History of Russian animation

Being a trained biologist, he started to make animation with embalmed insects for educational purposes, but soon realized the possibilities of this medium to become one of the undisputed masters of stop motion later in his life.

[9][10][11] Same year Ivanov-Vano and Cherkes worked on The Skating Rink [ru], another hand-drawn short that featured a distinguishable art style (white lines against black background).

[12] It was written and directed by Yuri Zhelyabuzhsky and Nikolai Bartram, founder of the Moscow Toy Museum, who also produced Bolvashka's Adventures that combined live action and stop motion animation in a story about a Pinocchio-like wooden boy.

[22] In 1939, Ptushko directed another feature — The Golden Key based on the popular Soviet fairy tale; it also combined stop motion with live action, but to a lesser extent.

[17] Simultaneously, Alexandre Alexeieff who fled for France during the Russian Civil War developed a pinscreen animation technology along with his wife, Claire Parker that allowed for a wide spectre of special effects achieved through the use of hundreds of thousands of pins that formed different patterns.

[5] Viktor Smirnov [ru] who headed the Amkino Corporation, a New York-based company responsible for distribution of Soviet movies in North America, was given the task to study the animation processes at Disney and Fleischer Studios.

[5][29] Next year Smirnov returned to Moscow and founded an Experimental Animation Workshop under the Main Directorate of the Photo-Cinematographic Industry where he, Alexei Radakov, Vladimir Suteev and Pyotr Nosov [ru] started "developing the Disney style".

[30] At the same time Aleksandr Ivanov and Dmitry Babichenko [ru] made a radical shift towards agitprop and socialist realism with films such as Grandfather Ivan and War Chronicles.

With the start of the Great Patriotic War the studio was evacuated to Samarkand along with some key animators who continued teaching students and producing films, including anti-fascist propaganda.

They also continued releasing short and feature films that brought them international recognition, such as The Lost Letter (1945) and The Humpbacked Horse (1947) that was used by Walt Disney as a teaching tool for his artists.

As the art director Yevgeniy Migunov remembered, he floutingly drew backgrounds for his next movie as realistic as possible, and suddenly it became "a golden standard" for the next ten years.

From 1950 to 1960, the vast majority of animated films were fairy tale adaptations influenced by the works of Viktor Vasnetsov, Ivan Bilibin, Mikhail Vrubel, Palekh and Fedoskino miniatures and other national styles.

[38] Some directors made extensive use of this method, while others mixed it with traditional animation as in The Snow Queen (1957) by Lev Atamanov, arguably the most famous work of that time.

All this allowed for a yearly release of prominent feature films with high production values such as The Night Before Christmas (1951), The Snow Maiden (1952), The Enchanted Boy and The Frog Princess (1954), The Twelve Months (1956) and The Adventures of Buratino (1959).

In 1958, Alexandra Snezhko-Blotskaya released an adaptation of Arkady Gaidar's A Tale of Malchish-Kibalchish inspired by ROSTA posters, while Boris Stepantsev and Evgeny Raykovsky directed a postmodern Petya and the Little Red Riding Hood [ru] that leant towards Tex Avery.

[43] Ivanov-Vano also broke new grounds with The Flying Proletary (1962), the first widescreen stop motion short based on the poems and art of Vladimir Mayakovsky that made use of bas-relief paper dolls.

Among his films was another postmodern comedy Vovka in the Far Far Away Kingdom (1965), the paint-on-glass animation Song of a Falcon (1967), the highly popular Karlsson-on-the-Roof dilogy (1968–1970) that made use of xerography and The Nutcracker adaptation (1973) that presented a familiar story without a single spoken word.

Ivanov-Vano was appointed an artistic director of the puppet division where he made a number of stop motion/cutout films inspired by Russian folk art, like Lefty (1964) that addressed lubok, Go There, Don't Know Where (1966) that used elements of rayok and skomorokh theatre, The Seasons (1969) based around Tchaikovsky's two character pieces, presented as a combination of Dymkovo toys and lace, and the award-winning The Battle of Kerzhenets (1971) where frescos and icons came to life.

[11] Another well-respected old-timer Boris Dyozhkin launched a popular series of short comedy films about two teams that competed in various sport disciplines such as football, hockey, skiing, boxing and so on.

[31] Among the most political animators were Fyodor Khitruk whose satire The Man in the Frame (1966) was cut by censors[45] and Andrei Khrzhanovsky whose surrealist film The Glass Harmonica (1968) was shelved for many years.

[48] These seemingly simple miniatures about a wolf chasing a hare through Soviet-style cartoon worlds owe a great deal of their popularity to the quality animation, varied soundtrack and cunning subtexts built into their parts.

Leonid Nosyrev explored the Russian North folklore with a number of ethnographical films based on the stories by Boris Shergin, Stepan Pisakhov and Yuri Koval.

His approach characterized by complex animation structures and multiple special effects could be observed in the award-winning Black and White Film (1984) or The Big Underground Ball (1987).

In 1993, Yuri Norstein, Fyodor Khitruk, Andrei Khrzhanovsky and Eduard Nazarov founded the SHAR Studio meant for training animators and producing films.

[62] Others joined Pilot, Christmas Films, Animation Magic and similar companies that lived on advertisement and commissioned works for big studios from Western countries.

In 1992, Films by Jove, an American company ran by Oleg Vidov and his wife Joan Borsten, signed a nine-year contract with the new Soyuzmultfilm director Stanislav Rozhkov that gave them exclusive distribution and editing rights for the major part of the studio's collection.

Skulyabin also refused to leave the director's chair up until 30 June 1999 when Sergei Stepashin finally signed a long-awaited order that turned Soyuzmultfilm into a unitary enterprise.

Only in 2007 Vidov and Borsten agreed to sell the collection to the Russian business magnate Alisher Usmanov who donated it to the state-run children's channel Bibigon.

English-language distribution rights to the series were acquired by 4Kids Entertainment from worldwide distributor Fun Game Media, Munich[73] and began airing as part of The CW4Kids block on The CW on September 13, 2008, under the name GoGoRiki.

A connecting factor in many recent Russian animated efforts is Timur Bekmambetov, whose Bazelevs Company has helped produce, finance and promote Kikoriki and The Snow Queen.