Interview with Dick Williams

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

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

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

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

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

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

Michael Sporn writes about the MoMA event. (LINK)

Thief climbs up Witch Mountain, Part 4

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...

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

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