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ocpmovie

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Post
#183059
Topic
The Thief and the Cobbler: Recobbled Director's Cut (Released)
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/183059/action/topic#183059
Time
It's best not to watch the version that's out there. It sucks, a lot. The workprint is wonderful, but we don't have it in any watchable quality. So ... wait for my cut, seriously.


I've just finished my version of the DVD art.

http://orangecow.org/thief/recobbledposter.jpg
http://orangecow.org/thief/cobbleramarayweb.jpg

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
Post
#182916
Topic
The Thief and the Cobbler: Recobbled Director's Cut (Released)
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/182916/action/topic#182916
Time
http://orangecow.org/thief/cobblerscancolorsoftweb.jpg
http://orangecow.org/thief/thiefscancolorsoftweb.jpg
http://orangecow.org/thief/yumyumnodscancolorsoftweb.jpg
http://orangecow.org/thief/oneeyescancolorsoftweb.jpg
http://orangecow.org/thief/zigzagscan2colorsoftweb.jpg
http://orangecow.org/thief/zigzagscan3colorsoftweb.jpg
http://orangecow.org/thief/oldwitchscancolorsoftweb.jpg



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.
Post
#182849
Topic
The Thief and the Cobbler: Recobbled Director's Cut (Released)
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/182849/action/topic#182849
Time
Sup Justin!

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
Post
#182626
Topic
The Thief and the Cobbler: Recobbled Director's Cut (Released)
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/182626/action/topic#182626
Time
I spent the night printing out screen grabs from the DVD, most of them tiny and hard to see, and carrrefully drawing them as line art.

http://orangecow.org/thief/cobblerscanweb.jpg
http://orangecow.org/thief/thiefscanweb.jpg
http://orangecow.org/thief/yumyumnodscanweb.jpg
http://orangecow.org/thief/zigzagscan5web.jpg
http://orangecow.org/thief/zigzagscanweb.jpg
http://orangecow.org/thief/oneeyescanweb.jpg
http://orangecow.org/thief/zigzagscan2web.jpg
http://orangecow.org/thief/zigzagscan3web.jpg
http://orangecow.org/thief/oldwitchscanweb.jpg

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.
Post
#182479
Topic
The Thief and the Cobbler: Recobbled Director's Cut (Released)
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/182479/action/topic#182479
Time
Don't blame Williams. He was working on the film for about 20 years with very little financing, mostly working out of his own pocket. The production of the film lasted so long because it was an independent project being done alongside his commercial work. He didn't need to hit a deadline or satisfy a committee -- one reason for the occasional "adult" humor and general feel of the film. The film began as something completely different - so the story HAD to change to suit where it was now going. The entire story was definitely in order before his financing troubles began! It had been in order for some time, apart from the little bits and bobs that he kept adding, because he was used to it.

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. =)
Post
#182349
Topic
The Thief and the Cobbler: Recobbled Director's Cut (Released)
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/182349/action/topic#182349
Time
http://orangecow.org/thief/cobblercannesart.jpg

Painting from the Cannes brochure - Eddie Bowers just sent it to me.

UPDATE: Larger scan courtesy of Richard Hayes!

http://orangecow.org/thief/cannesbrochurebig.jpg
http://orangecow.org/thief/cannesbrochurebig2.jpg


http://orangecow.org/thief/Thiefscript.RTF

Here's the original screenplay, courtesy again of Eddie Bowers, a really interesting read - lot of stuff in there that didn't make it. Thief and Yumyum being transformed by the witch over and over, the dragon at the end, Grand Vizier Goblet, the Princess singing a song (!) which might have helped the no-song quotient for Calvert ... the story was always changing, wasn't it ...

No sign of Tack fighting with Zigzag though. He fights with the dragon. And the nurse says "ass"!
Post
#182286
Topic
The Thief and the Cobbler: Recobbled Director's Cut (Released)
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/182286/action/topic#182286
Time
http://orangecow.org/thief/thiefpic42.jpg

THE TRAILER!

Or, a few attempts at uploading it.

I'm having troubles with both of my webservers.

But I did this lovely trailer and I want you all to see it, so here are a few ways to get it.

(update)

Rapidshare link for the entire trailer!

http://rapidshare.de/files/13429755/ThiefRecobbledTrailer.avi.html

This'll work for most of you.

Now, also ...

I've used Stuffit to upload the trailer in two parts.

http://orangecow.org/thief/ThiefRecobbledTrailer.avi.1 (19.5 megs)
http://orangecow.org/thief/ThiefRecobbledTrailer.avi.2 (6.4 megs)

Stuffit is a Mac program, I hope Winzip can handle this too. Anyway, when you download these two parts, you have to open up Stuffit (I'm using Stuffit Deluxe), click on "Join", and select the first segment. The two will join together into one lovely file.

If you don't have a program that can join these two files, check this one out.

Partial trailer (missing end)
http://orangecow.org/1morestuff/ThiefRecobbledTrailer.avi (23.7 megs)

This is pretty much the entire trailer. I was able to upload this much to my server before it stalled out. 2 megs are missing at the end. So, if you can't do the segmenting thing, that'll do nicely.


About my servers and the problems: Orangecow.org, for a year now, hasn't wanted to accept my uploading files larger than 20 megs. Which is ridiculous, and the people won't admit there's a problem. Need a new server. My FFrevolution.com has been hacked and I can't access it. Crap.
Post
#182165
Topic
The Thief and the Cobbler: Recobbled Director's Cut (Released)
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/182165/action/topic#182165
Time
I'm considering actually drawing my own cover art for this release. A difficult prospect. As if I haven't spent enough time on this film!

Thinking out loud in Photoshop, I decided to put a few screen grabs of characters together, to see how I'd want them to interact if I was drawing a poster. Who would be where, etc.

The following is a very bad Photoshop, as it was only intended to give me some ideas for layout, not to be anything by itself.

But I thought I'd share it with you.

http://orangecow.org/thief/thiefcoverlayoutweb.jpg

Rough layout for a cover?
Post
#182161
Topic
The Thief and the Cobbler: Recobbled Director's Cut (Released)
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/182161/action/topic#182161
Time
The Miramax version .... is best if you never ever ever watch it.

Shudder.


In the "Princess and the Cobbler" version, the narration is done by an "old Tack," as a doddering old king, like King Nod.

Neither one is any replacement for "The world which we see is an outward and invisible dream, of an inward and invisible reality."


"The whole thing is in the language of a dream." - Richard Williams


>> In that first shot of the hands around the ball, is there any way to remove the fuzzy black around the workprint part of the screen and replace it with the clean black background?

I could, but I'm not making any more changes to part 1 - done and dusted, and wiped from my HD. Moving on to Raggedy Ann, then part 2.



Richard Williams still teaches animation, and is apparently working on a project, which he only half-jokingly hopes to finish before he dies ... His recent book "The Animator's Survival Kit" is a must for any animator.
Post
#182136
Topic
The Thief and the Cobbler: Recobbled Director's Cut (Released)
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/182136/action/topic#182136
Time
No, the other one moves differently. Weird.


Well, I'm having trouble with my webspace, so having trouble uploading the trailer. But it'll get up somewhere soon.


I've burned a DVD that has just the first half of the new cut, and the trailer. As a test to see how it all looks I guess ...


I'm having trouble encoding a DivX or other kind of web-viewable file of the first half of the movie that's any good -- the original DivX that I did was very nice apart from the strangely out of sync audio. I'm having bad luck with programs giving me files that don't work. It's been a big waste of time.


I'm working on the Raggedy Ann DVD before I do the second half of The Thief.

Here's a nice big scan of the video box for Raggedy Ann -- if some intrepid soul wants to screw around with it a bit and create a DVD cover, there y'go.

http://orangecow.org/1morestuff/raggedyanncover.jpg
Post
#182043
Topic
The Thief and the Cobbler: Recobbled Director's Cut (Released)
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/182043/action/topic#182043
Time
Yes, a few names in the cast that'll be familiar to Star Wars/Lucasfilm fans.

Eddie Byrne also did some voice work here, he played General Willard in Star Wars, his last film.

Declan Mulholland, the immortal Jabba the Hutt himself, also appeared in one of Richard Williams' other films, Charge of the Light Brigade. That's probably where Williams met him. You can spot Mulholland in a few scenes there.

Sean Connery delivers exactly one line in the film. The last line. A quite important line, at that. =) It's an unusual cameo, but who could turn down Connery ...

Vincent Price is at his best here ... Donald Pleasance only gets to squawk a bit, playing Price's vulture Phido.

Clive Revill, Empire's Emperor, replaced the late Sir Anthony Quayle as King Nod for the Fred Calvert version. A couple of times in my edit you'll hear Clive Revill deliver a line instead of Quayle ... their performances are similar enough that it doesn't stand out.

Note that the cast list mentions "Princess MeMe" (or MeeMee) and "Prince Bubba," two characters who were deleted from the film. Prince Bubba can be seen briefly in the documentary "Richard Williams and the Thief Who Never Gave Up" ... seems to be a prince who fell under a spell and became a troll.

Princess MeeMee I don't know much about ... She's mentioned quickly at Eddie Bowers' site.

http://www.geocities.com/eddie_bowers/princess.jpg
(Meme and Bubba - drawing)
http://www.geocities.com/eddie_bowers/prince.jpg
(Bubba and witch)

There's a puzzling thing in the workprint ... we see Princess YumYum bathing - it's a pencil test, not finished animation - and next to her, in the background of each shot, is what appears to be a SECOND Princess Yumyum, in another bath.

I think this might be Princess Meemee. A sister, perhaps. The Thief steals TWO backscratchers from Yumyum in this scene, so who knows -- the other backscratcher could have been Meemee's.

Deleted from the war machine finale - Zigzag summons a giant dragon ...
http://www.geocities.com/eddie_bowers/dragon.jpg
"I conjure demons, charm beasts ..."




I've edited together a trailer. A really good one. I'll post that when I can get it uploaded.

I've converted the first half to DVD. I'm working on an AVI or MOV, in some format or another.
Post
#181881
Topic
The Thief and the Cobbler: Recobbled Director's Cut (Released)
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/181881/action/topic#181881
Time
Have finished the first 45 minutes of the edit, and saved that to disc.

I converted this to a 300 meg DivX AVI with the intention of posting it somewhere. Unfortunately, when I checked the DivX file, the sound was out of sync for some reason. I tried fixing this in Quicktime via some copying and pasting, but it seemed to screw up the file, so I'll try encoding it again.
Post
#181693
Topic
Classic Edition: Return of the Jedi by Ocpmovie (Released)
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/181693/action/topic#181693
Time
Nice job Alex! My preferred version would basically be that.

If I have time, I might redo that same cover with the scans from the cover book, but that'll do nicely.

Too busy with other stuff.



Oh, here are two versions of the disc art.

http://orangecow.org/starwars/swcovers-ocp/jediclassicdiscart.jpg
http://orangecow.org/starwars/swcovers-ocp/ROTJdiscart.jpg