Thief climbs up Witch Mountain, Part 2

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

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...

Notes

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!

The Dying Messenger, Part 2

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.

The Dying Messenger, Part 1

All the Dying Messenger scenes were animated by Turkish animator Tahsin Özgür, aka Tash. 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.to be continued in "Part 2"!

Leaves

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)

The secret Xerox conspiracy!

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

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."

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.

Static electricity

I remember having to do all the flying weaponry on the afore mentioned shot animated by Roy and Raymond, a scene that ended up being nicknamed: Starwars, due to it's plethora of flying objects.
It's funny now, remembering the lengths I went to, to make sure things didn't look repetitive or predictable. Seeing the finished item, it zips past you at such a clip, that even I hardly see any of the stuff I animated into it.
I guess it's what I now refer to as the Maple syrup concept.
You have to distil a lot of maple sap into a thimble full of syrup but only the concentration of vast amounts of input into a tiny amount of output will make it taste as sweet as it ultimately does.
The 18 foot long background for this shot hat to be stuck with sellotape to the walls of the camera room, and unstuck and held by assistants for the motorized move between frames and then restuck to the walls.
I remember John explaining the process of 8 or ten camera passes on this monster of a scene.
Needless to say, that meant that the film in the camera had to be rewound those 8 or ten times to be re-exposed again and again.
After almost a week of shooting the shot finally turned up in the moviola and lo and behold, Dick spotted something...
The film, passing through the felt lined slots in the reel housing, had built up enough static electricity to start sparking inside the camera, and those sparks were visible as thin blue lightning on the exposed film.
Luckily, Dick deemed it mild enough a fault, not to warrant a reshoot, which probably saved John and Grahams life...

And here is the proof...

Gigantic Cels

This just came in from Brian Riley in regards to yesterday's post and the palace gates:
“I dimly recall those scenes - I do remember John and I having long discussions about the water ripple reflections in the moat, doing multiple tests as always and I remember that he came up with a solution (as he always did) that satisfied Dick. Don't ask me exactly what that solution was, certainly some sort of double exposure with panning mattes, probably with a back lit, diffused and gelled reflective surface beneath the table but I could be completely wrong - I may be recalling a method we tried and rejected.
As to the gates, you're right, they were one of Roy's gadgets I think. In fact virtually all the larger* bg layouts had some sort of mechanical element that Roy had devised and constructed that could be reliably hand-animated under the camera over and over again. The rollercoaster scene in the War Machine you mention in your comment on Roy's city drawing for its gigantic cels was one such. But again, don't ask me for specifics as to what part and how it moved. I assumed you were talking about the scene where he crests the summit and the steep slope of the track back down opens up beneath him - he goes belting down it, the camera screaming after him to keep up, follows him in a sort of traveling down shot, then the track disintegrates and he slowly rotates in mid-air up towards the camera and then away into the distance back down into the disintegrating machine.
*When I say 'larger' - I mean larger in Thief terms, that is to say absolutely frighteningly huge in the terms of a normal animated feature - there were no small backgrounds on the Thief.”

Here are some images from this part. The animation of the cart rotating was first done in rough miniature drawings by Roy Naisbitt and then blown up to their final gigantic size and meticulously re-drawn by Raymond Guillaumet. He might have even traced it onto the cels himself. It was in his office that I saw the cels.
As I said in my comment, this part was used as a wipe to link 2 scenes together. David and Michael worked on a part of the scene before the wipe and I hope they will talk about it more.

Cobbler into Palace

I think this Zigzag scene was animated by Tim Watts...

...but I know that he animated this Cobbler scene. I was very impressed at the time with his drawings for this scene. I also like the subtle sense of depth he created with the head getting smaller as it recedes back in space.

Image 1: Here we have the first of many uses for Roy's setup for the palace gates. I've talked about this in an earlier post. It was a cardboard setup with the BG art in cut out animation style. Under the hood he had card board mechanics similar to a jumping jack that gave the camera man one “lever” to move along spacing calibration marks on the side as he shot the scene, allowing him to open and close the gate frame by frame always in the same pre-determined spacing. Repeatable maybe for multiple exposures.
(Brian, let me know if you have anything to add here.)
I think Dean Roberts animated the characters for this and the next closer shot (image 2) with the Cobbler being dragged across the drawbridge.
The scene with the roses by Margaret Grieve and Dee Morgan Andreas discussed already (Dec 27). I would like to know who animated the wall for the animated camera move of the next scene. Andreas thinks Margaret might have done the Wall too. She definitely did the flowers.
Here some more work in progress images from Margaret for the Princess arranging the flowers.

I think the next 3 Cobbler scenes are also Dean's.The Princess at the window was animated by Dick. I'll try to find out who did the birds in the long shot. Andreas thinks it might have been Dave "Squeaky" Cockburn.

Probably Dick was working over Ken's animation for the next 3 scenes. The first one is the scene where the Thief sees the 3 Golden Balls for the first time. A really strange and exaggerated stagger for the head. A daring choice, but it works for this moment. Ken – a master of staggers.

Next a nice back view of the Thief's head before the camera zooms close up to the balls.

Here the scene where the balls are “reflected” in the Thief's eyes. A nice surreal choice. The scene was reused later when he sees the balls again on top of the War Machine. The idea of the reflection in the eyes was used again in the Ruby Idol sequence.

Last scene in this sequence, the closing gates. Roy's setup again. I don't know who did the Thief.

Next up I'll have a guest post about the Throne Room sequence.

The City

Yesterday my roommate at work was watching the 1982 Thames documentary. Towards the end there is this scene where Dick and Roy posed themselves in front of Roy's gigantic drawing of the city. You can see that it would take up an entire wall. Roy did this and a lot of his other work for the Thief after hours and on weekends, on top of the work he did during the day on commercials or title sequences.


I found this photo of the drawing on Michael Sporn's blog:This drawing was used as a map to help them figure out the geography of the film's story. It was also used as a style guide for the backgrounds and parts of it where copied into BGs that made it into the film, the scene "Mouth to Mountain" for example, that we've mentioned in earlier posts.

Zigag steps on Tack

I'm picking up from the Jan. 17 post. This is most likely Alex's animation (over Ken's).


The next one is Dick's scene, working again over Ken's roughs. I'm posting one of Ken's drawings because there is quite a difference. Dick didn't like to look at or approve pose tests. He told us that he preferred looking at a scene with rough inbetweens, even bad inbetweens. In this case he even went along with questionable keys. It probably was OK for him because the action of them rolling down the stairs was clear. He knew he could solve the drawing problems later. He needed to see movement in order to know if a scene was working.
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.
I think over the years Dick developed a preference for refining the animation of his animators, rather than animating scenes from scratch. Which he could do brilliantly of course, but I think he just liked the final refining stage better, being able to concentrate on solving the drawing problems with the confidence of knowing that the animation was working. He had probably also discovered that he could put his stamp that way onto a lot more scenes. Of course he initially started off the Thief scenes by doing lots of character layout poses for Ken, that Ken tried to use in his animation as much as possible.

These 2 scenes are Dick's again.
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.

1st scene: re-use of Alex's Zigzag and carpet I assume. Crowd most likely by Gary Dunn (Thanks Garrett!) who did the crowd also for the other down-shots of the Zigzag walk.
I'm guessing that Dick animated the Cobbler and the Thief , even though they are so small. I imagine he would have liked to do the whole chunk.
2nd and 3rd scene, also by Dick.


These 2 images are from one scene. I mentioned in another post that Dick sometimes let characters change size within the same scene. This is one example. It is probably more acceptable in a scene on this film because the perspective is not clearly established with the use of a downview BG in combination with characters drawn in perspectiveFor 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.
UPDATE: http://thethief1.blogspot.com/2012/01/angora-love.html
At the time video thermo printers had become affordable and Dick used them a lot for his own version of rotoscoping. He would do the printouts on ones from video. The image size was about 3.5x5 inches.
In Europe the PAL TV standard is an animators friend. At 25 frames it's close enough to film's 24 frames to allow for convenient use of video reference. NTSC at 30 frames makes that difficult.
Dick would then tape every printout registered by the corners in to a corner of a sheet of animation paper. (More likely he would ask Roy or somebody else to do it for him.) He would shoot this and retime it in this stage. After numbering every frame he would pull out the ones he considered keys and start drawing the character on the same sheet of paper, referring to the print out but not being enslaved by it. This approach as opposed to working right on top of the live action also allowed him to change the proportions of the character as needed. Now he would put the sheet for the next key that he wanted to draw onto the pegs.
He would flip to determine how much the different elements of the live action change between the keys
and try to create the same change in his drawing. He would pose out his scene this way. This could either be done in a semi-straight ahead way, maybe on 8's or 16's or he might do a few storytelling poses and then work inbetween those to do all the keys.


I don't know who did these last 2 shots. If you do please let me know.


UPDATE: I just wanted to add s.th. to my thoughts about Dick's interest in the final clean up stage. At the front end he would provide character layouts for the animators, posing out the scene. Ken Harris stayed very close to Dick's poses. If they were not in the right place he would repeg them rather then redraw them. Ken had worked that way with Chuck Jones at Warners, utilizing the actual layout drawings in the scene as his story telling poses.
So really Dick had very strong input at the front and back end.