Bakshi, Ralph
Bakshi, Ralph (1939– ),American animator. After limbering up with Wizards, a fairy‐tale film about the conflict between good and evil played out through magic and technology, Bakshi made his most ambitious contribution to animated film by adapting the first two books of Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy (1978) for the screen. Seeking naturalism, rather than cartoon caricatures, he shot the whole script in live action, then set an army of illustrators to work tracing these sequences, frame by frame, with appropriate modifications, onto cels. The mixed critical and audience response to this technique and to the heavy compression of the Tolkien characters and narrative in the script led to book three of the trilogy remaining unfilmed.
Terry Staples
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