Well, the claw animation, and the animation of the rocks, in that one shot, I did because they were simple, linear bits of motion, easy to replicate. I thought that in this case, it was worth it to make the shot look like it came from a better source.
Every scene cuts back and forth between DVD quality and workprint quality, it's quite an interesting watch. In the second half of the film some scenes were only available in pan & scan, so pan & scan DVD images were placed over the widescreen but poor quality workprint.
Some scenes have been reinstated that don't appear in the workprint ... notably a short jousting fight between Tack and Zigzag (pencil test), a small conversation between Zigzag and One Eye, an extra bit of dialogue for the witch, a few Fred Calvert inventions ... the Calvert fight between Zigzag and Tack is still in there as I speak, but may not last.
THE COLLECTION
I've just completed two more Richard Williams related DVDs. Which makes three that I've done today ... and I did another one yesterday.
The two new ones are:
+ Ziggy's Gift/Ziggy Cartoons/Fred Calvert's Princess and the Cobbler: Work In Progress Version
+ The Thief and the Cobbler workprint
I was going to leave Ziggy's Gift on its own disc, because it was a retail disc with proper menus, but it's less than 2 gigs large! Ridiculously tiny, so I put it on with the Calvert WIP.
This brings the total number of discs in the set down to 9, rather than 10. Which is nice.
The Workprint is a remix of the one Stanch sent me. It retains the very good picture quality, but I've added sound to a long section of the film where there was none in his copy. There are a few picture faults mostly during the witch scene, so I've placed the appropriate parts of my other copies of the workprint on the "Animating Art" disc, so that someone who needs those shots can get them.
The sound remains in PCM format, as it was on the original - I haven't downconverted to AC3. "Blooper Bunny" has been omitted.
I think that Ziggy's Gift is still in print as a DVD, but I believe that everything else on my list was never commercially available or is long since out of print. Even the Arabian Knight japanese (widescreen) DVD is apparently out of print, and I'm sure The Princess and the Cobbler isn't getting any less rare.