The Secret of Kells

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.

First Pipe Sequence

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.

Aladdin

Yesterday somebody left a comment on "Throne Room, Part 2". A friendly comment along with a few points that I wanted to respond to - only I couldn't because the comment was very quickly removed. Here is the comment (without the reader's name): "Cool Post ! Some of the characters remind me a lot of Jafar and the Sultan in "Aladdin". Looks very similar, well for me at least :o) Anyways I like it a lot".
I think it would be fair to say that both "Aladdin" and the "Thief" were influenced by "The Thief of Bagdad", which also featured a Grand Vizier and a Sultan. The Grand Vizier Zigzag and King Nod in the "Thief" however had been designed many years before Aladdin was made. A few scenes with them had even been shown in a TV documentary in 1982. After Dick moved into the public spotlight with "Roger Rabbit", a film that Disney had been very involved in, it was also no secret when he finally got the funding to finish the "Thief". I don't know when Disney decided to make "Aladdin", but they where able to release their film first. I'm not familiar at all with the version of the "Thief" that was released here in the US, but I believe that some efforts had been made to make it similar to "Aladdin". But this was after it was taken away from Dick. The scenes we discuss here on the blog were animated before "Aladdin" came out. I hope this clears up this point, but I would appreciate your comments if you'd like to add s.th. that might be helpful to people who find this blog and who might have a similar reaction as the reader who posted the above comment.

Ice Age 2

The sequences with the Thief work brilliant as short bits of entertainment on their own. The Pole Vault and Tightrope sequences for example progress like a short film, there is a beginning, middle and an end. I have to admit though, that at times I had doubts about the general concept of using such “comic relief” sequences as framework for a feature film. This has been part of a lot of criticism of the “Thief” even while we were still working on it. After the film was taken from Dick, most of the footage that ended up on the cutting room floor were Thief scenes.When I watched the Recobbled Cut, it worked a bit like a time machine on me, re-awakening a lot of memories and thoughts about this, my first experience on a feature film. Around this time I also watched Ice Age 2. I might have been a bit Thief-centric at the time, but I noticed some similarities between the two movies. I felt that with Ice Age 2 they were very successful in the way they used their Scrat sequences - in my mind similar to how Dick had intended to use the sequences with the Thief character. Like the Thief, Scrat also seems to be very much inspired by the Coyote of the Roadrunner cartoons and as in the “Thief” they use 6 or 7 sequences with Scrat to frame their main story. Where the Thief is mostly focused on getting the Golden Balls, Scrat is always focused on getting the Nut. Similar to the “Thief” there is also a prophesy early in the story promising “doom and destruction”. In addition to the structural similarities you can also find a number of scene specific similarities, for example in the sequence where Scrat is pole vaulting.

One difference that made me feel that Ice Age 2's use of Scrat was more successful then the Thief is that Scrat's scenes, while quite spectacular, don't outweigh the main narrative. The audience cares about the main characters and the challenges and threats they face. In Ice Age 2 I quite enjoyed the back and forth between the main story and the “comic relief”. A good balance. There also is a better connection between what Scrat is doing and how that relates to the main story. Scrat's efforts of taking the Nut always reinforce the main threat of the ice walls breaking and flooding the little world that the main characters live in.
I think Ice Age 2 showed that a concept that didn't fulfill it's potential on the “Thief” (at least the “Thief” was never finished properly) could actually work. In my mind it validates Dick's approach in regards to the Thief scenes to some extend but also highlights some of the problems of our film.