The Thief and the Cobbler: Recobbled Cut Mark 4

[Garrett Gilchrist]

http://youtube.com/thethiefarchive
https://archive.org/details/thief-cobbl ... 3-hd-h-264

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

Chief Restorationist: 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


First thread begun January 14, 2006. 70 pages. 1726 posts. 116,721 views. Last post by G.Gilchrist, November 2006. Thread still popular until about March 2007.

Second (and main) thread begun at FFrevolution.com on Thursday, Feb 16, 2006. 222 pages. 3322 Replies. 369,256 Views. Thread closed February 2013.


https://archive.org/details/thief-cobbl ... 3-hd-h-264
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZibUpH- ... 76&index=1
https://mega.nz/#!atAjBAyQ!aqTW_E0rf5NA ... Xjcmfe_6yg
http://kisscartoon.me/Cartoon/The-Thief ... e?id=31633
http://orangecow.org/thief/ThiefCobbler ... ov.torrent

https://archive.org/details/il-ladro-e- ... o-italiano

Meet us on Facebook here:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/thiefan ... ter=albums

The Thief and the Cobbler: Recobbled Cut Mk4 is now also available in 10 ZIP file pieces, for anyone who had trouble downloading the full version as one file.
https://mega.nz/#F!UIESSQLB!NyUIcydIXcAVh6LPJYBnuA

Recobbled Cut Trailer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJry5ReXZVM

Images from early Recobbled Cut tests:
https://twitter.com/TygerbugGarrett/sta ... 0449468416

Deleted scenes:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6jVJdLFKfA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jIrNI11eHw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cH7RIGZzzf8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOE7LfJ8IoU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39Bvd3geFY8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hr9zWSSvI8Y

Arabian Knight trailers:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Dt2FjENDBs

"The Thief Who Never Gave Up" screenplay:
http://orangecow.org/thief/Thief%20Who% ... %20Rv2.pdf
http://orangecow.org/thief/thiefwhonevergaveup.rtf
http://orangecow.org/thief/thiefwhoneve ... CA-RFT.TXT
http://orangecow.org/thief/thiefwhoneve ... 20code.txt

"The Thief and the Cobbler" screenplay:
http://orangecow.org/thief/Thiefscript.pdf
http://orangecow.org/thief/Thiefscript.RTF
http://orangecow.org/thief/Thiefscript%20(1).txt

"The Majestic Fool (The Amazing Nasruddin)" screenplay:
http://orangecow.org/thief/Majestic%20F ... enplay.pdf
http://orangecow.org/thief/themajesticf ... enplay.txt

http://orangecow.org/thief/Thief.doc

The Thief and the Cobbler
Coloring and Activity Book
Promotional Art Inked by Garrett Gilchrist
144 pages of artwork and activities based on the Richard Williams animated film.
Appropriate for both children and adults. We would love to see your creativity on social media.
https://archive.org/details/thief-and-t ... oring-book

Mythbusters Tested.com interview with Garrett Gilchrist:
http://www.tested.com/art/movies/44961- ... sterpiece/

Other GG interviews:
http://flipanimation.blogspot.co.uk/201 ... lance.html
http://www.cartoonbrew.com/old-brew/thi ... -1934.html
http://flightstightsandmovienights.com/ ... gilchrist/
viewtopic.php?f=4&t=323


"A personal note, if you'll allow me." (Tribute to Richard Williams)
viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3&start=1750#p10071

"Once in his travels, Nasrudin came upon a magic show ..." (Tribute to Richard Williams)
viewtopic.php?p=10113#p10113

The Devil's Radio:
viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3&start=1790#p10123

A response to Cameron Byerly:
viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3&start=1740#p10058

About finishing the film:
viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3&start=1750#p10065

"Massive collection of Thief and the Cobbler artwork found at The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences site."
viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3&start=1730#p9987

Punchline:
viewtopic.php?p=11175#p11175

Once upon a time, in Soho, in the heart of London, an animator decided to make a film. Two and a half decades later, he had spent millions out of his own pocket, won every award in the animation industry and worked with a dream team of animation greats. But his feature film, his labor of love, still wasn't quite finished. The animator was Richard Williams, three-time Academy Award winner for A Christmas Carol and Who Framed Roger Rabbit. The film was The Thief and the Cobbler.

In the 60s and 70s, the art of animation was in decline. Simple, stylized animation, suitable for television and very low budgets, was the fashion of the day, and the great Disney and Warner Bros. animators of the 30s, 40s and 50s were getting old. Their knowledge hadn't really been passed on to the next generation and was in danger of being forgotten.

Richard Williams was always a fine artist and draftsman, but his ambition was to become a truly great animator. He hired great Disney and Warner animators like Art Babbitt, Ken Harris, Emery Hawkins, Abe Levitow, Grim Natwick, and so on, not just as animators but as teachers. Babbitt's lectures became legendary, and the brilliant work being produced at Richard Williams Animation set off a golden age of commercial animation in London during the 70s and 80s. Williams had a reputation for being a temperamental perfectionist, but also a brilliant teacher, and many people who worked for him went on to start their own animation studios or do classic work for Disney and other studios, such as Eric Goldberg, Andreas Deja, and so on.

Richard Williams won two Oscars for directing the animation for Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988), including a special achievement award. Animating on "ones" with realistic shadows and a moving camera, the film was more technically complex than any previous animated feature. It was also Disney's first big hit in years, and kicked off the Disney Renaissance (which began properly with The Little Mermaid in 1989). As both teacher and master animator, Richard Williams was a key figure in kicking off the animation renaissance of the 90s.

However, Dick was never all that interested in working for Disney (it's said he turned down Beauty and the Beast). He wanted to finish The Thief and the Cobbler, which he'd been animating inbetween working on his other projects for well over two decades now. Most of the money he made went back into The Thief, but not a lot of footage had actually been completed by 1989, when high off the success of Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Warner Bros. agreed to finance the film.

Although Dick had become legendary for his perfectionism, and for missing deadlines and going over budget, production moved along at a fast pace, and the footage produced stands as some of the greatest and most complex animation ever attempted anywhere. The film was mostly finished when Warner Bros. executives got cold feet. Disney was making a very similar film called Aladdin (and some of the lead animators had also worked on The Thief). They felt the film was too artsy, too uncommercial. It wasn't The Little Mermaid. And Dick was about to miss another deadline.

After over 23 years of work, Richard Williams was fired from his own film and the movie was dropped by Warner Bros. It's said that as animators grabbed what they could and left, Dick was still at his desk animating a scene. The film had become a "reason for living."

To fulfill a contractual obligation, the film was completed as cheaply as possible, and the resulting versions (The Princess and the Cobbler and Arabian Knight) bear almost no resemblance to what Richard Williams intended. Deleting half the footage and including obnoxious songs and voiceovers, the film was bought by Disney (through Miramax) and marketed as a cheap Aladdin ripoff - quite ironically.

Richard Williams no longer discusses the film.

My name is Garrett Gilchrist. I was eight years old when I first read about how the animator behind Who Framed Roger Rabbit wanted to create "the best animated film that's ever been made." I was about fourteen when I saw how it had gone horribly wrong. I was about seventeen when I watched the released versions of the movie, and Richard Williams' original workprint, on an extremely low quality VHS tape. Despite the poor quality I was fascinated by the film, which stands as a work of art quite unlike any other.

In 2006, at age twenty-four, I edited a restoration of the film combining the low-quality workprint with better quality DVD sources. I called it The Recobbled Cut. Restoring such an obscure film, I assumed only a handful of people would be interested. Instead, the Recobbled Cut has become something of a cult phenomenon, with viewers becoming captivated, as I was, by the tragic story of the film's demise, and then seeing it restored as intended, in the best quality available. Although often criticized for favoring animation style over the substance of story, the film is a masterpiece by any standard, on par with Disney's Fantasia, and considered by many to be one of the greatest animated films ever made - something you'd never know from watching the released versions.

The restoration project grew to encompass not only the Thief and the Cobbler, but an entire archive of Richard Williams' work, including the Thief Archive channel on Youtube. Incredible amounts of information, artwork and rare video have been shared, providing a clearer picture of an overlooked animation genius at the top of his game. Animators who worked with Richard have contributed to the project, and sometimes even contributed to the Thief restoration itself, which was updated in 2008 for the Recobbled Cut Mark 3.

In 2012, Kevin Schreck released a documentary about the unmaking of The Thief and the Cobbler, entitled Persistence of Vision and including lots of footage from The Thief Archive.

In late 2011, with new footage having come to light, I decided to create The Thief and the Cobbler: Recobbled Cut Mark 4. This is a much more ambitious restoration which starts from scratch and includes over 30 minutes of footage in full HD (transferred from 35mm film). In late 2012 I began hosting weekly Livestreams showing the extremely ambitious frame-by-frame restoration and reanimation work, which goes far above and beyond any unofficial restoration ever attempted. Not only is dirt and damage painted out on a frame by frame basis, there's new artwork and newly-created shots which tell the story better than ever before.


Thief and the Cobbler Recobbled Cut Subtitles (Various Languages, Mk4 and Mk3)
https://www.mediafire.com/file/d4dcdis1 ... itles.zip/

Thief and the Cobbler Recobbled Cut Mk4 Italian Dub Clips:
https://www.mediafire.com/file/ljhkon30 ... b.zip/file

French Language Arabian Knight Audio
http://www.mediafire.com/?j7zncy1xsxnd595

Japanese Language Arabian Knight Audio
http://www.mediafire.com/?xd7v5161748vc4b

El zapatero mágico (Spanish Arabian Knight Dub)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qaWx2h-O2Cg

El Zapatero y La Princesa (Spanish Princess and the Cobbler Dub)
https://www.dailymotion.com/search/El%2 ... 20Princesa




Mat Fitzpatrick writes:

https://mega.co.nz/#F!dw5nDIKS!Fk263VRHSyFUraJ1AKTMdA

NeverGaveUp-ScriptPgs
https://mega.co.nz/#F!lU0lzS7Q!NDsYspeQ-R5gmm2kGMukNg


The Thief Who Never Gave Up portfolio is now available for download! The portfolio was compiled in 1982, presumably for potential backers of the project, and contains production records, a full draft of the script (at the time), and copies of production photos and concept artwork. Clocking in at 1.22GB, the contents were scanned primarily on my home scanner. Larger pages were done at a local UPS Store. Text-only pages were scanned in B&W at 100dpi, while photos and pages with pictures were scanned at 600dpi (B&W photos were imported in color because my scanner, for whatever reason, wouldn't scan monochrome at such a high resolution). Small compression artifacts are evident in the artwork but are native to the source, since the pictures are copies themselves.
It was very cool to be able to look through all the history of the film, and it was very surreal to handle materials that thirty years ago were handled by Richard Williams himself.
One interesting thing to note: Tucked in the back of the production budget are a newspaper article and magazine article dated 1988 and 1990 respectively.
The only page too large for me to scan was a budget graph, which is split into two image files and located in the "Extras" folder of the Production Budget. Photos in the other booklets that are split over two pages I intentionally left split, mostly due to the punch holes from the binding.
I've also included the folder compiled by TheTimeWanderer containing the photos from the eBay listing. Happy downloading!
Just right-click "The Thief Portfolio" in the left column for downloading options.


The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has uploaded a large collection of artwork from Richard Williams' The Thief and the Cobbler.

A few years ago I was approached by Miramax via email. They were getting rid of old documents and had quite a bit of material from The Thief and the Cobbler to share. I suggested they send it to Dick Williams. I think this is much of what's at the Academy now.

Here are the images found when searching for "Arabian Knight."
https://www.mediafire.com/file/o8no5318 ... S.zip/file

Also available on Facebook here:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/thiefan ... ter=albums

Here are URLs to the images found when searching for "Arabian Knight."
https://pastebin.com/K3hXz1Cy

Here is the Oscars site where you can run a search for "Arabian Knight."
https://collections.new.oscars.org/Deta ... e/70171893




Here are some editing notes on the May 13, 1992 workprint of The Thief and the Cobbler ("A Moment In Time") as compared to the familiar, and widely-bootlegged earlier workprint of the film. These notes were taken at the Academy screening on Tuesday, December 10, 2013. These are not complete but will give a sense of this edit, which was sometimes missing audio elements.

viewtopic.php?p=2990#p2990

Los Angeles trip writeup:
viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3&start=960#p2989



About the frame-by-frame restoration process:

We (and I do mean we, as forum members donated) purchased the CHV Repair Collection of plug-ins for the Mac video editing software Final Cut Pro. This can remove obvious dirt, at the expense of sometimes removing actual picture detail you'd want to keep, especially in animation.

But you'll probably want to have a video editing program like Final Cut Pro, Adobe Premiere or Avid, with a dirt removal plug-in of some kind.

You'll want to learn how to export your video as a series of still frames, and still have it look identical to the original video once you've imported it back into your editing software. This can require some trial and error. I export sections of video as a series of PNG frames in Final Cut Pro, and the exact settings took some trial and error. But I'm able to seamlessly fix them frame by frame in Photoshop.

There are more professional programs to do this, but if you've got the time, Photoshop can obviously fix any large single-frame error.

Hand-removing dirt in Photoshop is not something I recommend for any large stretch of film, since it's very time-consuming and slow. (Although I know people who swear by using more expensive programs and going through frame by frame.)

You'll note that for The Thief and the Cobbler, I usually Photoshop only the edit frames, and a few frames before and after them. That's because in a workprint, the edit frames will have pieces of tape spliced across them, and that's a big issue that needs to be dealt with carefully, which Photoshop is great at doing. I also work on the dirt and warping as the film splices pass through the projector, and the warping is much more difficult (and has required some much more secret and complex and almost unexplanable work). And I'll handle any huge pieces of damage in Photoshop, anything noticeable.

I use the smudge brush in "Lighten" mode to smudge out black spots, or use the Rubber Stamp tool to fill in similar colors from nearby areas. I will also work on more than one frame at once, and copy/paste a similar frame below the frame I'm working on so that I can just Eraser out the dirt.

An automatic dirt removal plugin like CHV's Repair Collection, which works in an editing program like Final Cut Pro or Adobe Premiere, is very good at taking the dirt out of relatively static shots. Any element that's moving you'll need to be much more careful with. So what I do is I run dirt removal heavily on the frame, but then I have a second video layer (or more) that's been cropped to just the fast-moving elements of the frame, and dirt removal is limited or nonexistent on that layer. Voila!

Also, if a scene is animated "on twos" rather than "on ones" you'll have better luck with dirt removal, since the plugin is looking for any differences between frames that look like black spots.

[Garrett Gilchrist]

Alex Williams, who animated on The Thief and the Cobbler and is Richard Williams' son, asked me to write up an interview for his blog.

As usual I wrote something long. I can't seem to help myself there. I am a verbose man.

So here it is.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XYr5rk0O ... e=youtu.be



AW: What is the Recobbled Cut?

GG: The Thief and the Cobbler: Recobbled Cut (Mark 4) is an unofficial restoration of an incredible and otherwise-unfinished animated feature by Richard Williams, who won three Oscars for Who Framed Roger Rabbit and A Christmas Carol. We've tracked down and restored rare footage from all over the world and created new material to present the film in as complete and watchable a form as possible. Unfortunately with the film mostly complete, Dick was fired and replaced by someone who “completed” the film quickly, cheaply and poorly. So we're working with occasionally-inferior footage, but doing our damndest to make sure that Dick's original vision shines through.



AW: What made you want to take this project on?

GG: People who really know animation might know the sad story of The Thief and the Cobbler. It's a complicated story and I apologize in advance if I misspeak, but here's the story as I understand it. Your father spent over 23 years working on this one film, a visually lush Arabian Nights fantasy which he intended to be his masterpiece, and which contains some of the most complex animation ever attempted onscreen. He was never able to get full funding for the film until after Who Framed Roger Rabbit in 1989, so for two decades he'd just pick at it, inbetween working on some amazing animated commercials, and the Oscar-winning A Christmas Carol, and Raggedy Ann & Andy, and so on.

And his art style kept changing, becoming more complex. When he started in the 1960s, classic Disney-style animation had largely gone out of style, replaced by cheap and simple “modern design,” suitable for television. Richard Williams was a brilliant artist but he wanted to be a great animator, and this film was his way to learn. He hired some of the greatest old guard animators - Art Babbitt, Ken Harris, Grim Natwick, Emery Hawkins - very late in their lives, to pass on their knowledge to a new generation before it was lost forever. Richard's studio helped train the great animators of the 80s and 90s, like Eric Goldberg and Andreas Deja, and helped make the Disney renaissance (Aladdin, The Lion King) possible. It's a hugely influential film, even though it's wound up as a footnote in history.

And it's a work of genius, plain and simple. Richard Williams is a genius, with all that that implies. He was difficult to work for, and demanded perfection from his crew, but he was also an inspiration, and has become one of the great teachers, now. All these years later he's become the great, legendary animator he could only pretend to be in the 70s, and has literally written the book on how to animate - The Animator's Survival Kit, easily the best book ever written on the subject. But people haven't seen the project he treasured more than any other. Because there wasn't any good quality, complete version of it you could really watch.



AW: What is it about the original film that so inspires you?


GG: It haunted me, quite frankly. I'd never seen anything like it, and I still haven't. I first heard about The Thief and the Cobbler when I was seven or eight years old and sleeping on Roger Rabbit bedsheets. I thought Who Framed Roger Rabbit was a nearly perfect film, and I still do. It was this huge technical achievement, to do Disney-style animation on live-action sets with a moving camera, and constantly shifting perspective, and make it believable. A hugely difficult project that Richard Williams executed perfectly. I read an interview with him in Comics Scene magazine where he talked about the project he was really interested in. For over two decades he'd been trying to make what he intended as the greatest animated film ever made. The audacity of that, the ambition of it, astounded me. And he wouldn't share any art from it now, because he'd been ripped off before. Ironic, now. About seven years later, I saw in the theaters a preview for a terrible-looking Aladdin ripoff called Arabian Knight, with a K. Everything about it looked cheap and pathetic. When I got home, something clicked in my brain. This was by the Roger Rabbit guy. So this was his masterpiece, and something terrible happened to it somewhere along the way. Three years later I was on the internet - this was 1998 - and I found a website by Eddie Bowers, which talked about The Thief and the Cobbler. I finally knew the entire heartbreaking story.



How he obsessed over this film and created some of the most complex animation of all time - this huge war machine filled with every piece of weaponry and machinery imaginable - and some of the most delightfully subtle. And beautiful cinematography and lighting effects; every in-camera trick in the book and a hundred which aren't. But still no one would fund the thing until he won two Oscars for Roger Rabbit, and Warner Bros. decided to pick it up. He hired a new crew of mostly very young animators who he could train to animate in his own very unique style. People who hadn't already learned those Disney habits. And up until the first half of 1992 they worked hard and worked fast, even considering what a perfectionist Dick was, and had finished most of the film. All those years of training and practice had led up to this moment, and Dick created something absolutely unique. It's not a Disney film. It's a film which was designed in the 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s, and uses design trends from four decades, and ideas which are all its own. Some of the characters look like they came out of Yellow Submarine, or Dick Deadeye, but they move with perfect fluidity, whether it's realistic or stylized. It's a dream. As Richard said himself, “The whole thing is in the language of a dream.”



But the film had a reputation at this point, and so did Dick. He'd earned that reputation with his perfectionism, but people were saying he'd never finish it at the point where he was working furiously to finish it. Meanwhile Disney was making a movie called Aladdin which was, let's say, suspiciously similar. Even before seeing it they knew they were screwed. He'd had a script all these years and knew exactly what the film was. Every scene was numbered, everything had been in place for a decade now. But he'd never actually storyboarded the thing out, and people were claiming he had no story. They say he storyboarded the whole thing in two weeks - hundreds of gorgeous drawings, which could easily be keyframes. And they cut the whole thing together as a workprint, which is what we still have now. The executives from Warner Bros. watched the 90 minute movie and saw some of the most lush, complex and spectacular animation ever attempted. And there was just silence. No one was impressed. They got up and walked out, and eventually they fired Dick and cut their losses.



While everyone was grabbing what they could and getting out of there, Dick was still at his desk animating a scene. The film had become a “reason for living.” He doesn't talk about it to this day. I'm not sure he was even allowed to, legally, at the time.



The film was “finished” by some idiot who cut out half of it and turned the rest into a cheap saturday morning cartoon animated in Korea, called Princess and the Cobbler. You've never seen a film ruined so thoroughly. Then Disney bought it through Miramax, I think just to make sure no one would ever watch the thing. They made it even worse, adding Aladdin references and a voice track making fun of the film, but at that point it was a mercy killing. They called it Arabian Knight.



AW: What was the genesis of this project? Were you approached by others or was this your idea?


GG: A little of both. At his website back in the 90s, Eddie Bowers had edited the backscratcher scene to use some footage from Arabian Knight. So the idea was sort of there. I rented the Arabian Knight VHS and made a copy where I just muted the voices, when someone obnoxious was talking over this otherwise amazing animation. Eddie sent me The Princess and the Cobbler and Dick's early-1992 workprint, and some documentaries, all on one SLP VHS tape. The quality was horrific. You couldn't see anything. But I'd seen the other version; I knew what I was looking at. And it was absolutely haunting. Even if you could barely see the footage, the film just casts a spell. Because it's one man's vision. It's not like anything else. So I tried to talk to my friends about how I'd just seen this incredible film. But I couldn't show it to them. I'd watched three versions and filled in the blanks mentally. This film only existed in my head. I was a filmmaker by that point, and I cut together a version on SVHS, which wasn't copyable due to Macrovision protection. Just so I could show one or two of my friends some version of the movie and not feel crazy. I called it the Recobbled Cut; maybe five people saw it in that form.



By 2006 I'd gone to USC Film School, written and directed a few features and edited them digitally. I mainly wanted to be a TV writer but couldn't figure out how to get a job in the industry. One weekend when I was sick I decided to edit a little documentary called Deleted Magic, about how Star Wars was hard to film and could have been as bad as The Phantom Menace, but George Lucas and his team were smart and fixed the thing in the editing room. It was a big hit on the internet, I think a couple hundred thousand people watched it, via torrent or Youtube. It was a fan thing, a not for profit project. And I was posting at a forum which was trying to convince Lucasfilm to release the original Star Wars films in full quality on DVD, which they still haven't, sadly. We were discussing which films people should do fanedits of. And I said, nobody else will have heard of this film, but someone should really do a restoration of The Thief and the Cobbler, because dear God. Then one of those amazing coincidences happened where you realize this must be fate. There was someone on those boards who everyone knew, who was putting out rare Star Wars stuff we hadn't seen before. He messaged me saying, I was actually an assistant on The Thief and the Cobbler. I'm sending you some DVDs. Get started.

So I did.

My goal was the same as before, to combine the three versions into the version that was in my head, so that I could show maybe five people this movie that didn't otherwise exist. I was editing it for myself. I figured no one else would be interested. But I needed to do it, to make the film more complete.

Now, people in the animation industry had heard of this film but no one at this site had. Not this generation. None of my friends. And yet something funny happened. I edited a trailer together and people got interested, very interested. The artistry of the film, and the sad story behind it, captivated people.



In January 2006 I edited a new Recobbled Cut. I mainly used a widescreen Japanese DVD of Arabian Knight and that same old terrible workprint Eddie Bowers had given me on SLP VHS. I never released that version, because people started coming out of the woodwork and giving me stuff … animators who had worked on the film, and some who hadn't. I probably redid the edit about six times because people sent me some very rare footage and a better copy of the workprint, then a copy better than that, which was still pretty terrible. I released the final Recobbled Cut Mark 1 in April 2006 or so.

But the best part was hearing people's stories. All these talented artists and very nice people - Andreas Wessel-Therhorn, Holger Leihe, Tony White, Eric Goldberg, Greg Duffell, Tom Sito, Douglas Kirk, Beth Hannan, Steve Evangelatos, Margaret French Williams and so on.

I visited you, Alex, at your home, and seeing Dick's work, and your grandmother's work, on the wall, I was really overwhelmed by the sense of history. I remember I showed you a bit of my edit of the film, and your eyes lit up. You said, “You know, if we could really do this …”

One way or another, this film is Richard Williams' legacy, and it's been my goal to see it treated with respect.



Everyone was extremely helpful and I suddenly realized I was curating a massive archive of documentaries, pencil tests, video clips, articles, interviews, and artwork dedicated to the work of Richard Williams. I restored this material and released it to the internet in any way I could. Patrick McCart started a Youtube channel called thethiefarchive and I'm still running it today.

I was considering making a documentary and writing a book about the film, but never quite found the time inbetween my own artistic projects. Recently Kevin Schreck made a film called Persistence of Vision which tells the story very well.

But the chief focus was always The Thief. Trying to find better quality material and preserve this film and its legacy. People who had seen the Arabian Knight version, or even a really low-quality VHS workprint of Dick's workprint, hadn't really seen the film. I wanted to take all those terrible quality VHS tapes and quietly replace them with a beautiful restored DVD. I wanted to make sure that people respected this film and its place in animation history. I wanted people to forget the cheaply made “Aladdin Ripoff” Arabian Knight, and that fuzzy, unwatchable VHS workprint, and remember the film the way Dick Williams would want it, until it became popular and beloved enough that someone would have to officially release it on DVD in some form.



That's not to say that The Recobbled Cut, in any form, is Dick Williams' intended version of the film. It's not. Some idiot called Fred Calvert took over as director back in 1992. Some of the footage he produced is taken from Richard Williams' pencils and looks pretty close to what Richard would have produced. But a lot of the footage looks like something you might produce in the toilet after a bad meal. It's very much a gradual, sliding scale from nearly-Williams to nearly-unwatchable.

I don't know if Richard has seen my Recobbled Cut, but if he has, some of the footage I've used probably offends him. It probably makes him angry. Even though my edit is intended as a tribute to his genius.

Unfortunately I can't change history. This is something that happened, and unless someone gave Dick Williams five million dollars to actually animate the remaining footage as intended, and if he were even still up for that, we have to work with what we have. In some cases I was altering and reanimating bits of Calvert footage myself, so that Tack wouldn't speak, as he does in that version.



But I remembered that night when I watched three versions of the film in a row and filled in the blanks myself, in my mind. With the Recobbled Cut I assume that my viewers are smart and can fill in the blanks. I assume I don't need to hold their hands and tell them, this is good footage, this is bad footage. I include whatever footage tells the story best, even if the picture quality or animation quality is a bit impaired, so that they can fill in the blanks and have the perfect version of The Thief and the Cobbler in their own heads.

This seems to have worked rather astonishingly well. The edit I thought five people would watch has become something of a cult phenomenon. It's been picked up by Cracked and the Nostalgia Critic, Cartoon Brew and the Mythbusters website Tested, and so on. As of this writing, the war machine sequence in particular has been viewed 685,522 times on Youtube. So yes, that's more than five people.


AW: Your latest version is the “Recobbled Cut” Mark 4. Why now and what makes this one different from previous “Recobbled Cuts”?


GG: Back in 2006-7, I revised the film a bunch of times. Calvert's version of the movie, The Princess and the Cobbler, we didn't have that in widescreen. Someone found us a timecoded VHS tape and I revised those scenes for the Mark 2. In 2007, we heard from an animator who had rescued 49 minutes of 35mm film from Jean MacCurdy's trash at Warner Bros. It was all early Thief and the Cobbler stuff, the scenes he showed to impress them and get the job making the film. 21 minutes of it is in the edit. It's mostly Thief material, most of his adventures, including everything inside the War Machine. That worked out amazingly well since The Thief footage was heavily cut by Calvert, throughout the film, and it plugged a lot of gaps. The Old Witch too, and some of Zigzag and everyone else. We raised some money with the help of Patrick McCart and everyone on our forums, and transferred all that to video along with Raggedy Ann & Andy: A Musical Adventure, a 1977 movie Dick mostly directed which isn't on DVD, and also The Little Island, Dick's first animated movie from 1958, which is wonderful. We'd never seen it before then. And I redid and improved a lot of other stuff and that became the Recobbled Cut Mark 3.



Our copies of the workprint had always been pretty terrible. The copy used for the previous Recobbled Cuts was posted anonymously as an AVI via the file sharing protocol Emule. It's heavily compressed and blocky, making the pencil tests nearly unwatchable, much of the film's audio is missing or damaged, and for literally half the film, two frames are smudged together as one, making the visuals a muddy mess.

It was clearly taken from a high quality PAL VHS tape, and if we only had a VHS tape like that we could get all the original frames back and finally have a fully-watchable copy of the workprint, and therefore the film.

A few years passed, and Kevin Schreck was making his documentary. I spoke to an animator named Simon Maddocks, who had animated two complex shots for the film. One of an enormous iron killing soldiers in the War Machine, and one shot that had always fascinated me - the entire Golden City turning around as the camera swoops in through it and up to the three Golden Balls that define the story. Amazingly complex animation which was technically never quite finished in color, and doesn't appear in the Calvert versions.

Simon had pencil tests of this material, which show his amazing work in greater clarity than ever before. He had pencil and color tests of footage we hadn't even seen before, and certainly in greater quality. He had deleted scenes of the Brigands.



And he had the entire workprint on PAL VHS in very good quality. The difference was astonishing, and exactly what we'd been looking for all these years.

I met a German video restorationist named Christoph Nass at the Doom9 video forums and he began filtering and restoring the clean VHS workprint to get the most quality possible out of it. He then got to work on all the other footage, and by now he's worked for a year on it.

Meanwhile, 14 minutes of 35mm footage turned up - two reels on Ebay, and a German trailer. It happened that the reels were bought by film restorationist Peter C. in the UK, who paid to transfer them to 1080p HD quality himself. He also transferred a 16mm print of Richard's Oscar-winning A Christmas Carol.

The trailer was acquired by Helge Bernhardt in Germany, who used his own home-made scanner to scan the trailer at 5k.

Suddenly we had our first HD footage from The Thief and the Cobbler.

I also realized that there were shots I'd left out of the Mark 3 Recobbled Cut, and scenes I could have edited more clearly. It took me all these years to really understand the opening sequence and what was needed! I asked original animator Andreas Wessel-Therhorn to come back and draw new material of the “hands” for the opening.



AW: How large of an undertaking has it been?

GG: Pretty large. It was very clear to me that this restoration would have to be much more ambitious than the previous ones. I would remove dirt and splices by hand throughout the entire film. I would make all transitions from VHS to DVD quality seamless, by carefully warping and color correcting all the footage to match, and very carefully recreating lost frames in Photoshop. We would create new artwork, new elements, to restore shots and tell the story more clearly in the way it was meant to be told. I would follow Dick's workprint even more closely. The storyboards are dirt-free now, and the pencil tests perfectly clear.

One night, I was very carefully removing splices, dirt, film breaks and damage from the 35mm footage we'd transferred back in 2007. I cleaned up 96 frames that night. I've thrown all that out now, because I've realized just how bad that 35mm transfer really was. It's cropped at the top and bottom, it's overly blue, it's missing highlight detail, it's compressed and full of ghosting … it's terrible.

I decided if we were going to work for months removing splices and damage from this 35mm material that we should do it on a full HD transfer or better, something that could be shown on the big screen. Something that's futureproof. Something that does this film justice, and is ready for Blu-Ray, private big screen screenings, and - dare I say it - any official release that might happen in the future.

So, just like in 2007, I asked my forum to donate. Marcus B and Christoph Nass (our filtering restorationist), Mat Fitzpatrick, Sam Sleiman, Richard Hayes and twenty others all donated. So we're getting the footage transferred again. Hopefully at 5k. I've already mailed off the money.



There will be about 30 minutes of HD footage in this cut, much more if you count deleted scenes. We're going to clean it up, remove splices and damage. You'll finally be able to see scenes like the War Machine in the full big-screen quality that Richard Williams intended.

AW: What software are you using to put it all together?


GG: I'm a Mac loyalist. I'm also a frustrated artist and filmmaker who never knew how to find work “out there,” so I'm usually pretty poor. I had the same computer, a silver Mac G4, from 2003 until recently. Now I'm using a Mac built from PC parts by a friend. Finally having a modern computer has been a great relief and has allowed me to really spread my wings on this edit and do it justice.

The editing is being done in Final Cut Pro 7. The previous cuts used Final Cut Pro 4. Artwork and frame restoration is being done in Photoshop CS6. More unusual work is being done in AfterEffects CS6. I've used a hundred different points to warp the workprint footage until it matches the DVD footage exactly. Now I can transition seamlessly from one source to the other.



I'm using Magic Bullet Denoiser and the CHV Repair Collection for dirt removal, which the forum bought for me. I also use MPEG Streamclip, Audacity, Compressor, and ffmpeg.

AW: How difficult has it been to re-assemble all the missing elements?


GG: Pretty difficult. We have a VHS tape that Fred Calvert put together when he was starting work on ruining the film. It has a bunch of shots we don't see anywhere else, but they're extremely low quality. In many cases I've gone through very carefully frame by frame using Photoshop, just to get it to the point where you can even sort of see what's going on.

Also, pulling shots from animators' pencil test videos is very difficult, because those are shot on video and tend to be extremely low quality when you start working with them.



Some shots are taken from a VHS color test reel shot on video. Since these are just tests, they don't match the beautiful cinematography of the finished film and are often missing elements. In a bunch of cases, there is scotch tape over the background, and it takes a lot of work to remove that tape, using difference mattes and Photoshop trickery.

It's very difficult and time consuming to color correct these very different sources so that they even start to match. Results are never perfect. They also have to be warped and reshaped to match.

I've done little bits of animation in AfterEffects - like putting a backscratcher into The Thief's hands, when Calvert had shot the footage without one. I've added back lightning to a shot of the King ordering his soldiers around, when it was missing in our best copy. Lots of shots require new things added to them. I rotoscoped a spike sticking out of a Dying Soldier's chest that Calvert had removed, frame by frame. I think we're going to be adding back some bananas that Nanny is carrying. Or closing Tack's mouth, or YumYum's, or Nanny, so they're not talking when they shouldn't. Little things like that, that require some sort of minor new animation just so the story makes sense again.



AW: Are there missing parts you would still like to get hold of?


GG: Most definitely. We're still working from poor quality VHS and DVD sources for the most part, and that Arabian Knight DVD has blown-out highlights and leaves a lot to be desired. An actual 35mm print of either Arabian Knight or The Princess and the Cobbler would be invaluable, as would a copy of Richard Williams' 35mm workprint from 1992.

But even that workprint is incomplete. Richard Williams completed a lot more footage in color than we get to actually see in that workprint, or Calvert's versions. We often have poor quality copies of shots, or incomplete copies, or no copies at all.

The Recobbled Cut is a case of making the most of the footage we have, which varies quite wildly in quality - from nearly unwatchable VHS to very good VHS to pretty bad DVD to very good big-screen quality, now.

I'm not sure what exactly still exists from the film. When Richard was fired from the film, the Completion Bond Company took everything away, at least that they were aware of, and the animation houses in Korea tended to throw everything away as shots were “completed.” Richard himself had never been a packrat and threw out older material all the time. I am not sure if he managed to keep or acquire a full 35mm copy of the film at any point. Princess and the Cobbler and Arabian Knight were not released in theaters in any serious way, so prints will be extremely scarce. When Miramax bought the film, apparently - according to Alex, anyway - all the elements and artwork they intended to keep were stored in the Disney archives - a “bunker in Burbank.”



The Thief and the Cobbler started life as an entirely different film called Nasrudin, or The Majestic Fool, most of which is probably lost now, although who knows? Certainly we've found deleted scenes from earlier incarnations of the Thief film on these various 35mm reels and VHS tapes.

It would take an official release to look into Disney's archive and see what they have, or see what anyone else has. The fact is that this is old material, some of it dating back decades, and it needs to be preserved before it's faded into obsolescence.

In the meantime, we have managed to track down 30+ minutes of 35mm footage. Add that to a 35mm print of any full version of the movie and you really have something.

AW: Do you have any hopes of a theatrical release?


GG: Well, that's the question. I've kept my hopes up for any sort of release. We haven't even had a widescreen DVD release of the terrible versions of the film, outside Japan. The Weinstein Company has put out a DVD that is cropped, oversaturated, and Aladdin-themed, and which I suspect is bad on purpose.



Someone needs to buy back the rights, which are a bit murky right now after the dissolution of Miramax. That someone might be Richard Williams himself, if the companies in question would let him have the film, and if he'd be still be interested and able to revisit that dark chapter in his stellar career. Either that or a big fan with money.

While I can't know the mind of anyone there, and am basing this on almost no information, I suppose it depends on what sort of mood you catch the Weinstein Company in, or Disney or whoever you're dealing with. The people who were running Disney then are not running it now, and there are certainly people there who'd like to see this film released properly, just as I'm sure there are those who'd like to see it buried forever (and will probably speak louder when that time comes). I can imagine them raising the price if someone tries to buy it, even though any profits from this film have been almost nonexistent over the years.

So much bad blood was spilled back in 1992 and afterward, and many of those scars are permanent. I can't speak for Richard or anyone on this one. I would love to meet Richard someday though, just to shake his hand.



You could also argue that this is not a famous film, and a rerelease, such as a Blu-Ray workprint or Recobbled Cut, has no guarantee of making any money at all.

But I think the Recobbled Cut has proven that there is a significant fanbase out there, and that the public in general, if they hear about and see a glimpse of this film as intended, will be impressed by its scope and epic nature, and a great many people will fall for its artistry, and the sad story behind it, just as so many have before.

We know this film is good, and that there's a real story behind it. We know that it affects people. This is the sort of film that goes viral on the internet, and succeeds in this decade. It has all the makings of a huge cult success. In a way, the time has finally come for this film, and there is certainly money to be made if the rights can end up in the hands of anyone who cares about it.

For my part, I've edited a Recobbled Cut which has helped to rehabilitate the film's reputation and introduce it to a younger generation. Even if I'd only shown it to five people as I intended, it's a version which is watchable and gets the idea across, and is easy to pass around. Now, I'm restoring some 35mm material in full HD and doing other work that will be useable in any official, even theatrical, release, should it occur. I'm doing what I can.



AW: How can fans get hold of the Recobbled Cut?

GG: You can subscribe to our Youtube channel, youtube.com/thethiefarchive. There you can watch the Mark 3 Recobbled Cut, the Williams Studio's commercials, A Christmas Carol, Raggedy Ann & Andy, documentaries about Richard's work, and hundreds of other wonderful things not available on DVD. You can also see some preview clips from the Mark 4 Recobbled Cut.

DVDs of the Mark 3 Recobbled Cut have leaked to the internet and seem to be available lots of places via torrent. I personally gave out hundreds of free copies at the time, so they're out there. Sometimes people just contact me.



We discuss the film at http://orangecow.org/board and on Facebook in the Recobbled Cut group, and every weekend, as I'm working on the Mark 4 edit, I try to stream what I'm doing to the internet via http://livestream.com/orangecoworglivestream . I'm amazed anyone enjoys watching me edit. I'd assume it's extremely boring. But I'm told some people find it fun and educational, even inspiring … which is kind of strange. But Richard Williams always inspired me, all my life. I'm glad that this film can keep on doing that, 20 years later.',

[Garrett Gilchrist]

New Richard Williams Animation Studio Logo, using recent footage from Richard Williams' Animator's Survival Kit promo DVD, and the text from that book's cover.



Title card was noise-reduced and cleaned up from a DVD version previously thought unusable. The “dot” will be in HD from 35mm film.



New hands artwork by original Thief animator Andreas Wessel-Therhorn.



“Stars” effects barely visible in the workprint are shown as negative, with glow effects added, to have a whole new feel.




Pencil test footage from the collection of Simon Maddocks shows scenes in greater clarity. The opening is now edited to match and recreate Richard Williams' original workprint. Pencil tests are colorized and transition seamlessly to color footage from Arabian Knight.



Color Arabian Knight footage is chromakeyed and combined with pencil test footage from the collection of Simon Maddocks.



Color “circles” from the Princess and the Cobbler are placed over footage from the workprint, and a new graphic of the Golden City. An animated circular matte in the center makes the transition possible.



A new high-resolution graphic of the Golden City was painstakingly recreated in Photoshop using an low-resolution pencil sketch and color frames from an HD transfer of the “Mouth to Mountain” shot of King Nod screaming.





Simon Maddocks' pencil tests of this incredible sweeping shot of the Golden City are overlaid over the workprint's unfinished color version to finally show the clarity of the linework. The workprint has been very carefully darkened and color corrected to show much more detail than was obvious before, with blue and gold areas color corrected separately.

[Garrett Gilchrist]

About a dozen newly drawn hands by Thief animator Andreas Wessel-Therhorn match Dick Williams' original storyboards. Color footage from the Miramax DVD.



Pencil test from the collection of Simon Maddocks seamlessly transitions from the finished color footage. Hands by Andreas Wessel-Therhorn.




Still images and footage from the final shot of the film are repurposed to appear in the Crystal Ball, along with chromakeyed-in clouds from the Miramax DVD. Hands by Andreas Wessel-Therhorn.




Rare footage of Tack from a PAL VHS tape containing “color tests” shot on video from the collection of Simon Maddocks is carefully reworked in Photoshop, AE and FCP to appear in widescreen and look like a finished shot from the film. This shot has never appeared finished in color before.



Film damage, jumpy footage and splices (from when the 35mm film was originally edited using a razor and tape) are carefully removed in Photoshop (almost 100 frames in this opening sequence alone).

This work will be redone, since this material is being retransferred in HD from its original 35mm film. In total, about 30 minutes of scenes from the film, including many of the Thief's adventures (such as everything in the War Machine) will now be available in full HD for big screen quality.

[Garrett Gilchrist]

The complete version of this shot was recreated in Photoshop, AE and FCP using rare color test footage shot on video, from a PAL VHS tape in the collection of Simon Maddocks. I am still attempting to rework this shot and recreate the original lighting effects of John Leatherbarrow.

As with the other shot of Tack, the widescreen background was very carefully recreated in Photoshop based on Arabian Knight elements. A piece of tape was very obvious in the background, and Tack's feet covered it, so I had to use Difference Matting and all sorts of strange After Effects magic to remove or minimize the tape without removing Tack's foot. A stack of papers and other debris were also carefully removed from the original color test shot.




Even in these standard-definition screen shots, the material we now have in HD from 35mm film shows a new clarity and color never dreamt of before. The transfer of 13 minutes of material was paid for and supervised by Peter C in England. David Mackenzie removed all dirt and debris from this shot by hand.



One frame was missing from the HD transfer, and so was carefully recreated using footage from Arabian Knight and a lot of Photoshop work.



Selective color correction is used throughout the cut to make sources match up better. Here, the reds of a shot from Arabian Knight are brightened up. Things will get much more complex later.



The entire workprint has been very carefully warped in After Effects, using over a hundred points, so that it matches Arabian Knight (and other sources) almost exactly now. This allows me to dissolve-transition seamlessly from the workprint to Arabian Knight and back again. The sources now match so exactly that the transitions are perfect.

The workprint has to be carefully color corrected to match Arabian Knight as closely as possible. Also here, CHV's Dirt Removal plugin is used to remove dirt.



Two damaged frames from the KA 35mm reels are very carefully recreated in Photoshop to remove film damage and match the Japanese Arabian Knight DVD exactly. The result looks very similar to the Arabian Knight DVD.



The Arabian Knight DVD transitions seamlessly into the longer shot from the workprint, color corrected to match.




Pencil test footage from the collection of Holger Leihe is composited over pencil test footage from the workprint, which has been very carefully color corrected with noise and dirt removed using repair plugins. Pencil tests are now very clear and visible.

[Garrett Gilchrist]

The pencil test of YumYum's vase dissolves into a now-colorized version of the scene carefully recreated in Photoshop, with rare footage of YumYum herself in color taken from Simon Maddocks' color tests reel VHS. This is a closeup of a shot of YumYum at the window which is seen from a distance in the film itself. It is used here to suggest what this shot would have looked like in color.



Pencil tests from the collection of Holger Leihe show the intended animation of YumYum's hands and the flower stems, which was never completed in color (the flowers instead appear floating in the air).



A shot from Arabian Knight of YumYum singing is reanimated in Photoshop so that YumYum's mouth is closed and dirt and animation errors are removed.



A missing frame that appears in the workprint is carefully reworked and repainted in Photoshop to match the Japanese Arabian Knight DVD.



The Japanese Arabian Knight DVD seamlessly dissolves to this shot from the workprint, carefully color corrected to match. The left side of the screen is matted in from Arabian Knight itself.



An animation error (missing reflections on the floor) is fixed carefully in Photoshop.



The Japanese Arabian Knight DVD seamlessly dissolves to this shot from the workprint, carefully color corrected to match.





The workprint was originally edited on 35mm film using a razor and tape. In as many scenes as possible, I've removed the telltale tape splices (black horizontal lines across the picture) by hand in Photoshop, as well as major film damage. All workprint footage is carefully color corrected as well.

The workprint is now sourced from a PAL VHS tape from the collection of Simon Maddocks. It was very carefully filtered in AviSynth by Christoph Nass in Germany to look and sound as good as possible considering the source. The result is leaps and bounds better than the Mark3 source, which was a compressed, blocky AVI where every other frame was blurred together from two frames.

[Garrett Gilchrist]

Storyboard scenes, and scenes like this one which are in rough form and not yet fully animated, benefit greatly from CHV's Dirt Remover plugin, paid for by the forum. The ever-present dirt blotches which appear on the workprint and 35mm HD material can easily be removed as long as the image itself isn't moving too much. It's more difficult on finished color shots, where portions of the frame that we want to keep are also removed (such as The Thief's flies). Sometimes, but very rarely so far, dirt remover is used on color footage (and more often pencil tests). More commonly, color footage requires frame by frame attention to remove the dirt, something that usually isn't worth the time - although for the HD 35mm material we've done a few shots and are seriously considering it.

Thanks to the dirt remover and a little color correction, this shot is extremely clear and clean and dirt-free - as are all the storyboard sequences in the film.





Every shot that has to transition from the Arabian Knight DVD to the workprint and back again is now an absolutely seamless dissolve, since the workprint has been warped and color corrected to match. In many cases, the left side of the frame has been Photoshopped in from Arabian Knight.







A few frames had to be added back to dialogue between YumYum and Zigzag, present in the workprint but not Arabian Knight. YumYum's frames were carefully recreated and repainted in Photoshop using some Arabian Knight DVD elements, so that the material would match. Zigzag's frames were very carefully color-replaced in Photoshop to match Arabian Knight, and may receive additional Photoshop touchup work in the future.

Splices and damage were removed in Photoshop, as is now standard for every workprint and HD shot as far as time allows.



Pencil tests that were previously almost impossible to see are now clean, color-corrected and clear, with filters to remove noise, and sometimes dirt.

[Garrett Gilchrist]

A few minutes of HD material was scanned at 5k (big screen cinema resolution) by Helge Bernhardt in Germany, using his own self-built scanner. This is then color corrected.

At the very least I will probably create a 30 minute reel of edited Thief and the Cobbler footage which is in full HD, possibly even closer to cinema resolution, something that will look good on the big screen.



Transitions to and from the workprint are seamless dissolves.



Pencil tests are much clearer.





Most of the Thief's adventures will appear in full HD with splices and some dirt and damage removed.



Some pencil tests were not seen in previous versions of the Recobbled Cut. Fred Calvert removed Nanny's bananas from this shot; we may animate them back in.



Nanny's face was reanimated (as a still element) in Photoshop for the Mark 3, so that she doesn't speak in this shot. I may revisit this for the Mark 4, and even add bananas.




Tack speaks in Fred Calvert's version of this shot. His mouth was reanimated in Photoshop for the Mark 3 version of this scene. More footage of Tack with his mouth closed was reanimated for the Mark 4, but may or may not be used.

The editing in these sequences is now more similar to Dick Williams' original workprint.

[Garrett Gilchrist]

All storyboard sequences have had all dirt removed using the CHV plugin. Splices and bad frames are carefully edited out and all these sequences look extremely clean and clear.



Some careful editing removes Nanny's dialogue from this Calvert shot. Like all our sources, the entire Japanese Arabian Knight DVD was filtered and restored by Christoph Nass to look cleaner and clearer than ever.



The Dirt Remover plugin unfortunately is hard to use on finished color footage, as it removes elements we want to keep (like The Thief's flies). However, some shots may get frame by frame restoration treatment to remove dirt (and some already have).






Tissa David's pencil tests of YumYum (and her sister MeeMee, only seen here and not in the previous Recobbled Cuts) are cleaner and clearer than ever. Splices, dirt and film damage have been very carefully removed on each frame, sometimes in Photoshop, sometimes using Dirt Remover. The result is much more clean and coherent shots. The heavy color correction helps as well.




These rare pencil tests (taken from a Fred Calvert work in progress VHS) are some of the lowest quality material in the film - yet with careful color correction and cleanup they look much better and clearer than before.



Newly-created animation of the backscratcher in the Thief's left hand was keyframed in Photoshop and AfterEffects. The Thief was always intended to be carrying two backscratchers, but Calvert redid the footage with only one. The wrong is now righted.

[Garrett Gilchrist]

The Auto Levels color correction function in AfterEffects was used on almost all the pencil tests so that they would have bright whites and dark blacks and be very easy to see. Often, Dirt Remover was also used, and splices and damage removed in Photoshop.

Here, this brief scene extension was carefully warped in After Effects to match the Arabian Knight DVD exactly, for a clean transition.




Although this shot was finished in color, it only appears on a very low quality VHS tape (Fred Calvert's Work in Progress), and has no detail. Williams' original pencil test was carefully warped and composited over the low-quality color image, so that we get the best of both worlds - the clear lines of the pencil test and the filled-in colors of the VHS.




As usual, transitions from the Japanese DVD to the workprint and back again are seamless dissolves, with color correction and warping to match.



HD footage, actually scanned at 5k cinema resolution by Helge Bernhardt, gives these scenes greater clarity. Also for the first time we'll hear Dick Williams' intended sound effects here.




HD footage bought and transferred by Peter C in England.