I'm not fond of The Thief coming into Yumyum's bathroom because she should have soap on her back and there should be a mirror there ... but oh well.
I've heard from many sources that all the good material in the Calvert version, the stuff that looks like Dick's work, like the ending shot, was done by a team of real Thief animators in London, who were fired pretty quickly. Many of the key Thief animators were among them, still trying to bang out quality material for Calvert. Dick was not involved at this point of course.
Editing.
What a difference this better quality workprint makes. I can finally do "match dissolves" from the DVD to the workprint and have it look good .... I did this in my Return of the Jedi edit to good effect, and I'm doing it here.
It reminds me how much material I actually cut out because it was low quality pencil tests that you couldn't see. Much of that material is being reinstated. Although, again because of a dissolve, I'm still doing something else with Tack's introduction. I've prepared a version of the first Tack shot which puts the pencil test material on a background. It has a more magical feel to it. I'm currently using it as the second Tack shot.
I've started from scratch but I should be able to bang out part 1 in good time as that's the easier of the two. I'm amazed how good the new workprint looks, particularly the pencil tests.
I can see that in the bath scene, Yumyum and Meemee are drawn more like the early "Persian Miniature" designs ... kind of halfway to where Yumyum is in the final film. A pencil shot I originally cut out of Yumyum handing her shoe to Tack shows a roughed-in Tack, and less good Yumyum animation.
I'm going to do some new effects (and opening titles) for this cut ... I still don't know what to do with the introduction of Yumyum. It's clear that SOMETHING needs to be there, but what's in the workprint is just a concept, and is very poor. If it was finished animation it would be great. I think I need to create something here myself which approximates the storyboards.
EDIT: It would be nice to do this for the Hands of Fate as well, but that would require actual animation. Oh well.
Besides the material not being there on the DVD, another reason why I'm kind of ignoring the workprint's notes to fade in and out is because I'm aware that this cut needs to be faster and punchier than the workprint. A workprint by nature is a work in progress and has a pretty slow pace. Out of desire to do this version justice, and since I'm not Richard Williams, I'm not really cutting anything out, even though a few things probably should be ... anything I cut out would be very minor. But to give the appearance that this is a faster, more finished, more entertaining cut, I have to add music, sound effects, things that make it feel faster ... and cut out, say, the black screen between scenes which fade in and out. And the actual fade ins and outs if they don't feel necessary.