My animation to complete one of the most beautiful incomplete shots from Richard Williams’s unfinished masterpiece “The Thief and the Cobbler” is done! After 14 months and hundreds of hours this shot is completed to my satisfaction.

A comparison between how the shot looked originally and how it looks now.

After all my work on it, not a single frame of the original shot is unaltered, but always in such a way that it matches Richard Williams’s intent, as far as I know it. The new animation is integrated and composited into the existing roses to match the rest of the film. Hundreds of instances of dirt and hairs are removed from the roses as well as incomplete or damaged animation frames completed. The color’s have been made consistent throughout the shot and missing grain readded to create a more coherent overall image.

The original, low quality VHS background is removed by creating frame by frame 2D masks to separate the roses from the background and have a clean plate. The new background is restored to how it could have looked originally, based on numerous sources, to the best of my abilities. After that, the original background animation has been recreated in After Effects. This has been a fun and very educational experience, and I am very happy with the end result. I hope you like it as well and if so, please let me know!

The roses themselves are animated by Margaret Grieve, and then rendered on cell’s by render artist Dee Morgan.

A very special thanks to Richard Williams, by whose brilliance and imagination this all started. Also many thanks to the following people: Margaret Grieve and Dee Morgan, upon whose work I have continued. Thanks to whomever originally animated the incomplete linetest of the hands and stems. To Garrett Gilchrist, for his work on the recobbled Cut, his knowledge on the film and for graciously sharing high quality resources to work with.