The timing here is bit faster than the finished sequence but thats how the original video for this was anyway.

That's tremendous concentration.

Reading the history of the production of this film made me feel very depressed.
Could it be that Williams became delusional with this film?

Maybe it would have been better if he just moved on and tried to make his masterpiece with another project, instead of trying to save this film for over 28 years without success.

I've met an animator that worked on this. I think he is originally from Germany, but I'm struggling to remember his name. He works for Passion Pictures in London (they animate the Gorillaz videos). I think there were at least two other animators that helped animate this. There was more than one attempt and they had to do quite bit of maths to finally get it right.

Richard Williams reportedly had some animators work almost exclusively on background animation scenes similar to this for periods of up to two years (with at least one guy having little to none of this work actually ending up in any final cut). I think it is that high level of specialisation that made this kind of masterful work possible.

Well, it's impressive on a purely technical level, but also clearly impractical as a production process with the standards he had. Overbudget, missed deadlines, and in the end he couldn't even finish the film. What a waste honestly. I think there's something to be said about finding the right balance between passion and practicality.

duckroll said:
Well, it's impressive on a purely technical level, but also clearly impractical as a production process with the standards he had. Overbudget, missed deadlines, and in the end he couldn't even finish the film. What a waste honestly. I think there's something to be said about finding the right balance between passion and practicality.

I think there were three major death knells for this film.

1. The film was led by animation rather than story. He thought of the most technically impressive animation scenes and then tried to shoe horn them into a story. If even half of the care that went into the animation went into the story and clear locked down storyboards it would had fared better and not been such a hydra. Even after the 2+ decades the story is still not fully resolved.

2. Richard Williams had an almost religious commitment to working on 1's, even for relatively slow scenes. If he just changed that one thing he would have greatly increased his chances of meeting the deadlines.

3. The decision by a particular still powerful animation exec to steal his thunder with Aladdin which is heavily based on the Thief & Cobbler, put further pressure on the execs to take drastic measures with William's glacially paced project.

However, I would say that not all was lost on this film, or the techniques that were honed at Richard Williams studio during the project. They helped give birth to 'The Animator's Survival Kit' (arguably the most highly regarded animation book of the last 50 years), 'Who Framed Roger Rabbit' and provided a training ground for many virtuoso animators of the "Disney Renaissance" eg. James Baxter, Andreas Deja.

I wish he had kept making (feature) films after this.
He's currently working on an artistic short film at Aardman, aptly named "Will I live to Finish This"

But ultimately you are correct. The balance between passion and practicality certainly was not struck.

Oh for sure, Richard Williams is an amazing animator and patron to the industry. This particular film collapsed for the various reasons you mentioned, and I believe the lack of proper storyboards also contributed to the narrative issues.

My understanding is that he refused to make proper detailed storyboards for the film out of a fear that it would limit the creativity and freedom of the animation itself. Without completed storyboards to guide the process along, it is not surprising that much work was wasted on scenes which ended up being redundant or extra scenes being required as the production went on to fill in ideas which popped up. A real shame really.

I love seeing artists explore full creative freedom without being restrained, but I think these forms of exploratory process are best left to short films. Trying it with a full length feature generally ends with catastrophic results.

A lot of you guys speculations on what happened are answered by a some prominent animators that worked on the project in the "Persistence of Vision" documentary i got these clips from. I highly recommend you guys seek it out. Very good summation of what went on and some of the animators actually talk about the scene they were responsible for though this scene wasn't elaborated upon like some others were in the documentary.

SakugaDaichi said:
A lot of you guys speculations on what happened are answered by a some prominent animators that worked on the project in the "Persistence of Vision" documentary i got these clips from. I highly recommend you guys seek it out. Very good summation of what went on and some of the animators actually talk about the scene they were responsible for though this scene wasn't elaborated upon like some others were in the documentary.

Yes, I saw it about a year ago. Great film. I'm basing what I'm saying on a mix of having seen that film, speaking to the documentary maker and speaking to Richard Williams (on a separate occasion specifically on the issue of his work being stolen in Aladdin).

duckroll said:

I love seeing artists explore full creative freedom without being restrained, but I think these forms of exploratory process are best left to short films. Trying it with a full length feature generally ends with catastrophic results.

I wholeheartedly agree.

pkoduah said:
I think there were three major death knells for this film.

1. The film was led by animation rather than story. He thought of the most technically impressive animation scenes and then tried to shoe horn them into a story. If even half of the care that went into the animation went into the story and clear locked down storyboards it would had fared better and not been such a hydra. Even after the 2+ decades the story is still not fully resolved.

2. Richard Williams had an almost religious commitment to working on 1's, even for relatively slow scenes. If he just changed that one thing he would have greatly increased his chances of meeting the deadlines.

3. The decision by a particular still powerful animation exec to steal his thunder with Aladdin which is heavily based on the Thief & Cobbler, put further pressure on the execs to take drastic measures with William's glacially paced project.

However, I would say that not all was lost on this film, or the techniques that were honed at Richard Williams studio during the project. They helped give birth to 'The Animator's Survival Kit' (arguably the most highly regarded animation book of the last 50 years), 'Who Framed Roger Rabbit' and provided a training ground for many virtuoso animators of the "Disney Renaissance" eg. James Baxter, Andreas Deja.

I wish he had kept making (feature) films after this.
He's currently working on an artistic short film at Aardman, aptly named "Will I live to Finish This"

But ultimately you are correct. The balance between passion and practicality certainly was not struck.

seeing this comment is kinda sad as he had passed away :(

This was drawn back in the 60's, right?

akira625 said:
This was drawn back in the 60's, right?

The film was first conceptualized in the 60s but I don't believe any real production really happened until the 70s.

When was this specific sequence drawn? It's gonna be hard to pin down since this project was in production on and off for almost 30 years.