Zigzag's Playing Cards - The Thief and the Cobbler (HD)
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- Опубликовано: 28 янв 2013
- Richard Williams animation. New HD transfer. 25 damaged frames were repaired in Photoshop, often using elements from the Miramax DVD.
www.mediafire.com/?ye1cwqlj29p...
The famous shot of Zigzag with his playing cards is particularly damaged in the KA reels, so I chose it as my first restored HD shot. 25 frames total were repaired, often using elements from the (pan & scan) Miramax DVD. This shot appears at the end of a reel, so it has large black asterixes drawn over about ten of the frames. The luminance of the Miramax DVD was used to restore the original animation, with coloring redone by hand. Some of the more distracting dirt was painted out. There were two splices, at the beginning and in the middle of the shot. This also results in two "jump frames" after each splice, where the projector is recovering from the splice and the frame appears blurred vertically as it is moving upward. Some Miramax DVD material was also used here. I may go back and revise this further as there are very minor discrepancies in the colors of the repaired frames. Also, with this being my first HD shot, I have not yet figured out how to make my color settings in Photoshop match those in Final Cut Pro for the HD material, so there are minor color differences there as well.
Restoring HD material is significantly more difficult than SD material - there is much more detail, there's film grain to deal with, and a much higher standard that the work has to be held to. 
Кино
What kind of mad god can animate an entire deck of cards with each card moving independently
I think it was a team
Not to mention with only paper. No digital assistance at all..
Kfray and no this particular scene was definitely animated by Richard. He did ALOT in the cobbler
Kfray there’s a documentary about the making of this film and iirc in that doc Richard Williams said he did this scene by himself.
Richard Williams
This scene feels unintentionally symbolic here. Zigzag is capable of impressive tricks with his cards, but he goes for something too fancy, and it falls apart. Kinda like the movie itself
It’s like how Richard Williams said “the story behind the movie’s making is more interesting than the actual movie’s plot itself”
Wow
I would think it’s intentionally symbolic since this is how he is characterized throughout the film.
Parlor tricks and manipulation are nice but they only end up costing you when someone isn't impressed so easily.
There was only a little bit of this movie that didn't get animated if you really think about it, how many long sweeping shots that overstay their welcome prevented the movie from being finished? I can marvel at the magic of animation for 10 hours straight but the same can be done by combining many short clips together. This was supposed to be a movie, not a clip show, at some point the plot has to come forth and lead the animation, not the other way around.
@@ThatBugBehindYouthis was supposed to be Richard Williams magnum opus. A showcase and celebration of animation first and foremost.
Those complex shots are the whole reason the movie was being made in the first place
It's cool how his body doesnt have a clear outline but you can still "see" it
Liz S he’s a big boi
Its cause all the acting are.in the arms and face. Gorgeous acting.righr there
Gestalt animation babyeeeee
@@herr_crustovsky Yeah, you can see the glare on his shoulders as well. I wonder if they deliberately ended up placing the cells over a black background to achieve this effect, or whether it's just a side effect from lack of contrast. Looks super cool, though.
@@mercilesscuttlefish darn it I was going to say that
504 frames of animation, 21 seconds with 24 frames. Williams had this movie shot on 1s, so this is some of the most fluent animation I’ve ever seen.
fluid, and you are absolutely correct
Actually when the pearls in his hands shine you can use "." and "," too see that it is in two's. But even so, its a really impressive work that took almost 30 years.. Amazing
@@Gabiyi On twos when he needs to
@P.G. Ferret since you're the most recent comment, mind telling me what 1s and 2s mean I know nothing of animation
@P.G. Ferret thank you very much that's really helpful and damn that really explains why the movie was never finished if it's animating at such quality
The last card he grabs is the joker
joker's trick
That’s got to be a metaphor for something.
@@BlackCover95 He's a bad magician and a trickster. You can see that the joker falls from his clothes, he was hiding it.
TriggerHappy226
Well spotted. How did I not notice that?
@@BlackCover95 *looks at part where it falls out from behind him* right there
There's more animation in this one clip than the entire 24 episode run of some anime.
What the fuck are you doing here?
kenny lauderdale you right, and also, HOLY CRAP! YOU HERE, TOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Yes, in that alone there are about 504 frames of animation in there
Oof there's no need to make a comparison
@Simple Weirdo Anime is choppy as fuck lol how can you not agree? Just because it can look beautiful it doesn't mean you have to deny Japan's odd fear of fluid animation. I think Japanese animation would benefit from a more diverse array of art styles, they seem to be wary of branching out one bit (exceptions are not the rule)
Look at this scene: numerous colors, double exposure to light up 20 individual pieces of jewelry and 52 playing cards drawn and colored exactly as they appear in a real deck. No shortcuts, no cheating, nothing. It's a money shot.
Now remember that Richard Williams wanted every single moment in this film, no matter how unnecessary, to be just as, if not MORE complex, and insisted that his animators scrap and restart just about every scene innumerable times, rarely using storyboards mind you, and you will know EXACTLY why his vision was never realized. That was his problem: he wanted an entire movie of money shots.
Numerous times I've read "he wanted to make the greatest animated film of all time." He got lost in his definition of "greatest," because even if this film turned out exactly how Williams envisioned it, I doubt I'd say it WAS the greatest animated film I'd ever seen.
Das rite.
The problem is that he focused only on the animation, instead of the story and the characters
I dont find it a problem to want to give 100% its takes years, sure it doesnt make great story, But its ment for just pure animation, a visual spectical
... CHRIST.
The making of The Thief is a story about what it would look like if an artist attempted to make something 100% according to his vision with absolutely no compromises. It is a heroic story, where ultimately Williams flew too close to the sun and got burned. But what we got out of that, however flawed, gives us just a glimpse of what could have been. A completely uncompromised artistic vision.
Think about it. Imagine an artist with infinite time and infinite resources. What could they do? Unfortunately few have that luxury.
did oyu watch the "cobbled cut"? It does restore alot of the movie's original vision
Reminds me of a quote "The enemy of progress is perfection."
Williams decided to go for perfection but missed out on the fact his funds and time were not in fact infinite and screwed up big timr
I've heard the progenitor of Emperor's New Groove has a similar backstory.
@@SudrianTales Mayuri Kurotsuchi from Bleach quite beautifully expands this quote:
"The 'perfect being', you said? I have to tell you the honest truth. There is nothing in this world that is truly 'perfect'. It may be a cliche thing to say, but it's the way things are. That's precisely why ordinary men pursue the concept of perfection, it's infatuation. But ultimately, I have to ask myself, what is the true meaning of perfection? And the answer is, there is none. Not one thing. I spit in the eye of perfection. If something truly is perfect, that's it! No more intelligence, ability or improvement! Do you understand? To true scientists like you and I, 'perfection' is tantamount to 'despair'. We aspire to reach greater levels of brilliance than ever before, but never, NEVER, to reach perfection. That is the paradox through which we scientists must struggle. Indeed, it is our duty to find pleasure in that struggle. In other words, you may think we operate on the same level, but you're wrong. The moment you started spouting that perfection nonsense, you had already lost to me. That is of course if you are a scientist at all."
@@--i-am-rootingdom of the Sun got screwed because of corporate meddling and tight deadlines, not necessarily artistic endeavors. I do hope we get to see a workprint of it someday.
RIP Richard Williams, one of the greatest and most influential pioneers of modern animation.
His original vision will never come to fruition.
Without this man, feature animation wouldn't have made such a stellar recovery.
Godspeed, *Richard Williams.*
@@robbiewalker2831 Indeed. All we can do now is maybe attempt to finish the unfinished in his style. Not even sure if that's possible.
No! When did this happen? Horrible news, can't believe I haven't heard until now.
Rest in peace to one of the greatest animators who ever lived, creative juggernaut, his book is doubtless the best resource that anyone could have for learning animation and it's also got so many entertaining anecdotes. I hope his works continue to live on forever and inspire more generations of animators to make great stuff.
Wait, he died? When?
The fact that he doesn't lose a single card shows that he, in fact, does control the decks.
apparently not very well. but yes, he has (limited) control
The style of this is probably what those Zelda CDI animators were going for.
It definitely has that exaggerated movement that Theif and the Cobbler tends to have.
At first i saw this as an insult to this animation but that makes sense with the fluidity. Those cdi cutscenes just didnt try as hard and failed. They are great for ytp tho.
I would pay to see those cutscenes reanimated with this much quality
Imagine if Richard Williams had animated the CDI games like "Hotel Mario" and "The Wand of Gamelon"
Even the audio sounds like it would belong in a CDI game
"I have power over people, though they may appear complex. For me, they fall like playing cards and I controll the decks. Bla, Hehe, Hoho, Ha, Hehe, Hahaha, Hui."
𝕐𝔼𝕊
The perfect subtitles don't exi-
"Oh so that's where the budget went"
"Of course of course"
That Williams what a card
Found you.
Just noticed Zigzag has an extra finger on each hand.
He's the author of the journals!!! Look out! The beast with one eye is about to get the balls!!!
Probably how he can manipulate all those cards so easily.
He also has an extra notch in each finger, and a ring for each notch on his hands, which results in him having about 34 rings in his hands
Blue skin, extra fingers, and extra points of articulation? Zigzag is clearly an Arcane who went evil after being trapped in a planar world with little to no real magic.
@Captain Falcon He was designed to be in a movie that didn't get finished.
Vincent Price, one of the most amazing voices your ears could ever have the honor hearing.
Ratigon is my fave Vincent Price voice performance. (Also one of my fave Disney villains)
And this was (technically, since the film was in development for over 30 years) his last film role
@@grantmortensonva yeah, dude had been dead for some time by the time this movie finally came out
@@imsoadjectiveiverbnouns5499 As I understand it, Ratigan was Price's favorite role as well.
Ask me my favorite voice role I will say Ratigon ask me my favorite movie role I can't say , for the man is a legend and will live on forever as one of the best. Every time you hear his iconic voice you know, you are in for a great ride. He gives you 200% for a role that would demand 80% . From his first to his last film he was always enjoyable.
Long live the memory of the legend that is Vincent Price
For this scene in particular, Factor in that it's ALL animated on ones (as in 24 frames of animation for the 24 frames of film that make up one second), factor in that zig zag has 4 bones in every finger, unlike the 3 which we normally have in real life, factor in that he has a ring on each finger joint, and of course factor in the trick he tries to pull off with the deck of cards, only to mess up and cause all of the cards to fly off in different directions while he ALSO has to catch them in Mid air, and you can get an idea of what Richard Williams wanted to do with this movie.
He also has double elbows and double shoulders
Arturo Gonzalez-Barrios I mean, he is zigzag after all.
He also has six fingers, not five or four like other people animate. SIX.
Some poor animator spent 5 years on that
HI Lance
No rumour. Richard talked about it himself. Every few years he'd show the sequence to his mentor Ken Harris- "am I an animator yet, Ken?" and when it was complete Ken said "fine, you're an animator"
hi lance
lemondate how’s Allura doing
Diamond Jim Murphy that’s almost as bad as if he said, “yeah sure whatever ok.”
my god, watch this at .25 speed. if you focus on any part of this, whether it’s his cards or his hands, or his face, you can see a man working at the height of his skill. the amount of detail is astounding. it’s a complete masterpiece in 20 seconds. genuinely, it is breathtaking how much Williams was a master of his craft. he will truly be missed.
Looking at it slowed down and focusing on the cards when ZigZag spreads them out, I wouldn't be surprised if Williams insisted there be all 52 cards.
@@matthewpaul6904he hand drew all 52 cards moving independently in every...single...frame.
I cannot imagine how much team behind this movie suffered because of one madman
This looks like it was unedited. Like actual recovered footage. That's how good this is.
It is unedited, well nearly unedited. Just a few fixes.
I love the fairly subtle use of negative space here, with the black of Zig Zag's robes blending into the One Eye's flag. It's very simple but the effect really helps magnify the batshit insane animation of the cards.
That last little "HEE" with the eyebrows gets me every time. 😂
You truly just don't realize how insane this scene is until you actually try animation yourself
This short animation Show's a grand part of Zigzag's character. He IS an eccentric manipulator. Once in a while he may lose control of one or a dozen people in the world, But only for a second or two.
I think the unsung hero of this scene is the person(s) who had to edit in the sound.
Imagine trying to get the sound for an entire deck of playing cards getting unfolded in the air.
I watched this scene dozens of times and always thought the joker card popped out of his sleeve (and that would have worked fine absolutely anywhere else!). What a woeful underestimation! Just watching it in slow motion, you can actually see that the joker card is among the last few cards that are fluttering about, it drifts behind him and pops out afterwards. That's how much detail there is in this scene!
Such insane detail. You can actually spot the moment Joker goes behind Zigzag.
get yourself a girl whose personality is as amazing as this animation
Basically every line Zigzag said was quotable.
Oh, greatest king of all the earth,
this low-born cobbler of no worth
attacked me in the square today.
Shall we take his head away?
The final card he had to snap out of the air was the joker. A nice touch.
No matter how many times I see this, it just blows me away.
Zigzag is sooo...weird.
He does..."things" that are very well animated.
And he says..."words" that are very complex.
But it all feels out of place...he feels out of place.
Probably just a result of the INSANE flow that this entire film possesses. I've watched it and the complete parts seem almost ethereal in how smooth they move...
Zigzag creepypasta incoming
He also has 6 fingers cause Richard got tired of hearing "drawing hands is hard" :)
He is a six-dimensional character in a two-dimensional movie.
Because he reminds you of Genie and Jafar at the same time
its just 20 seconds of animation, but i bet it took EONS to plan and animate each frame.
Not to mention the coloring and lighting effects.
I listened to a podcast where they said the director animated this bit himself and spent months on it.
Anime's still superior over Western. Zigzag looks poorly designed.
Personally, I think that the character designs in this film is one of its greatest strengths. But I respect your opinion. Spirited Away is actually my favourite film, period. But there's just something inherently admirable about this movie, which I think is hand drawn animation at its absolute finest. While anime is usually 6 fps this is 24 fps, which makes it the most fluid (hand drawn) animation I've ever seen. Not that being 6 fps automatically means that anime's bad animation, but I enjoy Spirited Away and this movie for different reasons. Not every animation needs to be 24 fps, but I am glad that this one is.
Credin Animations low quality bait
I’ll be real, if I met this guy, I’d be more impressed at his ability to catch all those cards than his silly tricks.
I've watched this dozens of times and I am just now appreciating how these twenty seconds of painstaking animation tell us everything we need to know about ZigZag. He's manipulative, grandiose, arrogant and finally, a total fraud. It's just perfect.
This scene gets better with each watch. I swear the fluidity is almost therapeutic.
To think Williams animated this all by himself.
He did?
No. No he did not
@@andreesond This particular clip, yes.
Damn... Vincent Price 's classic voice and Richard William's artistry...which too few human eyes have seen and heard on the theater screen ( we know that millions have seen this on video and internet but the giant movie screen?? Too few have seen)
R.I.P. Vincent Price
Play the part with the cards at .25 speed.
The amount of details in just a 5 minute span is insane.
Second. Not minute.
Guess it kind of explains why the project went through development hell.
Looks like actual slowed-down footage of a person playing with cards. And it was hand-drawn and colored. No animation should take this much work.
It's so funny at 0:15 when you do this. 🤣
This is why I found it hard to believe this movie got only two stars on netflix.
The quality is insane even by today's standards.
The problem is that there's a lot more than visuals to a good movie. The animation is stellar, but nothing else in the movie really broke above mediocre tbh.
This movie really is not very good, outside of it's incredible animation. there's just too many "gaps" because of how incomplete it was (owing to it's long and troubled history) and a lot of it's plot is pretty by-the-numbers.
Disney actually copied a lot of this movie's ideas in the 90's when it was producing _Aladdin,_ but made a much better story out of it.
@@hobomike6935 And ironically some of the scenes that were finished are a bit too drawn out.
So sad that this film never got to see the light of day as it was originally intended.
Rest in peace Richard Williams
Technically he has "power over people". Unfortunately he didn't have power over crocodiles and he basically went the way of Ramsay Bolton from GOT cause he didn't feed his pets.
It really is worth watching this frame by frame. The amount of work that went into it is beyond incredible.
I love how each card that falls has their own path and style. You'll also notice, Zig Zag doesn't even need to look at his hands to know when to catch a card. Watch his right hand as the card falls back into the deck and he closes his thumb to hold it down. Crazy attention to detail
I always think the studio spent millions on this scene..... but maybe, just maybe, the animators are highly skilled to create this part with no trouble
gotta give Richard Williams credit for animating this good. if your methods are used by every animator, every one, then you must be doing something right.
One dislike? The cobbler has been spotted.
Ky Mo we got 2 dislikes, the theif has seen it too
4 dislikes. Guess YumYum and King Nod must have been brought here as well.
Now there are 41 dislikes, I wonder if most of these are the Brigands.
The likes must be the alligators; who else would like Zigzag?
In Memory Of Richard Williams
(1933 - 2019)
Animation Director Of The Thief And The Cobbler
The final role of Vincent Price.
The last screened one that is. He recorded this in the 70s.
Wasn't he in Edward Scissorhands though?
I don't think I'll ever truely appreciate this scene. Everytime I look at it, I take it for granted.
This little segment literally took years to complete
RIP Richard Williams... your animation is stunning
I love how he always speaks in rhymes.
Personally I think this far, far superior to Aladdin. Rest in peace Richard Williams and Vincent Price.
Agreed. I can't even watch Aladdin anymore without wishing it was more fluidly animated lol this movie is a blessing and a curse
Aladdin was amazingly animated, though it did take advantage of digital coloring and rendering technology that was now available when this movie didn't have access to it.
This movie's animation exceeds Aladdin's, *AND it's all hand-crafted,* but it came at the cost of the movie's coherency and enjoyability. the pacing of the movie practically trips over it's own shoelaces all the way to the climax, where the War Machine and it's ridiculously over-the-top collapse drag on and on to the point that when they tried to complete the movie later, they really didn't have any idea what the War Machine was supposed to look like from the outside while approaching the golden city.
Aladdin is better paced; scenes "flow" into each other. characters don't change size and depth context. settings and locations feel like they're physically possible. when a character leaves one room and enters another, it doesn't cause the entire reality of the universe to slightly alter like it does in the remnants of this movie.
However, Aladdin also could not exist as we know it to exist without this movie (Disney basically plagarized a lot of the concept of this movie; many of the settings, characters, design effects, and concepts are similar, and so on.)
@@hobomike6935 I think you will find that Disney is guilty over many things and definitely plagarizing a lot of films.
Sadly as much as I wish it wasn't true having less control and allowing studios to cut some scenes and have their quality assurance is more advantagious than having full creative control and being unable to finish your project do to lack of more stern authority.
If this film was finished perhaps it would have become a cult classic and much more people will be eager to draw comparisons with this and Aladdin.
Believe it or not I am aware of its pacing, personally it doesn't bother me as much, but I will admit for as fun and creatively pleasing as it is things like the inclusion of the Thief character are the main reason for the film tripping over its own pacing. Its one big classic story with one character who is hogging up all the screen time away from the entirety of the film. Like the Squirrel from Ice Age only the Squirrel never took up 7 to 15 full minutes of a scene.
I do like that he ends up stealing the film reel at the end, yeah that is pretty creative use for this character, but there needed to be more management and more stern control from someone other than Richard Williams.
Love the movie with all my heart, but it was a doom to itself
Herein lies some of the greatest animator's equally greatest work in his career. Amazing man, he'll be surely missed as an inspiration for animators everywhere. (1933-2019)
I like to think that Richard Williams animated the scene so realistically that A; All 52 cards in the deck are accounted for and shuffle realistically, and B; The point at which Zig Zag pulls out the cards, you can see where they come from (perhaps his sleeve) if one looks quickly. Are there any quick-eyed, observant people out there (or maybe magicians) who can confirm if this is so?
@Captain Falcon To be frank, Richard EXPLICITLY stated that he wanted this film to be his *masterpiece*. Not merely his best work, but the one film to show everyone that he *mastered* just about every *-piece* there was to be about animating movies.
Zig Zag seems to acquire the cards some little time before producing them, backpalming the deck like a real magician would. The "snap" you hear when they appear is akin to how backpalmed cards actually snap into view when performed. Williams must have found footage of an actual magician using that technique. His sleeve seems the appropriate place to have acquired the deck, though I can't spot him retrieving the cards before the backpalm production.
He has 6 extra long fingers with rings compared to other animated characters’ short and round 4 fingers on each hand.
Shows how little Richard Williams cared about things being difficult to animate.
He wanted this to be his masterpiece so that meant he needed everything to show off how absurdly talented he was.
Williams himself animated this by hand. I wonder how long it took him. It's amazing, it's all animated on 1s meaning each frame is different. That's insane!
Absolutely amazing, Richard Williams and his team of animators were truly master's at their craft.
Broke: Smooth as Silk
Woke: Smooth as Richard William’s animation.
There's more animation here than in several minutes of some anime. Really.
RIP Richard Williams
If this movie forwent characters and story and was just made to be an animated spectacle sort of like Fantasia then it would’ve been amazing.
For those who care to know, the music is the opening of the first movement of Scheherazade, otherwise known as 1001 Arabian Nights by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov
Don’t let him fool you, he was in complete control that entire time
24 frames per second. Mostly in animation they use the same drawing for 2, 3 or 4 frames, but Richard Williams make 24 new drawings per second. So in this 21 seconds scene there are 504 drawings made by hand and paper
When a 20 second scene has got more frames than your average anime episode
Good god, Richard Williams never fails to impress me. :D
Am I wrong to say that this is the best animation ever created? :)
When you try to impress someone and mess up, but still make it work.
Also.... This whole animation is so smooth!! A whole work of art
I like how that first sentence has a double meaning.
1. ZigZag impressing people with his card skills
2. This movie failing to be finished, but still impressing thousands of viewers
What a masterpiece. Though If I'm to be honest, the film would have been completed if Richard allowed for moments of this complexity to be spread out in small portions while keeping other elements simple to finish the project, but if he did that then we wouldn't have one of the greatest pieces of animation ever in lost media.
His awkward grin at the end cracks me up XD
It's a shame this movie never got the recognition it deserved because wow was that some beautiful, smooth animation.
he and one eye carried the entire movie
I was obsessed with this movie as a child. Looking at it again, and I’m still obsessed...
I like how you can slightly make out his cloak behind the black flag
I wish we had more quality animation like this these days.
RIP Richard Williams, I still have that wonderful book.
Damn, how long did you took to restore that scene? That looks phenomenal in HD.
I watched this frame by frame. Not only is every card different, but they were ordered to create multiple full houses, flushes, and other high value hands to the card carrier, implying he made a false shuffle and is a cheater.
Saw this clip on Instagram with the caption:
“That guy you knew in college who read two pages of ‘The Prince’ and made it his whole personality.”
This movie never did get the praise it deserved
Animation at it's best, RIP Richard Williams you master of animation.
Just noticed Zig Zag has six fingers, which was a sign of magical powers in ancient times.
Amazing attention to detail even on the cards
I saw this when I was a kid.
I had no flipping clue this movie's animation was so (albeit almost outrageously) complex.
I guess you could say Williams controls the decks
(I had to I'm sorry)
You can practically see the blisters form on the animator’s hands.
1 frames and 1 picture second all of times, Godlike key animators
Animation's very impressive. So is how he catched all the cards
rest in peace Vincent Price very good talented actor
I always come back to this vid just to appreciate how good the animation is 😂
going frame by frame with this is crazy, that bit where he pulls out the deck has not a single bit of distortion or cheaping out despite how fast it moves, he really did consider how a consistent hand would move with such flair
Bro, Richard Williams animation is just fucking insane and is just plain awesome.
This shit is beyond impressive. It's a shame the movie turned out how it did though.
That last card that flies out of the deck is a joker. I feel like there's some deep symbolism behind that, but I don't know what.
Notice he displays it to the audience. He's trying to provide some light comedic effect while also fooling the one eyes leader into thinking He's no real threat to his power (a joker).
The more moving parts, the harder the animation is. This God tier animation
I'm happy that his masterpiece was eventually uploaded here on RUclips by fans
RIP Richard Williams.
Man's gotta be a real grandmaster of 52 pick up to pick all the cards up while in the air