Simultaneously Kovalyov and Tatarsky started an "underground" home studio and created the Speaking of Birds comedy shorts using a handmade animation stand.
They brought it to the High Courses for Scriptwriters and Film Directors and were invited to join the animation faculty.
He also got into art films by Robert Bresson, Ingmar Bergman, Carl Theodor Dreyer and experimental animation by Borivoj Dovniković, Walerian Borowczyk and Priit Pärn in particular.
Due to his father's sudden death Igor left for Kiev in the middle of production and stayed there for the next several years working at Kievnauchfilm again.
Csupó continued to contact him and guaranteed that he would be able to produce auteur films, and under a pressure from his first wife and the overall crisis in animation Igor finally agreed.
As he later recalled, this was his only studio project where he was given almost full artistic control after he and Csupó had shown Investigation Held by Kolobki to the producers who became very impressed with it and asked for a similar style.
Bird in a Window (1996), Flying Nansen (2000) and Milch (2005) gained a number of awards at international film festivals, although the latter was finished when the studio was already in sharp decline, and Kovalyov had to seek sponsorship from his former father-in-law, a famous Russian lawyer Genrikh Padva who is listed in the credits as a producer.
[6][12] Same year Igor left Klasky Csupo to teach animation at California Institute of the Arts.
There he was approached by Timur Bekmambetov, who offered him to lead the production of the new Russian animated series Alisa Knows What to Do!
He is currently working on another revival of the popular Soviet series about parrot Kesha and his next auteur animation A Peacock Is Flying to the South-East.