Thought I might as well update you on some of what's been going on, and therefore what your Patreon dollars have paid for. This is going to be long but maybe you'll find it interesting.
Going back a bit, in 2021 I restored the 1977 Richard Williams "Raggedy Ann & Andy" feature (again) in "Ultra HD," with help from redacted (again) and Helge Bernhardt (again) and Kineko Video. This involved some frame by frame work. The print used was not in as good shape as the print used in 2008 provided by redacted, but with a little work it was brought up to standard. This restoration had been gestating since 2007 with redacted releasing a less restored Blu-Ray in the meantime.
https://archive.org/details/raggedyannandy1977hd
I also did a Thief and the Cobbler coloring book in 2022, and games for the Nintendo Entertainment System of Raggedy Ann (with fan Brooklyn Williams) and The Thief and the Cobbler (at a time when I was doing a lot of Nintendo game hacks).
https://archive.org/details/thief-and-the-cobbler-coloring-book
https://www.romhacking.net/community/6297/
Another long-gestating research project involved the Joe Raposo Raggedy Ann Broadway musical ("Rag Dolly") from 1984-86, which flopped immediately in the US but was well remembered in Russia, where it was performed as a show of American strength (!) .... This is much darker than the movie, which explains its failure, although I think that also makes it a better piece of writing. Information was very hard to come by in 2011, although Vinnie Rattolle found some material and I did my best. This eventually attracted a younger fandom who pushed harder than I did, and were able to get a full video of an early version of the play, audio of a much earlier version, and much more. They have performed the play to an extent and are trying to revive it. (RARE Theatricals, the Raggedy Ann revival project.)
I also restored a 1960 British film starring Jayne Mansfield, Too Hot to Handle, which came out at a time when the United States was still heavily censored, but France wanted full nudity, and the UK and Germany wanted the choice of either route. The upshot of this was that the film was unavailable in color, in English, and relatively uncensored. I had the help of the Cinema Museum London, who provided 37 minutes of film whose color had faded. I restored the color as best I could (using DrDre's 2015 color matching tool and other methods), and restored the full film to uncensored-ish color as best I could.
https://archive.org/details/too-hot-to-handle-1960-the-pink-flamingo-cut
A "Nasrudin" scene (pre Thief and the Cobbler) has recently leaked in color via Tahir Shah, although current releases are low quality.
In early 2024, using the new RF method, and with help from Tony Anderson and others, I restored seven interactive VHSes used with the "View-Master Interactive Vision" game system. These were original Muppet Show, Sesame Street and Disney pieces. The DVDs now play with original hardware, although with a buzzing on the sound due to the change from VHS to DVD. I am hoping these will eventually be emulatable. Some people were looking at that but have not finished the work.
https://archive.org/details/muppet-madness-vmiv
The Disney's Cartoon Arcade restoration, for this, also had me looking at Ludwig Von Drake footage from the Wonderful World of Color TV series. A lot of that is rare now unfortunately, and I collected a few higher quality clips which had turned up on laserdisc.
https://archive.org/details/disney-cartoon-arcade-dvd-remaster-vmiv
I started a (Knights of the) Lost Media group on Facebook, and now often help people find rare series. We've had requests for Toonsylvania, and the 90s Casper, which are impossible to find online in full. I was just sent another VHS of Jim Henson's "Inner Tube" but it's about as bad as the others.
I did find episodes of "Mr. Piper" (two epsiodes now on the internet, although the film is otherwise in bad enough shape that whoever I sent it to gave up on it). I restored episodes of "The Adventures of Hiram Holliday," and one of "Kidd Video" .... I found some of "Wake Rattle and Roll," a couple of "Adventures of Hyperman" and almost all of the 90s "Iznogoud" (in multiple languages), the 80s "Sidekicks (The Last Electric Knight)" and many more.
https://archive.org/details/mr-piper-pied-pipers-house-1
https://archive.org/details/the-adventures-of-hiram-holliday-1956
https://archive.org/details/kidd-video-101-to-beat-the-band
I spent a couple years restoring the 1993 "Super Mario Bros" movie with Bob Hoskins, as "The Morton Jankel Cut." An earlier extended cut on VHS was used as the basis. This was supposed to be an official release, but got mired in politics. I'd done all the work, but one group member eventually objected. I got paid, it leaked, and it went very viral, but what eventually came out on Blu-Ray was something different. So it goes.
https://archive.org/details/super-mario-bros-1993-the-morton-jankel-cut-extended-vhs_202207
Joss Hoskie has been handling Little Shop of Horrors and Menken/Ashman rarities on Youtube, and someone managed to leak the original musical ending to Disney's "Enchanted," which I restored and edited. There were several VHS leaks of Little Shop of Horrors scenes suggesting an earlier, darker edit, but a proper full restoration remains a holy grail for me, apart from the ending which was restored for Blu-Ray of course, in its early longer form.
Another Holy Grail for me? Vivian Stanshall's musical Stinkfoot (he of the Bonzo Dog Band), which I had restored from VHS for his daughter Silky, although it was a private thing not for public use, and I'm not sure she was tech savvy enough to download it. I also just advised a little, about the unaired American "Young Ones" pilot which is coming out on Nigel Planer's Patreon pretty soon. I did a quick noise reduction pass on the sound but couldn't do much about the picture quality. Don't ask me for these.
At one point in the 2000s I did an edit of Jim Henson's The Dark Crystal based on a very low quality VHS with the original audio which was dumbed down for the theatrical release. This failed due to technical sound sync problems and was abandoned. Maybe a higher quality VHS will eventually turn up with the audio?
https://archive.org/details/the-dark-crystal-1982-deleted-scene-mystic-death-jim-hensons-muppets
I also restored some 1993-4 Garfield and Friends VHS tapes which had the "rap" intro and the Twisted Tales of Felix the Cat bumpers.
https://archive.org/details/20210704_20210704_1220
Around 2019 I restored Evil Dead prequel "Within the Woods" (although a better capture has now overtaken this apparently), and the rare TV version of "Evil Dead 2," which includes some uninteresting extra footage. Both were a favor done for the Book of the Dead website (and Rob's Nostalgia Projects).
https://archive.org/details/within-the-woods-evil-dead-1978-sam-raimi-bruce-campbell
https://archive.org/details/evil-dead-2-deleted-scenes
By 2020 I used the then-new program EBSynth for colorization, and my work inspired several official Doctor Who releases. Myself, I hand-colorized a few Bonzo Dog (Doo Dah) band clips, as well as an early clip of King Crimson, which they keep blocking on Youtube. This was partly a collaboration with Jason Antic who created DeOldify before selling it to MyHeritage.
https://archive.org/details/bonzo-dog-zelda
https://archive.org/details/bonzo-dog-jollity
https://archive.org/details/bonzos-metaphorically-c
https://archive.org/details/king-crimson-cat-food-totp
I have just now colorized a minute of Dexy's Midnight Runners footage for some reason. "Solid Gold," "Come On Eileen." I have it in color on a repeat, but they cut a minute from it there.
In early 2024 I restored the Muppet Show generally, putting out about 19 PAL fan DVDs, and several addendums. These circulate elsewhere. The idea was to present certain original episodes uncut as much as possible, with their original Zoot tags and other material not present on current releases. I also wanted to include as many Season 4 and 5 episodes as possible. Those seasons were never released on DVD in full, but there were Time Life "best of" discs as well as French and Dutch DVDs which often cut one segment, the UK spot. I had to restore those from other sources (including the awful Disney+ ones). I even restored an entire episode, with Shields and Yarnell. It was a lot of work so I only did the one, but I combined a PAL VHS source with interpolated Disney+ material to get a DVD-like appearance. Additionally I restored a season one special "Best of the Muppets" which had some unused/alternate footage throughout.
Afterward I was able to dig up a few more original off-airs of the series as it originally aired in the UK and Australia, with material not seen since, such as an alternate intro to the John Cleese episode. Turns out the German season 1 also has a little extra footage here and there. And I've continued to look for and restore the Muppet Show promos, which were improvised by Jim as Kermit and usually Frank as Fozzie.
I still collect such things here as they turn up.
https://archive.org/details/muppet-show-promos-compilation
https://archive.org/details/movies-the-muppet-show-itc-atv-zoot-ending-shots-and-promos
https://archive.org/details/muppet-babies-im-always-gonna-love-you-music-video
Additionally in 2024 I did a new restoration of "John Denver and the Muppets: A Christmas Together."
(I had previously, in the mid-2010s, restored The Jim Henson Hour, Little Muppet Monsters, The Great Santa Claus Switch, and hundreds of Muppet projects generally, most of them available on Archive.)
I also restored a Herb Alpert special and Johnny Carson appearance which were the first appearances of Miss Piggy. The latter was incredibly complicated and timeconsuming, involving frame by frame animation throughout due to a damaged source.
Also very complicated was the first appearance of "Jabba the Hutt" in Star Wars 1977, involving frame by frame animation throughout due to many low quality and partial sources. The end result was nearly an animated scene.
https://archive.org/details/star-wars-deleted-scene-jabba-the-hutt-1977-declan-mulholland
Other mini-restorations: Fred Ott's Sneeze 1894, A Charlie Brown Christmas, Dog Police, Ghost of Frankenstein, Neil Innes on 3-2-1.
https://archive.org/details/fred-otts-sneeze
https://archive.org/details/urban-spaceman-neil-innes-3-2-1-1982
https://archive.org/details/charlie-brown-christmas-coca-cola-bottlers
https://archive.org/details/@ocpmovie?query=muppet
And "Backstage at Disney 1983" ...
https://archive.org/details/backstageat-disney-1983
Also The Goodies Commonwealth Games color clip (I am now aware that this exists privately in full quality at Germany's ZDF, but I did a wonkier version for the public).
https://archive.org/details/goodies-commonwealth-games-get-fit-colour
Also Mego Time Out (first US commercial for a Nintendo game, color restored from a faded 16mm print).
https://archive.org/details/mego-time-out-toss-up-1980-nintendo-game-and-watch
Also the soundtrack to Nelvana's classic Rock & Rule (via cassette) ...
https://archive.org/details/rock-rule-soundtrack-flac
... and Assaulted Nuts, a fairly bad early-80s UK/US sketch comedy series which I'm still looking for the second series of. (It involved Emma Thompson and Gail Matthius, replacing Tim Brooke-Taylor and Elaine Hausman).
https://archive.org/details/assaulted-nuts-1985
I also did a collection of Rutles music videos, with a few restored shots here and there, although I never finished the punchline, which was me doing voiceover as Peter Jackson.
https://archive.org/details/the-rutles-remonstered
Also several Marina and the Diamonds music video edits:
https://archive.org/details/starring-role-marina-and-the-diamonds-music-video
https://archive.org/details/enjoy-your-life-marina-and-the-diamonds-live-music-video
https://archive.org/details/marina-the-diamonds-the-outsider-music-video
https://archive.org/details/froot-marina-and-the-diamonds-extended-music-video
https://archive.org/details/numb-marina-and-the-diamonds-live-music-video
And this Phantom of the Paradise music video edit, done for the Swan Archives in the late 2010s.
https://archive.org/details/potp-hellofit-edit
And, over the years, a collection of Neil Innes and Bonzo Dog Band videos generally.
https://archive.org/details/bonzo-dog-doo-dah-band-video-collection
https://archive.org/details/@ocpmovie?query=innes
I've also collected Monty Python rarities for decades.
Going back to 2014, I restored a VHS tape of Keep Off My Grass!, a rare film from 1969-ish which features Micky Dolenz of the Monkees in a supporting role. I did this for UK TV/radio host and Monkees expert Iain Lee, and it was briefly available as a DVD you could buy. Costar Jack Grapes also filmed an interview for it.
https://archive.org/details/keep-off-my-grass
Going back a bit, I spent much of 2007-2009 drawing animated characters from lost Doctor Who episodes from the 1960s, as "Whosprites." I had hoped to get a job doing this officially, or at least collaborate with fans who seemed keen to animate the lost episodes but might lack the artistic skill. I provided high quality artwork for this purpose, but any fan technologically savvy enough to work with this stuff also wanted to do it their own way, I suppose. An episode of "Evil of the Daleks" was completed and several tests, but most of the work went unused.
However, in 2019 the project was revived briefly when I was asked to animate a lost episode of "Adam Adamant Lives!" ... another 60s series from the creators of The Avengers and Doctor Who. I did a lot of art for this but it did not continue due to lack of funding, and will not be revived at this point ... unlike Adam himself.
During the pandemic I settled down in a very quiet town well north of Los Angeles, where nothing ever happens. I generally don't feel well and am working through exhaustion, but doing my best. I still mask up at times and am fairly isolated for a lot of reasons.
I set up an old computer in the spare room and captured, via MiniDV, a massive archive of my old work, like my old shot-on-video movies from the late 90s and early 2000s. A lot of old MiniDV, Digital8, Hi8, Video8, and VHS. I sometimes think I should return to edit a few scenes from my 2007 She-Hulk feature (which is partly viewable on Youtube), while I still have the old computer that I originally edited it on, and therefore have access to my original files in a way that I won't in the future. This has always been low priority, although people do occasionally ask about it, and there is at least one scene that I should really back up in a sensible fashion for the future. There were 55+ hours of footage shot for She-Hulk.
From 2016-2021 I continued to work on a secret-ish multimedia Alternate Reality Game (ARG) webseries for 5.5 years total, producing a huge amount of content, and making one of the biggest projects of all time in that genre. Sadly it remained a secret project which did not take off in popularity. While the first "episode" went somewhat viral in February 2016, the big finale got only 14 views. We had about a dozen players at any time, and only a couple stayed around for the entire project, although many remember it fondly. The fans we had think of it as one of the greats. This is still more popular than my current project.
This also ended up involving a lot of video game hacking experiments and some Spice Girls video restorations and edits. It also involved a cast of four actors, plus a few cameos, an animator or two, and a social media manager. This took up most of my time during those years and was my main creative outlet. I'm still very proud of everything about it and recently did a two-page feature on it for a magazine, plus another two pages dedicated to my current project, which is similar in many ways.
Since 2023 I have been working on another semi-secret original project, comprising mini-comics, an ARG, a novel, lots of puzzles, several video games, some CGI animation and 3D sculpts, a toyline, and so on. Almost no one has seen this project sadly, and I've had difficulty promoting it. I am trying to get as much done as I can on this personal work while I have time. I am hoping eventually it will have a following of its own, and I am currently advertising it so we'll see.
I have also been revisiting an abandoned game project from 2014 somewhat, something I still owe money on. I'd like to learn game coding generally, as it's been a blind spot for me. Both of my large ARG projects were based on abandoned video game ideas to an extent (although the first went in a very different direction). Both would still make good games.
There's also the matter, again, of The Thief and the Cobbler. I'd avoided the subject of doing any new animation for the movie, because Richard Williams was one of the great animators of all time and I'm not an animator, although I can draw. I'd done a coloring book in 2022 as noted, inking over what original pencil art I could find, as well as storyboards and screen grabs to an extent. This got me thinking that maybe I could animate these characters, at least if the movement was simple and straightforward.
The main thing that pushed me into this was two animators having done their own shots for the edit, which were very good. One was Dennis Van Hout, who finished the floating roses scene and Zigzag's death, and a small thing of YumYum which he found difficult (she's complicated). One was Kiko Pablo "The Crow Artiste," a young artist who was animating and drawing a lot of Thief and the Cobbler scenes, and very good at it. He finished a few shots and I finished one for him (of Zigzag), but otherwise he kept experimenting, and not really communicating with me regularly. He has occasionally kept doing it.
Anyway this led me to think I could produce my own animation for the film, and I redrew a few of Richard's storyboards as cleanup, then inbetweened them from one to the other. Unfortunately this was obvious from the result. Not being a trained animator, there wasn't much timing, just a straight-forward mechanical flow. The character designs are much more complex than they appear, so it was easy for details to be inconsistent, especially with YumYum. I'd gone to color (!) before these problems became obvious. A lot of work was wasted.
I put out a "Thief and the Cobbler Recobbled Cut Mk5 WIP" on Youtube, which had glimpses of this unfinished work. I restored many scenes for this version and finished work I'd left unfinished in 2013. Some people were rude about this, privately commenting "Still? Just give it up, Garrett." Otherwise there was a lot of demand for it, and it is something I get asked about a lot.
I had tried to recruit animators to work on the project, but this was unsuccessful. Obviously I can't really expect people to work for free, and people don't have the time/money, with the economy the way it is. This is generally why I work alone these days, and it does hold me back from doing more film and collaborative work.
I had hoped to get some feedback on my unfinished animation and some ideas on how to correct it timingwise so that it could actually work, and move forward. Someone did look at it and gave a few small suggestions but it's a bigger problem than that. At the moment I've just moved on to other work (on the personal project), and taken it as a loss. Maybe someday.
As long as this is, I'd forgotten that I'd also had a project I abandoned where I was restoring TV ads for Atari VCS 2600 games. "Demon Attack" and "Star Voyager" were released via Kyle Tryon.
https://archive.org/details/imagic-star-voyager
https://archive.org/details/Imagic_DemonAttack_USA_1982
I also recorded a few videos around 2022-2023 for Youtube that I never edited, most notably a talk show called "After These Messages" with guests Michael Guy Bowman and David A Scott Jr. I regret not putting this out, but it was tough to get to the editing inbetween other work. I really should actually put that out sometime. It would have been easy to put the material out basically unedited, but that wouldn't have been as good.
I probably also at least considered editing footage from my older movies which I archived from MiniDV in 2019-2021.
Writing-wise, apart from the two ARGs, I wrote a short pilot in mid-2015 about puppet monsters, which I'd forgotten about until this second. Around 2021 I wrote part of a feature film about a woman who had starred in, and became trapped in, a 90s FMV CD-ROM video game. I should really finish that one. I wrote a script for a suggested revival of The Muppet Show. And I also attempted at one point to finish a novel I'd written most of around 2010, which was about the end of the world. I did not do enough writing during this time.