Bob Godfrey (1921-2013)

So I've been sick and have been spending most of the past two days just trying to sleep it off. And when I woke up today I found out that some time during my slumber the animation world had lost one of their greatest contributors, and one we've seen several times in the past on this blog. Sadly, the Australian-born British animator Bob Godfrey had passed away at the age of 91. He is greatly remembered in England for his work in children's entertainment, such as the television series Roobarb, Henry's Cat, and Do-It Yourself Film Animation Show, which inspired a whole generation of animators, including 3-time Oscar winner Nick Park. Yet Godfrey's success with the Academy came with completely different types of films, ones that satirizes the British way of life, often with explicit sexual innuendo. His greatest triumph came with his 1975 masterpiece Great, the irreverent musical tribute to the life and career of Victorian-era British engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel. Great captured the Best Animated Short Oscar in 1975, and was my second favorite nominated film between the years 1972-1981. He received three other nominations, including Kama Sutra Rides Again (1973), Dream Doll (1979, with Zlatko Grgic), and Small Talk (1993). Although those  nominations ended up losing, they helped him leave behind a style and legacy that will remain memorable to fans of animation for a long, long time.

Text of the article after the break.

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Best Animated Short - 1993

Our journey in reviewing the Oscar nominated animated shorts has taken me to 1993 Oscars. This was the first time I remember watching any parts of the Oscar ceremony. Before I get into that story, let me first clarify something. The Oscars are an annual thing, so there will have to be a way to designate which ceremony you are talking about. There are generally three ways to do so. The first way is to do the official title, which counts the ceremonies using the 1927-28 one as the first one. So for example one we are reviewing is the 66th annual Academy Awards while the one that just passed is the 85th annual Academy Awards. I don't like this method because it is annoying and requires a lot of math. An alternative method is to do it by year, but even then there are two ways to do so. One is to do it by the year of the ceremony, so in this case would be the ceremony from 1994. The other is to do it by the year the movies they were celebrating came out. So this would be the 1993 Oscars, since the films that were nominated had their release in 1993. This is the way I do it.

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