Briggs turned next to pastels in 1978’s The Snowman, a wordless story about a boy whose snowman comes to life. But this magical story was still grounded in harsh reality; the next morning, the boy wakes to find only the snowman’s hat and scarf listing on a pile of melting snow. ”I don’t have happy endings,” Briggs told the Radio Times in 2012. “I create what seems natural and inevitable. The snowman melts, my parents died, animals die, flowers die. Everything does. There’s nothing particularly gloomy about it. It’s a fact of life.” It was made into an animated film by Channel 4, one of our terrestrial television companies, with a sublime score by Howard Blake. When I was growing up it was broadcast every Christmas; perhaps it still is. With us watching it became an annual event. The holiday simply would not have been the same without it, as if there was no Christmas tree, no lights and no watch night service in church.

The following morning, James wakes up to find that the snowman has melted, leaving only his hat, scarf, coal eyes, tangerine nose, and coal buttons in a pile of melted snow. James kneels down by the snowman's remains while holding his scarf, mourning the loss of his friend. The film was nominated as Best Animated Short Film at the 55th Academy Awards in 1983, but lost to the Polish film Tango by Zbigniew Rybczyński. [16] It won a BAFTA for best Children's Programme (Entertainment/Drama) at the 1983 British Academy Television Awards, and was also nominated for Best Graphics. It won the Grand Prix at the Tampere Film Festival in 1984. [16] a b Brown, Helen (21 September 2023). "How Walking in the Air took The Snowman to great heights". Financial TImes. Archived from the original on 1 October 2023 . Retrieved 1 October 2023.Christmas Eve" ( Noch pered Rozhdestvom, 1832) by Nikolai Gogol (from Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka)

He was very amused when Liz Benjamin's three-year-old granddaughter announced one day at the dining table that “Raymond is not a normal person”. “The best compliment I have ever had,” he said. And words that he would like as his epitaph. The secretary of the Inter-Church Peace Council (IKV) in the Netherlands, Mient Jan Faber (left), receiving the first copy of the comic book When the Wind Blows (called When the Bomb Fell in the Dutch version) by Raymond Briggs (right) in 1983 Photo: Dutch National Archives

The book

In the United Kingdom, it was the runner-up for the Kate Greenaway Medal from the Library Association, recognising the year's best children's book illustration by a British writer. [5] [a] In the United States, it was named to the Lewis Carroll Shelf Award list in 1979. Briggs's mature style, favouring crayon as a medium over earlier experiments in watercolour, has a fine-textured patina and muted palette that is as distinctive and unmistakable as the strongly outlined, vividly coloured images of two internationally popular Francophone comic-book series—Hergé’s Tintin adventures (starting in 1929) and René Goscinny and Albert Uderzo’s Asterix books (1959-2015)—both of which are reminiscent of the style and primary tones of the 19th-century posters and short books of the French publisher Imageries d’Epinal. To celebrate the 30th anniversary of the original short and of Channel 4, a 25-minute special titled The Snowman and the Snowdog aired on Channel 4 on Christmas Eve 2012. [18] Produced at the London-based animation company Lupus Films, [19] with many of the original team returning, the sequel was made in the same traditional techniques as the first film, and features the Snowman, a new young boy named Billy and a snow dog flying over landmarks and going to another party. [20] The sequel was dedicated to the memory of producer John Coates, [24] who died in September 2012, during its production. [25] Stage version [ edit ]