Building character(s)

When reading articles about Pat & Mat, you will often find a sentence reading something like this: "It was in the first TV episode Tapety where they got their definitive look." On the face of it (pun intended), that's a mostly correct statement. However, I would say that the final important change to Pat and Mat's look is a subtle one which happened in 1982, specifically in the first of that year's episodes, Sťahovanie. That change would the last one to shape the characters into the ones we know and love today.

The handymen before and after 1982 were identical ― except for their faces. The faces were redesigned at that point; the eyes became thinner, their shape going from thick ovals to either an almost rectangular shape or a small circles, depending on the puppets used. The mouths were also changed. Before, different expressions were used to convey the two's emotions, with a circle representing shock or surprise and :( representing what it usually does, sadness and disappointment.

Mat going from sad...

... to confused in a matter of frames

the duo shocked at the end of Grill

Even though they were possibly made to conserve time, these changes brought about several fresh ways to handle the characters and imbued them with more comedic potential. When their eyes became smaller, Pat and Mat became less goofy, a bit more aware of what they were doing. This gave their DIY failures an even bigger punch as the "heroes" could be held even more responsible for their complete failures.

proud of their achievements

usually before disaster strucks

Getting rid of the mouth expressions meant that much more attention was given to the posing. Whereas previously animators could show Pat's shock with a simple circle on his mouth, they now had to rely on the clever placement of his hands, legs, caps and everything else. This opened up new avenues for the stories and their gags. The humor could now also be constructed from the reactions of the protagonists to their exploits and to one another, not just in the typical action situations. Interestingly, the lack of facial expression gave the two characters more character depth.

It is not surprising that the animator chosen to handle the first episode with this design tweak was Jan Klos, who will be the topic of my next post, but for something different. I find him the series' best animator of all time when it comes to the interplay between the two DIY masters: he best portrayed all the emotions that Pat and Mat could now offer.

I think the episode that perfectly illustrates this is Búdka. I remember being a bit disappointed with this episode when I was a kid, feeling that nothing much happens in it. In fact, its humor is very subtle, based mostly on the interaction between Pat, Mat and a bird, represented only by sound recordings. I think that's why it could be more appreciated by adults. Here's the episode:

A quick note - the copy posted above is not official, so it may get deleted at some point. I intentionally don't post links to videos from the copyright holder, Bonton, because they are awful. Bonton are so lazy that they uploaded copies of the episodes downloaded from torrents and they even messed those up, with picture cropping and out-of-sync sound present on many copies, often together.
 
Obviously, it was deemed that this adjustment was very successful, as ever since both of the changes were implemented completely. Pat and Mat today have almost-rectangular-shaped eyes and don't change their mouth expression during the course of an episode. There were some minor design changes later on, the latest of them undertaken in 2002's Puzzle, when Mat's hat was redesigned, but none as important as this.

Pat and Mat in 2014 (photo: Patmat film)