114-498: The Thief and the Cobbler is an animated fantasy film co-written and directed by Richard Williams , who intended it to be his masterpiece and a milestone in the animated medium. Originally devised in the 1960s, the film was in and out of production for nearly three decades due to independent funding and ambitiously complex animation. It was finally placed into full production in 1989 when Warner Bros. agreed to finance and distribute
228-411: A stop motion technique to two- and three-dimensional objects like paper cutouts , puppets , or clay figures . A cartoon in the animation sense is an animated film, usually short, featuring an exaggerated visual style. The style takes inspiration from comic strips , often featuring anthropomorphic animals , superheroes , or the adventures of human protagonists. Especially with animals that form
342-562: A 1988 interview with Jerry Beck , Williams stated that he had two and a half hours of pencil tests for Thief , and had not storyboarded the film since he found such a method to be too controlling. Williams also recorded further dialogue with Vincent Price for Zigzag for the 1990 production, but Price's old age and illness meant that some lines remained unfinished. Williams had experimented with shots with characters animated by hand to move in three dimensions, including in Roger Rabbit where
456-435: A Canadian-produced animated feature, in 1990 to almost no promotion. Jean MacCurdy , Warner Bros.' then-head of animation, did not know anything about animation, as she admitted to an artist who had worked for Williams while she was seeing footage of The Thief . Another animator salvaged almost 40 minutes of 35 mm dailies footage from MacCurdy's trash. Meanwhile, Walt Disney Feature Animation had begun work on Aladdin ,
570-490: A consistent way to whatever style is employed on a particular film. Since the early 1980s, teams of about 500 to 600 people, of whom 50 to 70 are animators, typically have created feature-length animated films. It is relatively easy for two or three artists to match their styles; synchronizing those of dozens of artists is more difficult. This problem is usually solved by having a separate group of visual development artists develop an overall look and palette for each film before
684-422: A dedicated Disneyana Fan Club (since 1984). Disneyland opened in 1955 and features many attractions that were based on Disney's cartoon characters. Its enormous success spawned several other Disney theme parks and resorts . Disney's earnings from the theme parks have relatively often been higher than those from their movies. As with any other form of media, animation has instituted awards for excellence in
798-422: A distributor and get people who find it as a novelty". With the new funding, the film finally went into full production in 1989. Williams scoured for talented artists around the world. At this point, with almost all the original animators either deceased or having long since moved on to other projects, production began mostly with a new, younger team of animators, including Richard's own son Alexander Williams . In
912-460: A film that bore striking resemblances in story, style and character to The Thief and the Cobbler ; for example, the character Zigzag from Thief shares many physical characteristics with both Aladdin 's villain Jafar , and its Genie , as animated by Williams Studio alumnus Andreas Deja and Eric Goldberg . The Completion Bond Company asked television animation producer Fred Calvert to report on
1026-576: A funding and a distribution deal for The Thief and the Cobbler , which included a $ 25 million marketing budget. Williams's current wife Imogen Sutton suggested him to finance Thief with European backers, citing his appreciation of foreign films. Richard insisted he could produce the film with a major studio. Williams and Warner Bros. signed a negative pickup deal in late 1988, and Williams also received financial aid from Japanese investors. He later said: "In hindsight we should have just gone to Europe, take another five years, made it on our own, and then go to
1140-496: A lot of sound". Silent comedies, like films from Charlie Chaplin and Harry Langdon , were already an inspiration on Nasrudin and continued for the new film. Tack was modeled after said silent film stars. British illustrator Errol Le Cain created inspirational paintings and backgrounds, setting the style for the film. During the decades that the film was being made, the characters were redesigned several times and scenes were reanimated. In late 1973, financial difficulties forced
1254-426: A natural predator/prey relationship (e.g. cats and mice, coyotes and birds), the action often centers on violent pratfalls such as falls, collisions, and explosions that would be lethal in real life. A cartoon can also be a still humorous drawing, often with the same elements as animated cartoons but with still versions. The illusion of animation—as in motion pictures in general—has traditionally been attributed to
SECTION 10
#17328695835201368-451: A new life on the small screen and by the end of the 1950s, the production of new animated cartoons started to shift from theatrical releases to TV series. Hanna-Barbera Productions was especially prolific and had huge hit series, such as The Flintstones (1960–1966) (the first prime time animated series), Scooby-Doo (since 1969) and Belgian co-production The Smurfs (1981–1989). The constraints of American television programming and
1482-454: A promotional booklet was released with a public announcement by Williams about the status of his project: Nasrudin was found to be too verbal and not suitable for animation, therefore Nasrudin as a character and the Nasrudin stories were dropped as a project. However, the many years work spent on painstaking research into the beauty of Oriental art has been retained. Loosely based on elements in
1596-520: A separate background, computer animation is usually based on programming paths between key frames to maneuver digitally created figures throughout a digitally created environment. Analog mechanical animation media that rely on the rapid display of sequential images include the phenakistiscope , zoetrope , flip book , praxinoscope , and film. Television and video are popular electronic animation media that originally were analog and now operate digitally . For display on computers, technology such as
1710-558: A speech to his subjects. Revill also re-recorded some of his lines for the Miramax version, mostly discussing the Witch being related to the Mighty One-Eye and "the bearer of his other eye". ^e Sims' voice for the Witch was mostly re-dubbed by Marshall, but a few lines spoken by Sims were retained after she first fully materializes and when she receives her chest of money all the way up to
1824-484: A studio system and deliver high-quality animation within time and budget. Disney and Spielberg told Williams that in return for doing Roger Rabbit , they would help distribute his film. This plan did not come to pass. Disney began to put their attention more in their own feature animation , while Spielberg instead opened a rival feature animation studio in London . Following his success, Williams and Warner Bros. negotiated
1938-503: A ten-minute test sequence with a budget of $ 100,000. Williams chose the complex, penultimate sequence of the Thief in the War Machine for the test. The studio missed two deadlines, and the scene was completed in late 1979 for $ 250,000. Despite his positive impression of the finished scene, Faisal backed out of the production because of missed deadlines and budgetary overruns. Williams tried to use
2052-461: A trend of animated films being tampered with by studio executives. Sue Shakespeare of Creative Capers Entertainment had previously offered to solve story problems with Richard Williams, suggested bringing in Terry Gilliam to consult, and proposed to allow Williams to finish the film under her supervision. Williams reportedly agreed to Shakespeare's proposal, but her bid was ultimately rejected by
2166-450: A true powerhouse of animation production, with its own recognizable and influential anime style of effective limited animation . Animation became very popular on television since the 1950s, when television sets started to become common in most developed countries. Cartoons were mainly programmed for children, on convenient time slots, and especially US youth spent many hours watching Saturday-morning cartoons . Many classic cartoons found
2280-522: A very long history in automata . Electronic automata were popularized by Disney as animatronics . The word animation stems from the Latin animātiōn , stem of animātiō , meaning 'bestowing of life'. The earlier meaning of the English word is 'liveliness' and has been in use much longer than the meaning of 'moving image medium'. Long before modern animation began, audiences around the world were captivated by
2394-409: A wide variety of styles, relatively often including stop motion and cutout animation techniques. Soviet Soyuzmultfilm animation studio, founded in 1936, produced 20 films (including shorts) per year on average and reached 1,582 titles in 2018. China, Czechoslovakia / Czech Republic, Italy, France, and Belgium were other countries that more than occasionally released feature films, while Japan became
SECTION 20
#17328695835202508-694: Is a technique combining hand-drawn characters into live action shots or live-action actors into animated shots. One of the earlier uses was in Koko the Clown when Koko was drawn over live-action footage. Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks created a series of Alice Comedies (1923–1927), in which a live-action girl enters an animated world. Other examples include Allegro Non Troppo (Italy, 1976), Who Framed Roger Rabbit (US, 1988), Volere volare (Italy 1991), Space Jam (US, 1996) and Osmosis Jones (US, 2001). Brigands Too Many Requests If you report this error to
2622-404: Is brought before King Nod and his daughter, Princess Yum-Yum. Before Zigzag can convince King Nod to have Tack executed, Yum-Yum saves Tack by ordering him to fix a shoe she intentionally breaks. During repairs, Tack and Yum-Yum become increasingly attracted to each other, much to the jealousy of Zigzag, who plans to take over the kingdom and marry the princess. Meanwhile, the Thief, having noticed
2736-497: Is credited under "Loop Group" in the credits. Also, in the Miramax version, some lines from the brigands and the camel's laughter appear to be re-dubbed, again by unknown actors. In 1964, Richard Williams, a Canadian animator living in the United Kingdom, was running an animation studio assigned to animate commercials and special sequences for live-action films. Williams illustrated a series of books by Idries Shah , which collected
2850-608: Is no reason why not". He also envisioned the film to feature very detailed and complex animation, the likes he thought no other studio would attempt to achieve. Additionally, much of the film's animation would be photographed " on ones ", meaning that the animation would run at full 24 frames per second as opposed to the more common animation "on twos", in twelve frames per second. In 1978, Saudi Arabian prince Mohammed bin Faisal Al Saud became interested in The Thief , and agreed to fund
2964-413: Is pointless for a studio to pay the salaries of dozens of animators to spend weeks creating a visually dazzling five-minute scene if that scene fails to effectively advance the plot of the film. Thus, animation studios starting with Disney began the practice in the 1930s of maintaining story departments where storyboard artists develop every single scene through storyboards , then handing the film over to
3078-449: Is that once a film is in the production phase, the marginal cost of one more shot is higher for animated films than live-action films. It is relatively easy for a director to ask for one more take during principal photography of a live-action film, but every take on an animated film must be manually rendered by animators (although the task of rendering slightly different takes has been made less tedious by modern computer animation). It
3192-404: Is the best known and most extreme example. Since first being licensed for a children's writing tablet in 1929, their Mickey Mouse mascot has been depicted on an enormous amount of products , as have many other Disney characters. This may have influenced some pejorative use of Mickey's name , but licensed Disney products sell well, and the so-called Disneyana has many avid collectors, and even
3306-519: Is the process of producing high-quality traditionally animated films that regularly use detailed drawings and plausible movement, having a smooth animation. Fully animated films can be made in a variety of styles, from more realistically animated works like those produced by the Walt Disney studio ( The Little Mermaid , Beauty and the Beast , Aladdin , The Lion King ) to the more 'cartoon' styles of
3420-432: Is the process that was used for most animated films of the 20th century. The individual frames of a traditionally animated film are photographs of drawings, first drawn on paper. To create the illusion of movement, each drawing differs slightly from the one before it. The animators' drawings are traced or photocopied onto transparent acetate sheets called cels , which are filled in with paints in assigned colors or tones on
3534-625: The Arabian Nights stories, an entirely new and original film is now the main project of the Williams Studio. Therefore any publicity references to the old character of Nasrudin are now obsolete. In 1973, Williams commissioned a new script from Howard Blake, who wrote a treatment called Tin Tack that incorporated a character who is a clumsy cobbler named Tack, and retained Williams's thief character from Nasrudin . The script would later be scrapped, but
The Thief and the Cobbler - Misplaced Pages Continue
3648-743: The Internet ( web cartoons ). Rotoscoping is a technique patented by Max Fleischer in 1917 where animators trace live-action movement, frame by frame. The source film can be directly copied from actors' outlines into animated drawings, as in The Lord of the Rings (US, 1978), or used in a stylized and expressive manner, as in Waking Life (US, 2001) and A Scanner Darkly (US, 2006). Some other examples are Fire and Ice (US, 1983), Heavy Metal (1981), and Aku no Hana (Japan, 2013). Live-action/animation
3762-515: The Warner Bros. animation studio . Many of the Disney animated features are examples of full animation, as are non-Disney works, The Secret of NIMH (US, 1982), The Iron Giant (US, 1999), and Nocturna (Spain, 2007). Fully animated films are often animated on "twos", sometimes on "ones", which means that 12 to 24 drawings are required for a single second of film. Limited animation involves
3876-556: The animated GIF and Flash animation were developed. In addition to short films , feature films , television series , animated GIFs, and other media dedicated to the display of moving images, animation is also prevalent in video games , motion graphics , user interfaces , and visual effects . The physical movement of image parts through simple mechanics—for instance, moving images in magic lantern shows—can also be considered animation. The mechanical manipulation of three-dimensional puppets and objects to emulate living beings has
3990-408: The entertainment industry . Many animations are either tradtional animations or computer animations made with computer-generated imagery (CGI). Stop motion animation , in particular claymation , has continued to exist alongside these other forms. Animation is contrasted with live-action film , although the two do not exist in isolation. Many moviemakers have produced films that are a hybrid of
4104-462: The flip book (1868), the praxinoscope (1877) and film . When cinematography eventually broke through in the 1890s, the wonder of the realistic details in the new medium was seen as its biggest accomplishment. It took years before animation found its way to the cinemas. The successful short The Haunted Hotel (1907) by J. Stuart Blackton popularized stop motion and reportedly inspired Émile Cohl to create Fantasmagorie (1908), regarded as
4218-430: The golden age of animation , such as Art Babbitt , Emery Hawkins and Grim Natwick , to work at his studio in London and help teach him and his staff. Williams learned also from Milt Kahl , Frank Thomas , Ollie Johnston , and Ken Anderson at Disney, to whom he made yearly visits and would later pass their knowledge to the new generation of animators. Williams also allowed animators like Natwick and Babbitt to work on
4332-439: The persistence of vision and later to the phi phenomenon and beta movement , but the exact neurological causes are still uncertain. The illusion of motion caused by a rapid succession of images that minimally differ from each other, with unnoticeable interruptions, is a stroboscopic effect . While animators traditionally used to draw each part of the movements and changes of figures on transparent cels that could be moved over
4446-529: The 1960s, and European producers looking for affordable cel animators relatively often started co-productions with Japanese studios, resulting in hit series such as Barbapapa (The Netherlands/Japan/France 1973–1977), Wickie und die starken Männer/小さなバイキング ビッケ (Vicky the Viking) (Austria/Germany/Japan 1974), Maya the Honey Bee (Japan/Germany 1975) and The Jungle Book (Italy/Japan 1989). Computer animation
4560-522: The Beast was the first animated film nominated for Best Picture , in 1991. Up (2009) and Toy Story 3 (2010) also received Best Picture nominations, after the academy expanded the number of nominees from five to ten. The creation of non-trivial animation works (i.e., longer than a few seconds) has developed as a form of filmmaking , with certain unique aspects. Traits common to both live-action and animated feature films are labor intensity and high production costs. The most important difference
4674-486: The Cobbler and get it finally finished. Roger Rabbit was released by Disney (under their Touchstone Pictures banner) in the United States on June 22, 1988, and became a blockbuster hit. Williams won two Oscars for his animation and contributions to the visual effects. Although Roger Rabbit ran over budget before animation production began, the success of the film demonstrated Williams's capability to work within
The Thief and the Cobbler - Misplaced Pages Continue
4788-490: The Completion Bond Company in favor of a cheaper one by Fred Calvert, whom the company had assigned to finish the film as cheaply and quickly as possible. Calvert said: "I really didn't want to do it, but if I didn't do it, it would have been given off to the lowest bidder. I took it as a way to try and preserve something and at least get the thing on the screen and let it be seen". It took Calvert 18 months to finish
4902-696: The Friendly Ghost (1945), Warner Bros. Cartoon Studios ' Looney Tunes ' Porky Pig (1935), Daffy Duck (1937), Elmer Fudd (1937–1940), Bugs Bunny (1938–1940), Tweety (1942), Sylvester the Cat (1945), Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner (1949), MGM cartoon studio 's Tom and Jerry (1940) and Droopy , Universal Cartoon Studios ' Woody Woodpecker (1940), Terrytoons / 20th Century Fox 's Mighty Mouse (1942), and United Artists ' Pink Panther (1963). In 1917, Italian-Argentine director Quirino Cristiani made
5016-545: The Prince Bubba, who had been turned into an ogre and was voiced by Thick Wilson, was deleted, and some animation of the Witch had to be discarded. Also deleted was Ken Harris's sequence of a Brigand dreaming of a Biblical temptress. Steven Spielberg saw the footage of The Thief and was impressed enough that he and Robert Zemeckis asked Williams to direct the animation of Zemeckis' film Who Framed Roger Rabbit . Williams agreed in order to get financing for The Thief and
5130-505: The Shahs had a falling out. The Shah family had a bookkeeper who was not keeping track of the studio's accounting, so Williams felt that producer Omar Ali-Shah had been embezzling financing from the studio for his own purposes. Further friction came because the Shah family had been asking for 50% of the profits from the film, and Idrias's sister, author and folklorist Amina Shah , who had done some of
5244-590: The Tramp (1955) failed at the box office. For decades afterward, Disney would be the only American studio to regularly produce animated features, until Ralph Bakshi became the first to also release more than a handful features. Sullivan-Bluth Studios began to regularly produce animated features starting with An American Tail in 1986. Although relatively few titles became as successful as Disney's features, other countries developed their own animation industries that produced both short and feature theatrical animations in
5358-521: The US. Successful producer John Randolph Bray and animator Earl Hurd , patented the cel animation process that dominated the animation industry for the rest of the century. Felix the Cat , who debuted in 1919, became the first fully realized anthropomorphic animal character in the history of American animation. In 1928, Steamboat Willie , featuring Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse , popularized film-with-synchronized-sound and put Walt Disney 's studio at
5472-495: The War Machine sequence to attract more investors but they too backed out. In the 1980s, Williams put together a 20-minute sample reel of The Thief , which he showed to Milt Kahl, a friend and one of his animation mentors, at Skywalker Ranch in Marin County . Star Wars producer Gary Kurtz briefly worked with Williams to attempt to get financing in the mid-1980s. In 1986, Williams met producer Jake Eberts , who began funding
5586-469: The animation begins. Character designers on the visual development team draw model sheets to show how each character should look like with different facial expressions, posed in different positions, and viewed from different angles. On traditionally animated projects, maquettes were often sculpted to further help the animators see how characters would look from different angles. Unlike live-action films, animated films were traditionally developed beyond
5700-521: The animators only after the production team is satisfied that all the scenes make sense as a whole. While live-action films are now also storyboarded, they enjoy more latitude to depart from storyboards (i.e., real-time improvisation). Another problem unique to animation is the requirement to maintain a film's consistency from start to finish, even as films have grown longer and teams have grown larger. Animators, like all artists, necessarily have individual styles, but must subordinate their individuality in
5814-494: The biggest problems we had was trying our desperate best, where we had brand new footage, to come up to the level of quality that he had set". Animated film Animation is a filmmaking technique by which still images are manipulated to create moving images . In traditional animation , images are drawn or painted by hand on transparent celluloid sheets ( cels ) to be photographed and exhibited on film. Animation has been recognized as an artistic medium, specifically within
SECTION 50
#17328695835205928-410: The character of Tack would be incorporated in another script written by Margaret French, which would use characters from Nasrudin , including a sleepy king, a thief and an evil vizier originally named Anwar. Many scenes that did not include Nasrudin himself were also retained. Throughout the 1970s, Williams would further rewrite the script with Margaret French, his wife at the time. Actor Vincent Price
6042-406: The city; King Nod has a vision of them the next morning. While Zigzag tries to convince Nod of the kingdom's security, the Thief steals the balls after several attempts, only to lose them to Zigzag's minions. Tack escapes from his cell using his cobbling tools during the ensuing panic. King Nod notices the balls' disappearance when the soldier warns them of the invading One-Eyes. Zigzag attempts to use
6156-479: The collapsing machine, only to run into Tack while escaping. After a brief scuffle, the Thief, realizing the balls are not worth the trouble, reluctantly gives up and leaves them with Tack. With peace restored, and the prophecy fulfilled, the city celebrates as Tack and Yum-Yum get married; Tack finally says, "I love you" in a baritone voice. The film ends with the Thief stealing the reel of the film and running away. ^a According to Richard Williams, Sean Connery
6270-714: The demand for an enormous quantity resulted in cheaper and quicker limited animation methods and much more formulaic scripts. Quality dwindled until more daring animation surfaced in the late 1980s and in the early 1990s with hit series, the first cartoon of The Simpsons (1987), which later developed into its own show (in 1989) and SpongeBob SquarePants (since 1999) as part of a "renaissance" of American animation. While US animated series also spawned successes internationally, many other countries produced their own child-oriented programming, relatively often preferring stop motion and puppetry over cel animation. Japanese anime TV series became very successful internationally since
6384-467: The desert, they discover a band of dimwitted brigands led by Chief Roofless, whom Yum-Yum recruits as her bodyguards. They reach the hand-shaped tower where the Witch lives and learn that Tack is prophesied to save the Golden City. The Witch also presents a riddle—"Attack, attack, Tack! A tack, see? But it's what you do with what you've got!"—before destroying the entire tower with a storm cloud. Tack and
6498-422: The drawings and simulate camera movement and effects. The final animated piece is output to one of several delivery media, including traditional 35 mm film and newer media with digital video . The "look" of traditional cel animation is still preserved, and the character animators ' work has remained essentially the same over the past 90 years. Some animation producers have used the term "tradigital" (a play on
6612-462: The entire film, while the other characters—with the exceptions of the Thief and Tack, who are mute—speak normally. Williams stated that he did not intend to follow "the Disney route" with his film, saying that it would be "the first animated film with a real plot that locks together like a detective story at the end". He also said that with its two mute main characters, it was essentially "a silent movie with
6726-844: The field. Many are part of general or regional film award programs, like the China's Golden Rooster Award for Best Animation (since 1981). Awards programs dedicated to animation, with many categories, include ASIFA-Hollywood 's Annie Awards , the Emile Awards in Europe and the Anima Mundi awards in Brazil. Apart from Academy Awards for Best Animated Short Film (since 1932) and Best Animated Feature (since 2002), animated movies have been nominated and rewarded in other categories, relatively often for Best Original Song and Best Original Score . Beauty and
6840-418: The film after his successful animation direction for Who Framed Roger Rabbit . When production went over budget and behind schedule, and Disney's similarly-themed Aladdin loomed as imminent competition, Williams was forced out and the film was heavily re-edited and cheaply finished by producer Fred Calvert as a mainstream Disney-style musical . It was eventually released by Allied Filmmakers in 1993 with
6954-489: The film done. While Williams encouraged the best out of people, discipline was harsh and animators were frequently fired. Funders pressured Williams to make finished scenes of the main characters for a marketing trailer. The final designs were made for the characters at this time. Test animation of Princess Yum-Yum, as featured in the released versions, was traced from the live-action film Muqaddar Ka Sikandar , with her design slightly changed later on in production. The film
SECTION 60
#17328695835207068-487: The film was missing, which did not help matters. The studio lost confidence and backed out of production entirely, and the Completion Bond Company seized control of the film, ousting Williams from the project. Additionally, Williams said that the production had lost a source of funding when Japanese investors pulled out due to the recession following the Japanese asset price bubble . Fans have cited this decision as an example of
7182-451: The film's initial release). It has maintained a cult following since its release. In a kingdom at the Arabian desert, the prosperous Golden City is ruled by the narcoleptic King Nod and protected by three golden balls atop its tallest minaret . According to a prophecy, the city would fall to "destruction and death" if the balls were removed, and could only be saved by "the simplest soul with
7296-774: The film's rehabilitated reputation, due to projects like The Recobbled Cut , a restoration by Garrett Gilchrist, and Persistence of Vision , a 2012 documentary by Kevin Schreck detailing the production. The Thief and the Cobbler is one of the films with the longest production times . It is the final film for several actors and artists, including animators Ken Harris (died 1982), Errol Le Cain (died 1989), Emery Hawkins (died 1989), Grim Natwick (died 1990), and Art Babbitt (died 1992), and actors Felix Aylmer (died 1979), Eddie Byrne (died 1981), Clinton Sundberg (died 1987), Kenneth Williams (died 1988), Sir Anthony Quayle (died 1989), and Vincent Price (died 1993, one month after
7410-401: The film) as the Mighty One-Eye. Matthews is still credited as the Mighty One-Eye in the "Recobbled Cut" version. Catherine Schell and Thick Wilson (who was also the voice of Hook in this film) were proposed as the voices for Princess Mee-Mee, the sister of Princess Yum-Yum, and the enchanted ogre Prince Bubba, respectively, in an early draft of the film. Both characters were dropped in 1989 at
7524-555: The film, which was turned into a Disney-type musical. The new scenes were photographed "on twos" rather than "on ones", with the animation being produced by freelance animators in Los Angeles and former Williams animators working with Neil Boyle at Premier Films in London. Sullivan Bluth Studios , the Dublin-based studio headed by former Disney animator Don Bluth , animated the first song sequence "She Is More", and Kroyer Films produced
7638-454: The first feature-length film El Apóstol (now lost ), which became a critical and commercial success. It was followed by Cristiani's Sin dejar rastros in 1918, but one day after its premiere, the film was confiscated by the government. After working on it for three years, Lotte Reiniger released the German feature-length silhouette animation Die Abenteuer des Prinzen Achmed in 1926,
7752-406: The forefront of the animation industry. Although Disney Animation's actual output relative to total global animation output, has always been very small; the studio has overwhelmingly dominated the "aesthetic norms" of animation ever since. The enormous success of Mickey Mouse is seen as the start of the golden age of American animation that would last until the 1960s. The United States dominated
7866-497: The golden balls atop the minaret in the courtyard, breaks into the palace through a gutter. He steals the repaired shoe from Tack, prompting the cobbler to chase him through the palace. Upon retrieving the shoe, Tack bumps into Zigzag, who notices the shoe is fixed and imprisons Tack in a cell. The One-Eyes, a race of warlike, cycloptic monsters, plan to destroy the city and have already slaughtered much of its frontier guard, all except for one mortally wounded soldier who escapes to warn
7980-611: The humour it can provide. Some animated characters in commercials have survived for decades, such as Snap, Crackle and Pop in advertisements for Kellogg's cereals. Tex Avery was the producer of the first Raid " Kills Bugs Dead " commercials in 1966, which were very successful for the company. Apart from their success in movie theaters and television series, many cartoon characters would also prove lucrative when licensed for all kinds of merchandise and for other media. Animation has traditionally been very closely related to comic books . While many comic book characters found their way to
8094-435: The late 1980s, in a style similar to traditional cel animation. The so-called 3D style, more often associated with computer animation, became the dominant technique following the success of Pixar's Toy Story (1995), the first computer-animated feature in this style. Most of the cel animation studios switched to producing mostly computer-animated films around the 1990s, as it proved cheaper and more profitable. Not only
8208-465: The live action camera was moving all the time. With Thief , Williams began planning several sequences to feature a greater use of this technique, including Tack and the Thief's palace chase, which was achieved without computer-generated imagery . According to rumours, Williams approached The Thief with a live-action point of view, coming off Roger Rabbit . He was creating extra footage and extending sequences to trim down later, and would have edited down
8322-421: The magic of moving characters. For centuries, master artists and craftsmen have brought puppets, automatons , shadow puppets , and fantastical lanterns to life, inspiring the imagination through physically manipulated wonders. In 1833, the stroboscopic disc (better known as the phenakistiscope ) introduced the principle of modern animation, which would also be applied in the zoetrope (introduced in 1866),
8436-804: The oldest extant animated feature. In 1937, Walt Disney Studios premiered their first animated feature Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs , still one of the highest-grossing traditional animation features as of May 2020 . The Fleischer studios followed this example in 1939 with Gulliver's Travels with some success. Partly due to foreign markets being cut off by the Second World War, Disney's next features Pinocchio , Fantasia (both 1940), Fleischer Studios' second animated feature Mr. Bug Goes to Town (1941–1942) and Disney's feature films Cinderella (1950), Alice in Wonderland (1951) and Lady and
8550-505: The oldest known example of a complete traditional (hand-drawn) animation on standard cinematographic film. Other great artistic and very influential short films were created by Ladislas Starevich with his puppet animations since 1910 and by Winsor McCay with detailed hand-drawn animation in films such as Little Nemo (1911) and Gertie the Dinosaur (1914). During the 1910s, the production of animated " cartoons " became an industry in
8664-460: The others return to the Golden City to find the One-Eyes' massive war machine approaching. Tack shoots a single tack into the enemy's midst, sparking a Goldberg-esque chain reaction that destroys the entire One-Eye army. Zigzag tries to escape but falls into a pit, where he is eaten alive by alligators and his vulture, Phido. The Thief, avoiding death with almost every step, steals the golden balls from
8778-468: The part when she's in a basket lighting a match to the fumes. Unlike the nanny, Sims was still credited in the Calvert cut. ^f Fred Calvert is credited on both of these versions. Hilary Pritchard was initially cast as Yum-Yum and is listed in some of the original drafts of the script and a 1989 Cannes brochure. By the time of the 1992 workprints, she had been replaced by Sara Crowe. Pritchard's name
8892-544: The polo game. ^c In both of the 1992 workprints, the Thief is heard making short grunts/wheezes in a few scenes—though not as many as in the Allied Filmmakers version. Actor Ed E. Carroll did additional ones for the Allied Filmmakers version. ^d Although Quayle's voice was mostly re-dubbed by Clive Revill in the re-edited versions of the film by Allied Filmmakers and Miramax, Quayle's uncredited voice can still be heard for an entire scene when King Nod gives
9006-456: The production through his Allied Filmmakers company and eventually provided US$ 10 million of the film's $ 28 million budget. Allied's distribution and sales partner Majestic Films began promoting the film in industry trades under the working title Once... . At this time, Eberts encouraged Williams to make changes to the script. A subplot involving the characters of Princess Mee-Mee, Yum-Yum's identical twin sister voiced by Catherine Schell, and
9120-435: The production's name was changed to The Majestic Fool and British Lion Film Corporation became the earliest mentioned distributor candidate for the independent film. The International Film Guide noted that the Williams Studio's staff had increased to forty people for production of the feature. Williams gained further attention when he and the studio produced a TV adaptation of A Christmas Carol for Chuck Jones , which won
9234-457: The request of Warner Bros. Many of the minor characters, such as Goblet, Gofer, Tickle, Slap, the Dying Soldier, and the alligators all have additional dialogue provided by currently unknown voice actors in the Miramax version. Additional characters exclusive to the Miramax version, including Zigzag's announcer is voiced by an unknown actor and the Thief's mother is voiced by Mickie McGowan, who
9348-459: The ruby. Approximately 18 minutes of completed animation were cut by Calvert due to the scenes' repetitiveness. Calvert said: "We hated to see all this beautiful animation hit the cutting room floor, but that was the only way we could make a story out of it. He [Williams] was kind of Rube Goldberg-ing his way through. I don't think he was able to step back and look at the whole thing as a story. He's an incredible animator, though. Incredible. One of
9462-764: The screen (which is often the case in Japan, where many manga are adapted into anime ), original animated characters also commonly appear in comic books and magazines. Somewhat similarly, characters and plots for video games (an interactive form of animation that became its own medium) have been derived from films and vice versa. Some of the original content produced for the screen can be used and marketed in other media. Stories and images can easily be adapted into children's books and other printed media. Songs and music have appeared on records and as streaming media. While very many animation companies commercially exploit their creations outside moving image media, The Walt Disney Company
9576-577: The second number "Am I Feeling Love?". The animation was subcontracted to Wang Film Productions in Taiwan and its division Thai Wang Film Productions in Thailand, as well as Pacific Rim Animation in China and Varga Studio in Hungary. Robert Folk was brought on to compose a new score replacing the score from the workprint, with the lone exception being Night on Bald Mountain when the Thief prepares to try and fly to
9690-458: The side opposite the line drawings. The completed character cels are photographed one-by-one against a painted background by a rostrum camera onto motion picture film. The traditional cel animation process became obsolete by the beginning of the 21st century. In modern traditionally animated films, animators' drawings and the backgrounds are either scanned into or drawn directly into a computer system. Various software programs are used to color
9804-414: The smallest and simplest of things." Living in the city is a cobbler , Tack, and a nameless, unsuccessful yet persistent Thief, who are both mute . When the Thief sneaks into Tack's house, the two get stitched together and stumble outside, causing Tack's tacks to fall onto the street. Zigzag, King Nod's Grand Vizier , steps on one of the tacks and orders Tack to be arrested while the Thief escapes. Tack
9918-405: The state of production in detail. Calvert had made multiple trips to Williams's London studio to see how the film was progressing, and judged that Williams was "woefully behind schedule and way over budget". Williams had a script, but "he wasn't following it faithfully". (According to Garrett Gilchrist, however, this anecdote is false.) Calvert and people from the Completion Bond Company were visiting
10032-457: The stolen balls to negotiate Yum-Yum's hand in marriage in exchange for returning the Balls, but when King Nod dismisses him, Zigzag defects to the One-Eyes and gives them the balls instead. King Nod sends Yum-Yum, her nurse, and Tack to ask for help from a "mad and holy old Witch" in the desert. They are secretly followed by the Thief, who hears of a golden idol on the journey but fails to steal it. In
10146-436: The stories featuring Mulla Nasruddin". Williams took on television and feature film projects in order to fund his project, and work on his film progressed slowly. Williams hired veteran Warner Bros. animator Ken Harris as a chief animator on the project, then titled The Amazing Nasrudin . Roy Naisbitt was hired as layout artist / art director for the film, and promotional art showed intricate Indian and Persian designs. In 1970,
10260-418: The studio an Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film . According to composer Howard Blake , Williams and the studio had animated around three hours of footage for what was now being called Nasrudin by 1972 . Blake insisted to Williams that while he thought the footage was excellent, he needed to structure the film and his footage into a three-act plot. The Nasruddin premise did not last as Williams and
10374-420: The studio assignments, such as the 1977 feature Raggedy Ann & Andy: A Musical Adventure . The Mad Holy Old Witch was designed as a caricature of animator Grim Natwick , by whom she was animated. After Natwick died, Williams would animate the Witch himself. As years passed, the project became more ambitious. Williams said that his idea was "to make the best animated film that has ever been made—there really
10488-442: The studio more often towards the end of production. Williams was giving dailies of sequences that were finished or scrapped since the 1980s, hoping to give an indication of progress to Warner Bros. He was asked to show the investors a rough copy of the film with the remaining scenes filled in with storyboards to demonstrate its narrative. He made a workprint which combined finished footage, pencil tests, storyboards, and movements from
10602-416: The studio to focus primarily on various TV commercial, special and feature film title assignments, leaving Williams's film to be worked on as a side project. Since Williams had no money to have a full team working on the film, which was a "giant epic", production dragged for decades. Ken Harris was still chief animator on the film, as he had been since Nasrudin , and Williams would assign him sequences while he
10716-403: The symphonic suite Scheherazade to cover the 10–15 minutes left to finish. Animators found out that they had completed more than enough footage for an 87-minute feature, but they had yet to finish certain vital sequences involving the central story. On 13 May 1992, this rough version of the film was shown to Warner Bros., and was not well-received. During the screening, the penultimate reel of
10830-425: The synopsis stage through the storyboard format; the storyboard artists would then receive credit for writing the film. In the early 1960s, animation studios began hiring professional screenwriters to write screenplays (while also continuing to use story departments) and screenplays had become commonplace for animated films by the late 1980s. Traditional animation (also called cel animation or hand-drawn animation)
10944-512: The tales of Mulla Nasruddin , a philosophical yet " wise fool " of Near Eastern folklore from the 13th century. Williams began development work on a film based on the stories, with Shah and his family championing production. Production took place at Richard Williams Productions in Soho Square , London . In an early mention of the project, the 1968 International Film Guide told that Williams would soon begin work on "the first of several films based on
11058-550: The title The Princess and the Cobbler . Two years later, Miramax Films , which was owned by Disney at the time, released another re-edit titled Arabian Knight . Both versions performed poorly at the box office and received mixed reviews. Over the years, various people and companies, including Roy E. Disney , have discussed restoring the film to its original version. In 2013, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences archived Williams's own 35 mm workprint . He acknowledged
11172-428: The translations for the Nasrudin books, stated ownership of the stories. With her threatening with a copyright infringement lawsuit, Paramount Pictures withdrew a deal they had been negotiating, and Williams was forced to abandon Nasrudin as the Shah family took the rights of the source material. However, Williams was able to keep characters he designed for the books and the film, including a thief character. In 1973,
11286-462: The two . As CGI increasingly approximates photographic imagery , filmmakers can easily composite 3D animations into their film rather than using practical effects for showy visual effects (VFX). Computer animation can be very detailed 3D animation , while 2D computer animation (which may have the look of traditional animation) can be used for stylistic reasons, low bandwidth, or faster real-time renderings . Other common animation methods apply
11400-833: The use of less detailed or more stylized drawings and methods of movement usually a choppy or "skippy" movement animation. Limited animation uses fewer drawings per second, thereby limiting the fluidity of the animation. This is a more economic technique. Pioneered by the artists at the American studio United Productions of America , limited animation can be used as a method of stylized artistic expression, as in Gerald McBoing-Boing (US, 1951), Yellow Submarine (UK, 1968), and certain anime produced in Japan. Its primary use, however, has been in producing cost-effective animated content for media for television (the work of Hanna-Barbera, Filmation , and other TV animation studios ) and later
11514-565: The value had increased to an estimated US$ 370 billion. Animated feature-length films returned the highest gross margins (around 52%) of all film genres between 2004 and 2013. Animation as an art and industry continues to thrive as of the early 2020s. The clarity of animation makes it a powerful tool for instruction, while its total malleability also allows exaggeration that can be employed to convey strong emotions and to thwart reality. It has therefore been widely used for other purposes than mere entertainment. During World War II, animation
11628-401: The very popular 3D animation style was generated with computers, but also most of the films and series with a more traditional hand-crafted appearance, in which the charming characteristics of cel animation could be emulated with software, while new digital tools helped developing new styles and effects. In 2010, the animation market was estimated to be worth circa US$ 80 billion. By 2021,
11742-445: The way to a rehearsal space during production on Raggedy Ann and Andy: A Musical Adventure . Matthews had not done any acting before, and so Williams had promptly cast him as the Mighty One-Eye. Not long afterward, however, Williams, wanting to go in a different direction, replaced Matthews' voice with "England's tallest man" Christopher Greener (mistakenly credited as Christopher Greenham or Chris Greenham in several pamphlets promoting
11856-683: The words "traditional" and "digital") to describe cel animation that uses significant computer technology. Examples of traditionally animated feature films include Pinocchio (United States, 1940), Animal Farm (United Kingdom, 1954), Lucky and Zorba (Italy, 1998), and The Illusionist (British-French, 2010). Traditionally animated films produced with the aid of computer technology include The Lion King (US, 1994), Anastasia (US, 1997), The Prince of Egypt (US, 1998), Akira (Japan, 1988), Spirited Away (Japan, 2001), The Triplets of Belleville (France, 2003), and The Secret of Kells (Irish-French-Belgian, 2009). Full animation
11970-402: The workprint he later assembled. Warner Bros. had signed a deal with the Completion Bond Company to ensure that the studio would be given a finished film, otherwise they would finish The Thief under their management. Dedicated but pressured, Williams was taking his time to ensure sequences would look perfect. Animators were working overtime, sometimes with sixty hours a week required, to get
12084-477: The world market of animation with a plethora of cel-animated theatrical shorts. Several studios would introduce characters that would become very popular and would have long-lasting careers, including Walt Disney Productions ' Goofy (1932) and Donald Duck (1934), Fleischer Studios / Paramount Cartoon Studios ' Out of the Inkwell ' Koko the Clown (1918), Bimbo and Betty Boop (1930), Popeye (1933) and Casper
12198-529: Was gradually developed since the 1940s. 3D wireframe animation started popping up in the mainstream in the 1970s, with an early (short) appearance in the sci-fi thriller Futureworld (1976). The Rescuers Down Under was the first feature film to be completely created digitally without a camera. It was produced using the Computer Animation Production System (CAPS), developed by Pixar in collaboration with The Walt Disney Company in
12312-441: Was hired to voice Anwar, later renamed "Zigzag". His dialogue was recorded in the summer of 1973, while he was filming Madhouse . Price was hired to make the villain more enjoyable for Williams, as he was a great fan of Price's work and Zigzag was based on two people whom Williams hated. In addition to Price, Sir Anthony Quayle was cast as King Nod. The characters were renamed at this point. Zigzag speaks mostly in rhyme throughout
12426-464: Was not finished by a 1991 deadline that Warner Bros. originally imposed upon Williams, and had approximately 10 to 15 minutes of screen time to complete, which, at Williams's rate, was estimated to take "a tight six months" or longer. The animation department at Warner Bros. had put their enthusiasm towards high-quality television animation, but had little confidence towards backing feature animation. The studio had already released The Nutcracker Prince ,
12540-562: Was not very skilled in animating and that he needed to actually learn the art, if he wanted to hold the audience's interest: "I was a graphic artist in animation … thought I was ever so clever, until one day I realized I didn’t know a damned thing. I couldn’t suspend disbelief for more than 15 to 20 minutes. I thought I had better go and study ‘how you do it’. So we did … and it was a nasty shock to realize when you thought you were wonderful and were covered with awards, that you didn’t know how to do it, at all." Williams hired veteran animators from
12654-435: Was set to record Tack's one line, but never showed up at the studio, so the line was instead performed by a friend of his wife's. However, Connery's name remains credited as Tack in the end credits of the "Recobbled Cut" version. ^b While Yum-Yum's dialogue was mostly re-voiced by Bobbi Page for the Allied Filmmakers version, one vocal effect from Crowe is retained when Yum-Yum throws her pear at Zigzag in disgust during
12768-463: Was still retained in the credits of the "Recobbled Cut" version, until Mark 5 when Sara was finally credited. Similarly, Miriam Margolyes was initially billed as the Maiden from Mombasa, but the workprint features co-writer Margaret French as the Maiden. According to animator Michael Sporn , Paul Matthews was an African-American delivery person with a deep, dark voice whom Williams met in an elevator on
12882-440: Was supervising production on commercials. To save money, scenes were kept in pencil stage without colour, as advised by Richard Purdum: "Work on paper! Don't put it in colour. Don't spend on special effects. Don't do camera-work, tracing or painting... just do the rough drawings!" Williams was planning to later finish these sequences when the financing would come in. Upon seeing Disney's The Jungle Book , Williams realised that he
12996-418: Was widely exploited for propaganda. Many American studios , including Warner Bros. and Disney, lent their talents and their cartoon characters to convey to the public certain war values. Some countries, including China, Japan and the United Kingdom, produced their first feature-length animation for their war efforts. Animation has been very popular in television commercials, both due to its graphic appeal, and
#519480