Thieving the Cobbler

...I try to generally post about about things that would add to the collective conversation, but I encountered something really cool over the weekend for the first time and had to share about it. I'll try to make it somewhat relevant as well.
Youtube kept suggesting that I watch some movie called The Thief and the Cobbler: Recobbled Cut, which I knew nothing about, so I figured it was youtube giving irrelevant suggestions again. Then, when I was researching more about Cartoon Saloon, I found out the this movie was an inspiration for The Secret of Kells.
So, naturally, I wanted to find out more about it.
Thief technically never got finished, and has the longest production time of any animated movie, being made from 1964-1993. It was conceived and directed by Richard Williams, best known for his animation in Who Framed Roger Rabbit? Due to the fact that he was taking too long and wasn't even following storyboards, the project was taken away from him with only fifteen minutes of animation left to finish. Some big wigs took over, added bland copies of Disney songs, took out some adult content and just overall plot and made several mute characters speak in order to market it as a children's film. If you buy a copy of the movie now (or check out the copy in the Digital Media Library), that's the butchered version you are going to get.
HOWEVER
Some geniuses made a not-for-profit organization who is working on restoring the original movie as close as Williams originally intended it, using workprint copies and archived rough animation in order to fill in the missing pieces: thus, the Recobbled cut.
So I watched this version on Friday night.
And it sort of blew my mind.
I'm not going to delve too far into plot, because to be honest it wasn't that great. It wasn't awful, but it wasn't anything super unique. However, the characters were pretty fantastic, especially Charlie Chaplin inspired Tack, the evil rhyming Zig Zag, the Thief, who has to be the cousin of Wile E. Coyote, and I even sort of liked Princess Yum Yum's design.

Yeah. I know. I probably lost you there with those ridiculous names. To be honest, I like them, but yeah, they aren't normal at all ^__^
What I really liked about this movie was the animation, which is what I always look for in an animated movie. And I could definitely argue that this is the best animated movie ever made. Not meaning in terms of content, but in terms of animation.

Just watch this and try not to be amazed. And remember that this was done BEFORE the advent of computer animation. AKA ALL BY HAND.
I wish more animated films looked as beautiful as this...