THE THIEF

Angora Love

2012-01-31T12:51:00.000-08:00

Remember this earlier post?
http://thethief1.blogspot.com/2008/02/zigag-steps-on-tack.html

I recently watched a few Laurel&Hardy shorts and in one of them I recognized the shots that Dick used as reference for the animation of Zigzag stepping on the tack. The short is called "Angora Love".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angora_Love

As a kid I watched a lot of Laurel&Hardy films on German television. Comedian Hanns Dieter Hüsch did narration and also voice over for all the characters. When I think of Laurel&Hardy I always imagine hearing his voice. You might want to search for "Die nächtliche Ziegenwäsche". There is a clip that has the shots that Dick used around the 8:50 mark.

Into the City (updated)

2011-11-20T08:59:00.000-08:00

Here is a guest blog entry by our friend Simon Maddocks, in his own words and with illustrations he supplied. Enjoy!

UPDATE - Simon's linetests:

I started work at Richard Williams Studio in the summer of 1990, originally employed as Ramon Guillaumet's assistant. On my first day however, Dick gave me a scene to animate on the War Machine destruction sequence. The second and final scene I animated was the animation of the city from a long shot of the palace to a close-up of the three gold balls. This lasted about 194 frames, and took me a year. I've dug out a few drawings from the scene below:

Prior to the city scene were scenes of swirling clouds and other abstract patters within a glass ball held between a disembodied pair of hands. This is a layout drawing guide to the framing of those scenes.

The city in which much of "The Thief" takes place was depicted in many backgrounds in the film, and among the most spectacular was a large painting by Errol Le Cain of the whole city on a hill. The palace in its grounds surrounded by a moat is seen here in this detail. The whole painting was probably about 6 feet wide.

The design for the city was drawn up by Roy Naisbitt as a huge line drawing about 10 feet wide. I was concerned with animating the palace section at the top which was to be at the end of a track in to that section from a wide shot of the whole city.
I stared at this drawing for hours on my first day on the scene, wondering how on earth I was going to start the process. The style of the film was that of Persian miniatures, which had naive perspective which did not really lend itself to the kind of dimensional breakdown that would make animating around the form easy, but I noticed - to my relief - that Roy had actually used perspective on the palace, and the towers around the walls were actually definable on a perspective grid. There was no vertical perspective, all the vertical lines were parallel.

This is an early drawing to try to break down that structure before getting into some detailed grid animation on which I would construct the city. The underpinning of the grid would stop the buildings losing form and swimming around as the animation progressed.

With some basic grids drawn up I started on some rough keyframe drawings as a test of the process and also the composition.{

This is one of five or six layers of gound level where the grid is sub-divided and the plans of the buildings are then drawn in. The reason for using subdivideable grids almost everywhere is that you don't need any measurement, which is impractical in a perspective drawing. The subdivision works naturally within the perspective and allows smooth animation based on only a few initial points being laid down. Of course you have to get those right!

This drawing shows the plans of the buildings and walls for the various ground levels for one of the animation frames.

From the plans the heights of the buildings are "extruded" upwards to act as a template for the more detailed drawings.

This is the finished drawing of the main details of the architecture and landscape for the first frame. Further detail would be added on additional cell layers for bricks and smaller details, such as the chains supporting the leaning minaret.

As I had done with the city, the palace needed to be broken down into a constructable set of shapes. The palace was the most detailed building in the scene by far and was to fill the screen, so it needed particularly fine detailing.

This is a test drawing for the detailed lines of the palace for frame 103.

The finish of the artwork was another issue that required much care, detail and sheer craftsmanship. Under Dick's direction, it was decided that the city would be photocopied onto yellow paper, which would then feature coloured pencil rendering with additional layers of hand traced detail such as bricks and highlights on frosted cells. This picture is of a colour test by Dee Morgan. Dee had also worked on the flower renders in the film. Rendering in this sense refers to the subtle coloured pencil shading of the animation frame by frame. This is extremely demanding work because the tendency is for the randomness of the shaded pencil strokes to "boil" from one frame to the next, distracting from the more subtle main animation.

This is a demonstration frame I made up with laser copied city drawing rendered by Dee, with further detail and rendering work on a frosted overlay cell. There is also a flat painted cell for the sky. This is by no means the finished look as there would have been additional exposures to highlight the sky brightness and the gold domes. The cells no longer perfectly align in this artwork unfortunately but I hope it gives some indication where the scene was heading. The disc is about 11.4 inches in diameter

This is a test render of the final frame, centred on the gold balls at the top of the minaret, which were a key plot device in the story. Subsequent scenes in the prologue took over from this frame.The scene was called "Into City". I did the principal animation but others contributed, including Elaine Koo ( in-betweening ), Mark Naisbitt ( detail work ), Robert Somerville, ( in-betweens, detail ), and Dee Morgan ( rendering )Sadly this scene was never finished. The studio had a break for Easter in 1992, and when we came back 12 of the drawings from the middle of the scene had gone missing. These were near-finished highly rendered drawings from Dee that would have taken a long time to replicate. Shortly after that the film fell into the hands of the Completion Bond Company and all artwork was shipped off to the States. No-one picked the scene up again.Working on "The Thief" was very hard work but it was extremely rewarding. Seeing the rough cuts as the film came together was inspiring. It seems rare now to see the close collaboration the team all had directly with Dick Williams, you didn't have to go through a chain of leads and supervisors to communicate with the director you just walked up to him. I learned a lot on that production and made a lot of friends, who I am still in touch with. There's a wide range of opinion concerning the fate of "The Thief". I believe had we been allowed to finish it it would have certainly been an artistic success and probably a popular one too. We'll never know.

Neil Boyle's "The Last Belle"

2011-10-21T11:05:00.000-07:00

I can't wait to see Neil Boyle's short film "The Last Belle". Nice to see a lot of familiar faces in these photos from the crew screening:
http://thelastbelleblog.blogspot.com/2011/10/crew-screening.html

"making of..." blog:
http://thelastbelleblog.blogspot.com/

website:
http://www.thelastbelle.com/

John Leatherbarrow and Neil Boyle

PERSISTENCE OF VISION - Preview Trailer

2011-04-25T15:32:00.000-07:00

Brigands!

2011-02-25T10:42:00.000-08:00

I'm going to start posting some storyboard sketches from the Brigands sequence in the desert. They seem to be a combination of Corny Cole's drawings and earlier sketches by Dick- (the Nasruddin character is still present). Since there appears to be 2 different passes here it's difficult to identify exactly the sequential order so someone may be able to help verify these details? Here's the first batch . . .

2011-02-18T16:36:00.000-08:00

Great interview with Dick on One Huge Eye

One Eye

2010-12-15T11:26:00.000-08:00

Was this article from Michael Sporn's blog ever linked here?

"While working on Raggedy Ann and being somewhat close with Richard Williams when he was in town, I was amused by something that happened early on.
Dick was in and out often recording and editing the voice track. A lot of time was spent in the rehearsal studios in the Broadway/theatrical of town. (That was about three blocks away from the studio.) In an elevator ride up to the rehearsal space, Dick overheard a large black man in the elevator. I believe he was a delivery guy, maybe a messenger.
Dick popped up in a flash. He immediately asked the guy if he had ever done any acting. No? Well, Dick hired him on the spot to be the voice of the leader of the One Eyes. His voice was incredibly deep and dark.
Within the week, Dick had rerecorded the lines. (Another actor had done him in England, and Dick was looking for something better.) To be honest, I’m not sure if this was actually the final voice used in the film (it could be), but the story was so entertaining to some fly-on-the-wall like me, that I remember it well.
After recording the piece, Dick did a thank you drawing for the guy. I made a xerox. This is that copy done with drying magic markers."

Dick's new film!

2010-11-01T10:26:00.000-07:00

The Observer 21st February 1965 featuring some of the 'Circus Drawings'

Dave Nethery reports on a very interesting development -Dick's finished his latest short film & it has actually premiered at a silent film festival. More details on Harvey Deneroff's site

The result is an extraordinary adventure in time. The artist encounters his young, adventuring self. The circus artists of more than half a century ago – where can they be now? – are brought back to life, athletic or absurd, luminous.

The film begins with a montage of the 1953 drawings, revealing that the quality of draughtmanship that distinguishes Williams from other animators was already intact from the beginning. A camera could not read these strangers’ eyes as the drawings do, as timeless and unpretentious as Old Masters.

Halfway, the film turns to colour, and now the older artist takes over, bringing decades’ seniority of experience, and the legacy of working with the Disney masters. These glimpses, the sketches animated – a bird taking flight, acrobats, athletes, and clowns, a rope-walker momentarily faltering, trousers falling, a baby embraced, a dress pulled over the shoulders – represent traditional, hand-crafted animation the like of which we may not see again. For those with an eye for poetry and magic, this is it.

On release, the film will be shown with sound, with Richard Rodney Bennett’s 1965 score. However, uniquely for this performance, Richard Williams wishes to screen the film as a “silent”, with live piano accompaniment by Maud Nelissen. – DAVID ROBINSON

Serata inaugurale/Opening Night Prima mondiale / World Premiere CIRCUS DRAWINGS (Richard Williams, GB 2010) Regia/dir., anim: Richard Williams; prod: Imogen Sutton; mont./ed: Don Fairservice; f./ph: Charles Pithers, Graham Orrin; anim. camera: John Leatherbarrow; mus: Richard Rodney Bennett, diretta da/conducted by John Carewe; 35mm, 796 ft., 8'51" (24 fps); fonte copia/print source: Richard Williams. Didascalie in inglese / English intertitles.

Searching for more info on the project I came across this well illustrated recent interview.

Pencil Tests

2010-10-17T15:36:00.000-07:00

Excellent collection of pencil-tests from the Thief linked from Dave Nethery's blog here.
The first of which is notable for its inclusion of live-action print-outs that Dick referenced for particular scenes in the film.

I remember in his Masterclass Dick told us about his method of using a 'medical printer' to study live-action footage but I had never seen the results until now.

Dick on Disney

2010-09-29T04:05:00.000-07:00

Richard Williams, Brian Sibley and Gerald Scarfe discuss the enormous influence of Walt Disney.
Listen to the BBC radio 4 podcast here.

More Photos from the reunion

2010-08-08T04:19:00.000-07:00

Some more pictures from Tuesday night, this time courtesy of Ramon Modiano and myself...
There'll probably be more later.

Teddy

Tanya & Alyson

Squeaky

Simon

Phil & Sharon

Gary & Michael & Sharon

Roy & Sharon

Robert & Kevin

Robert

Squeaky & Phil

Michael & Michael

Jim

Phil & Claire & Inge

Ian

Gary

Cyrus

Atlanta

Everybody

Pete & Alex (out of focus, sorry)

All done and dusted.

2010-08-06T11:01:00.000-07:00

It came and went, and I think must be considered a success.
We managed to pack out Blakes-bar at the Star and Garter, much to the delight of Kelvin, the landlord, who prides himself on the pubs animation history.
Simon Maddox sent me his photos and, as they are nicer than mine, they'll be the first to see publication.
I enjoyed it so much, I promise I won't wait another 20 years before we do it again...
Enjoy...

Sharon & Robert

Pete & Paul

Claire

Mark

Lance & Neil

Cy & Roy

Rob

Tanya

Alyson

Michael

Alyson

Gary

Mike

Ramon

Sue & Tanya

An & Iain

Robert

Dean & Atlanta

Roy

Roy & Ian

Paul

Dean

London, 3rd of August, Star and Garter

2010-07-20T11:06:00.000-07:00

The 3rd turned out to be the most available date.
To all of you who can't be there, I apologise.
I'm sure we'll do it again in the years to come and I'll give everybody a bit more warning then.
Meanwhile:

Tuesday 3rd of August,
Star and Garter,
62 Poland Street,
Soho, London
6:30 or 7:00 onwards

See you there...

Michael

The Thief Archive

2010-07-19T12:07:00.000-07:00

Patrick McCart and Garrett "Recobbled" Gilchrist have collected lots of Williams and Thief related clips on this YouTube channel. Click this link: The Thief Archive

...an inward and invisible reality.

2010-06-27T05:30:00.001-07:00

It's been 20 Years and a get-together is in the making.
It will probably be within the first three weeks of August
and probably on a Tuesday, but definitely in London.
I will contact as many people as I have details of, by E-mail.
If you don't hear anything in the next week
and you worked on the Thief and are interested in coming along,
leave a comment under this post and I'll contact you.

Michael

Roy's birthday

2010-05-06T13:39:00.000-07:00

Roy Naisbitt is 80 years old today. Here is a drawing he gave me when he showed me his collection of drawings in his home. He has the original artwork for his opening pan of Christmas Carol for example and lots of other things that should be in a museum.The drawing size is 25x12".

Happy Birtday Roy! You are awesome.

The Creative Person

2010-05-06T09:10:00.000-07:00

I recently had a drink with Pete Weston, who told me about this video documentary.
It seems to be a half hour film made in the 60s and even if it doesn't give any revolutionary new insights, it does offer an intriguing view of Soho, 40 years ago...
Here is the Google video version, which is all in one piece.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4521253840921599093#

If that doesn't work for some, just watch it on youtube.
Part one is here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQdcJ84BHSk

Once again, Thank you Pete for the tip...
Enjoy!

2010-04-17T01:17:00.000-07:00

I recently contacted Mr Anthony Perry after reading his small book on the making of The Yellow Submarine in which he has written a chapter on his association with Dick Williams. Mr Perry was a producer on the Beatles picture and helped set up Dick in his first studio space. With permission I've scanned the chapter on Dick to post here.

Mr Perry's book makes for a fascinating read about how & why The Yellow Submarine was produced-it only costs £3 and is available from the Cartoon Museum, London.

ANIMATOR magazine article 1984

2010-04-14T07:43:00.000-07:00

Eric Goldberg talks about Ken Harris

2010-04-07T11:43:00.000-07:00

LINK to YouTube clip

Once...

2010-03-05T00:56:00.000-08:00

....there were two students of animation at the University of Essen called Holger and Dietmar. They were taught by a certain Hans Bacher who one day approached them – as if it was the most normal thing in the world – with the words: „You two should make a show reel and shop it around in London“

In 1990, London was the place where „it happened“. Disney made „Treasure of the Lamp“. Universal was working on „American Tail“ and then there was Pizzazz, Felix Films, Oscar Grillo's Klacto and many others in the commercial business.

Well, in proper „deutscher Arbeitseinstellung“ Holger and I went to work. Today you would copy your portfolio on a DvD, in 1990 we cut and assembled everything on 16 mm film. After that, we needed to pay a laboratory to transfer the film to a U-matic tape. I remember this cost being so high, that we only got one copy.

The next step in „deutscher Gründlichkeit“ was to phone the different studios in London to make appointments, only to find out that there was a much more relaxed atmosphere there than with german studios. Basically we were told to just „knock on the door“ when we were in London.

In 1990, this worked not only for the small studios that did commercials, but also for the feature film companies. Already on our first day we had appointments at Disney („Sorry guys, we are closing the studio here“) and Dick Purdom. They had a job that they would offer to one of us, all we had to do is duel ourselves outside for it. Oscar Grillo and Eric Goldberg advised us to show our stuff to Dick Williams. Williams wasn't officially hiring, but they had heard that he would be looking for people soon. Through Hans Bacher we were familiar with Williams' work and we had seen several inspiring documentaries, one of them about his masterpiece „The Thief and the Cobbler“ - but while dreaming of working in London was in order, dreaming of ever working on the „Thief“ seemed outrageous.

We showed our tape at Universal and got an offer to start as inbetweeners on „American Tail“ for the astronomical sum of 250 pounds per week. Could it get any better? We were so upbeat about the opportunity to work in „proper“ animation that we decided to go for broke. We took the tube to Camden Town and walked up to the famous building on Royal College Street – No. 138. Our flamboyant ringing of the doorbell produced a slightly irritated Ian Cook, Williams' production coordinator, who greeted us with a brief „Mr. Williams does not meet any applicants“. We were further told, that we could leave our tape in the studio, with no promise that Mr. Williams would actually take a look at it. „Almost no chance“ seemed better than „no chance“, so we handed our tape over. After the door closed, we realized that we had in fact given away our one and only tape and we were now stuck with 2 days in London and nothing to show if we wanted to apply elsewhere. Bit of a bummer.

I don't remember how we killed the next days, waiting for the flight back, but at least we tried and phoned 138 times and again to see if there was any feedback from the maestro. Alas, it was the answering machine every time and finally it was Friday, our plane was scheduled to leave in a few hours and we decided to try and enter the lion's den once more to at least retrieve our precious tape. Once again our not-so-flamboyant ringing of the doorbell was answered by Ian Cook and before we were finished uttering some nonsense about planes and flights and our only tape, Ian Cook said the words I shall never forget: „Mr Williams wants to see you“.

To sum up the next 30 minutes: heartbeat at 120, walking on clouds, holy choirs singing, cherubs blowing trumpets, the world seen through a soft focus lens, a grin on the face like an idiot.

Somewhere in there we met Dick and Roy and got a job as assistant animators „starting tomorrow if you want“. Oh boy, did we want to – but the small issue of having to break this news to my newly-wed wife and arranging things at the university and around the house delayed our start a little bit.

Later Hans Bacher told us that Dick had called him up to ask if he could recommend anybody else. Hans knew 2 other German guys from Muenster, Andreas Wessell-Therhorn and Michael Schlingmann. They also went to London to see Williams, were hired and we all started to work on the Thief on March 5^th, 1990. Andreas and Holger entered the hallowed halls of 138 to work there and Michael and I were among the first to occupy desks in „The Forum“. And the rest is...as they say...history. On which we now look back, 20 years later.

The Animator's Survival Kit - Expanded Edition

2010-01-23T13:00:00.000-08:00

The major text book of the animation trade has just been updated. In the DVD version of "The Animator's Survival Kit", Dick had already added more material than what had been in the first edition of the book. Now the good news is that after finishing the DVDs, Dick went back to work on a new "Expanded Edition" of the book, updating it with the additional material.The added material is nicely organized at the end of the book:
Here is an example page with a beautiful analysis of animal motion.
You don't want to miss the lectures on the DVDs, where Dick talks you through everything, but the book is indispensable for animators in their day to day work. I'm glad I have it in my book shelf.

Thief flying across mountain

2010-01-08T18:30:00.000-08:00

Happy 2010! It's been a while since my last post and even longer since I posted about one of my scenes. (Link to "Thief climbs up witch mountain").
I will jump ahead several scenes to the last scene of the flying sequence that I animated. I've recently found some slides that I just scanned in and which I would like to share.
In the scenes leading up to this one I had animated the Thief doing all sorts of air acrobatics. For the grand finale Dick had asked me to animate the Thief flying across the witch mountain. I remember that I really enjoyed drawing the background layout for this one. Dick had the idea of using Roy's strobing trick again.In this scene with the Cobbler Roy had spaced the round spiral elements corresponding to the spacing of the BG pan and then rotated the spirals so that they appeared to move. Dick wanted the hands to appear moving, as if they were trying to grab the Thief as he was flying by. So preparing for the layout - the first thing I did was to animate a hand doing a grabbing motion. I put registration marks on these animation drawings and xeroxed them several times, increasing and then decreasing in size to create the illusion of a round mountain. I had animated the Thief already and line-tested him with a BG-pan that consisted just of rough wiggly lines to determine how long the drawing for the pan would have to be. It turned out that it would be one of the longest pans used in the film. Then I started placing the hands on the layout corresponding to the spacing of the pan increments, just as Roy had done it, but with one difference. Dick didn't want the effect to be as exact as in the Cobbler scene, so I worked out a stagger pattern, so that the hands appeared to be shaking a bit.
Inga Davelouse turned my layout drawing into the final BG painting that you see below. She painted it in sections that were then taped together.
Here are the people from the checking department shooting the scene for a video test.

Witch swinging around the mountain

2009-11-23T11:45:00.000-08:00

Recent reader question:
I couldn't find anything on the blog about this particular piece of animation, which only recently caught my eye: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRPPC2uaoEw#t=2m21s
There are a few quick shots of the side of the mountain- we see it "spinning" as the camera moves- and there really seems to be a lot of detail in every frame. Would you know who was involved with it?

I'm not sure. This scene was done before my time on the film, but I would guess that Roy Naisbitt worked out the animating BG and Dick did the witch animation. If anybody knows - please leave a comment.

Soho Square pictures

2009-09-23T18:14:00.000-07:00

Hans Bacher posted more photos. LINK

Miscellaneous Production Art

2009-06-28T02:42:00.000-07:00

Rough layout of the messenger by Art Babbitt (?)

Roy and Art photos

2009-05-11T09:17:00.000-07:00

Hans Bacher has posted some photos of animation artists. Here is the link to his blog post: CREATIVE WORKSPACES 1
He said that there are more to come in the near future.
In 1981 he met Art Babbitt in the Hollywood QUARTETT film studio, where Art was animating on THE THIEF:

This one of Roy Naisbitt he took in the Soho Square studio in 1987:

On his blog there are also 2 photos of Dick W. that were taken during the production of Roger Rabbit.

2009-05-02T10:04:00.000-07:00

On Monday the 27th of April, the Marc Davis lecture on Animation took place at the Academy headquarters in Los Angeles.It turned out to be the most popular animation evening so far and really was a whos who of the industry.Concluding the over 3 hour long program of lectures, film clips and panels was a video message from Dick Williams.First almost timid and humble, he said he wished he could have been at the actual event. Starting to talk about Milt Kahl though, he quickly showed his usual passion . He acknowledged that knowing Milt and having been able to call him from time to time, was a highlight of his life.
Apparently, he always tried to make the never humble Milt admit to being the World's greatest animator.Milt kinda grumbled and didn't commit.Dick recalled the great friendship between Milt and Marc Davis, a kind of admiration society for two.Once they had an argument and Milt shouted after Marc... you cant even draw your own A$%. Marc returned to Milt's office a little later with a giant drawing of exactly that.On one occasion, Dick showed some 20 minutes of Thief footage at the Lucas ranch and had invited Milt to come along. After the screening, some Lucas people excitedly inquired about who had made this and were told that it was Dick's work. They proclaimed him to be the World's greatest animator and Dick turned to Milt and said " No, that is the World's greatest animator" to which Milt kinda nodded. Dick got his admittance of greatness finally when he talked to Milt in '87 and finally made him say that he indeed was the best animator.Two days later, he passed away. Dick freely admitted crying a lot and he said it was especially sad when he realized he cried over the fact that he would no longer be able to call the great man and chat.
It was a fitting and heartfelt tribute from one artist to another. A perfect ending to that evening and a chance for us to see Dick, albeit on video, and be part of this celebration.

The Secret of Kells

2009-04-30T12:25:00.000-07:00

A little while ago at work I saw a screening of the Irish animated film "The Secret of Kells" and also a presentation on how the film's style had evolved. I enjoyed both the film and the presentation very much. The filmmakers are longtime fans of "The Thief and the Cobbler". The Thief inspired them to start working on their own feature film 10 years ago while they were still in college studying animation. Their film has very much it's own style and story, but you can see how they embraced and emphasized the flat nature of their artwork in a way that was inspired by what Dick and Roy did on the Thief.Very inspiring also the stories about how they worked on "Kells" initially on the side for several years, while working on commercials and other things at the studio they founded in 1999 in Kilkenny: Cartoon Saloon. Just a few years ago (2005) the project gained momentum and independent financing and was finished by several teams in Ireland, Belgium, Hungary and Brazil. The amazing thing is that it looks as if it was done in one place. I was happy to see that my old Iron Giant friends Marcello and Jean de Moura were involved through the Lightstar studio in Brazil.

links to: blog and website.

What's going on with the DVD poll?

2009-04-22T12:04:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago the number of people who had voted in the DVD poll did reach 210. Over the last few days the number has been declining. Today it's at 185. Very strange. Please leave a comment if you know why that could happen. I appreciate the interest so far and had planned to keep the poll open, but that makes no sense if it's unreliable.

UPDATE: I removed the poll because it appears that after 6 months votes started to expire, which caused inaccurate results (see comments). Thanks again for everybody who participated during the last 6 months. More than 200 people expressed interest in an official Thief DVD.

These were the 2 options:
A lot of us wish for an official DVD release with all the Williams footage of the THIEF. It would be good to know how many people would buy such a DVD. Please vote for one of these 2 options:
1. Yes, I would buy such a DVD, but only if the film gets properly finished.
2. Yes, a high quality version of the workprint, with storyboards. Plus documentaries etc.
(LINK)
Around 87% voted for option 2.

This is the online petition that inspired our poll and it's still open: (LINK)

Dig into the archives...

2009-04-14T12:24:00.000-07:00

Sorry for the lack of updates. I can't promise when the next new post will come, hopefully soon. I'm glad that our stats show that a lot of people still visit the blog. I just wanted to remind new visitors to dig into the "blog archive" and read the "tips for new readers". Both can be found in the sidebar on the right.

Animation star relaunches Bristol school

2009-02-20T05:51:00.000-08:00

Oscar-winning animator Richard Williams, who worked on Hollywood blockbuster Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, will launch the new Bristol School of Animation next week.
The University of the West of England is relaunching its animation school on Wednesday, after investing £250 000 in new computer-aided animation technology.

The school has just moved to a bigger site on the Bower Ashton Campus in Bristol, in an attempt to become ‘the main animation hub outside London’, according its head, Gill Sandford.

Bristol is also home to Aardman Animations, the biggest animation studio in the UK and creator of Wallace & Gromit and Creature Comforts.

Source: DESIGNweek Online
Publication date: 20 February 2009 11:51 AM
Author: Emily Pacey

Nasrudin CAT AND MEAT

2009-02-12T15:46:00.000-08:00

Luke Menichelli emailed this Nasrudin storyboard and excerpt from the script.Nasrudin storyboard (from International Film Guide)

CAT AND MEAT (Sequence 7)
Cut to Kerima, still stirring her pot, furious. Crowd noises die down slightly, as they start to give up,
Muttering ...

Cut to Nasrudin beside window, looking at Kerima,

Cut to Kerima, who looks around craftily, takes a big bowl and ladles out a great quantity of meat balls into it. She looks
around again and eats the whole thing in three seconds,
Nasrudin tiptoes downstairs.
NASRUDIN:
Kerlma, dear ... what is for lunch?
She says nothing, scrapes the bottom of the pan and ladles out two and a half potatoes on his plate and three on hers, She
gulps hers down.
NASRUDIN:
Potatoes? - what happened to the three pounds of meat I brought you?
KERlMA:
(finishing off another potato)
The cat ... the cat ... the cat ate it! All three pounds of it !
Nasrudin puts down his plate, goes over to the slumbering cat on a chair, picks it up and puts it on a set of hand-held
scales, He puts on three one-pound weights,
NASRUDIN:
This cat weighs three pounds
KERIMA:
So? ... Slobber! Slobber ... So?
NASRUDIN:
If this is the cat, where is the meat?
If, on the other hand, this is the meat
where is the cat?
He puts the cat down on the chair and, angry now, stamps out to the backdoor, turns around and gives Kerima an angry glance
and slams the door. Fade to black.

1975 Crew picture update

2009-02-09T08:29:00.000-08:00

I just want to point everybody again to Michael Sporn's post about the same crew picture I posted about last week. At his blog a lot of interesting comments keep on pouring in. Click LINK

Last Nasrudin images (Exploits)

2009-02-06T15:52:00.000-08:00

This concludes the current Nasrudin season. The images posted over the last 2 weeks are Illustrations that Richard Williams did for the book "The Exploits of the Incomparable Mulla Nasrudin".

1975 Crew picture

2009-02-05T09:09:00.000-08:00

I love how people contact us via email lately with inspiring input. This makes blogging easy. Here is another one:
"Hello, I have a question that has been gnawing at me for years and I thought you might be able to help. Attached is a photo from the 1975 book "Creators of Life" by Donald Heraldson. It is the staff photo of Richard Williams studio. I can easily make out Richard W., along with Art Babbitt and Grim Natwick. But you will also notice a 10-year-old boy in the middle of the photo. The subtext says he is part of the staff. If that young man was 10 in 1975, that would make him about 43 or 44 today. Do you know who he is, and if he is still in the animation industry? Thank you,
- Tim Hodge"We don't know yet who the 10 year old boy is, but Carl Gover was kind enough to identify most of the other people. Here is what he wrote me today: "...an old photo to bring back lots of memories. Sadly, mine is not what it should be but I can recall some of those in the pic. However, the kid’s name escapes me although I do remember him as a prodigy at the time.

I believe I was abroad this day – or otherwise occupied.

Bottom row:
Richard Williams...Richard Burdett (animator)... Art Babbitt...(unknown).....Carol Stallings (Dick’s sec.)...Dick Purdum

Row above:
Chris Knott (SFX guy)...Bella Bremner (Dick’s Asst.)...Ken Harris...Grim Natwick...Roland B. Wilson (Designer/illust.)...Sergio Simonetti (animator)...Brian Lewis (Lawyer)... Tass Hesom (animator)...(unknown)...Leslie Silver (Prod. Asst.)..(unknown)...Howard Blake (Composer)

The people behind (left) are familiar but the only name I remember is Tony White (animator) between Bella and Ken. UPDATE: on the left with Glasses is Jeff Short, then between him and Tony: Greg Duffell

Those behind (right) are Roy Naisbitt...Russell Hall...Rod Howick (editor)

I will do my best to contact others who might help..."

Update:
Please check out Michael Sporn's blog who is posting about this picture, too. I'm updating Carl's list above to incorporate the names that came up in Michael's comment section.

On Michael's blog Tim Hodge says: I also sent the photo to William’s Master Class website. This is the response I got back yesterday from I. Sutton.: “He wasn’t an employee but a very bright boy who was invited to attend a Masterclass at the studio. It was a long time ago and I don’t have a
record of his name or whether he is still animating.”
So the book was off-base a little.

Update from Michael Sporn in the comment section:
Greg Duffell, on my blog, identifies almost everyone in the photo, including the boy:
Back row from left:

Inbetweener Geoff Adams, unknown (perhaps assistant editor), trainee inbetweener John McCartney, Assistant director, designer, layout artist and technical director Mr. Roy Naisbitt, animator Russell Hall, editor Roy Howick

Next row forward: Junior Animator Jeff Short, trainee inbetweener Greg Duffell, Animator Tony White, Animation legend Mr. Grim Natwick, Illustration legend Mr. Rowland B. Wilson, Senior animator Mr. Sergio Simonetti, Executive Producer Brian Lewis, Executive Secretary Lesley Silver, Lettering artist and animator Mr. Raymond Guillemet.

Next row forward: Effects animator Chris Knott, Assistant animator Bella Bremner, Animation legend Mr. Ken Harris, visiting student Jonathan Dean, trainee inbetweener Tass Hesom, animator Bill Rhodes, composer Howard Blake

Front row: Legendary animator Mr. Richard Williams, Top assistant animator and animator Richard Burdett, Legendary animator Mr. Arthur Babbitt, Executive secretary Carol Stallings and Dick’s right hand man and animator Mr. Richard Purdum.

Thanks Tim, Carl, Michael, Mark and Greg for the glimpse back in time .

Thief gets a new cloak out of the trash

2009-02-03T08:29:00.000-08:00

Last weekend I received this email:

Hey guys,
I've been a dedicated follower of your blog since I first read about it on Michael Sporn's site and I was curious about who animated the scene where the Thief pulls a cloak out of the trash after he crash lands during the flying sequence. I thought maybe you'd get to this scene as you were going through the Thief on the mountain scenes but then you got off the scene breakdowns so I decided to bother you about it in an email. I think this may be my favorite piece of animation in the film because of it's reality. The Thief feels completely alive with all the beautiful weight shifts and the way he mulls through the trash, it's all so wonderfully observed. The part where he wiggles into his cloak reminds me a lot of Milt Kahl's animation of Sluefoot Sue putting on her dress in Pecos Bill. Any information you have would be appreciated.
Thanks for keeping up the blog!
-Aaron SorensonThanks for the question Aaron! I've always admired this scene. Neil Boyle animated it. The need for the scene came up when Dick finalized his intentions about the continuity of events and how to link from scenes where the Thief's cloak was torn to shreds and later scenes where his cloak was intact again. This was during the 1990-92 time and it's one of the scenes that were not based on previous Ken Harris animation.
As you can see the screengrab is kind of blurry. This scene was never part of any of the official releases. One of many reasons why we should hope for an official DVD that contains all these lost treasures. Remember to vote in the poll at the top right corner...

Nasrudin in the Papers

2009-02-02T06:37:00.000-08:00

Matt Jones just sent these scans:

Nasrudin 15

2009-01-29T12:12:00.000-08:00

Babbitt and Harris

2009-01-28T07:02:00.000-08:00

From Mark Mayerson's blog: (LINK for full post)
He writes: "Børge Ring sent me this anecdote about Art Babbitt being something of an animation snob.

First time Babbitt came to London Dick Williams picked him up at the airport. On the way to town Dick said joyfully proud: "We've got Ken Harris." Babbitt frowned. "But eh: Isn't that somebody from Warner Brothers and all that?"Dick laughed and said: "I'll show you tomorrow."Next morning he took Art to the movieola and ran a string of Ken's scenes of the Thief. Babbitt was baffled. "Well I'll be damned." He and Ken Harris became great friends at Dick's formidable small studio..."

Nasrudin 14

2009-01-27T06:53:00.000-08:00

Nasrudin 13

2009-01-26T07:00:00.000-08:00

Script research

2009-01-23T13:52:00.000-08:00

In reply to the last post Luke Menichelli writes:
"Though it's the donkey in this script, I remember reading an account from someone there (can't remember who) that the sequence involved the Thief with brightly colored wolves.

Garrett Gilchrist noted this from the early Nasrudin script:

THE MAJESTIC FOOL

WOLVES (Sequence 11)

Cut in to reveal six long-headed wolves posing as a tree, They zip in and run over to another pole, a little closer to Nasrudin, and pose again as a tree.
A snow storm hits and as it clears, we cut to Nasrudin asleep, with snow covering his body, looking like a white coffin, the donkey still sits, bored, at his feet,
Cut to the wolf-tree entirely covered in ice. The ice cracks and the icicles drop off, revealing the wolves who have turned blue from the cold. They shiver terribly and run to another tree.
Cut to the donkey whose ear lifts and whose eyes open wide,
Cut to the woIves who run to another tree.
Cut to the donkey, more worried.
Cut to the wolves sticking out from behind a tree, all six of them clutching at their stomachs - they are obvious1y starving to death. They zip back in and go down the hill from tree to tree, like a slalom,
Cut to the donkey, now very worried, Iooking round stupidly.

Cut to the wolves who shoot out from behind the tree, do a long run and zoom into the air.
We hear the sound of a screaming jet engine and they land on the donkey, who disappears in a cartoon bIurr.
Jet and buzz-saw and eating noises as the blurr zooms around,

Cut to Nasrudin with one eye open looking at the demotion of his donkey, entirely calmly, he leans to us and says.

NASRUDlN:
Such is life! One thing is conditional upon another.

Cut to the wolves, now with huge, full bellies, who burp and snicker, pick their teeth and laugh gleefully to each other in
front of Nasrudin, rubbing their bellies with delight."

Ken Harris and Wolf

2009-01-22T08:19:00.000-08:00

Luke Menichelli just sent this photo from the International Film Guide.Interesting. I wonder who or what the wolf just swallowed.

Nasrudin

2009-01-20T09:33:00.000-08:00

More about DVD set

2009-01-19T08:30:00.000-08:00

From AWN: click LINK

Wolf?

2009-01-16T12:14:00.000-08:00

I wonder if this is one of the wolves that Ken Harris animated. Has anybody seen these wolves pencil tests?

Nasrudin (cont.)

2009-01-15T07:42:00.000-08:00

Thief without ears?

2009-01-14T08:56:00.000-08:00

Nasrudin, 3 more

2009-01-13T10:05:00.000-08:00

2 for Monday

2009-01-12T07:45:00.000-08:00

3 for the weekend

2009-01-09T09:49:00.000-08:00

Nasrudin 5, Bread guy

2009-01-08T07:25:00.000-08:00

This seems to be one of the characters from the bread sequence...

Nasrudin 4

2009-01-07T08:24:00.001-08:00

Nasrudin 3

2009-01-06T09:04:00.000-08:00

Nasrudin 2

2009-01-05T13:02:00.000-08:00

A while ago Michael posted some of Dick's illustrations for "The Exploits of the Incomparable Mulla Nasrudin". (LINK)
Matt Jones just sent more scans from the same book. I'll try and post one every day.

Another Interview

2008-12-10T13:23:00.000-08:00

From the latest BAFTA members magazine.

Interview with Dick Williams

2008-11-12T08:11:00.000-08:00

Fellow animator Andrew Gordon and I just did an interview with Dick. Here is a link to the Spline Cast: (LINK).
During the interview Dick shared anecdotes, some of his views on animation and talked about his new DVD set (LINK).

I enjoyed the talk with him very much. Before the interview he was kind enough to pose for a photo with me.

Thief DVD poll

2008-10-17T07:32:00.000-07:00

Andreas mentioned in his last post that we will take a break from posting for a few months. If any of our former Thief co-workers would like to do a guest post let me know. Just send email to thiefcobbler at yahoo dot com. I don't check that email account too often, so maybe leave a quick reminder in the comment section as well.

Many of you have been digging already into the archive. This is an opportunity to catch up on older posts. Some of the most interesting posts were posted months ago, so why not start at the beginning and read them all? Also check the TIPS FOR NEW READERS in the side bar.

Now, my apologies to the 23 people who already voted in the DVD poll. I want to simplify the poll, so please vote again in the new poll box on the right. Here is the long version:
A lot of us wish for an official DVD release with all the Williams footage of the THIEF. It would be good to know how many people would buy such a DVD. Please vote for one of these 2 options:

1. Yes, I would buy such a DVD, but only if the film gets properly finished.
2. Yes, a high quality version of the workprint, with storyboards. Plus documentaries etc.

I will vote for No. 2, because that could happen immediately. There is more than 1 hour of finished Williams animation footage, not counting the storyboards. Finishing the film would be a whole different story and who knows when that might happen. Would it be possible to re-assemble a crew that would be able to finish it on the same quality level? Would it make sense to spend the money necessary to get that whole machine rolling again? We have discussed this before, but please comment if you have strong opinions one way or another.

Thief DVD petition

2008-10-15T11:35:00.000-07:00

I just saw and signed this online petition (LINK) for an official Thief DVD (via ASIFA page).
The main thing is that by signing you are saying that this would be a DVD that you would be interested in buying. It's asking for the film to be finished. Personally I would be happy to get something along the lines of what petition signer 84 or 85 wrote: "... Release a Special Collector’s Edition DVD of the Workprint version; fully uncut and unedited; in widescreen; with digitally restored and remastered picture and audio; extra features like a special introduction to the DVD by Richard Williams himself; audio commentary by Richard Williams; early artwork, drawings and pencil tests; all the BBC documentaries about the film; an all-new documentary about the film’s troubled history, Richard’s other film’s, “ The Little Island” “Love Me Love Me Love Me” etc courtesy of him; and other extras to make the DVD worthy of the name, “Special Collector’s Edition”.

Update: I added our own poll on the right.
If there would be an official DVD using only Williams footage, would you buy it?
1. Yes
2. Yes, but only if the film is properly finished.
3. Yes, a high quality version of the workprint, with storyboards. Plus documentaries etc.
4. No. The way it's released right now is good enough for me.
5. No, I'm not interested.

Random Thoughts

2008-10-12T09:52:00.000-07:00

Before we take a break from posting, I thought I'd post some random ramblings and images.
I have now been in the animation industry for 18 years and i can honestly say that none of this may have ever happened without Dick Williams and 'the Thief'. When Dick took us four Germans on, we had very limited experience. Holger and Dietmar had studied animation in college and Michael and I were entirely self taught. It takes people like Dick Williams to see the potential and most of all, be willing to take a chance. We all worked very, very hard on the movie and I think, our work ethic today is firmly rooted in what we learned in those first 2 years.
My very first assignment were inbetweens for Neil Boyle, a scene where the Thief walks on stilts while arrows whiz all around him. Was I lucky to work with someone so patient and knowledgeable right at the start. He sent me back several times to redo what I thought were perfectly fine inbetweens, my eye not trained yet to see the slight imperfections, changes in angles and volumes, but after redoing the drawings a few times and thinking all the time that I'd be fired by the end of the week, I got it. Thanks, Neil.
This industry really lives on through artists who are willing to share what they know and mentor. I have worked with good and ,well, not so great mentors over the years.The best, I found, were the ones to freely point out one's mistakes without putting you down, to inspire you to try your own ideas. Dick Williams is certainly someone who always put the work in front of ego, and I think thats what inspired the fierce loyalty we all felt on the picture.Eric Goldberg is another example of the ideal mentor, freakishly talented enough to warrant star behaviour, yet never displaying any, instead freely sharing his knowledge...to paraphrase Dolli Levy...knowledge is, pardon the expression, like manure. its no good unless its shared and allows young things to grow. While no young thing anymore myself, I will always be deeply grateful to Dick Williams for giving us the initial chance to enter this crazy business.

A crowd scene featuring a guest appearance by Barbra Streisand. I think, Gary Dunn did a few characters too. When we showed the scene to Dick, we glowed with pride when he said: Well done! There was no w@nking around on this.

One of Dick's pet peeves. He thought, we shouldn't listen to music while working. We did, anyway. We couldn't all bring in a trumpet to play out loud.

Interview links

2008-10-11T10:42:00.000-07:00

I was finally able to listen to the Dick Williams Ottawa Radio interview:
http://cbc.ca/ottawa/media/audio/allinaday...0922richard.ram
(Thanks David Nethery!)

Tom Sito about Eric Goldberg (LINK)
Dick Williams (2002) (LINK)

Thief climbs up Witch Mountain, Part 5

2008-09-26T09:29:00.000-07:00

This is the concluding post for the climbing scenes in sequence 10.3. I will pick it up sometime soon with the remaining scenes of the sequence, which I also worked on, where the Thief is flying.

This scene was not based on anything Ken had done and it didn't have a scene number. It had a name: Hunter. 9-04 feet. I worked on it from June 13 to 16, 1991.
Dick did 2 or 3 drawings, which meant that this scene was pretty much done. Recently I listened to part 1 of Eric Goldberg's interview on Animation Podcast (LINK). He did a very good impression of Ken Harris, with Ken being all modest about his animation and saying that Dick did all the drawing work. Dick had the highest regard for Ken's abilities. It was a pretty unique working relationship with Dick as Ken's boss and student at the same time. He did poses for him before Ken started his scenes and refined the animation after Ken was done.

seq. 10.3/ sc.9x, by Dick/Ken

seq. 10.3/ sc.10x, by Dick/Ken, redo coat by Holger
These scenes had been finished in color and had been on film for years. It's an hommage to Bill Tytla's work with the Devil from Fantasia, even using the same music. I always loved this part of the film and was thrilled that I could be involved a little when I was assigned to add wind animation to the coat, as an overlay to the original cels. It's also interesting how much Dick sometimes disregarded continuity, more thinking about what was right for the scene. If it would work and nobody noticed it was good. Do I care that the palm trees from the previous scenes disappeared, or that the angles of the rock changed? No, I don't. I like the hightened drama that Dick created by these choices.
I remember some Ken linetests that Dick decided not to use, where the Thief is elaborately sticking the palm leaves into his coat sleaves. I think all that had been part of sc. 5x.

I also got to do this longshot, which hooks up directly to the next scene 11x, where the Thief is flapping his wings, trying to fly, but I save that and the following scenes for another post. I think we need to post s.th. else for a while. All the recent images use the same set of colors and maybe you had to look closely to realize that this was a new post.

MoMA

2008-09-23T08:09:00.000-07:00

Michael Sporn writes about the MoMA event. (LINK)

Thief climbs up Witch Mountain, Part 4

2008-09-18T17:24:00.001-07:00

In my notes I found that Roger Waters was at the studio on one day while I was working on these scenes. I remember peeking over the desks when he was talking to Dick. I think they were discussing him doing some music for the film, but that never happened. Paul McCartney and George Martin were also visiting at another time, talking about writing the music, but that also fell through.

seq.10.3/sc.2x, 26-02 feet, I worked on it May 13 - 31, 1991Here is a rough sketch Dick did for this scene while he was explaining to me what he wanted. Most of this scene was based on Ken's work, but Dick asked me to add some business with the Thief feeling dizzy after getting up and almost falling off. Dick wanted to know the German translation for the word "dizzy". I wrote it down for him in the top right corner: "schwindelig".I also did the BG layout drawing, referencing an Errol BG for 10.3/5x (see below), the hand just at a slightly different angle. I think Margaret Grieve animated the palm leaves moving in the wind. On this scene and on the scenes that followed Hilary Denny, who assisted me on this sequence animated the flies. I was really happy about this as it allowed me to start on another scene instead of going back in to work on flies. Up to that point I had not only animated flies for my own scenes, but also for a lot of Dick's scenes. I think Hilary adopted my color coded method (see Sept. 5 post). Dick and Neil used another approach when they animated flies. They did them all at once in graphite and they didn't worry too much about following through on the individual flies as long as the overall shape was moving properly. We all used the tip of the heart shape to help with the direction they were flying in.

seq.10.3/sc.3x, 4-05 feet, I worked on this June 1 and 3, 1991These were pretty much just 3 keys with lots of inbetweens. Apparently I did the layout, too. I probably just xeroxed the Ruby Idol from another scene.

I'm not sure about the scene number for this one. I think I did a drawing of the Thief for a held cel.
In connection with this sequence I have s.th. from an earlier post:
"Roy later told me about times when Ken Harris was about to arrive for his seasonal stay in London and having been busy on commercials Dick sometimes had not prepared any work for him. In a hurry they would whip out BG and character layouts for the Thief character. Dick would just say "Let's make him climb up the mountain..." and that would keep Ken busy for a while." (see also this LINK)

seq.10.3/sc5x Redo 23-10 feet
This scene was considered a redo which meant that the footage could not be counted towards our weekly studio quota as it had been counted already. This reminds me of our production coordinator Ian Cook and how he would come by every week and ask "What is your footage?". This might only mean s.th. to my former colleagues, but the way he said this every week was funny. Ian has a very dry sense of humor. Dick had done this scene years earlier working over Ken's roughs and it had been painted and filmed, but now Dick wanted wind moving through the coat. So I took his drawings and animated the coat as overlays that were carefully matched to the existing cels.

Hans Bacher returns...

2008-09-15T14:44:00.000-07:00

Without him we wouldn't have worked on the Thief. I missed his blogs in recent months and just discovered he is using WordPress now:

click: ANIMATION TREASURES

Thief climbs up Witch Mountain, Part 3

2008-09-15T09:14:00.000-07:00

This is a drawing Dick did for scene 4x:This drawing is from scene 5x:

TB means trace back. His feet in this case did not move, for a while at least. I couldn't put them on a held cel because his leg had to move, so for the linetest I roughly traced them for each drawing from drawing 143, probably in green. TB 143 told the tracer to trace back the foot for each cel to drawing 143, but he had to do it with much more care. Later in the scene there were indications drawn in red pencil: Match BG. Parts of the Thief were going behind the rock in shape of a thumb. Here the tracer had to first trace himself a master match line from the final background and then trace a self ink line in the color of the coat on each cel, "matching" it to the BG. The color red was always reserved for this, so that T&P would know right away what to do.
There were a lot of rules like this. Over the years Dick had streamlined the processes used in his studio to ensure good product.
This drawing appears to be an inbetween by the way. Keys had the drawing number circled and usually a chart on them. Looking at this drawing reminds me of s.th. Dick once said about the Thief style. Animation drawings and linetests often look best in the rough stage and sometimes lose a bit of appeal at every stage until they reach final color, while the Thief scenes tended to look best once they were painted. Maybe some of that's due to the 2 dimensional style. The Thief's coat also reads much better as a shape once it's painted. Dick often would shade in the coat on the animation drawings to aid a better read of shape as opposed to lines.

In an earlier post there is an image comparison illustrating the evolution from rough to final. The example is a bit extreme because in many scenes Ken's version was closer to what ended up on screen, but it shows the general trend of scenes improving in final. Click LINK

Richard Williams in Conversation with John Canemaker

2008-09-12T10:24:00.000-07:00

MoMA, New York
Monday, September 22, 2008, 7:00 p.m

Click this LINK

Alltop

2008-09-12T08:13:00.000-07:00

Our blog is on Alltop.
Click this LINK

Thief climbs up Witch Mountain, Part 2

2008-09-05T18:35:00.000-07:00

For the BG layouts for these scenes I had to look more and more at my own hands as I didn't have direct Errol reference for the required hand shapes. I just tried to draw the knuckles and finger shapes in Errol's style. As mentioned in the last post all these scenes just came with minimal indications of a general rock outline, just enough for a rough linetest.
Scene 5x never made it into the released version, but it's in the Recobbled Cut. Scene 7x was cropped for the released version and in his Recobbled Cut Garrett Gilchrist composited added image information on the sides, from a copy of the work print I guess.

seq.10.1/sc.5x, 10-08 feet, finished on April 14, 1991
seq.10.1/sc.6x, 10-11 feet, finished on April 24, 1991
seq.10.1/sc.7x, 13-01 feet, finished on May 1, 1991
The approach for reworking Ken's Thief was similar to what I described in the last post for sc. 4x. The kicking action for the Thief in sc. 7x was fun to do, a bit different than Ken had it. I did the feet on ones as partial drawings because there was a lot of favoring in the spacing, overlap on the feet and arcs to consider. Hilary Denny who was assisting on these scenes would finish the inbetweens of the head, torso, upper arms and hands according to the charts. When things were moving I would work on 2s, in slow parts on 4s, trying not to leave more than 3 inbetweens between my drawings. Once all the drawings were done I would go back in and animate the drapery straight ahead on twos and give it back to her to finish. Once everything was on ones and approved by Dick I would animate the flies straight ahead on ones, like a flipbook. I used a pegbar with high pegs and could put 16 drawings on there. I color coded the flies and worked in groups of 5, doing maybe 4 passes to get up to 20 or so. I delivered my scenes clean up on ones. The drawings were hand traced onto cel. They could have rough lines from color erase pencil underneath, usually rubbed down a bit as long as there was a clear black pencil line that could be traced. The tracing would reflect each drawing exactly. The tracers worked unbelievable accurate. So on one hand you have more freedom in your work flow. It was OK to have the inbetweened part of the drawings slightly lighter, possibly just pencil and other parts darker with color underneath were I roughed out the feet and the drapery in maybe more than one pass, leaving rubbed down traces of the other attempts. Clean up for digital painting is much more unforgiving in this. On the other hand our drawings were the final statement for the animation. Any wobble, inconsistencies in volume or being slightly off model would show up on screen. The animator had that responsibility and that was not a bad thing...

Thief climbs up Witch Mountain, Part 1

2008-09-02T09:04:00.000-07:00

I'm always very happy when some of my former Thief colleagues write here on the blog about their work on the film. I can't think of anything else to write about at the moment, so I thought I might as well write a bit about some scenes that I worked on. I recently found some notes I took at the time to keep tabs of the work I was doing. The scene number for this scene was seq10.1/sc.4x, the scene length 10 feet and 14 frames and I started working on it on March 20, 1991. The scene starts close on the Thief and then pulls back to reveal the Ruby Idol in the distance. I worked over Ken's original animation. Dick wanted the proportions much different, less cartoony, smaller head etc. It still is very much like Ken's animation and I feel I mainly contributed effects, animating his coat and sleaves flapping in the wind, the rope and the flies. I think I did the first bits of gravel that he kicks of and Lynette Charters animated the rest. These scenes usually also required some retiming and respacing. The first 2 days I spent drawing the BG layout. Before I started there was only a simple outline to indicate where the mountain was. Dick gave me some of Errol's BGs as reference for how he wanted the hands drawn. The drawing for the Ruby Idol he did himself. I think he did that for all the other scenes with the Ruby Idol as well. It's a caricature of actor Sydney Greenstreet.
I always enjoyed it when I was asked to draw my own layouts, a privilege really. Dick liked us to be involved in as many aspects of our scenes as possible, encouraging us to make them our own and feel responsible for them. For most scenes he liked to do several key clean-ups to keep the style consistent and the drawings on model. It also gave each scene his personal flavor, in the way that a Milt Kahl scene for example is recognizable by his drawing style. Dicks drawing choices were pretty unique and he always came up with the nicest shapes. Maybe this resulted sometimes in a reduced sense of ownership for us and the drawing of our own layouts was intended to make up a little for this. I didn't draw any of the bushes by the way. I think that was all Inga Davelouse who painted the BGs for this sequence.
When I started this scene I had been averaging 8 feet a week for a few months, which usually put me pretty high on the "footage chart". This was a board that Ian Cook the production coordinator kept up to date. It showed how much footage was counted every week for each animator. Counted meant footage that was reported as done in the weekly report to Warner Brothers. In the case of this scene for example half of the scene was counted already on the first day (Friday) I started animating it. These decisions were usually made by Dick in the (click:) ROUTE SHEET MEETING.
In addition to fulfilling his directorial duties Dick also was the studio's most productive animator. Mostly it was him or Neil at the top of the footage chart. At route sheet meetings Dick often made a big deal out of announcing the "footage king" for the week. On the few occasions when I had that honor I felt a mixture of pleasure and embarrassment. Embarrassment because I felt that the scenes I worked on were so much easier to do than many of the ones that other animators worked on and it felt a bit manipulative and not really fair. However I worked hard to maintain my footage average, between 60 and 77 hours per week.
Reading what I just wrote I would have to add that what motivated me even more to work hard was the desire to get as many good scenes with the Thief as possible before work on the film would be completed.

More to come...

The other cover and...

2008-08-26T10:58:00.000-07:00

I'm posting this as an addition to Dietmar's last 2 posts. This is the other cover for the brochure. I still love this for the title of the film.This is the cover for VHS copies of the documentary that has been mentioned often in earlier posts. They were sent out to promote the studio and the Thief.

The other glorious brochure - part 2

2008-08-23T01:41:00.000-07:00

Finally weekend again and I just can feel it! The aficionados of "The Thief and the Cobbler" want pictures and not words.

So here is the other half of last weeks blog - pages 10-18. Little note of interest: As Holger posted in his comment to last weeks blog, there is also a coversheet with the title "The Thief and the Cobbler". And as you see here just below, that title was not so skillfully taped over with the words "Once" inside the brochure.

The other glorious Brochure - Part 1

2008-08-12T09:39:00.000-07:00

This high-gloss brochure must have been printed around 1984, at least that is what the copyright says and given that it sports a 1988 release date, this seems somewhat right.
Dick had a few leftover brochures in Royal Colledge Street 138 and recognising a true fan of his work, it wasn't hard to persuade him to let me have one.
Front and back are covered by an extra clear sheet of cel and between those are 18 pages in luxurious A 3 color print with photos, credits and stills.

The first 9 pages are presented this week, with the last 9 pages to follow in 7 days. Enjoy!

Notes

2008-07-31T14:04:00.000-07:00

I just came across these 7o's Williams Studio notes on Michael Hirsh's website:
Click here.

Dig far enough for the 2 pdf files!

Tony Palermo

2008-07-28T10:32:00.000-07:00

If you have seen the Recobbled Cut and looked at the slow motion scene of the Dying Messenger on the horse you might have also seen this scene:Like Tash's slow motion scene this one is also part of King Nod's dream. If I remember it properly this was the first scene that Tony Palermo animated on the Thief. I think previously he assisted Brent Odell on scenes with technical effects, like the scene of the falling tower in the War Machine sequence where the camera rotates sideways.I was impressed by Tony's work here, the timing and spacing of the swords and the organic feel of the blood. It's quite different from what he had done previously and I was glad that Dick gave him a shot to animate his own scene.Here is a photo of Tony Palermo with his desk neighbour Emanuela Cozzi.I didn't remember what else Tony animated on the film, but I consulted with Dietmar who remembers these 2 scenes:

The Dying Messenger, Part 2

2008-07-21T09:55:00.001-07:00

Here is part 2 of the interview with Tash. This is the 2nd Dying Messenger scene. It's animated in slow motion to suggest that it's part of King Nod's dream.Holger:
I remember seeing this second scene of yours at the linetester, at normal speed initially. It might have been one of the times where Dick liked a test so much that he called everybody over to check it out. I remember Dick telling you to just throw tons of inbetweens in there to create the slow-motion. Did that work out or did you have to adjust things a bit?

Tash:
I had to adjust things and I knew that would be the case when I started out. There are always a lot of small, wonderful things that happen that the eye misses in normal speed. Animation on twos naturally glosses over a lot for fluidity; if you want to incorporate some of them, you ought to switch to ones. When you go deeper into fractions of seconds, you find more. Think about all the slow motion live action scenes you have seen. At the time I had in mind some slow motion horse racing scenes from a film with a boy and a horse; I believe it was The Black Stallion.
When the scene reached its ideal slo-mo look, Mr. Williams wanted one more set of inbetweens packed in- to make the whole thing on ones. Slow though it was, Mr. Williams still wanted animation on ones. The hairline inbetweens were indeed carried out. (This scene) was actually assisted by someone else (not Sharon), a girl who came just before I left; I believe she was from Berlin.

Holger:
On all the scenes I like the overlap on the flag pole and arrows. I remember seeing on some of the drawings faint traces of rubbed down straight versions. Did you animate them rigid on a first pass pose-to-pose, perhaps and then the bending for overlap in a second pass straight-ahead, referencing the rigid version?

Tash:
I don't remember the details now but I probably would have sketched in the flag in its actual size and shape, taking into account the perspective and all. This would be a precaution against the flag progressively growing, a common trap in flag waves and similar secondary action cloth animation when it is done straight ahead. As for the arrows, they were especially difficult to keep track of because they overlapped a lot in perspective. I kept track of them by giving each a different color.

Holger:
Did you inherit the BG pan for this 3rd Messenger scene from Babbitt's earlier version?

Tash:
Inherit I did, but my version was done from scratch.

Holger:
Did you animate the horse on the spot on the same pegs or did you work locked to the BG, switching pegs every few drawings?

Tash:
Now this is a scene that doesn't satisfy me that much in its final version: I made the original animation in place and it looked fine. I figured since it is a gallop, the hoof contacts would be so short that it wouldn't be difficult to create a matching pan. What I failed to calculate was perspective- or rather, the absence of it. I have the horse galloping right up to the camera and then away again, seen almost from the back. It would have worked if there was no texture on the ground, or at least something moving in perspective. But the background had to look flat, with these rectangular tiles or whatever they are on the ground. Ironically, this flat oriental style that looks so exotic to Western eyes has always left me, a native of the near orient, cold! I started experimenting by making sketches with patterns of squares in varying sizes, and panning at varying speeds, trying to come up with the ideal combination that would keep the hoof on the spot it landed and not slip. The closer that animal comes, the faster the whole background has to move you see. Then Roy Naisbitt came to me and told me Mr. Williams didn't favor animation "in place" since it meant having the pan locked in, he preferred it done "with the pan" so that he would have the freedom to adjust the pan speed himself. Mr. Naisbitt took my animation and re-pegged it over a compromised background and the result of this re-pegging you can see on screen; the effort to keep the hooves steady has resulted in some jitter and some loss of fluidity.

Holger:
Let's talk about the scenes in the Throne Room. Did you work on the reflections at all (maybe just on some key poses?) or did you leave that completely to Sharon, perhaps?Tash:
Well, after the (first) scene was done, I was told the whole scene was to be played on a polished floor, and the reflections would have to be put in. I remember suggesting putting a carpet under the horse and rider to hide the hoof and foot contacts; then it would have been a simple matter to flip the drawings and the illusion would be fine. However, Mr. Williams did not want to go for that solution. It was to be polished floor all the way through!
This meant drawing the underside of the horse and all, or else the foot and hoof contacts wouldn't work- not to mention the full body contact when the horse collapses! This was one place in this no-perspective film where we couldn't evade the demands of the law of perspective! I started working on it- it was just before I left- and I believe Sharon was to take over and continue, but when I saw the finished version of the scene, surprise surprise... the carpet! So I figured maybe they did just flip the drawings after all!

Holger:
I really like these closer scenes with dialogue. Together with the first 2 scenes these are my favourites. It would be nice if you could tell me s.th. about your work on them.
Tash:
These scenes were my only real lip-synch scenes on the film; pity, because I enjoy lip-synch. I get a kick out of seeing my drawings actually talk! The messenger only grunts and moans in the other scenes, here I actually got to animate him saying something. Again, as in the other scenes, the challenge was to make a very slow-paced scene interesting. If you listen to the track alone, it's depressing. Again the solution was to enrich the slow pace with a string of small details, hopefully interesting in themselves. I do regret putting in a stagger though, I did that because Mr. Williams did it in a lot of his scenes, and I thought I would take a page from his book, this being his movie after all! But in general I am satisfied with the scene, his weight when he falls forward and catches himself with his arm, the overlapping bits of his headgear. the discs on his costume that help give him volume, his suffering puppy-dog expression- these were all fun stuff to work with and if not actually fun to watch (he is dying after all!) I hope at least interesting to the viewer!
Holger:
I much appreciate you taking the time for this Tash. Thank you!

Tash:
You're welcome! Did Sahin also contribute to your blog? His story is most interesting! He had a difficult time having his own genius (I am using the word in all seriousness) accepted and appreciated by Mr. Williams, but he eventually held out longer than I.

Tahsin ("Tash")

I also asked Mark Williams about the Dying Messenger scenes. Here is some of what he wrote: "I don't remember too much. It was a while ago. I'm surprised that you have so many details in the blog already. I'm also surprised that other animators remember their shots so well. I think Dean Roberts and Gary Dunn did a lot of the background characters. Tim Watts some of the King and Zig Zag but what exactly I don't know.

Tips for new readers

2008-07-15T11:14:00.001-07:00

If you are interested in the work done on the Thief I recommend that you dig into the older posts, too. To make this easier you might want to try using the "Blog Archive" on the right. You can still comment on older posts by the way. We get an email for every comment, it makes no difference - old or new post.

Another useful tool is "Labels". Here you can find posts on a specific topic. If for example you want to find out more about a person who is only referred to by first name in a blog post, there is a good chance that you will find not only the full name and job description but also a photo if you check out the posts under the "photos" label.

If you want to see a larger version of an image just click on it.

On leaving comments: To leave a comment click under the post on "comments". If you have a blog or google account you would use the Google/Blogger option of course, but even if you don't have a blog you can comment. I'm happy about every comment including the anonymous ones, but I would prefer if you would use the Name/URL option in that case and let us know who you are. It's nicer to reply to you by name rather then to Anonymous.

The Dying Messenger, Part 1

2008-07-14T12:11:00.000-07:00

All the Dying Messenger scenes were animated by turkish animator Tash aka Tahsin Özgür. Put together back to back they work like a little short film. I love the irony and black humor. Tash's animation stands out as some of the best work on the film. Very solid and convincing.
When I talk to other animators about the Thief, something that a lot of people remember is the first scene of the Dying Messenger climbing onto the horse. All images shown in this post are from this scene. Tash confirmed that this was the first scene he animated when he started working for Dick Williams in 1990. I'm very happy that Tash took the time to answer some questions via email about his work on the film.

Holger:
I remember you half-jokingly saying that this scene would be your only contribution to the film. It's one of the longest scenes in the film, almost one minute long. This is very unusual for a hand drawn film. I think it's pure gold. The beginning was edited out after Dick lost the film to make room for whatever... it makes no sense to me. Fortunately you were able to do more scenes, all the Dying Messenger scenes if I remember correctly?

Tash:
Yes, but he (Williams) wasn't happy with my interpretation of the Sultan, so in the scenes where they appear together, I animated only the Messenger. And the horse, of course. I also passed on one dying warrior in the first long scene to my assistant, Sharon, who did a fine job of it (bottom left of screen). I also had an inbetweener, Mark, and I seem to remember he did a dying figure somewhere too.

Holger:
I was impressed when you showed your first pass for this scene. You animated the horse with much more drama, more active - I think it even went up on it's 2 rear legs? Could you tell me a bit about how you worked with Dick to get from that initial approach to the final more contained animation style?

Tash:
Mr. Williams did not want a cartoon approach. Maybe Roger Rabbit had turned him off completely, who knows? But the pacing of his commercials have also been different from the usual "cartoony" approach. Whatever I did he would want me to reduce, pull back, slow down. The horse was supposed to be shell-shocked, that was his brief to me, but I wasn't allowed to express that with any kind of broad movement. So I had to keep the animation contained, and somehow be expressive at the same time.Holger:
Dick sometimes felt frustrated when he realized that often he could not use Art's work to the same extend as Ken's work. Did Art animate an initial version for this scene? Were you able to use his work in any way or did you pretty much redo the scene?

Tash:
The scene had already been animated before by Art Babbitt but Mr. Williams was unhappy about it. I didn't get to see Art Babbitt's original version straight away, I had gone someway into the scene before I could and mine bears no resemblance to it. But I could see why Dick was unhappy with it. He wanted a long, drawn out, slow scene and Art gave it to him; the result was frightfully boring. I tried to make it interesting by filling it with small incidents and movements. The Messenger climbs over things, pushes aside a sword, then a leg, the horse reacts to him trying to get on, he in turn is affected by the movement of the horse. The long, slow scene became a string of tiny events that keeps it from getting dull.

Holger:
Did Dick give you layout drawings? Where they on-model? Or was it up to you to come up with the drawings for what he wanted happening in the scene?

Tash:
What I got was things that looked like blown up storyboard sketches- and I use the word "sketch" intentionally. They were very rough and gave a rudimentary idea of what the scenes would look like. I drew a Messenger that looks somewhat like the figure on the sketches, and for the details of the action I came up with things as I went along. Every time my Messenger came close to approaching his target, Mr. Williams wanted him to struggle more and spend more time. So I backtracked a lot to make him do whatever he was to do with more difficulty.

Holger:
The Messenger and the horse feel more 3-dimensional and solid than some of the other characters in the film. Did Dick design it that way or was it more the way you ended up drawing them that contributed to that?

Tash:
It is pretty much my approach to drawing that gave that look. There was no model for the horse, Mr. Williams just showed me some prints of Middle Eastern miniatures for reference.

Holger:
Did you work pose-to-pose, straight-ahead or both?

Tash:
Both, intermixing, and eventually having all drawings drawn rough and tested before passing it on to the assistants who clean it up. This is still my method.Holger:
Didn't Dick advise you to look at Kurosawa's Ran? How did that influence your work on this scene?

Tash:
Yes, he gave me the cassette to watch. I was to try and lend the atmosphere of carnage and devastation that we see in the aftermath of the battle in that film. I was also meant to make the flags flutter in the Kurosawa way, and making a mad wind like that meant animating the horse's mane, tail, stirrups and a tassle in the same way.

Holger:
For most scenes in the film Dick liked to do some final clean drawings. Did he do that for your scenes?

Tash:
No. They went straight to my assistants.

Holger:
Dick often expected his animators do do their own cleanups. Your method was different. You had your little team, Sharon Smith and Mark Williams. Could you tell me a bit about your method and how you used their help?

Tash:
Generally I do all the rough animation, inbetweens included, before passing it on to assistants. I test it, correct and fine-tune it and then re-number and re-chart in its definitive form, try to create charts for parts that were done straight-ahead, indicate secondary action, overlapping action, and anything else that does not follow the chart. Then I pass it on to the assistants. That is how I worked with Sharon and Mark then. Sharon would clean up the keys and breakdowns, correcting forms and volumes, and Mark would do the clean inbetweens, referring to the roughs of course. Whether I ever asked them to fill in drawings that I did not already draw and test myself, I don't remember right now, but the proximity of their desks would have made that also practicable if at any time I found it necessary.

Holger:
I think you did some of the best work on the film and your approach is more than validated by the final result, but I'm curious about how you convinced Dick to let you work this way. How did you accomplish that? Was that discussed when you were hired or did you work that out while you animated your first scene?

Tash:
I don't really know how others worked, Mr. Williams and Ms. Sutton demanded a lot of overtime- 56 hours a week (that was a request given in writing, later increased) which is the equivalent of seven days a week. I opted to work away the hours during the week and save my weekends. I was just married then and that marriage would not have lasted long if I was gone seven days a week. The result was that I chained myself to my desk and did not socialize, working with full concentration the 11 plus hours (not including lunch) daily in order to be able to spend the weekends with my wife.
So I never really knew how the others worked or whether my system was any different. Sorry, I did know how Sahin worked - I knew him from before, and we are friends as well as compatriots so we saw each other outside work as well. He had a small group from Bulgaria assisting him for a while. I don't remember having to persuade Mr. Williams about anything. I believe that was the set-up I walked into. My only condition was that I be allowed to bottom-peg and he, the convinced top-pegger, didn't mind.I just adjusted this post as Tash just sent in lots more about his other scenes. I'm looking forward to "Part 2"!

The high-gloss folder

2008-07-06T11:52:00.000-07:00

From "The Thief who never gave up" to "Once" to "The Thief and the Cobbler", the film has had a few title changes. When it was finally called "The Thief and the Cobbler" we got the Crew Jackets made that Andreas wrote about. In the time before, when the film was called "Once" a very nice glossy brochure was printed. I got it signed by as many crew members as possible and would like to present as this week's blog entry:

Leaves

2008-06-30T09:52:00.000-07:00

This is a little spin-off post from the recent Chase post. I was trying to find out who animated the leaves for this scene:What follows is a little back and forth email conversation I had with F/X animator Graham Bebbington about the technique used to create the shimmering leaves in this and two more scenes:

Graham:
I animated a few of the shimmering leaf scenes and may have had a hand in the one shown. Basically they were painted panning backgrounds with sections of animated leaves repeated to give the impression of movement.

Holger:
Could you explain that in more detail for the blog? I'd like to understand how that worked.

Graham:
Basically it involves animating leaves moving very slightly as if in a breeze from say left to right, fixed to the same spot on a painted tree BG. Then gradually layering the same drawings slightly offset until you are happy with the amount and feel of the animation. Then you can experiment with the colours to enhance the shimmering effect and if they need to react to something, i.e the Thief falling into the branches, you can have bigger movements and showers of leaves falling down from the branches to enhance the effect as secondary animation. Above all you need patience and attention to detail as it is the repetition and variety that creates the illusion of movement and any large movements would distract from the main focus. As Dick said at the time you should “feel the wind”.

Holger:
I talked to Dietmar about this. He told me about some scenes where he reused OneEyes in the same scene by using different pegs and offsetting the numbers in the x-sheet. Since you mentioned other leave scenes I had a quick look and found 2 more in the Polo game:
Graham:
WOW, you found two scenes I definitely did… you’ve made an old man very happy. (Just kidding!) Below should clarify it a bit more and added to the previous e-mail give you a better idea. Obviously being in the same room and drawing them for you would be the best way. But this is the next best thing.

Holger:
For example I don't understand how you would use different pegs if you just want to shift the drawing an inch or so. Floating pegbar, bottom pegs?

Graham:
OK--- I meant the Bg was painted over A, B and C pegs. With the leaves animated separately on paper as a cycle of 12, 16, 20 or? drawings … whatever works. In Dick’s case more… more… more!!!. Then once they worked they could be repositioned in paint and trace SEPARATE from the pegs BUT registered to the painted tree Background. The trick is to hide the join between the separate cycles of leaves and to start the cycle animation at a different number for each section. E.G. TREE One below start on frame 1 of cycle, TREE two below start on frame 3 of cycle etc.etc.
Holger:
When you said “then you can experiment with the colours” - that would be done in T&P? Would you linetest this by shading leaves in with colored pencils?Graham:
Yep, you guessed it. That was how I did the one in the rainbow scene above. Again animating sections and changing the start point of the cycle. (this time it was on smaller sections and it meant the tracing had to be pin point or the animation would jump)

Holger:
In this scene with the Thief I also can't find any obvious repetition:Graham:
I think this may have been animated as seen and used as a basis for the other ones, as the leaves are larger and would be harder to hide cycles in. Although the longer the cycle the easier it is. (i.e a 36 frame cycle would be more convincing than a 12 frame one)

Chase Part 2

2008-06-23T10:33:00.000-07:00

Here we have the concluding scenes of the Chase sequence. A lot of question marks. Please leave a comment if you know more...

Left: Thief and crowd by Andreas, glass f/x ?
Middle: Thief by ? glass f/x ?
Right: Thief by ?
For some reason my first guess for the leave animation on the right had been Margaret Grieve, but it's possible that F/X animator Graham Bebbington worked on this. He definitely animated similar leaves in other scenes and I'll do a little spin-off post about this next.

Left and Middle (same scene): Dean, courtiers by Andreas
Right: Dean

Left: Dean
Middle: Dean
Right: Andreas

update by Paul Dilworth:
With regard to the backgrounds, I remember doing the big palace window scene (many many golden stars to paint!) Inga did the beautiful trees, (and the rest of the Polo Scene.) The maps on the wall in Zig Zag's room were Roy's original drawings for the Golden City. Oh to see them large and in a movie theatre! I may be wrong but the blue radiating circle behind Tack's head as he was pinned to the wall was a total fluke. He just happened to end up right in the middle of it.

Guest Blogger: Monika Kremer - Paint and Trace

2008-06-15T14:49:00.000-07:00

It is really unbelievable, how much has changed since we worked on the thief.

I didn’t belong to the animaton crew, I worked as a painter in the paint and trace department.
It was my first and only experience at working on an animated movie.

I became interested in the film, because my husband Dietmar was one of the animators. Lacking the talent to draw or animate, but fascinated by the look and story, I applied for Paint and Trace and got the chance to work on the Thief. Thanks a lot to Maggie Brown, the head of Paint and Trace - it was an experience I will never forget.

In 1990 it was impossible for me to imagine that 15 years later it would need only a couple of people and some computer to do – not only our work, but the work of the camera department, too. We were about 20 painters and up to 15 tracers - and I always thought, we needed more. But soon the space that we had rented for the Paint and Trace department was filled to the last place with people and free-lancing painters were employed, too.

The tracers worked with special tracer pens. They traced the pencil drawings, which came from the animaton department, with their pens and in different colours onto the cels. For this they needed a lot of skill. I wasn’t able to do that at all and so I had the biggest respect for our tracers. Some very complicated drawings took over an hour to trace.

Nearly every drawing was traced; only bits from the war machine were photocopied. The brigands were animated on frosted cels with special pens by the animators. These cels were called “frosted” because they looked like a window covered in ice. This enabled the animators to draw straight onto them and a special spray was used afterwards to make the cels transparent and then being painted on the backside as usual.

We painters worked with several different sized brushes, depending of the size of the area that needed painting. We used uncounted litres of paint not to forget the many white cotton gloves to prevent fingerprints on the cels. I still left a lot on them.

With cels the size of up to 60 x 30 cm, it felt like painting walls at times. And if there were special effects like lights in a scene, there had to be a black matte and a counter-matte for every single cel where an effect was to be created in the camera department.

Just to give an example, Zig Zag’s rings had already fifteen colours. Today that is just a mouseclick, back then, every single ring needed to be painstakingly painted with brushes. Here is also a colour model of “Your average crowd scene”

And of course these colours were not all readymade available, most of them had to be mixed, some had to be adjusted to compensate for cel level jumps under the camera. This effect can still be witnessed in old TV animations. When a character was on a held cel and just an arm moved, this arm would be on a cel above the held character. And if you didn’t adjust the colour for the arm on the level above, that colour would look different, because the cels are never truly transparent.

Some paints weren’t easy to handle, The colour of the Thief’s robe on the inside had to be stirred very carefully, otherwise it dried with spots and stains. If that happened, the paint would have to be scratched off again and re-applied. Obviously, today’s computers save a lot of time and hassle here.

Sometimes it wasn’t easy to stay inside the trace lines. For example, there was a scene were the Thief had spiraly vines around the body and then makes them into springs on his feet, which were incredibly fuzzy to paint. No “Animate at 300% and reduce in compositing”. This I would have loved to paint only with a few mouseclicks.

After the cels were traced and painted, they went to the checking department before they could go to camera. It was always a nightmare if a mistake was discovered on a cel. If somebody mixed up the two colours on the hem on kings garment for example, it meant that the paint had to be scraped away and the cel painted again. When you work from 8 in the morning to 10 in the evening, a lapse of concentration like this could happen easily.

Finally an example that was mentioned in an earlier blog, how the animators loved to add incredibly small details to their scenes. The "Stainless Steel Solingen" blades in the War Machine:

Dick's upcoming DVD

2008-06-09T11:35:00.000-07:00

The website for Dick's upcoming DVD version of his book has just been updated.
Here is the link for the SITE and a link for a PROMO CLIP. It's different from the one posted on Cartoon Brew, although it starts out the same...

Update: further discussion HERE and HERE

an outward and visible reality.... or The Crew Jacket

2008-06-07T13:22:00.000-07:00

Picture this... London, 1991 , a place bustling with Feature and commercial animation ( I know, hard to picture, but try)
Amblimation has a studio in Acton, Disney is at Kings Cross and Henson is busy on several projects. And we see something we hadn't seen before... crew jackets. We all felt deeply proud to be working on ' Once ' , as it was called then and really wanted to join the throngs of artists wearing their pride on their sleeves...or better yet, on their back. Disney had jackets, Henson had jackets.. but we had a very limited budget and crew jackets were out of the question... until they weren't. Dick decided one day that not only would we get jackets as well, but ours would be the best of them all.
Lacking any official merchandize, I had taken to painting t-shirts with whatever took my fancy...and so I made a t-shirt using the Once logo and one of the images from the Thief brochure.( fashion maven I wasn't).

Caricature by T. Dan Hoffstedt

Dick saw me wearing the t-shirt one day and, in his no nonsense way, asked me to strip off, so he could xerox it... which I dutifully did. Thankfully that was before the middle age spread set in.
By that time, the film had already been re-titled as The Thief and the Cobbler, so Dick took my T- shirt design ( which, let's face it, was just his designs reused anyway ) and adapted them to the new title logo... a crew jacket was born!

We were ecstatic when the finished jackets were finally delivered, and Dick hadn't promised too much. The stitching was very intricate and on the front , for all to see, was a badge of honour we had all dreamed of from the time we fell in love with our chosen profession :

The secret Xerox conspiracy!

2008-06-01T03:46:00.000-07:00

Well, a blog entry has to have a flashy title to grab you by the throat and pull you right in. In reality there was nothing secret, no conspiracy and only Xerox.

During the time, when Dick funded the film privately, many of the greatest war machine scenes had been animated. And they had all been traced on cels. As Holger has written earlier, these cels were gigantic. The Layout for the scene “Kettle” for example was 66 x 30 cm.

It was quite clear early on that there would be no war machine cel tracing any more. Time and monetary constraints forbid that. So it was decided that the animation would have to be photocopied (or xeroxed) on cels. But of course, with a film shot in glorious 35-mill cinemascope and to be presented on big screens, there was no way, we would animate these awesome battle scenes on A3 or even A 4 paper. That would be like watching Picasso’s “Guernica” on a stamp. And it would wobble and shake all over the place.

Luckily a shop that did A3 laser Xeroxes with brown toner on cells was found after extensive research. In the meantime Roy cooked up a clever scheme. We would use irregularly cut Overlays that would also add depth to the picture and hide the cell edges. Then the animation would be xeroxed on separate A3 cels and the cels cut to fit under Roy’s Overlays. Instead of one big cel, we now had up to 4 cels placed next to each other, but cut up like mosaic pieces. To avoid colour jumps, blank cels would be placed where no animation took place and nobody in the audience was the wiser.

But there was after all a little problem to the whole idea: The Xerox machine would distort every copy ever so slightly. And it would distort it always in a different place. So it was not just a matter of placing the xeroxed cel over the original drawing and pegging it. We literally had to make 3 Xeroxes of each drawing and then peg the keys first and afterwards re-peg all the in-between Xeroxes according to the Xerox keys. Staring on 3-5 transparent levels of cels, each loaded with many little one-eyes does mess with your eyes and brains after a while, I can tell you that. So if you fail to grasp the concept behind the “secret Xerox conspiracy”, it is not your fault, but clearly an after effect of me working too many hours on these scenes.

To add insult to injury, let me quote Neil Boyle “Give Dietmar a Xerox machine and he gives you three feet of animation a week”

Paul Dilworth, Part 2

2008-05-25T16:25:00.000-07:00

Here is another guest post by Paul. "The Thief" reader Justin left a comment on Paul's first post: "Big thanks to you Paul for sharing your experience! Always been a huge admirer of the film and Errol's other work... So could you say more about the "bath" and the specific process/ materials you'd use to make one of the BG's?"
Here is Paul's reply: "A lot of Errol's backgrounds were in the film. I think he did the Lion Fountain sequence, a lot of the market stalls, the atmospheric distant hills, the city behind Yum Yum's beautifully rendered roses, and a lot of the War Machine. I never met him, so I don't know too much about his techniques, but I was told he often put his backgrounds in a bath. I tried this with the Zig Zag tower background which had a sort of milky sky. Dick wanted more stars in the sky and the city outside the window more "magical," and he gave me some Edmund Dulac photocopies from "The Arabian Nights" and "The Rubaiyat of Omar Khyyam," as well as some photocopies of Persian miniatures. There was always a lot of reference to look at.
Anyway, I must have dipped the background in the bath half a dozen times,taking it out of the water, adding more blues and greys, and trying to feather out the "tide lines" with a soft brush. Gradually the sky became fuller and milkier, so I put the stars on and John made them twinkle under the camera.
We usually used gouache for the skies as the chalk in the gouache got rid of a lot of the streakiness that sometimes happens if you do a wash with watercolours. However, watercolour washes were used for lots of the really dark backgrounds and gently airbrushed on top to hide any streaks. Generally we tried not to use airbrushing. Some watercolours really stain the paper and you can get a really intense dark effect, e.g. for the Camp of the One Eyes and in the War Machine. Some people were naturally more suited to certain scenes and we each tended to get whole sequences of those scenes. Some of the skies were absolutely flat, some a vignette of two colours and some milky and cloudy. Sometimes spiralling Persian miniature clouds floated by. That looked great on a flat sky. When the grey Polo Scene sky met the peacock blue "beauteous evening" sky Dick stuck a rainbow effect in to hide the join. It worked perfectly.
Anyway, the idea of dipping the backgrounds into a bath was that some of the colours floated off and some remained on the paper (we used watercolour paper, not illustration board.) It made everything look richer, like an underpainting for an oil painting. For rocky scenes, (e.g. in Tack's cell,) you can get a good craggy effect by dabbing randomly with a paper towel after wetting the bg. Then put more colours on and keep doing it 'til it looks rocky. There was often a slight grainy effect of the waterclour on the paper which you often see in the Dulac illustrations. If we had used acrylic animation paints it wouldn't have had the same lightness with the paper being part of everything and adding atmosphere. I guess all this is kind of stating the obvious, but if this is in some way useful then so be it!
Anyway, it was areal privilege to have had the opportunity to work on The Thief. Absolutely."

Roy Naisbit - part deux

2008-05-18T06:01:00.000-07:00

"What did the frog say to the Warmachine?"
"Rivet, Rivet"

And that is what this giant monstrum of a siege machine boils down to. Rivets. Many rivets. Hundreds, thousands, maybe millions. Before I joined the team I didn't even know the word "rivet". Afterwards I wished I never had.

Not really, just joking :) But if you have taken a close look at Roy's designs, you see how much he and Dick loved rivets. They are everywhere. And without more funny or interesting stories to tell, let's have more eye-candy from the master himself.

Warmachine through King Nod's telescope

2008-05-17T06:56:00.000-07:00

We received this very nice assembly of King Nod's P.O.V of the warmachine from Luke Menichelli and think it is definitely worth sharing.

Chase Part 2

2008-05-09T10:09:00.000-07:00

Just a quick update to the first Chase post. Harpo Marx in Duck Soup:

Roy Naisbitt – certified genius.

2008-05-08T04:15:00.000-07:00

Holger, Andreas, Michael and I felt like kids in a candy store working on the Thief. There was talent and inspiration oozing from every corner, and seeing even the tiniest scrap of paper land in a waste bin could break our hearts.

Naturally it wasn’t long before an unspoken pact was made to liberate anything that landed in the bins. If for nothing else, then to save it for the after world.

The drawback is that one ends up wading through heaps of paper and cells, but slowly a single pile is emerging and building up, containing Layouts and Designs that Roy Naisbitt made of and for the war machine. Some are copies, some are originals, all are huge.

As the workload piled up, we spend more Saturdays and Sundays at the studio and every one of my Saturdays would begin by visiting Roy in his corner, listen to his stories of the long collaboration with Dick or talk about life in general, while we shared a coffee and a few rolls. For almost two years, it was the best way to spend a Saturday.

So with Roy’s Birthday on the 6^th of May just over, what would be better than celebrating it with some of his great Layouts?

What would be better? Well, a few pints of Lager at the local pub of course!

Happy Birthday Roy!

2008-05-06T19:34:00.000-07:00

Chase Part 1

2008-05-01T11:08:00.001-07:00

This sequence was all new material which had not been touched by Ken or Art. It's also full of optical illusions.

same scene: Neil
all: Neil

left: Neil
middle and right, same scene: Dick

left and middle, same scene: Dick
right: Dick
Dick animated all these runs very quickly. First he posed out the contact positions for one leg, plotting out the progression in space. Inbetween those he would draw the contact positions for the other leg, then do the breakdowns for the passing positions, just as he describes it in his book.

left: Dick
middle: Dick
right: Dean
The first scene has a nice trick by Roy, where he utilized the strobing effect of the circles to animate the pattern within. Later in the film Dick asked me to use the same trick to animate the hands of the Witch Mountain when the Thief is flying by.
For the second scene Dick semi-rotoscoped a scene from a Marx Brothers movie, Duck Soup, I think. I'll try to get a screengrab, hopefully tomorrow.

Dick

same scene: Dean
One of the highlights of the film with a stunning animated camera move. This appears as a long continuous scene without visible cuts, but because of the fast action and foreground elements working as a wipe there were opportunities to divide this into separate scenes. I don't know if that was the case, but it would have made the scene easier to manage.
Dick had used the idea before in Ragged Ann and Andy:...which was in turn directly inspired by Little Nemo:

Jane Wright, Part 1

2008-04-23T09:00:00.000-07:00

I have been emailing with Jane Wright. I updated a few of the recent posts with some of the information she gave me. 4/2, 4/4, 4/14
I also pasted parts of her emails into this guest post:

Many amusing stories have been told of Dick's outbursts and I do smile when I hear them, but really, I only ever witnessed the more gracious side to his personality as a director. Working downstairs no doubt helped. After my very first scene (Thief splashing into moat) had been shown in rushes I passed Dick on the stairs later that morning. He was deep in conversation with two or three other VIPs - probably Roy, John L. and Peter (Bond), but as I'd only been at the studio a few weeks I wasn't sure who they all were, only who I was -- nobody. So I shuffled past them all with my head down. I was halfway down the stairs when Dick broke off from his conversation, turned round and said, "Great splash!" before continuing his discourse.

While it's probably true that he knew such comments could make you cancel your plans for the evening, sharpen your pencil and work until midnight instead, it's moments like that which stay with you forever. A lesser director might build you up with a trace of condescension, yet Dick had a way of drawing out the best in many people and making you feel your contribution was much greater than it actually was. That's a rare gift. Whether it was because I was so far down the food chain doing only effects, or whether it was because I was more keen than artistic, or whether it was just beginner's luck I can't say, but it's the highest part of a human being which steps aside and allows a far dimmer light to shine to its brightest potential for a brief moment.

I think I was about 9 years old when the scene was first animated by Ken Harris. I remember well the awe of seeing a dope sheet with the names: Ken/Dick/Jane in the 'animated by' tick box and knowing that the scene had remained boxed up all the way through my school and college years. I guess we've all got memories like that from The Thief....

You might want to track down John Cousen, if you haven't already, he animated all the witch's vapour effects. Graham Bebbington and Lynette Charters were the other two effects animators from the Forum days. Heather Tailby did a scene or two also. Lynette did most of the animation - sand dunes, clouds, etc. - in the opening sequence with the prophecy. And Julie Penman was everyone's hard-working assistant and carried so much of the workload with very little credit. When you have Julie assisting you, your workload is lifted off your back on angels' wings...

The bubbles... (see 4/14/2008 post)
Neil set the style for the outlines for the first 15 feet or so, then handed the sequence over with the brief that they should move more like breasts, adding with an oblique glance, "Those are Dick's words, not mine!"
Not sure I was up to the challenge and thinking this might be more of a bloke's job, I nevertheless finished the rest of the bubble animation, then set about experimenting with the reflections, distorting all those little tiles on the floor.

The bubbles on most of those Thief scenes were animated on three levels with the idea that when shot on different passes, the bubbles behind would still be seen through the bubbles in the foreground. They ended up being painted all on the same level as it would have been too expensive to paint and shoot with three levels, so a lot of that detail and also the depth was lost. After the first scene was approved on twos and I was told to put it on ones I saw at first only the size of the job - I think it was about 80 odd feet - that first scene where the Thief squeezes out of the hole. "He wants it on ones", I moaned when I got back downstairs, "It'll take forever." "Well, you're not going anywhere, are you?" John C. quipped in response. He was right, I wasn't going anywhere - not for a long time! I was of course thrilled when it was actually finished on ones (due in large part to Julie who handled much of the assisting for the sequence and also kept track of all the different levels and who was working on what). The experience taught me not to look at the whole mountain, just the next two or three steps ahead. In proportion to the rest of the film it wasn't a mountain anyway, just a small hillock, but it's still the longest and largest scene I've ever worked on.

The day the studio closed I was in Wales. Lynette called me in the morning with the sad news and I jumped straight into my car. Four or five hours later I was in Camden joining in with the lamentations and farewells of my comrades. Dick's first words to me were "Sorry we couldn't finish your bubbles on three separate levels." I was shocked because nothing was further from my mind. It was really quite humbling because he'd just lost his whole film and I wanted to say something to him that wouldn't sound completely lame, yet he magnanimously drew the attention away from himself and was really there for all of his crew. But then that was how he was on so many occasions that I recall.

I know a man's grace doesn't sell many tabloid newspapers and wouldn't raise a chuckle over a few pints in the pub, but it's a side to Dick that is very real and perhaps gets eclipsed by the more 'colourful' facets of his personality when stories are being told. Because of his kindness, his encouragement and the example he set as a hard worker rather than a delegator, the year and a half I spent working under his direction is right up there as a 'Jim'll Fix It' episode in my life. (Actually, it was John Cousen who fixed it for me to work there, but that's another story...)

Throw in the kitchen sink...er...kettle.

2008-04-17T02:22:00.000-07:00

My apologies to my fellow bloggers that I have been away for so long. I shall try and contribute more in the future – but concerning the different scenes I worked on, this will be an interesting undertaking. As you will see in one of my future entries, Dick entrusted me with a scene that would keep me and 3 assistants busy for an entire year.

But for now, I will stick to the time when I finished assisting the scene “Bild” for Brent Odell, where several elephants and war-machinery were lifted up.

I was preparing to assist on the next scene, when already a re-arranging of animators and assistants happened. No sooner had I settled in at “The Forum” at Camden street, that I packed my bags and moved to the legendary “138 Royal College street”. Dick had decided that I might as well go ahead and animate my first very own scene. This was – as it turned out – part of a master plan, where we young and hungry assistants soon became junior animators and the hours that we put in voluntarily would put pressure on the other animators too.

But right now, I was in heaven. I worked in the lair of the master himself, just one floor below and on my own scene. I happily met with Dick, and he presented me with a sketch for “Kettle”:

To the "uninitiated" (me) this looked like a case of “huh?” But as the image below shows, Roy Naisbitt clearly read Dick’s intentions and as usual created a beautiful layout.

Today, in times of computer animation and programs like “Massive”, known from Lord of the Rings, even the armies of the Mighty One-Eye would be laughably small. But in 1990, we only had the mighty “Xerox” and patience on our side. The “2.5-D perspective” of the artwork really was a benefit here, as it meant we (warmachine) animators could cheat perspectives in complicated scenes like these and with all the FX going on and the fast cutting, we could get away with placing and tracing many characters.

When hand-drawing a tray with 40 one-eyes that gets destroyed by a rocket, impaling many soldiers and throwing the others to the abyss over 75 drawings time just flies by..and before you know it, 3 weeks are over….

Second Pipe Sequence and Bathroom

2008-04-14T09:29:00.000-07:00

updated
All: pipes by Ken/Raymond

Left: pipes by Ken/Raymond, Thief by Ken/Dick
Middle: pipes by Ken/Raymond
Right: Thief by Ken/Neil, bubbles by Neil/JaneNeil did the first 15 feet or so of the bubbles just to set the style, and then it was handed over to the Effects Dept. where the bubble animation was continued, and reflections were added throughout.
The effects animators also animated the bubbles with reflections for the rest of the sequence.

Left: Yumyum by Tissa David/Neil, not finished under Dick's direction
Middle: Jewel F/X by Mick Burns
Right: Thief by Ken/Neil, bubbles by Jane (reuse of scene above)In the days following the shut down of the production by the Completion Bond Company, Dick suggested to Neil Boyle and John Leatherbarrow that if there was any way they could continue to work on the production they should. Neil and John, joined by Effects Supervisor John Cousen and Color Modelist Barbara McCormack, then set up Premier Films to help finish The Thief and the Cobbler. From a new studio space in London they were able to employ a large number of the artists that had worked under Dick, and worked only on sequences that had already been carefully planned out by Dick with his storyboards, as well as finishing scenes through to trace, paint and shooting that had already been started under Dick's direction.
The Princess scenes for this sequence fall into these categories. In the 70's Tissa David had done scenes with originally 2 Princesses who were sisters. Neil and later in 2 scenes Tim were trying to reference Tissa's original scenes where possible, but because the dialogue had changed, the actress voicing it had changed, and the whole original set up of the scene had changed (i.e. that the original scenes were dialogue between the two Princesses Mee Mee and Yum Yum, but Dick had subsequently cut out Mee Mee from the story) -- that all meant that much of the Princess stuff had to be done anew. But the intention was to try and keep any nice poses or attitudes from Tissa's original drawings where possible, and integrate them into the new Princess design and the new geography of the shots.

Left: Yumyum by Tissa David/Neil, not finished under Dick's direction
Middle: Thief by Ken/Neil, bubbles and reflections by Jane
Right: Yumyum by Tissa David/Neil, Thief by Ken/Neil, not finished under Dick's direction

Left: Yumyum by Tissa David/Tim, Thief by Ken/Tim, not finished under Dick's direction
Middle: Tissa's linetest, originally there were 2 princesses in this scene
Right: Thief by Ken/Neil, bubbles and reflections by Jane

Left: Tissa's linetest
Middle: Yumyum by Tissa David/Tim, not finished under Dick's direction
Right: Thief by Ken/Neil, bubbles by Jane (not reflections) Tim's drawings of Yumyum here are very faithful to Dick's storyboards

Left: Yumyum by Tissa David/Tim, not finished under Dick's direction
Middle: Thief by Ken/Neil, bubbles by Jane (not reflections)
Right: Tissa's linetest
Neil also animated the curtain for the middle scene.

Simon Maddocks Part 1

2008-04-07T10:22:00.000-07:00

Simon Maddocks just sent these photos with comments.
(I added a few things). See also his update to our first post "The Opening Scene".

Richard Williams at the 1990 Christmas Party at St. Pancras Way.

Dietmar and Monika Kremer. Michael Schlingmann and Tanya Fenton
138 Royal College Street. Dick owned this building. The Forum was only leased for the duration of the main production. You can just make out that someone has put the word "END" on the door, so this is probably from around the end of the movie production in Camden.
F/X supervisor John Cousen holding a leg by the downstairs line tester in The Forum. I don't know why.
Bill the security guard with his chips.
Margaret Grieve and Dee Morgan.

Tessa Wolpe hands me my redundancy notice on 15th May 1992.

The Checking Department at St. Pancras Way. Atlanta Green on the right.
Sally Burden, who ran Trace And Paint after Maggie Brown left.

The last gathering in the pub after the takeover. Neil Boyle, John Cousen, editor Peter Bond and Paul Dilworth in The Eagle.

Richard Williams in The Eagle. Ian Cook "Films are ephemera"

Guan Chuan Chew ("Chew"). Chew and his wife were the studio accountants.
Sophie Leatherbarrow, F/X animator Lynette Charters and Roy Naisbitt.

Neil Boyle and producer Mo Sutton. Richard Williams and John Leatherbarrow.

Roy Naisbitt

Jim Maguire in front of some of the scenes he looked after as librarian.

Ross Dearsley working on a war machine build scene I think.
Max Berry working on Fido animation, probably assisting or in-betweening for Dave Byers-Brown.
The Forum in Camden, where the animation, production and editorial sections of The Thief were housed in 1990 to 1992, on the first and third floors.
An in-progress drawing from the "Thief On Springs" sequence.
Desks on the first floor of The Forum, with the wall of scene boxes in the background.
A detail of some of the scene box labels.
Tim Watts and Robert Malherbe.

First Pipe Sequence

2008-04-04T11:52:00.000-07:00

updated
For my taste this is one of the highlights of the film. Here is another contribution by a trusted source, with a few edits by me:
On most productions the animation of pipes wobbling and clanking would probably have been assigned to the effects department, but for this sequence - where the Thief works his way up the inside of the palace drain system - Dick had Ken Harris work out the various vibrates, accents and stagger timings of the bending pipes, figuring that Ken would milk the situation for all its humor, and be able to inject some of the Thief's personality and timing into the movements of the pipes.

Errol le Cain painted the backgrounds for this sequence, following the layouts that Roy Naisbitt and Dick had designed. As well as painting the background sections of palace wall and the skyline beyond, Errol painted watercolors of each of the pipes setups, which were then scalpeled out and mounted on a cel overlay. This was done so that Errol could apply his distinctive color sense in designing bands of graduated greens and browns which ran along the length of the pipes and suggested, in a graphic way, their roundness. This cut and paste on the mock ups of the pipes almost certainly was done by Roy. (It always seemed to fall to Roy to cut, paste and invisibly join the background artwork!) Color Modelist Barbara McCormack then matched exactly each of these bands of color to equivalent shades of cel paint so that the same effect could be achieved on the final production cels. Inks had to be matched to the cel paints too so that each band of color would butt seamlessly to the next, rather than be separated by an ugly black trace line. I have no idea when Errol did the color setups for the pipes, but I think it was a long time prior to the shots going in to clean up and color. This was not unusual though -- I think that Dick would sometimes get a sequence worths of background paintings done by Errol after Ken had finished his roughs, even though he knew that the clean up and trace/paint on the characters may not be done for some years hence. I guess Dick figured that Errol was unique and he wanted to get him to do as much of the film as he could by producing the backgrounds as soon as they were ready to go. A lot of Ken's Thief rough scenes already had background paintings done for them by Errol. Roy used to fish them out of the archive at 138 so that matchlines could be checked as the scenes went through final animation. Ken did the original rough animation for the pipes sequence probably somewhere between the very late 60s and the mid 70s -- most of the X sheets seemed to fall somewhere between there...

Ken's original pipe animation was cleaned up and detailed by Raymond Guillaumet. Raymond was always cast by Dick on any job that needed extreme precision and technical drawing (Raymond had previously been a diagrammatic animator and a lettering artist, and had designed the fonts and lettered many title sequences for feature films including some of the early James Bond films and the famous 'zero gravity' floating titles to 'Barbarella')

The animation of distant birds in the sky, dust and debris falling from the pipes, and the flies following the Thief's progress up the pipes were animated variously by Dick, Neil, Holger and Dave Cockburn.

The shots of the Thief coming up through the palace toilet were animated by Neil from Ken's roughs. A late addition to these shots was made when Dick decided he wanted the jewelled toilet flusher to turn slightly in the breeze. Dick was always keen to have some sense of air moving through the palace and would often request that hair, veils and drapes sway slightly in the wind. The direct inspiration for this came from the Powell and Pressburger film 'Black Narcissus', where a Himalayan wind flows continuously through the nunnery in which the story takes place.

Left: Thief by Ken/Dick, water by Graham Bebbington
Middle: pipe by Ken/Raymond, Thief by Ken/Dick, water by Jane
Right: pipe by Ken/Raymond, Thief by Ken/Dick, water by Lynette Charters4/21/2008 update by Jane Wright:
"The first one where the Thief reaches a hand up to the pipe while still submerged was Graham's, the one where he struggles up the pipe I did, and the third one (if it's a separate scene) may be Lynette's as she did the other long shot from that sequence."

Left: Alex
Middle: done in LA (?), not under Dick's direction
Right: pipes by Ken/RaymondWhen Dick was forced to fill in the gaps of the movie with storyboards he added a lot of boards with Yumyum, Cobbler and Nanny into this sequence. As far as I can remember it, only the single close up of the Nanny saying "The nice young man is fixing your slippers, my dear" (left image) was completed during the original production, and Alex Williams did it. I don't know if this one shot was picked out as an attempt to nail down the Nanny's design in close up, or for promotional/trailer material, as I don't remember any of the surrounding shots ever going into production (?) The rest of this sequence seemed to remain forever in storyboard form in the original workreels... The other scene (middle image) was done after the shut down of the London production -- at least I don't remember seeing any line tests for it -- but I do remember very clearly that Dick had done very precise (color) storyboards for these scenes, with many of the poses already worked out. There's a slightly snappy timing to how the Nanny reaches that final lovely pose which suggests to me that it was done in LA - just a hunch - but the pose itself is definitely one of Dick's.

All: Ken/Raymond

Left: Ken/Raymond
Middle: Ken/Neil
Right: Dick

Left: Ken/Neil
Middle: Ken/Dick, water by Dave Cockburn
Right: Art/DickFrom what I heard Dick was a bit upset when some scenes were included in Roger Rabbit that were pretty similar to this (the Thief flushing himself down the Toilet) and he refused to be involved with these scenes.

Left: Roy/Raymond
Middle: Ken/ Raymond
Right: Ken/ RaymondFor the scene on the left Roy probably animated a rough miniature version which was then enlarged and the final drawings done by Raymond.
If you watched the new "Horton Hears a Who" movie, there are a few shots in there that look as if they were inspired by these last 7 scenes.

All: Ken/Raymond

Thief by Ken/Dick, pipes by Ken/Raymond, water by RaymondRaymond was a perfectionist and very self critical. I remember he was unhappy that Dick wanted him to animate the water for this scene. He felt his animation of the water was not irregular and random enough. Part of the reason for this was also that Dick was looking for a stylized approach versus a naturalistic one.

Dustbin

2008-04-02T10:57:00.000-07:00

updated
Left: doors by Roy, guards heldcel by Holger (maybe)
Middle and Right (same scene): horses by Juergen Gross, dustbin by Ken/Raymond, Thief by Ken/HolgerThis was one of my first Thief scenes. I worked on it around Christmas 1990. On Christmas Eve, one day after the Christmas party that was depicted in the recent photos, we had a little celebration in the animation department with chocolat muffins and lots of good champagne. This was the only time ever that I did some animation while not being sober. I was working on the overlap of the Thief's sleeves, animating straight ahead. When I later checked I was surprised that the animation had turned out decent. I just had to fix some of the sleeve lengths.
If I remember correctly this was also the day that Judy and Juergen became a couple.

Left: Holger
Middle: dustbin by Ken/Raymond, Thief by Ken/Dick
Right: dustbin by Ken/Raymond, Thief by Ken/DickRoy and Dick had lots of big reference sheets where they collected cut out images from art books about
Persian Miniature painting. I remember one image which was very similar to these BGs. Perfectly black ground with flowers. Even the buildings were very similar.
For the middle scene Dick diverted from the usual fly formula and had some flies land on the Thief's face for a while, switching from animating them straight ahead to tracking them along with the Thief's pose to pose animation.

Left: Holger
Middle: dustbin by Ken/Raymond, Thief by Ken/Dick
Right: dustbin by Ken/Raymond, Thief by Ken/Dick, water by Jane Dick took it a bit literal here with the Persian "Miniature" style. These dustbin drawings were tiny! I was lucky to have 2 very good assistants helping me. Hilary Denny and Tom Matzeit. Doing the keys for this scene was difficult but the inbetweens were hell. I feel like apologizing to Hilary and Tom, but I think they did some of the most accurate inbetweens on the film here. After this Tom became Raymond's favorite assistant. Raymond did the most precise work in the studio and was very particular about inbetweens.

UPDATE 4/21/2008
Jane Wright (formerly Jane Smethurst) sent in updated information:
"...I also did the splash in the dustbin sequence that is thought to be Raymond's. It was interesting to read that Dick wanted a stylized design rather than naturalistic because he'd changed his mind with the next splash and he wanted a more organic feel. Just as well as it was the first scene I ever animated and I wouldn't have been able to copy Raymond's style if my life depended on it!"

(Holger:) Memory has deceived me before. I remember trying to compliment Raymond on his animation of the water for this scene (the last scene of the April 4 post) and at that point he told me that he wasn't happy with it and that he felt that he had not done it irregular enough. Maybe it was more a case of that Dick liked it the way Raymond had done it, rather than Dick asking beforehand for a more stylized style.

Left: Holger
Middle: Thief by Ken/Dick, water by Jane Smethurst
Right: Thief by Ken/Dick, water by Lynette Charters (now Serembe)

Left: Holger
Right: doors by Roy

Happy 75th Birthday Dick!

2008-03-19T08:38:00.000-07:00

It's also Atlanta Green's birthday. Atlanta supervised the checking department on the Thief.
Happy Birthday Atlanta!