For the production of Williams’ film Raggedy Ann and Andy in 1975, he hired Babbitt not only to animate, but to continue his animation seminars as well.  When Babbitt demonstrated the mechanics of animation to young interviewer John Canemaker on June 4, 1975, his skills as a communicator came alive.  “Hay is made up of little strands of straw overlapping each other,” said Babbitt, miming a man pitching a bale.  “If you get some resistance in the thrust of the pitchfork, and maybe make it bend a little as you pull upwards, then the release as the hay goes over the shoulder – that give you the feeling of weight!”[27]

Babbitt talks animation with Richard Williams to a "Sight and Sound Magazine" critic.

Williams adds, “Art had an unusual lucidity, a surgeon’s mind.  Most animators aren’t known for their coherence – they have trouble talking about what they’re doing.  This is because it is not a language of tongue.  But Art had no difficulty in explaining how to construct an action, a walk, where the weight is, or how to accent a gesture.  And he had the whole thing arranged in a logical teaching order and system.”[28]

“I had the temerity to teach a class at Dublin University,” said master Looney Tunes director Chuck Jones, “and there were a few people who had been to Art Babbitt’s class, and asked me why I didn’t teach the way Art Babbitt did.  And I said I didn’t know how.”[29]

Ken Harris, Grim Natwick, Babbitt and Richard Williams outside the London studio.

Richard Williams’ London studio hired living animation legends like Ken Harris, Grim Natwick and Shamus Culhane to pass on the magic of the Golden Age to the next generation.  After all, the greybeards wouldn’t be around forever, and it was up to younger folks like those at the London studio to carry the torch.  Babbitt was the only master animator under Williams’ roof to relish the art of teaching.  Incidentally, a decade later, it was Williams’ studio that produced the animation for Who Framed Roger Rabbit – one of the electric jolts that brought the public’s love of classic animation back to life.

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I had never encountered someone like Babbitt, a person so deeply committed to the education of the animation craft.  He often talked about wanting to leave a legacy – but not a legacy of monumental animation, character innovation or labor rights.  A How-To manual would be the culmination of his life, and was what he envisioned carrying on his heritage after his death. He was a man who affected the industry of animation in different ways, all of them significant.  But in the end, Babbitt saw himself as a teacher.  To him, it was his most important contribution to animation.