Tom Sito.

AF: Did you have much interaction with the live-action department, or were the animators fairly isolated?

TS: The live action was pretty well done by the time we were crunching on the footage. But cinematographer Dean Cundy, as well as Ed Jones, Steve Starkey and Ken Ralston of ILM made themselves available for any problems or support. We were flattered when Ralston (then in charge of ILM) said to us after, "That was the hardest picture I had ever done. The spaceship pictures we got down, but making this toon noir look real, that was tough."

AF: Was working in a London a big adjustment for you and the other animators?

TS: It was. We all speak English, but it is still a different culture. Even the can openers don't open the same. But it was a pretty international crew. We had artists from Ireland, Holland, Canada, France, Germany, Zimbabwe and more. It was a real Légion étrangère. By the end we were a pretty tight-knit family.

Many believe that Rabbit was the beginning of the great 2D renaissance at Disney. Before that, Sito believes that feature animation was rudderless, stewing in its own juices and not knowing what to make of its new ownership.

We hung out together at the pub, and took care of each other. London's Time Out magazine joked that all the artists wandering around Camden Town in their Disney U.K. crew jackets looked like an army of occupation. When the film premiered in NYC, my birthplace, a bunch of Brits came out for the opening and Pat and I got show them my town, as they were our guides in Old Blighty.

AF: How demanding was Richard Williams as a director? What lessons did he impart that are still with you to this day?

TS: Dick is the most demanding yet exciting director I ever worked with. Every time our paths crossed, I felt my technique improved. Before he ever started lecturing, he was the world's greatest student of animation technique, and he infused all his young artists with the same desire to study the master animators. Dick never drove an artist harder than he drove himself, but he did drive himself very hard! He was the quintessential G.I. general. He always wanted to outdo himself on the next scene, and he encouraged us to outdo ourselves. That is his greatest legacy.

One more anecdote: I recall after all the hoopla and effort, the day of Roger Rabbit's opening finally came. Now it was up to the public. I was driving through my parents' old neighborhood in Brooklyn when I stopped at a traffic light. Roger was playing at the Canarsie Theater across the street. I saw three little scruffy kids, like extras in a Fat Albert movie, crossing in front of my car.

I heard one say about the film, "Hey, did you see dat?" And the other replied, "Yeah, it sucked!" I was horrified! Oh no!! But later that night, back in Manhattan, when I saw the triple lines of ticketholders held back by police barricades in front of the Ziegfeld Theater, and the line extending down the block around 6th Avenue, I knew we had a hit on our hands.

Sito animated a lot of weasels, some of the gorilla bouncer at the Ink & Paint Club, and a lot on the finale (above). Courtesy of Tom Sito.

James Baxter
AF: How did you get involved with the production?

James Baxter: I started on Who Framed Roger Rabbit in the summer of 1987. The film was already well underway, the opening Maroon Cartoon was already complete, and Richard Williams had already moved his entire operation to Camden under the umbrella of Walt Disney Animation UK. A few friends and me heard about the project during our first year at West Surrey College of Art and Design where we were studying animation. A project like Roger doesn't come to London very often, so it was a once in a lifetime opportunity for us.

AF: And what was your role in the animation department?

JB: I started out on Roger as an in-betweener and then was on Andreas Deja's clean-up crew. During this time I was doing animation tests and showing them to Andreas. Eventually, they started giving me little pieces of animation to do, until I was made an animator around the end of 1987.

AF: Which characters did you animate?

JB: I animated mostly weasels, but I also did a few Roger and Jessica shots. Dick Williams had always been a hero of mine when I was still at school, and it was largely because of him that I took a chance and quit school (after one year) to go work on Roger.