The Thief and the Cobbler | Rough Animation Montage

I was very excited to see, only a few days ago, that some young and generous soul had found it within himself the desire to seek out the many fine and talented folks who worked on this project, and bring the nearly lost and forgotten tale of its creation to light: in a brand-new documentary entitled The Persistence of Vision.

I now, thankfully, and one of the individuals lucky enough to own a copy of this film, and will be bringing you my thoughts as soon as the DVD is in my hands. It is also fortunate that a previously unseen cut of The Thief and the Cobbler, prior to the Disney/Miramax debacle, is going to be a bonus feature on this DVD set. So not only will I write a review about the documentary, but I will also finally be able to gush about my feelings on this masterpiece of 2D animation.

I am well aware that the Recobbled Cut has been around for quite some time, but that version is of course from a fan-made source, and is essentially a boot-leg, even if it’s mostly built from existing material of the actual production. And while I commend that fan’s efforts in trying to produce a worthy version of a film almost lost to us in its intended form, I would first like to see what an original print of the existing film looked like before I make my judgments.

For the moment, I figured I should pass this around some more, since it seems to be catching ground in animation circles, and this is an animation-centric blog after all. These are original pencil-test films of The Thief and the Cobbler during production, all pieced together possibly as a form of advertisement for potential investors.

It’s a little hard to see at times, but its really a marvel to look at this, because it allows for you to see the magic of animation with all of the working pieces visible. Even the animator’s table. And I just love that.

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