Friday evening, a good occasion to remember the golden childhood.
I recently talked with a familiar igrodelem, and he seriously convinced me that the main reason for the current crisis in the gaming industry is the lack of memorable images. Previously, they say, in good toys there were images that stuck dead in the memory of the user - even purely visually. And now all the games are faceless, indistinguishable, solid "Korea-style", which is why they fail one after another.
And I remembered how - already one of the last - I interviewed our great animator Anatoly Savchenko, who made "Petya and Little Red Riding Hood", "Vovka in the Thirtieth Kingdom", "Carlson", "The Nutcracker", "Return of the Prodigal Parrot Β» with a fat cat and a parrot Kesha and many other cult cartoons.
I asked him what is the most difficult thing in the work of a production designer, but he did not even think, but immediately said - to come up with images. Nothing will help you here - neither skill, nor experience - nothing. You can call the best artists - and fail, or you can hire students - and hit the top ten!
An original, memorable image is the most difficult thing. I, he says, it took the most time and effort. But, on the other hand, this is the most grateful thing. If you guessed right with the image - it will feed you not even for years - for decades. I, he says, in 1954, immediately after the death of Stalin, came up with Moidodyr for the Ivanov-Vano cartoon.
And, he says, Procter & Gamble still pays me extra for the Myth washing powder - very, he says, a significant increase in my small pension turned out.
But why? Because I, he says, guessed the image, he is remembered. But even before me, the darkness of the people of Moidodyr painted, and the great artists - Kanevsky, Konashevich, Yuri Annenkov, but they didnβt get an image - thatβs all!
And I immediately remembered one very interesting story, fortunately, at one time I was engaged in Soviet book illustration. One to one - to these words about "guessed - not guessed."
Who do you think it is?
This is a newborn Dunno.
A well-known fairy-tale character of Ukrainian origin.
Here is the first image of this iconic fairy tale hero.
Not everyone knows that Dunno was born in Kyiv, and from birth he was bilingual - as soon as he was born, he immediately spoke two languages: Russian and Ukrainian.
Here is how the BiblioGuide tells the story:
βIt is known that in 1952, heading with a delegation of Soviet writers to Minsk for the anniversary of Yakub Kolas, Nosov talked all night long with the young Ukrainian writer Bogdan Chaly (at that time the editor of the Barvinok magazine). It was to him that Nosov told about the idea of ββDunno. They say that Chaly literally fell in love with the image of a charming short man and offered to publish them in his magazine as soon as the first chapters of the work appeared, without even waiting for it to finish. The offer was accepted, but the word was kept. So for the first time the fairy tale was published in the magazine "Barvinok" in 1953-54. in two languages ββ- Russian and Ukrainian (translated by F. Makivchuk) - under the title "The Adventures of Dunno and His Comrades" with the subtitle "fairy tale-story"".
And here she is, as presented by another editor-in-chief of Barvinka, Vasily Voronovich:
βIn the compartment, Nikolai Nosov got into a conversation with Bogdan Chaly, a resident of Kyivian, the then editor of Barvinka. Cup after cup - and the writer was drawn to revelations: he told Chalom that he had been nurturing a story about a small people living in a fairy-tale land for a long time. But everyone does not dare to proceed with it. Then Bogdan Iosifovich, as they say, took the bull by the horns: βAs soon as you get home (the writer went to Irpen, Kiev region, to visit relatives), you sit down at the table and start writing. I'll print you in my magazine."
That's how it all happened. Nikolai Nikolayevich 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, editor of the Perets humorous magazine) and printed.
This Dunno is from there, from the Periwinkle. The illustrations were made by a married couple of artists: Viktor Grigoriev (a very eminent Leningrad artist, the famous Gris, who at that time worked in Kyiv) and Kira Polyakova. Drawn, by the way, in today's archi-class.
I draw your enlightened attention that Toropyzhka is still Toropyga, and in the friendly gop company there are Mustaches and Borodatik later nailed by the author (I suspect that they were replaced by Avoska and Neboska and they did it right).
Subsequently, the Ukrainian version of Dunno came out as a separate book (only a year behind the Russian version) and was usually published with these illustrations.
However, with all the quality of the work of Ukrainian artists, Nosov's tale, as they say, "did not come to them." - one artist may not be able to get a character, while the work of another will become a classic. The inhabitants of the Flower City among the people of Kiev turned out to be too old, some kind of short dwarfs, and Dunno turned out to be somehow forgettable.
Therefore, when Alexei Laptev made his illustrations for the first Russian edition, where there were children playing as adults ...
And especially when Alexei Mikhailovich came up with the main dunno "chip" - a wide-brimmed blue hat ...
That won immediately and unconditionally. It was his illustrations that became classics. Dunno could no longer look different.
And it was the "Laptev" Dunno that other great children's artists like Evgeny Migunov used in their illustrations (on the cover of the book - Laptev's illustration)
And even the people of Kiev were forced to βfinishβ their pictures in later editions in order to comply with the canon:
And it is precisely the βLaptevβ Dunno known to all of us from childhood that is depicted on the tombstone of the great Soviet storyteller Nikolai Nikolaevich Nosov.
Source: habr.com