Wednesday, March 29, 2006

NU, POGODI! Part 2

We are continue to put online art material for most known Soviet cartoons NU, POGODI! ("Ну, погоди!").
Here you can see the photo of permanent director of all original episodes of NU, POGODI! Vyacheslav Kotenochkin and his son Alexey Kotenochkin. Alexey has become the animation director also and recently he did two new episodes of NU, POGODI!


And here there are another drawings done for 8th part, which was produced in 1974. Please notice that the same artist did all clean up drawings.
Valery Ugarov (he become famous animation director later) did animation for this scene, the clean up is by Sergey Marakasov.


Animation by Oleg Komarov, clean up by Sergey Marakasov.

Monday, March 27, 2006

NU, POGODI!


Outside of any doubts the most known and loveable cartoons in Soviet Union was the NU POGODI! (Which one may translate as the WELL, BE CAUTIOUS!) series. The NU POGODI! cartoons were made every year since 1969 to 1986, one short per year on the average (there were two cartoons in 1971 and in 1973). And every new cartoon was a big holiday for all Soviet children. Obviously that the most close Western analogue to NU POGODI was a TOM AND JERRY cartoons. Many people think that NU POGODI is the imitation of TOM AND JERRY but actually even the permanent director of NU POGODI Vyacheslav Kotenochkin did not see the MGM cartoons when began work on own series.
Today we begin to put online some art material done for NU POGODI. You will see the clean up drawings, cels and photo. Hope you will like it. And for us it is a history.

These drawings were done for 8th part. Animation by Victor Arsentiev. Clean Up by Sergey Marakasov.





All art material was presented to Russian Insider by Vladimir Nikitin.

Wednesday, March 15, 2006

Prince Vladimir. Concept Art 11

Back to our most important recent animated feature. PRINCE VLADIMIR is in theaters for three weeks already and it grossed more than $4,7 millions in Russia. It is become clear that the final grosses will be about six millions. Ok, considering that PRINCE VLADIMIR's budget is about $5 millions, these results are not the outstanding. Still it is a success certainly. The hand drawn animation is alive in Russia! By the way a new hand drawn animated feature will be released in Russia tomorrow. This film which loosely based on Russian folklore has a very complex title DOBRYNYA NIKITICH AND ZMEY GORYNYCH. Unlike PRINCE VLADIMIR it is a comedy just like SHREK. Here you can see the poster.


And we glad to continue to put online Grigory Lozinsky's concept art for PRINCE VLADIMIR. These are last ones for a while (please do not forget that production of the second chapter of the dilogy is just started).




Tuesday, March 07, 2006

THE CHILDHOOD OF RATIBOR. Part 2

Many thanks to all of our guests for kind words! We glad that you liked the drawings from THE CHILDHOOD OF RATIBOR. And now the second part is coming.





Monday, March 06, 2006

THE CHILDHOOD OF RATIBOR. Part 1

As you probably already know, the new Russian animated feature PRINCE VLADIMIR (about which we told so much here) has been released. And it become the most successful hand drawn animated film in modern Russia within just a few days of distribution. It grossed more than $2 million on the first four days of release on 390 screens (you see there were about 14700 screens in Soviet Union but right now there are very few fully working theaters in Russia). Anyway it goes here on one level with the most successful computer films such as MADAGASCAR. It seems that PRINCE VLADIMIR should make at least $5 million and it is great for a non-Hollywood film. We'll see.

And today we want to recall another Russian animated film (though not full-length). Its title is THE CHILDHOOD OF RATIBOR (1973). Just like PRINCE VLADIMIR it is devoted to very drastic times in Russian history but it feature very stylish graphic approach instead of realistic look of PRINCE VLADIMIR. By the way it was directed by Roman Davydov who was a director of Soviet version of JUNGLE BOOK (please see below).
So here you can see some production drawings done for THE CHILDHOOD OF RATIBOR. Sorry for quality - time has not spared these drawings.




To be continued