Richard Williams Wiki

Tack the Cobbler is the main protagonist (or one of two, three or four main protagonists) of the Richard Williams film The Thief and the Cobbler. His love interest is Princess Yum Yum.


Appearance: Tack is tall, thin and pale, wearing a leather cap, patched white shirt, striped socks, sandals, and patched overalls. Tack lives in the Golden City (inspired by Persia, or modern-day Iran) and works repairing shoes. At the beginning of the film he is implied to spend his time inside in the dark. As the film progresses, Tack's skin darkens and he becomes more athletic in appearance, resembling Princess Yum Yum by the end. The skin color change begins when Tack is out in the sun during the Brigands and Witch sequences. This is more clear in the Recobbled Cut than in the Calvert versions. The Calvert versions have an animation error where Tack's skin is already dark when the caravan leaves the palace at night, a scene which was completed properly for later Recobbled Cuts.

Tack the Cobbler was created to replace the Mullah Nasruddin, the comical Turkish Sufi mystic and protagonist of The Majestic Fool, an unfinished animated film whose ideas were recycled into The Thief and the Cobbler. Like the Princess Yum Yum, Tack's design was finalized late in production, and there is very little finished animation of Tack from the Richard Williams Studio in the back half of the film. Tack's animation later on is from the Fred Calvert production, and is of a lower quality, so we only get a hint of how Tack's characterization would really have played out.