 1966. Within the show was a very small section about one of Williams’ artists, Errol LeCain. He was given the task of making a film 
by himself. As Williams explains, this would teach him all the aspects of animation filmmaking and the studio would gain a short film in the end.
The film was called The Sailor and the Devil. This is probably the only film done by the Williams Studio that I haven’t seen. It’s still not on YouTube. Hans Bacher gave some color images on his site, one1more2time3, a year ago. Wanting more, I went back to the special and made frame grabs of some of the film, and I’m posting them here.
Dick was so young, as was Errol LeCain. He went on, of course, to become a world-class children’s book illustrator and the original designer of the backgrounds for the ill-fated Cobbler and the Thief.
Errol LeCain
A glimpse at the storyboard on the wall.
(Click any image to enlarge.)
Another shot of LeCain.
on 03 Jan 2013 at 6:59 am 1.John Carnell said …
Wow. That’s a good pic of Errol. I’d never seen one of him at this age. I knew and lived with Errol in Bristol. He was an amazing guy. Fantastic artist and great friend.