This came in from a trusted source and I made some minor edits with the author's approval:
"Here's some stuff I remember about the 'Throne Room' sequence (not sure what it was actually called in the production). The scenes of the Princess first seeing the Cobbler as he's dragged across the drawbridge, and the following scenes in the 'Throne Room' sequence have some history behind them.
For many years the various drafts of the script for The Thief featured the twin Princesses Yum Yum and Mee Mee, one of whom was in love with a reptilian beast called Bubba. A few inspirational watercolors were produced by Dick and Errol le Cain which suggested early ideas for the look of the Princesses.
Later on, during the mid-1970s, Dick was working with the New York animator Tissa David on the production 'Raggedy Ann and Andy' and, impressed by her sensitivity animating Raggedy Ann, he hired Tissa to produce some rough animation of the two Princesses bathing and talking in the palace bathroom. Some of Tissa's rough pencil animation can still be seen in the various rough cuts of the film.
In 1988 (after Dick's success with 'Who Framed Roger Rabbit') Jake Eberts became the Executive Producer of The Thief. Jake (or rather his company) invested some development money in the film and then he and Dick got Warner Bros interested, and then signed up at some point in 1989.
Jake encouraged Dick to pare down the script which was running at 160 pages plus. Two of the casualties of this process were the Princess Mee Mee and the beast Bubba, both of whom were removed from the story entirely.
Later in 1990 or 91 Dick was under pressure to produce color shots of all the main characters in the story, possibly for a presentation of the film at Cannes, so that distributors and possible merchandising partners could get a sense of how they would work on screen. Although there were already plenty of color sequences featuring the character of the Thief, as well as some color footage of the Witch, the King, Zig Zag, and the single 'Laughing Brigand' shot, there were no final shots of either the Cobbler or the Princess. Dick set about animating a shot of the Princess stepping away from the camera and looking demure, which had been inspired by a shot from a live action film (the name of which escapes me). Dick also animated the patterns of light and shadow moving over the Princess, and these drawings were traced into mattes and used by John Leatherbarrow to create a dappled, multi-colored light playing over the figure of the Princess. This single shot remained the only color example of the Princess for quite some time and was eventually used as the final shot of the Princess in the 'Throne Room' sequence. If you look closely you can see that the Princess has slightly different, slightly more naturalistic proportions in this shot, compared with any others, and this is simply because it was an early attempt to find the final look of the character. As Dick drew more scenes he refined and simplified her.
Once Dick had animated several Princess scenes (the Princess at the window, the Princess waking the King, and her laughing at the end of the 'Throne Room' sequence) he assigned Alyson Hamilton to work on the Princess, keen to have a female animator develop her character. Alyson animated most of the remaining shots in the 'Throne Room' sequence.
About the same time Dick was exploring the design of the Princess he took some rough animation of the Cobbler that Art Babbitt had done as a movement test several years before, and began to develop it as a full color test. Dick had initially based the character of the Cobbler on the 'baby faced' silent comedian Harry Langdon, and taking this as his cue. Babbitt had animated a test of the Cobbler waddling about with a slightly sped up, silent film feel. Dick took this animation and refined it, drawing over it with an updated design. This was traced, painted and used as the test shot to show potential investors how the Cobbler would look on screen.
A couple of years later, when the film was fully in production, Dick gave the artwork used in this test sequence to Neil Boyle, who had to build two shots in the 'Throne Room' sequence around it. The first section of the animation was used to show the Cobbler entering the Throne Room, and Neil added some animation of the guards moving up behind him, while Andreas Wessel-Therhorn added the courtiers looking on.
Then, in the next section of Art/Dick's Cobbler animation the Cobbler scuttled around erratically before turning back to the camera. Neil had to create new animation of Zig Zag producing a telescopic wand from thin air and hooking it around the Cobbler's neck as if the Cobbler was being pulled back towards us by Zig Zag.
In this way, both the test shots of the Cobbler and the Princess were integrated into the final production footage."
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.
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.
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.
...which was in turn directly inspired by Little Nemo:
Zigzag's walk into the throne room and his hand gestures are based on a scene with German actor Conrad Veidt, probably from the 1940 film “Escape”. Veidt is playing a German general. The film is not currently available. It would be nice to have an image for the scene that Dick used. In the prints he looked just like he does in this image from “Escape”:
In 1940 Veidt also played Grand Vizier Jaffar in “The Thief of Bagdad”, which was an inspiration for both the Thief and also “Aladdin”.
The first Princess scene that Dick animated and that was mentioned in the last post was drawn over thermo prints from a VHS copy that Dick had taped off TV and saved for later use.
In 1988 (after Dick's success with 'Who Framed Roger Rabbit') Jake Eberts became the Executive Producer of The Thief. Jake (or rather his company) invested some development money in the film and then he and Dick got Warner Bros interested, and then signed up at some point in 1989.
Once Dick had animated several Princess scenes (the Princess at the window, the Princess waking the King, and her laughing at the end of the 'Throne Room' sequence) he assigned Alyson Hamilton to work on the Princess, keen to have a female animator develop her character. Alyson animated most of the remaining shots in the 'Throne Room' sequence.
Then, in the next section of Art/Dick's Cobbler animation the Cobbler scuttled around erratically before turning back to the camera. Neil had to create new animation of Zig Zag producing a telescopic wand from thin air and hooking it around the Cobbler's neck as if the Cobbler was being pulled back towards us by Zig Zag.
In this way, both the test shots of the Cobbler and the Princess were integrated into the final production footage."
He had people in the early days inbetween Ken's drawings (which Ken drew with a brown pencil) with a blue pencil. Just for a rough linetest, so he could see the movement. The reason for the color coding was to make it easier to identify the inbetweens so that they could be quickly thrown out when it came to refining the scene.
It should be pointed out that he animated everything including the chicken, the nails (tacks) and scissors. All this is so well done, very convincing. It feels like live action. I'm just mentioning it because in some studios this might be considered F/X and would be animated by an effects animator. I always liked that Dick enjoyed doing things like that himself.
For the Zigzag's hopping action Dick used live action reference of actor Oliver Hardy. If you watch this scene and recognize which Laurel&Hardy film it's from, please let me know and I'll update this post.
