Boris Stepantsev

He graduated from the Moscow Art School and in 1946, right after the end of war, joined animation courses at Soyuzmultfilm where he watched many "trophy" movies, including films by Disney that served as a major inspiration for him.

[4] He spent the next five years serving in the Soviet Navy, and on his return entered the Moscow State University of Printing Arts while continuing his animation career.

In 1954 he co-directed his first short A Villain with a Label (together with Vsevolod Shcherbakov) which also became one of the first Soviet post-war stop motion animated films produced at the newly founded puppet division of Soyuzmultfilm.

[1] In 1962 they made a sequel of sorts — a half-hour live-action animated film Not Just Now where Petya, played by a real-life child actor, traveled through time and interacted with hand-drawn environment.

[2] With the colorful cartoon art style, funny dialogues and some of the best voice talents involved (Rina Zelyonaya, Vasily Livanov, Klara Rumyanova, Faina Ranevskaya) all of them became extremely quatable and the main characters joined the pantheon of beloved animated icons, along with Cheburashka.

[3] He directed two pictures without a single spoken word, based solely on classical music: Window (1968) inspired by Sergei Prokofiev's Visions fugitives and The Nutcracker (1973) adapted from Tchaikovsky's ballet of the same name.

He described Prokofiev's music as "drawing what should happen on screen by itself, defining character's smallest gestures... its dramaturgy was more logical, clearer than many far-fetched plot twists".

[2] In 1974 Iosif Boyarsky "lured" Stepantsev to the puppet division of Soyuzmultfilm where he directed two stop motion shorts based on Nikolai Gogol's Dead Souls.