Dick Arnall

Animation producer, 1944 to 2007.

Dick Arnall was born in Sunderland on 14 July 1944 and died on 6 February 2007. He worked on Yellow Submarine, was assistant managing director at Halas and Batchelor, produced ten multi-award-winning independent animations, and from 1990 was production adviser to animate!, the commissioning scheme set up with the Arts Council and Channel 4.

Early years

Arnall was educated at Monkwearmouth Grammar School and studied metallurgy at Queens' College, Cambridge. There he ran a film society and devised Britain's first animation festival, held in 1965, 1967 and 1968.

“By far the most original, exciting and creative film festival ever staged in the British Isles.” The International Film Guide, 1968

Yellow Submarine and Halas and Batchelor

He worked on George Dunning's Yellow Submarine (1968), the first animated British feature for 14 years. From 1969 to 1972 he was assistant managing director at Halas and Batchelor, where he produced the first films by Paul Vester, Geoff Dunbar and Gillian Lacey, and managed the studio's Jackson Five and Osmond Brothers series for ABC-TV.

Independent production

Arnall met his wife, the Finnish animator Marjut Rimminen, at the Mamaia festival in Romania.

He returned to independent production with Rimminen's I'm Not a Feminist, But... (1986), the first of ten multi-award-winning animations made over the following 15 years. They included Tim Webb's A is for Autism (1992), Ruth Lingford's Death and the Mother (1997, made on an Amiga home computer) and Robert Bradbrook's Home Road Movies (2001).

animate!

From 1990 he was independent production adviser to animate!, the commissioning scheme set up by David Curtis, Keith Griffiths and Clare Kitson with the Arts Council and Channel 4, steering 35 films to completion. In 1999 Creation magazine voted him top producer in its 50 Hottest Names in British Animation.

From 2000 he ran animate! through his own company, Finetake, expanding it with an international artists' award and the online archive animateonline.org, now being restored at animate.finetake.com.

A founding member of Blacks in Soho in 1993, he was always distinctive in his Marimekko shirts. His nurturing and defence of film-makers, especially emergent talents, ran through all he did.

Tributes and archives

“He was simply one of the most decent and generous people that those who met him have known.” Gareth Evans, The Guardian, 18 April 2007

Read the full obituary, by Gareth Evans, The Guardian, 18 April 2007.

In November 2024 the London International Animation Festival held a tribute screening, Magic in Marimekko.

The animate! collection is held at animateprojectsarchive.org; Animate Projects continued the scheme after his death. His papers are held in the Dick Arnall Collection at Middlesex University.

He is survived by his wife, Marjut Rimminen, and his son, Timo Arnall.