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http://rapidshare.de/files/13429755/ThiefRecobbledTrailer.avi.html
http://rapidshare.de/files/13429755/ThiefRecobbledTrailer.avi.html
Dr. M
The Thief and the Cobbler: Recobbled Director's Cut (Released) — Page 5
http://rapidshare.de/files/13429755/ThiefRecobbledTrailer.avi.html
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Miramax certainly didn't need to rape it like they did. But it's obvious that Williams wasn't an innocent in all of this.
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Btw, Trailer = Amazing!
How much of that footage is your tweaked work?
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In the 80s, his success with Roger Rabbit allowed him to secure financing and finish the film. This was a double-edged sword because Hollywood looked at him and expected him to hit a deadline or be destroyed. Having worked on this film for 20 years he wasn't about to rush and ruin it. So they destroyed him.
You can't blame him for that! Just another example of art being destroyed by commerce.
UPDATE: I've finished the Raggedy Ann DVD. I also put the Thief trailer and A Christmas Carol on there - I wanted to save A Christmas Carol for another disc as it's a better watch than Raggedy Ann, and might go well with Ziggy's Gift (Christmas and all) but Chris Sobieniak's disc of the Williams commercials didn't want to import into DVD Studio Pro correctly, so I went with A Christmas Carol.
I am DRAWING some art for the DVD case, myself. I've already got a few good drawings down, but am working on more to finish it. These characters are very difficult to draw - they have a deceptively simple look about them, and the curves are impeccably well chosen - so I'm trying to use the best reference available and duplicate Williams' work as best I can.
About the trailer: Tweaked? I avoided showing any lower quality/workprint material in the trailer - It's roughly all from the Miramax version. The witch stuff is only available in pan& scan so there's a few shots from the witch sequence in the trailer which were recreated in widescreen by me - I wanted to show that she'd be in there! And there's a shot pulling away from Zigzag, a famous shot when he meets One Eye - I added about 10 frames to that from what you see in the Miramax version - faking it, so to speak. For the complete shot, wait for the real cut. =)
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I used to be very active on this forum. I’m not really anymore. Sometimes, people still want to get in touch with me about something, and that is great! If that describes you, please email me at [my username]ATgmailDOTcom.
Hi everybody. You’re all awesome. Keep up the good work.
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Difficult characters to draw, to say the least.
For perspective, I mastered drawing, say, Aladdin's Genie at the age of 12, but today 12 years later drawing Zigzag gave me conniptions. I gave up on original thought and wound up tracing very carefully - it still took me many tries to get anything that felt right. Just his hands alone can drive a lesser man insane. He has six fingers, and something like 20 bulbous rings on each hand. He looks different in each frame, but if you change anything about him he looks completely wrong. Drawing the hands, or drawing One Eye, sometimes I'd just think, what the hell am I drawing?? So insanely complex and obscure when it LOOKS simple.
I'm proudest of the Old Witch. And Nod and Yumyum, since the screen grab I was working from was very small and vague so I was coming up with most of it on my own. Some of these show signs of redrawing and reworking - I'll fix a lot of things when I'm coloring them.
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Anyway ...
These are not intended to stay exactly as line art ... I intend to apply a lot of Photoshop effects to soften the look and feel - minimize the appearance of the black lines.
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Nice work on the pics too. The sample you showed of ZigZag that's been filtered looks almost like an animation cel that's been scanned. Good luck with the rest fo the work for the DVD cover.
To contact me outside the forum, for trades and such my email address is my OT.com username @gmail.com
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Yeah, the pencil tests will be there, but I'm working from a slightly better copy of the workprint this time and color correcting the hell out of them so that you can actually see what's going on. It's been very effective actually.
You can find all the colored drawings I've just done here, along with more stuff:
http://orangecow.org/thief
Here's a nice big scan of the painting from the Cannes brochure, courtesy of Richard Hayes!
http://orangecow.org/thief/cannesbrochurebig.jpg
http://orangecow.org/thief/cannesbrochurebig2.jpg
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Softened up to look more like the real thing - These could be used to make any kind of cover you like.
I'll be having a try at it - if anyone wants to make their own cover based on these, I'd love to see 'em. I've posted the large versions of all these images here:
http://orangecow.org/thief
I'll be posting a pic of the logo too, that you can clean up.
You could even take the brigands from the Cannes poster.
Anyway, I'll start fooling around with it.
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I've just finished my version of the DVD art.
Full size!
http://orangecow.org/thief/cobbleramarayweb.jpg
Here's the text, for those of you who want to attempt your own.
It is written among the limitless constellations of the celestial heavens, and in the depths of the emerald seas, and upon every grain of sand in the vast deserts, that the world which we see is an outward and visible dream, of an inward and invisible reality ... Once upon a time there was a golden city. In the centre of the golden city, atop the tallest minaret, were three golden balls. The ancients had prophesied that if the three golden balls were ever taken away, harmony would yield to discord, and the city would fall to destruction and death. But... the mystics had also foretold that the city might be saved by the simplest soul with the smallest and simplest of things. In the city there dwelt a lowly shoemaker, who was known as Tack the Cobbler. Also in the city... existed a Thief, who shall be ... nameless.
“ANIMATION AMONG THE MOST GLORIOUS AND LIVELY
EVER CREATED!” - The New York Times
Restoration and cover artwork by Garrett Gilchrist
For the first time ever on video, enjoy the original version of this lost animation classic, written and directed by three-time Academy Award winning
animator Richard Williams (animation director of Who Framed Roger Rabbit). Nearly 30 years in the making, a labor of love by a team of animation greats, this was to be the masterpiece of Williams’ career, perhaps the most ambitious independent animated film ever conceived. The film was the inspiration for Disney‘s film Aladdin, which proved to be its undoing. After over two decades of work, the film was taken away from Williams when he couldn’t meet his deadline. It was eventually bought by Disney, recut and destroyed. It has never been seen the way it was intended to be seen ... until now. Based on Williams’ original workprint, missing scenes have been restored using storyboards and unfinished
animation. Restored to its true form, this lost
classic has finally been found - for you at home.
Directed by Richard Williams Screenplay by Richard
Williams and Margaret French Master animator Ken Harris
Produced by Imogen Sutton and Richard Williams
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Now chop chop, back to work--stop dawdling and get that second half finished.
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Damn. Really good stuff, but weirdly, the version I remember of this film is my own cut, the one I did six years ago. I couldn't remember what was and wasn't actually in the workprint, so I was surprised by a couple of things.
Partway through the film in the workprint the sound is really screwed up and there are a number of weird breaks in the videotape, as it's stopped and restarted -- at different points in my old copy, but all around this same point -- as the Thief is trying to steal the Buddha ruby before they meet the witch.
So, the workprint becomes only semi-useable at this point, and I used a lot of Princess and the Cobbler material instead - I continued to use a lot of Princess material throughout the rest of the film.
So, seeing the actual workprint again - I was like, well, I'm fixing that. =) I'm not using that. Cos I didn't 6 years ago, y'know ...
I gotta take back one thing I said at one point - I was talking to Chris Sobieniak defending my inclusion of the final Tack and Zigzag fight. It's not in the workprint, and seems added by Calvert, but I included it in my cut six years ago and I'll include it again, because I'm quite certain that it was at least pencilled by the Williams studio.
I said I could prove this because in Zigzag's death scene in the workprint, he's all stitched up, an apparent remnant of the fight with Tack.
Well, eating my words. I was remembering my own cut - in the workprint, this scene only appears in storyboards, and Zigzag isn't stitched up! Ouch.
But I can prove in another way that Williams' studio did this - Zigzag IS stitched up in the Calvert cut, and it's ANIMATED ON ONES, clearly by Williams. Also, much of the fight with Tack is ANIMATED ON ONES - check the shot of Tack throwing Zigzag over his head. Calvert almost never animated a thing on ones - the character designs are different in this scene, but that might be intentional. Perhaps Williams work inked by Calvert's hacks. Who knows, but the animation is just a liiiittle too good.
And it fills out the end of the movie nicely, worth watching.
Also, a certain other source said that Williams did it. =)
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I'm more concerned with "making the best possible film with the materials available" than trying to do exactly what Williams wanted. I'm adding music and even Calvert scenes when I think it becomes more entertaining that way.
As for the hands, those hands belong to the narrator. The shot that's in the Miramax cut also appears in the workprint (as a pencil test) without the hands, suggesting that Williams would have added the hands later, or dropped them out during that shot and brought them back in when needed.
So, the shot appears in my cut without the hands, since the hands were never finished, but the hands appear elsewhere ...
You should hold questions on things like that until seeing my cut!
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Btw, I'm to pass on a compliment for the great use of Rimsky-Korsakov's Sheherazade for the music. Is that used in the film as well?
Dr. M
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I can't place most of the music used in the film tho'.
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The reviewer struggled with Miramax's changes, and the unfortunate comparisons with Aladdin, but enjoyed the original artwork present therein.
I bet she would have really liked the real thing ... or even Princess and the Cobbler ...
The New York Times
FILM REVIEW; A Late Finisher About Old Araby
By CARYN JAMES
Published: August 26, 1995, Saturday
In 1968, long before he animated "Who Framed Roger Rabbit," Richard Williams began an ambitious, elaborate feature called "The Thief and the Cobbler," about a brave cobbler, an Arabian princess and a bumbling thief. His decades-long project, retitled "Arabian Knight," opened yesterday in an end-of-summer slot usually reserved for films being tossed away. "Arabian Knight" deserved better. It's no dog, though it is a fascinating problem.
Mr. Williams's wide-screen animation is among the most glorious and lively ever created. The backdrops feature beautiful, jewel-like mosaic walls in old Baghdad. The thief leaps and scampers like a slapstick comedian. When Princess Yum Yum and the cobbler, named Tack, try to save the city from an army of one-eyed villains, the colorful battle scenes whiz along using ingenious Rube Goldberg weapons. "Arabian Knight" is amazing to watch.
But no one can ignore the fact that while Mr. Williams and his crew were lovingly plugging away, Disney's "Aladdin" came along. "Aladdin," of course, also features a poor but brave young man who loves an Arabian princess and is upstaged by a comic sidekick. "Aladdin" has livelier characters and far better songs, too. Now "Arabian Knight" seems like a pleasant-enough clone, with a truncated love story and weak comic asides that are no match for its dazzling animated action.
Apparently, a last-minute rescue mission was mounted to try to strengthen "Arabian Knight." Just four months ago, the film's publicity material listed a different set of actors' voices. The major exception was Vincent Price (who died two years ago), who had always been listed as Zigzag, the evil sorcerer. Recently, the movie was dubbed with Matthew Broderick (the voice of the adult Simba in "The Lion King") as Tack, Jennifer Beals as Princess Yum-Yum and Jonathan Winters as the thief.
Tack is shy, with the loose limbs of a scarecrow. He usually has a couple of cobbler's nails in his mouth, and his white face and wide blue eyes make him look a bit like another juvenile hero, Casper the ghost.
The princess falls for the commoner the minute she sets her violet eyes on him. Princess Yum Yum looks like Barbie, but she is a proto-feminist determined to prove she is as smart and brave as any man. She asserts this in two of the film's four songs. The princess (sung by Bobbi Page) sings these horrible lyrics to forgettable melodies: "She is more than this/There's a mind in the body of this pretty miss." She sings of Tack: "I know he's just a pauper/ But I really like him."
Price uses his trademark smooth villainous style for Zigzag, who nonetheless will never escape the shadow of Jafar in "Aladdin." Zigzag is usually pale blue, but his face changes colors when he gets annoyed, and his eyes turn heart-shaped when he asks for the hand of Princess Yum Yum in marriage.
The thief has a ferrety face, with flies always buzzing around his head. He finds gold so irresistible that he pole vaults to the top of a minaret to steal the three gold balls. Mr. Winters's voice-over gives us the thief's thoughts, which should have been funnier.
Some of the best scenes feature bulky and admittedly stupid brigands who live in the desert and sing a finger-snapping melody to the words, "Beem bom, boogedy boogedy, bibbity boo/We're what happens when you don't finish school." The brigands have taken on the same color as the sand, and such delicious visual surprises pop up throughout "Arabian Knight." There are geometric floor patterns and stairways inspired by Escher, which send characters tumbling down. There is the illusion of swift camera movements, as if this were a live-action feature. And there is the sumptuous, entrancing court of Baghdad. Some viewers will fall in love with the art of "Arabian Knight," even though its story lacks the allure of a mainstream hit.
ARABIAN KNIGHT Directed by Richard Williams; director of Los Angeles production, Fred Calvert; written by Mr. Williams and Margaret French; score by Robert Folk, with songs by Mr. Folk and Norman Gimbel; produced by Imogen Sutton and Mr. Williams; released by Miramax. Running time: 81 minutes. This film is rated G. WITH THE VOICES OF: Vincent Price (Zigzag), Matthew Broderick (Tack, the Cobbler), Jennifer Beals (Princess Yum Yum), Eric Bogosian (Phido), Toni Collette (Nurse and Witch) and Jonathan Winters (Thief)
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Annoying.
Well, I'm not reburning Raggedy Ann - I'll put a better version of A Christmas Carol on one of the other discs.
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Originally posted by: ocpmovieSo, the shot appears in my cut without the hands, since the hands were never finished, but the hands appear elsewhere ...
Aren't the hands present in the screenshot from the opening you posted?
The reason I was concerned was because the scene looks a little rough with the chunk of the shot taken from the workprint sitting in the middle of the DVD material, and it's kind of a waste if the shot really isn't necessary...but of course, if I'm misinterpreting what I'm seeing here, well then...I'll just shut up about it.
You should hold questions on things like that until seeing my cut!
Aren't the hands present in the screenshot from the opening you posted?
The reason I was concerned was because the scene looks a little rough with the chunk of the shot taken from the workprint sitting in the middle of the DVD material, and it's kind of a waste if the shot really isn't necessary...but of course, if I'm misinterpreting what I'm seeing here, well then...I'll just shut up about it.
You should hold questions on things like that until seeing my cut!
But patience just isn't one of my virtues!