2018-20 animation credits

Martin Kublák working on Plot in 2018 (source: pro-miminka.cz)

As I' ve mentioned in a few other posts, a list of animators on the 2018-20 episodes would be useful for future reference, so here it is. These episodes all have the same group animator credits (with all the Czech and Chinese animators listed on every episode), which are annoying when you want to see which people worked on which episode exactly. The credit usually goes:

Animation: Jan Smrčka, Alfons Mensdorff-Pouilly, Wang Peipei, Xiang Weiwei, Li Xiangyuan, Yu Huagong, Xiao Xieliang

Martin Kublák, seen above, appears in the credits on seven episodes from 2018, but worked on only one of them, Plot. The group credit means that it is impossible to discover anything purposeful about the styles of various animators in the Chinese Steamworks studio. When it comes to style, though, I can see Steamworks' animators mostly tried to copy Jan Smrčka's animation and presumably watched a lot of his Venkovĕ episodes. Steamworks did their jobs well enough that 'ordinary' viewers won't spot many differences between their and Czech works, but we are not ordinary viewers. So, I've produced a list of 'who animated what' on these episodes. Unfortunately, for Steamworks' animators, I can only write the name of the studio, not the animators involved. Of course, this is all guesswork (albeit educated, experienced guesswork based on many instances of watching the episodes), so please report any inaccuracies if you find them. I have already gone through this list with a reader of the blog (Buurman) and none were found, so I am not expecting any. For episodes with multiple known animators, screenshots are included. AMP is short for Alfons Mensdorff-Pouilly. The animator credits have been added to my episode list. Thanks to Buurman for all of his help in making this post.

• Včely – Steamworks
• Sekačka – Steamworks
• Krtek – Jan Smrčka, Alfons Mensdorff-Pouilly, Steamworks; Smrčka does the scenes in front of the fence, while Mensdorff does those on the houses set. Steamworks was given a 20-second sequence inside the workshop.

Smrčka

AMP

Steamworks

• Plot – Martin Kublák, Alfons Mensdorff-Pouilly, Jan Smrčka. I originally wrote a summary of the scenes allocation (The scenes where part of the house is visible are mostly by AMP. The rest is by Kublák or Smrčka. Thanks to reader Buurman for starting discussions on this episode, as he made me realize Smrčka, in fact, takes over from Kublák. Smrčka's first shot is from 5:29 to 5:34. It is followed by Kublák's final scenes, which end at 6:14.), but decided that it's best to present the scenes in video form as there are couple of surprises and three Czech animators working on one episode happens extremely rarely. Unfortunately, uploading the animator breakdown video is very difficult due to copyright restrictions, so this is how I have to do it.

AMP doing one of his scenes in this episode

• Ucpaný komín – Steamworks
• Elektrárna – Steamworks
• Skalka – Alfons Mensdorff-Pouilly
• Rodeo – Steamworks, Alfons Mensdorff-Pouilly; AMP does 30 seconds of footage in front of the houses (0:12-0:28, 0:35-0:49).

AMP

Steamworks

• Kolotoč – Steamworks
• Myčka – Jan Smrčka
• Odpad – Steamworks, Alfons Mensdorff-Pouilly; AMP does the scenes outside, in front of the houses.

Steamworks

AMP

• Schody – Steamworks
• Kamera – Steamworks, Alfons Mensdorff-Pouilly; AMP does the scenes on the road side of the houses. The scenes in the backyard and the rest are by Steamworks.

Steamworks - and a big error!

AMP

• Kalamita – Steamworks
• Vánoční světýlka – Steamworks
• Sauna – Jan Smrčka, Alfons Mensdorff-Pouilly (just the scenes in front of the houses)

Smrčka

AMP

• Betlém – Alfons Mensdorff-Pouilly, Jan Smrčka; Mensdorff-Pouilly, apart from appearing as an in-joke in the episode, also animates most of it. Jan Smrčka did the scenes with Mat in the part of the floor left to the kitchen. These are scenes with Mat cutting corn, operating the iron machine etc. (Smrčka's first scene starts at 3:27). I don't know who does the scenes with the corn dolls being thrown to the cupboard, but I believe it is Smrčka. The cupboard appears in both animators' scenes. Here are a few oddities animation-wise: the scene by AMP starting at 5:57 features a mistake that is pretty much the opposite of a kind we discuss in the minutiae posts. Instead of an unwanted object appearing in the frame, the rolling pin prop here disappears for about a second! Also, Smrčka does a flying hat take and you know I love those.

AMP animating himself

Smrčka joins in

scenes I can't atrribute with confidence

• Stromeček – In the most obvious of shifts, Alfons Mensdorff-Pouilly animates everything up to 5:53, at which point Steamworks takes over.

• Dárky – Steamworks, Alfons Mensdorff-Pouilly; AMP is given very little to do here and he animates only the shots in front of the houses, so 2:59-3:23 (not counting the shot of the iron inside) and 3:53-4:00.

AMP

Steamworks

• Silvestr – Steamworks
• Novoroční přání – Steamworks
• Bramborový salát – Steamworks
• Kapr – Steamworks
• Perníková chaloupka – Steamworks
• Ledovka – Steamworks
• Iglú– Alfons Mensdorff-Pouilly, Jan Smrčka; Jan Smrčka animates all the scenes taking place inside of the house, except for the scene at 5:06, which is, like the rest of the episode, by AMP and which features an appearance of an unwanted object in the frame. Look at the lower right corner. This small mistake was fixed in the movie version of the episode. Interestingly, AMP uses quite a lot of twos in this episode compared to his preferred ones, mostly due to the snow.

AMP

Smrčka

movie version

• Palačinky – Jan Smrčka
• Létající stroj – Alfons Mensdorff-Pouilly, Jan Smrčka; Smrčka only does the scenes inside the house, 1:09-1:40

AMP

Smrčka

• Popcorn – Steamworks
• Nábytek – Steamworks
• Automyčka – Alfons Mensdorff-Pouilly
• Sklizeň – Steamworks
• Fotopast – Steamworks
• Barbecue – Steamworks
• Potrubní pošta – Alfons Mensdorff-Pouilly, Jan Smrčka; Mensdorff-Pouilly does all of the interior scenes, while Jan Smrčka does all of the exterior scenes (the houses set). Look out for another object in the lower right corner.

Smrčka

• Výroba ledu – Steamworks
• Pizza – Alfons Mensdorff-Pouilly
• Chleba – Steamworks
• Garážová vrata – Jan Smrčka