Thief and the Cobbler Color Test Reel

Here's a curio for Thief and the Cobbler fans. 32 minutes of color
tests shot on video at Richard Williams Studios. The PAL VHS video
is clear and clean and we get a good look at details of various
shots from the film, including the edges of the cels and things
we're not supposed to see. Some shots appear without backgrounds.
The entire reel is without sound.

It's like a pencil test reel, except this isn't pencils - the video camera is
shooting the fully-colored cels for testing purposes.

Rare original footage from this lost animation classic, written and
directed by three-time Academy Award winning animator Richard Williams
(animation director of Who Framed Roger Rabbit).

On a certain Tube video site, [TheThiefArchive] you can see The Thief and the
Cobbler: Recobbled Cut, an unofficial restoration of the film by Garrett
Gilchrist. (orangecow.org)

Nearly 30 years in the making, a labor of love by a team of animation greats,
this was to be the masterpiece of Williams' career, perhaps the most ambitious
independent animated film ever conceived. Williams funded the film over the
years with his millions of dollars of his own money, until after Roger Rabbit,
Warner Brothers decided to fund the film. The Thief was the inspiration for
Disney's film Aladdin, which proved to be its undoing. After over two decades of
work, the film was taken away from Williams when he couldn't meet his deadline.
It was eventually recut and destroyed, bought by Disney and destroyed further.

Also known (in horrifically butchered form) as Arabian Knight and The Princess
and the Cobbler.