‘The Snowman’ Creator Raymond Briggs Dies Age 88

British author-illustrator Raymond Briggs, who created numerous works which inspired animated classics such as The Snowman and Ethel & Ernest, died Tuesday, August 9 from pneumonia at age 88. “We know that Raymond’s books were loved by and touched millions of people around the world, who will be sad to hear this news,” his family shared in a statement today, in which they also thanked the staff of the Overton Ward at Royal Sussex County Hopsital, where Briggs spent his final weeks.

Lupus Films, which has adapted Briggs’ works to animation, shared condolences on Twitter:

We are very sad to hear that Raymond Briggs died yesterday. He was such a wonderful inspiration to us and so encouraging when we produced The Snowman and The Snowdog and Ethel & Ernest. He was a kind and generous person with a playful sense of humour. RIP Raymond. pic.twitter.com/s6JeFzQ2xY

— Lupus Films (@LupusFilms) August 10, 2022

Born January 18, 1934 in Wimbledon, Briggs began cartooning at an early age and went on to study painting at the Wimbledon School of Art and typography at the Central School of Art and Design in London. Conscripted into National Service as a Signals corps draughtsman in the early 1950s, Briggs aftward continued his painting studies at the Slade School of Fine Art at University College London, graduating in 1957.

Soon, he was working as a children’s book illustrator, notably on the 1958 Cornish fairytale anthology Peter and the Piskies (by Ruth Manning-Sanders), and gained notoriety with a runner-up commendation for the 1964 Kate Greenway Medal (for the nursery rhyme colleciton Fee Fi Fo Fum) and a win in 1966 for The Mother Goose Treasury, which featured over 800 color illustrations by Briggs. During this time, he also began teaching illustration part time at Brighton School of Art, where he taught until 1986.

Briggs’ first big break as an author-illustrator were two holiday titles published by Hamish Hamilton featuring a curmudgeonly St. Nick published in 1973 and ’75, which were later combined into the 1991 Channel 4 animated special Father Christmas, produced by John Coates. Another of Briggs’ Hamilton picture books, Fungus the Bogeyman (1977) about a working class monster, was adapted into two different three-part hybrid specials; the first in 2004 (BBC) and the latest for Sky1 in 2015, narrated by Andy Serkis an dproduced by his mo-cap studio The Imaginarium.

Perhaps the artist’s best-known work, The Snowman was published in 1978 (Hamilton / Random House in the U.S.) Briggs said that after working “amongst muck, slime and words” for Fungus, he wanted to so something “clean, pleasant, fresh and wordless and quick.” The books’ distinctive pencil crayon illustrations were faithfully adapted into a BAFTA-winning, Oscar-nominated half-hour TV movie in 1982. The film was produced by Coates for TVC and directed by Dianne Jackson, with supervision by Jimmy T. Murakami.

The Snowman remains a beloved holiday classic in both its print and animated forms, and made the BFI’s 100 Greatest British Television Programs list in 2000. The 25-minute Channel 4 special The Snowman and the Snowdog, produced by Lupus Films, was released in 2012 to celebrate the original film’s 30th anniversary, and was dedicated to the memory of Coates, who passed away just months before its premiere.

Into the 1980s, Briggs began to expand his work into more adult themes, as seen in Gentleman Jim (1980) and its follow-up, When the Wind Blows (1982), which imagines a Soviet nuclear strike through the eyes of a retired couple in rural England and was made into an animated film in 1986, directed by Murakami, produced by Coates and starring the voiced of Peggy Ashcroft and John Mills.

In 1998, Briggs published Ethel & Ernest: A True Story through Jomnathan Cape. The poignant graphic novel tells the life story of Briggs’ parents — Ernest, a milkman, and Ethel, a former lady’s maid — by collecting the memorable moments of their years together from their first meeting in 1928 until their deaths in 1971. The illustrated biography won a British Book Award and was made into the hand-drawn animated feature  Ethel & Ernest in 2016, produced by Lupus Films, Melusine and Cloth Cat, directed by Roger Mainwood and starring Brenda Blethyn and Jim Broadbent.

Briggs’ childrens books The Bear and Ivor the Invisible were also adapted as animated television specials, in 1998 and 2001, respectively. His last published book, Notes from the Sofa, was released by crowdfunded label Unbound in 2015. Over the course of his career, Briggs won two Kate Greenaway Medals (plus two runners-up commendations), two British Book Awards and several other honors. He was inducted into the British Comic Awards Hall of Fame in 2012, and appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 2017.

The late author was predeceased by his wife, Jean (1973), and his long-term partner, Liz (2015). At the time of his death, he was residing in Westmeston, Sussex.

[Source: BBC, The New York Times]