Parkety and Vrata: animation

Continuing from my interview with František Váša, today I will be discussing two episodes made in 1992, Parkety and Vrata, with focus on their animation.

The aiF Studio episodes are somewhat of a mixed bunch. I would say that overall, there is a significant drop-off in quality from the episodes which immediately precede them, those made in 1989-90, as they are more consistent. Still, I have noticed that this era is favorite to many fans of the show, especially those in Poland. I don’t know why exactly, but I would guess that the sort-of homemade feel which resonates from them, where you can sense that they come from a new, private studio slowly figuring out how to do certain things is a contributing factor. Broadcast history also must have played a part in this case.

I have never been a very big fan of the aiF era on the whole. This is also because I first saw these episodes only after I had seen the first 35 to death and although I was too young to articulate it, probably felt that they were not as good. However, maybe it is then easier for me to look at the individual episodes and see which I like the most. The episode Parkety has always been one of my favorites of the bunch. It is an episode which makes me laugh even though I’ve seen it many times. It’s got a fun story which keeps getting funnier as the episode progresses, which is why I feel it is definitely one of the best episodes of the fourteen.

Parkety and Vrata were the only two episodes from aiF co-animated by Marek Beneš. Leaving aside his work as a director and other functions on the series, Marek Beneš was, in my opinion, the weakest of the in-house animators on Pat & Mat, in-house referring to the three major studios which continually produced the series, aiF being the second of them. I would say his best work was also his first, Klíč. His animation’s main problem is that it lacks subtlety and fluency. Perhaps this is best seen by his walk cycles, which Pat and Mat can only undertake at a particular speed, performing extremely large steps. This can be funny at times, but when used all the time becomes a nuisance. His Pat and Mat are also very stiff, often jerkily moving from pose to pose, resulting in scenes which may look nice as individual poses (frames), but which do not look dynamic when seen in succession. A good example of his rigidness is the final handshake in this episode, where literally just the lower parts of the puppets’ hands move.

Váša, on the other hand, was the animator who used the most of the puppets’ body at aiF. His Pat and Mat are therefore the opposite to Beneš’s, often looking bubbly, getting even more energized as the years go on. Váša’s Pat and Mat were especially expressive with their hands – for instance, look at how Mat strokes his face at 1:09. This is where we come to the main topic of this post, the animation breakdowns.

Based on my observations about the different animators’ styles, I’ve made videos where I mark who animated certain scenes. For Parkety, I don’t have any doubts about my guesses. Not only do Beneš and Váša’s styles clash, the puppets they use aren’t the same as well. Váša’s Mat puppet wears a much larger, thicker beanie and the difference from Beneš’s is quite noticeable. Interestingly, Beneš uses up to three puppets of Pat (or two, with the second having its eyes corrected at some point). Overall, it seems Váša steps in for Beneš on most of the complicated scenes in the episode, including the fun chase sequence:

Even though I was pretty confident about my guesses beforehand, I was further proven right by papers František Váša found in his archive. It transpired that this was the last episode of the 1992 series he animated on. In fact, he arrived in the closing stages of its production to do the chase scenes, but he also, as he put it, “came up with some scenes to make it more action-packed”. The somewhat strange animator transitions in parts of the episode now make more sense and I’m sure Váša’s additions contributed to this being one of the best episodes from aiF. Here is Váša’s animation sheet for his work on the episode. The first scene listed appears at 6:28 and was animated on May 14, 1992. Although the description is very brief (remember, this was intended only for Váša himself), everything which happens is described: Mat exits the screen to the left, returns from the right and does the "A je to" gesture. For the rest, I will let you decipher the scenes in the comments.

František Váša's notes on his animation in Parkety

Afterwards, it was decided that Marek Beneš would stop animating. However, before Parkety, he animated on another episode, Vrata. This episode, I feel, shows several of aiF’s shortcomings. I think it is one of their most unimaginative episodes. While Parkety makes me laugh throughout, Vrata does not really. There is nothing new here, while the rehashed parts don’t make for a very interesting whole. This is a good study of how the scripts suffered after the move to aiF. Not only were the ideas left to Marek Beneš (who had a half-interested Jiránek for help and was obviously tasked with a lot of things), but there was also no dramaturge to polish the scripts, which made them uneven. Compare the scene of Pat hanging on the edge of the roof with an identical scene from Dveře from two years prior. While the scenes in Dveře are one of the most dramatic, nail-biting and even disturbing from the series, their replica in Vrata completely falls flat (while Pat does not!).

As such, the animation is one of the more interesting facets of this episode, with Mensdorff-Pouilly’s solid, calm approach contrasting to Beneš’s, making it feel erratic. The animator casting seems to be consistent at first (with Beneš animating everything in front of the garage and Mensdorff-Pouilly the rest) but throws up some surprises. For one, Mensdorff uses two pairs of puppets, which is usually not as apparent as in this episode, while Mensdorff and Beneš possibly share the same pair throughout. Mensdorff’s scenes such as those starting at 3:11 and 4:58 were made with bulkier puppets he would use in Cyklisti and were probably filmed after the rest. The unusual arrangement of the scenes makes me think there could have been some reshoots or additions like those in Parkety but as the scenes are always filmed out of order, depending on the availability of the animators, the puppets, sets and so on, that may not have been the case. Unfortunately, I haven’t seen any material on Vrata, if it even exists, so the best you can do is my guesses, of which the result is this video:

I have to thank the user Buurman for going over the video with me and giving his feedback. I am still unsure about a couple of shorter scenes, but they are not that important for understanding this atypical mix of animation in a Pat & Mat episode where different styles come to the fore. For the 1994 releases, only one animator, Váša or Mensdorff, was assigned to an individual episode, which was, interestingly, not the policy on the two other series from the studio, Jája & Pája and Čertík Lucifuk. This may have been a decision from Luboš Beneš to unify the animation of the studio's two most popular characters. It certainly helped make the 1994 episodes more consistent.

I must again give huge thanks to František Váša for sharing some of the production material and his recollections with us. As an added bonus, here is one of the few props from the series he has saved. This is because it long predates his animation work ― he built this model ship in his teens. It appears in the background of episodes like Trezor and Narkoblues. Take a good look because below it, you will see the order in which the 1992 episodes were animated.