Friday evening, a perfect reason to reminisce about the golden childhood.
Recently, I talked to a game developer acquaintance, and he was seriously convincing me that the main reason for today's crisis in the gaming industry is the lack of memorable characters. In the past, he said, good games had characters that would stick in the user's mind — even purely visually. But now all the games are faceless, indistinguishable, just bland 'Korean style', which is why they are failing one after another.
I remembered how I was one of the last to interview our great animator Anatoly Savchenko, who created 'Petya and the Red Riding Hood', 'Vovka in the Thirtieth Kingdom', 'Carlson', 'The Nutcracker', 'The Return of the Prodigal Parrot' with the fat cat and parrot Kesha, and many other iconic cartoons.
I asked him what was the hardest part of being a set designer, and he didn't hesitate for a second — he said it was coming up with concepts. Nothing can help you here — neither skill nor experience — nothing. You could hire the best artists and still fail, or you could hire students and hit it big!
An original, memorable character is the hardest thing to create. He said that it took him the most time and effort. But on the other hand, it's the most rewarding. If you hit the mark with a character, it will feed you not just for years — but for decades. He said he came up with Moidodyr in 1954, right after Stalin's death, for the Ivanov-Vano cartoon.
And, he said, to this day, Procter & Gamble pays me extra for the laundry detergent 'Myth' — it turned out to be a significant boost to my modest pension.
And why is that? Because, he said, I nailed the character, it sticks in people's minds. Even before me, countless people had drawn Moidodyr, including great artists like Kanevsky, Konashevich, Yuri Annenkov, but they couldn't capture the character — and that was it!
And I immediately recalled a very interesting story, having once been involved in Soviet book illustration. It perfectly aligns with these words about 'hitting — not hitting'.
Who do you think this is?
This is the newborn Neznayka.
A famous fairy-tale character of Ukrainian origin.
Here is the first image of this iconic fairy-tale hero.
Not everyone knows that Neznayka was born in Kyiv and was a bilingual from birth – he started speaking both Russian and Ukrainian as soon as he was born.
Here’s how this story is told by BiblioГид:
“It is known that in 1952, while heading to Minsk with a delegation of Soviet writers for the anniversary of Yakub Kolas, Nosov talked all night long with the young Ukrainian writer Bohdan Chalyi (who was then the editor of the magazine 'Barvinek'). It was to him that Nosov revealed his idea for 'Neznayka'. They say Chalyi literally fell in love with the charming little character and proposed to publish the first chapters of the work in his magazine as soon as they were ready, even before the entire work was completed. The offer was accepted, and the promise was kept. Thus, the fairy tale was first published in 'Barvinek' in 1953-54 in both Russian and Ukrainian (translated by F. Makivchuk) under the title 'The Adventures of Neznayka and His Friends' with the subtitle 'a fairy tale-novella.'”
And here it is in the account of another chief editor of 'Barvinek', Vasyl Voronovych:
“In the compartment, Nikolai Nosov struck up a conversation with a Kyiv resident, Bohdan Chalyi – the then editor of 'Barvinek'. Shot after shot, and the writer opened up: he told Chalyi that he had long been nurturing a story about a small nation living in a fantastical land. But he hesitated to start. Then Bohdan Iosifovych, so to speak, took the bull by the horns: 'As soon as you get home (the writer was heading to Irpen in the Kyiv region to visit relatives), you sit down at the table and start writing. I will publish you in my magazine.'
And that’s how it all turned out. Nikolai Nikolaevich worked (he wrote the first chapters in Irpen, the rest in Moscow), then sent the texts to the editorial office, where they were translated into Ukrainian (this was done by Fyodor Makivchuk – the editor of the humor magazine 'Pereц') and published.
This Neznayka is from there, from 'Barvinek'. The illustrations were done by a couple of artists: Viktor Grigoriev (a very well-known Leningrad artist, famous 'Gri', who was then working in Kyiv) and Kira Polyakova. By the way, they were drawn in an incredibly cool manner for today's standards.
I would like to draw your enlightened attention to the fact that Toropyzhka is also Toropyga, and in the friendly hooligan group there are characters subsequently pinned down by the author Usatik and Borodatik (I suspect they were replaced by Avoska and Neboska, which was the right decision).
Later, the Ukrainian version of 'Neznaika' was released as a separate book (a year behind the Russian version) and was usually published with these illustrations.
However, despite the quality of the work by Ukrainian artists, Nosov's fairy tale, so to speak, 'did not come to them.' — One artist may find a character 'not come to them,' while another's work becomes classic. The inhabitants of the Flower City appeared too grown-up, some sort of little dwarfs, and Neznaika turned out to be rather unmemorable.
So when Alexey Laptev created his illustrations for the first Russian edition, where there were children playing as adults...
Especially when Alexey Mikhailovich invented Neznaika's main 'feature' — the wide-brimmed blue hat...
He immediately won and without contest. His illustrations became classics. Neznaika could no longer look any other way.
And it was the 'Laptev' Neznaika that other great children's artists, such as Evgeny Migunov, used in their illustrations (the cover of the book features a Laptev illustration).
Even the Kyiv artists were forced to 'refine' their pictures in later editions to correspond to the canon:
And it is the familiar 'Laptev' Neznaika from our childhood that is depicted on the gravestone of the great Soviet storyteller Nikolai Nikolaevich Nosov.
Source: habr.com
