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.

František Váša interview (2020)

František Váša working on B. Pojar's Hiroshi

After a long pause, I'm today finally showing you something very interesting: my interview with František Váša!

What? How? When did this happen? Quite a long time from now, actually, August 21st, 2020. Some months before, I was able to reach Mr Váša by email (big thanks to Dan cz for help) and introduce him to the blog, which he very much enjoyed. He is often difficult to reach by email, though, so I was especially pleased to hear he would be visiting Split, my hometown! This was, in fact, nothing unusual. Dalmatia is often a summer destination for Czechs and his family is no exception. I had a chance to meet him and ask him what I wanted.

Our meeting took place almost in transit. Mr Váša had just arrived to Split and had a ferry to catch to the island of Vis, so we were able to talk only for less than an hour in Split’s center. Our exchanges were a bit comical; Mr Váša speaks little English – I understand Czech well but can only speak half-broken sentences with intrusive Croatian vocabulary. However, I came prepared with translated questions and they quickly set us off. I spent the next 50 or so minutes getting to talk about most of the stuff which went on in the aiF Studio with one of its leaders! In Czech, of course. It was, as you can imagine, an exhilarating experience, only compounded when I accompanied Mr Váša to the ferry, met his lovely wife (who speaks perfect English!) and then got to chat with an even bigger name in Czech stop motion animation, director Jiří Barta, who was also going to Vis! It was wonderful to meet all of them and, hopefully, this was just the first of our encounters. Very much a day to remember!

Still, the interview! I must apologize to my faithful readers for posting it very late, but the delay was caused by multiple factors, from troubles with faithfully translating certain remarks to lack of time, but also not being able to reach Mr Váša afterwards for months at a time. I should also mention that, per his request, I will not be sharing certain small portions of the interview. As you can imagine, aiF’s break-up was not the most idyllic of splits (on the contrary, lawsuits sprung up) and there is no point in possibly opening old wounds with certain people through my blog. I hope you can respect that, as I have. The majority of the story is still here, I can assure you.

Before continuing, I must again thank František Váša not only for agreeing to meet with me and answer my questions, but also for providing some images which have further enriched this post!

 

The interview

MP: How did you react when you first saw that there is a blog devoted to Pat and Mat?

FV: [laughs] Ha, I thought to myself, and forgive me, is it possible that somebody can show this much interest in Pat and Mat, is everything fine with that person? 

MP: Hahaha, well somebody must exist somewhere!

Scenes from Narkoblues (1997)

Things have been going slowly on this blog. Unfortunately, I don't have that much time to devote to it at the moment, so posts will appear less frequently. Some things are on the way, but I don't know when I will get them out. I'd like to say that I'm feeling fine and hope you are too in these unpredictable circumstances.

Recently, thanks to a friend, I got to see Narco Blues (or Narkoblues, the title in Czech) for the first time. This film was made in aiF Studio in 1997 as, I believe, aiF's only completed one-shot puppet short film, not tied to character series. Directed by famed director Břetislav Pojar together with cameraman Ivan Vít, it was part of Rights from the Heart series, which highlighted different problems children face when their rights are violated. This film dealt with drugs - here is a synopsis from the NFB of Canada, which co-produced the film with aiF and Czech Television:

On summer vacation a young teenager finds himself hanging out alone on the streets of his neighbourhood, all his friends having gone to the country with their parents. Near his home he meets a disturbing character, a drug pusher looking for clients, who introduces him to an artificial paradise. The teenager discovers a seductive and terrifying world that frequently draws him back to his neighbour. To buy the drug, he empties his piggybank, pawns his favourite possessions and finally goes into his mother's purse where he finds her wallet empty. The pusher is unscrupulous. Unable to pay, the young teenager lets himself be persuaded into committing a theft. The duo is surprised by the police, but the boy manages to escape. The incident leads to a bad trip, which ultimately has a salutary effect on him. An animated film without words for twelve to seventeen year olds.

title card

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

Maľovanie: three animators, two studios

Maľovanie is one of the most unique episodes of the entire Pat & Mat cannon and also the single most unique episode of the ... a je to! series. It always piqued my interest and I've always felt it somehow didn't match up with all the episodes around it. It turns out there's a great story behind this particular episode.

It is no surprise that Maľovanie ended up being the topic of the first post on this blog which wasn't part of an array of introductory posts concerned with producing a detailed filmography of the series. That short post, which only served as an introduction to a much more comprehensive one about Alfons Mensdorff-Pouilly, is here. I remember writing practically all of the short post and much of the larger one on my mobile phone on a snowy bus ride from Zagreb to Split in late December. That was more than half a year ago and in that time I've learned so much more about these bumbling handymen than I thought I ever would. For instance, I've learned that a key bit of information in that short post was - wrong.

Back to Maľovanie: This episode's main distinction is obvious: much of it is animated by Alfons Mensdorff-Pouilly, who typically did not work on the series, using a pair of  puppets which were never reused in the series. Yet, there are even more differences to be found in the credits: for instance, this is the only post-1979 episode that lists Věra Henzlová as production manager.

In hindsight, a most telling inclusion...

I'm very grateful to have been able to contact some of the people who worked on this great series and, of course, no person more than animator Jan Klos, with whom I've been able to talk about many of the films he worked on, both inside and outside of the Pat & Mat world. One day, Jan remembered an anecdote about his work in animation and sat down to share it with me by "knocking" it into his keyboard. With his usual self-deprecation, he quipped that this was one of those to share "before becoming history". It went like this:

It happened at Pojar's in Čiklova 13A. I finished an ... a je to! episode for Beneš and after a while I was due to start another one. Around that time, I had injured my right hand and had it in plaster (immobilized in large casing). I don't know the name of the episode, but I remember that the hero comes into the picture and carries a chicken that he intends to bake in the oven. He pulls the baking tray out of the cupboard. He finds out that the baking pan is not suitable - it is too small, so he pulls out a larger baking pan that is again not suitable - it is also too small and so on and so on until he is satisfied with the size of the baking pan. I animated these scenes with my left hand.

the headline says ... football competitions

Review: Pat a Mat kutí (Part II)

This post continues my review of individual episodes from the Pat a Mat kutí series. For more on the series as a whole and previous episodes, visit Part I here.

Before I go on, I know there are readers of this blog who would much prefer to read about the old episodes and the history of the series. Don't worry and stay tuned because some very interesting (even exclusive) stuff is on the way...

8. Barbecue

animated in China

I'm not particularly pleased with the three 2020 episodes which were animated in China (8, 10 and 12 on this list). For me, they are mostly average episodes on the whole with some funny moments scattered around. Their pacing is often sluggish and things happen too slowly. It's interesting then that the studio has reedited (or is in the process of doing so) the 39 8-minute new episodes into 5-minute ones for some TV markets. I've only seen Sauna from the Winter series in that format and the result was promising. Do this to some of these episodes (even speed up the animation in some scenes) and I feel they will come out better.

A friend told me this episode reminded him of Grill, but I think it has much more to do with 2003's Opékají špekáčky, with the ending practically being the same. In any case, it's at least easy to identify with Pat and Mat and their barbecue fails in this episode.

9. Potrubní pošta / Tube Post

animated by Alfons Mensdorff-Pouilly (interior scenes) & Jan Smrčka (exterior scenes)

I LOVE this episode! When it premiered on YouTube, I watched it and then immediately had to watch it two more times, which didn't happen with other episodes from this series. It's probably my favorite episode from the past decade. In one of my posts, I wrote how viewers looking for a nostalgia trip will rarely find it in these newest episodes. That is definitely not the case here as this episode hits all the right buttons and it's a great one for fans of the original show. There are even appearances of two old friends in the form of props - the original drill from 1976 (how cool is that!) and a jug that appeared in 1980s countryside episodes such as Zahrádka. Experts will recognize some younger props as well, like the green vacuum cleaner which appeared in Patmat's first episode, Puzzle, back in 2002.

Nevertheless, it's not only nostalgia that makes this episode great: it is not the funniest of the episodes, but it never loses focus and feels inspired - I can imagine Marek Beneš, who also wrote it, looking at a tube post system or hearing about it and thinking - this would make a good episode. It shows that the two don't always have to be hilarious to be charming. The pacing is very good and consistent throughout, while the animation is splendid and the animator casting makes the best use of the two animators. This is a great resource for comparing their different styles, which I'll write about in the future. The episode is also very expansive as it takes place on six different sets (the houses and five indoor sets), with the attic rooms appearing for the first time, which adds to the dynamic. All in all, a very pleasant episode with a great atmosphere.

10. Výroba ledu / Ice Making

animated in China

Review: Pat a Mat kutí (Part I)

All of the newest Pat & Mat episodes are out, so it's time to take a look at each one of them and the series as a whole. This two-part post will feature my comments about the series, mini reviews and tidbits. All of the episodes will be available on the official YouTube channel by Monday - all episodes have already been aired on Poland's TVP ABC.

I would generally describe Pat a Mat kutí as: okay to good. I stand by my comment that it's the series I enjoyed most from the three produced from 2018 to 2020 and there are several reasons for it. By and large, I was indifferent towards the first series (my opinion has changed for some episodes, though), more pleased with the second and even more pleased with the third. However, I would understand if some people prefered the second or first series because this is the most inconsistent of the three - it often felt like hit-and-miss and it's a mixed bag: there were some episodes I truly enjoyed, some I enjoyed less and some I did not like. Overall and in this context, this variety is to me more interesting than most episodes being on a similar level and not overly ambitious. As always, your opinion in the comments would be appreciated.

The title, Pat a Mat kutí, is basically saying Pat and Mat do handymen stuff. That's understandable as the title is more a placeholder than anything else. The series is just Pat and Mat. However, it's interesting then that this particular series is not that much about DIY at all. A more apt title would have been Pat & Mat: Food (and else) as only five of the episodes don't have anything to do with food or drinks. I don't have a problem with that as long as the episodes are entertaining and for the most part, they are. Conversely, the first series had no episodes explicitly about food.

Pat and Mat making dough

This series had the highest percentage of animation produced in Czechia (6/13 episodes - almost half). That's a big plus for me as even though the Chinese animators (Update, July 2020: Info on the Chinese studio, Steamworks Studio, has come up - click here for details) handled the series mostly OK up to this point, they can't replace two animators who have a combined 55 years of experience on the show. Also, the Czech episodes from this series were visually much more pleasing than those from the first due to their lighting (the Chinese have a distinct purplish hue). The first series definitely looked way too bright and overblown. Compare two pictures from the website, first and third series:

This series features a nicer array of colors that look more balanced, even if the series as a whole still looks, as a friend noticed, sterile compared to pre-2014 episodes, as that's when a drastic change to the lighting was made, presumably due to new equipment. I also found the music in this series to be the most enjoyable. I especially liked Zdeněk Zdeněk's tune that plays near the end of Palačinky, Potrubní pošta and Chleba (and probably some others) when the two think they are approaching a solution. As such, I would rate this series the best in the context of the three 13-part "seasons". Not on the overall level of Pat a Mat na venkově, but continual progress is present.

A few words from Jan Klos

Readers of this blog should already be familiar with Czech animation legend Jan Klos and his work on the series in 1981-85. In one of my previous posts, I mentioned how I believe Klos' work on three episodes in 1984 and 1985 was credited with a pseudonym. In its conclusion, I stated: Jan Klos is still with us and, hopefully, somebody will ask him about this peculiarity someday, as there is probably more to this story. I am not one to sit around and wait, so already then I was trying to reach out to Jan myself. In the end, I was able to do so thanks to the great folks from Memory of Nations and the Post Bellum organization, for which Mr Klos had given an interview. I especially must thank A. Poláková, who gave me Klos' e-mail contact in the end.

There are couple of interviews with him online already (for instance, this one, where he talks for three hours), but they mostly concern his life before animation. In my e-mail to Mr Klos then, I presented my posts on the blog and asked him about several things: the altered titles, the way he animated the characters and so on. After about 15 days, responses started coming in.

Jan Klos about 20 days ago in a candid photo made by his son-in-law,
which he included in his e-mail

As you know, Jan Klos is 79 years old, so once again I must say: Thank you very much, sir, for taking the time to write to me! I know Jan will not read this, but in case members of his family do, give my best to Jan yet again. Jan stated that he cannot spend much time at the computer and has to "ram" his thoughts into it (he's, in his own words, a simple, old, too old man), so he provided answers to my questions in the form of chapters chronologically speaking about his work (of course, in Czech) and he didn't mind me sharing them on this blog. He really took the time and effort to write them over a period of a few weeks, so here I present them to you translated into English. You will notice that Jan openly discusses his life and work, often with self-biting irony As he noted: producing "humor and folk entertainment" is an ambition and an ideal profession for me. Unfortunately, it rarely succeeds.

Jan Klos:

CHAPTER 1

By profession a puppeteer, I became an employee of Krátký film Praha in 1973 by a combination of lucky coincidences and I began to animate in the Jiří Trnka Studio (puppet film) in director Břetislav Pojar’s staff. Those were my apprenticeship years in animation. DIFFICULT years - but BALANCED with a good feeling that I can be part of creation ON A CERTAIN LEVEL. The production process, dramaturgy, direction, collaboration with the experienced deaf-mute, ingenious animator Boris Masník, these were standard professional conditions - simply HAPPINESS (the studio's address then was Čiklova 13 A).

Břetislav Pojar in the studio's yard in 1974 (photo: Ivan Vít)

At the beginning of 1982, the management of Krátký film Praha banned Pojar from working (comrade director "was unable to fulfill the production plan") and Pojar's staff was scattered around. In order to be able to continue to animate puppets (it is the simplest and my favorite animation discipline), an average director, a skilful, hardworking man and also an employee of Kr. film Luboš Beneš offered me work on his films in a new four-member team. A space he discovered was adapted for shooting puppet films with cameraman Miler, animator Chocholín and one graphic artist. So I moved to the SECOND DIVISION, and there were five of us (address: Wenzigova 5). We called ourselves "Benešfilm". Here I worked on five or up to seven parts of PAT and MAT (I don't remember anymore), which belonged to the First series - it was 21 parts. Now I remember that the series was then called A JE TO.

New series premieres

A new episode, the first of 13 from the new series Pat a Mat kutí (Pat & Mat do DIY - there's no official translation yet), was released on March 5. It is episode 33 (meaning ep. 7/13 in the series) and was posted on Attraction Distribution's (one of the worldwide distributors of the series) Vimeo profile (link here), but the video posted there is slowed down, so here's a link to a corrected version from a dedicated Polish fan. The title is Automyčka, or Car Wash:

I thought this was a funny and satisfying episode, not a bad way to open the new series. The previous 6 episodes were released on December 17 last year and are officially available free of charge on this link: https://www.televizeseznam.cz/porad/pat-mat

UPDATE, March 11: The titles for the next 13 episodes with screenshots have just been announced on Patmat film's website. Click the following links for Czech or English lists.

I haven't had a chance to cover the newest episodes on this blog yet, so this is an occasion to air out some opinions and criticisms of them. This episode is one of 39 episodes split into three 13-part series: Pat a Mat nás baví (Pat & Mat Entertain Us), Pat a Mat v zimě (Pat & Mat in Winter) and the new series, which is basically the first series renamed. Although the episodes are still technically on a high level and were made the same way as older episodes (the only difference being digitization: they are now shot digitally in 4K), the newest episodes generally can't hold a candle to older episodes. It can be said that the newest episodes are all decent, but not much else. There are not (m)any stand-out episodes and there aren't many really bad ones.

The first series, Pat a Mat nás baví, was especially disappointing. It was the first series with these characters that I didn't really enjoy overall and I consider it a step down from Pat & Mat in the Countryside (Pat a Mat na venkově), the series that preceded it. The winter series was an improvement, so I hope the third one will be as well. Don't get me wrong, I am definitely not against making new episodes, but I am against making 39 of them in 3 years, numbers which were not reached even when three studios produced episodes at the same time. I'm afraid that is just hyperproduction. Although we can all agree that the heights of ...a je to! will never be reached again, there is always potential for good adventures with these characters if we tread carefully.

The car wash contraption from the episode

Director Marek Beneš has stated that finding new ideas for the episodes is really tough. This was painfully obvious in the often boring and monotonous first series and prompted the studio to hire new writers, specifically Štěpán Gajdoš, who was born in 1997, just like the author of this blog. Interestingly, the story credit for this episode is the first ever given to Kees Prins, the voice of Pat in Dutch dubbings. In this interview from 2018, Prins said:

Well, they did approach us to maybe think about ideas for episodes, because they are now - I believe - making 36 of them, with a master plan of 81 in total. So, they also need feedback from other people, and, of course, it is very nice that they have asked us. I said: first, let me think. Then, I made three stories and sent them to the studio. And they have already chosen one of those three, it still has to be made, but it is already in the pipeline.

Other interesting story shouts are Ladislav Pálka, the Ateliery Bonton Zlín director from 2003-04 (maybe an unused script from that time) and this episode's animator's son.

Even though it was fun, I feel this episode would have been even better if it was condensed into a 7-minute episode with the action sped up. Pacing is problematic in the new series. The action often feels overdrawn; there is a sense that not much (or rather not enough) is happening, which wasn't the case with Countryside. A further hindrance is that all episodes are timed to exactly 8:00, which leaves no room for improvisation during filming. In 2003-04, the episodes were timed to 7:00. The slowing down might also be connected to the target audience: as promotional leaflets say, the new series is marketed to children aged 3-8.

Mensdorff-Pouilly working on a yet unreleased episode (volskrant.nl)

"I did not want to spend the next 15 years animating 30-odd episodes with one animator", Beneš said in an interview, referring to the 2011-15 episodes, where Jan Smrčka worked as the sole animator. Now, seven animators, two Czech and five Chinese, get to do the work. Without much guessing, I can say that Alfons Mensdorff-Pouilly animated this episode in its entirety. His handprint is all over it: the fluid, but unique way the characters move (notice their wobbly walk cycle), and Mat's appearance cannot be missed. However, I noticed a certain stiffness in some scenes of the episode, which is probably a result of the fast production schedule. The stiffness can especially be noticed in episodes animated in an unnamed Chinese studio, where young animators work to get these episodes out faster. I've tried to find out the name of the studio, but it has never been mentioned in any interview. Googling the Chinese names listed in the credits also doesn't turn up any results. Beneš criticized the studio in this 2019 interview, saying they finished the episodes later than Patmat film was originally told. These delays meant the studio had to ask for an extension of their 2-year deal with Czech Television. Yet another evidence of a the production being quite hectic is that post-production mistakes occur here and there: look at this scene from the episode, where part of the frame is left unused.

Countryside, the series preceding these three new series, had a much more nostalgic atmosphere and was overall more enjoyable. An important factor in that was also Petr Skoumal's music. Skoumal sadly passed away in 2014 and the last four Countryside episodes had to be completed with music he composed for previous episodes. The new composer is Zdeněk Zdeněk, who possesses years of experience in composing animated series. Skoumal's shoes are very tough to fill after 90 episodes and Zdeněk was only partially successful - I was often annoyed with his music in the first series as I thought there was a certain overload in that department. He improved during the winter series, but there is one major objection I have regardinv his scores - not counting titles, he has never utilized the Pat & Mat theme in any way. As Skoumal used it in practically every 2000s episode, this is a step away from tradition. Older viewers would be pleased to hear the old theme here and there.

Marek Beneš, Zdeněk Zdeněk (patmat.cz)

One of the reasons older viewers still tune into Pat & Mat is that they are given a nostalgia trip, something which, I believe, they can't quite get from these episodes. Before writing this post, I talked with some older viewers and consulted Czech reviews; most of them say that a certain magic and charm of the series has been lost. To paraphrase an old title, you could hear them say: ... and that's not it! 

our heroes

Maybe that's a bit too harsh. The new episodes still remain a unique programme. They are surely interesting to children audiences even though they won't be an older fan's cup of tea. No matter what, it is still Pat & Mat. This blog will therefore continue to keep track of new episodes as they start to appear in the future. Patmat film is currently preparing production of further new episodes, which will start next year.

I would love to hear your thoughts on the newest episodes in the comments below.

Alfons Mensdorff-Pouilly: animator profile

Animators are one of the unsung heroes of Pat & Mat and probably every stop motion series. They are the ones who spend the most time actually creating the action we see on the screen, which makes their work vitally important.

While they have mostly stuck to similar principles throughout the years, each animator on this series has some quirks and differences which make their style unique. One of these animators, and definitely a legendary one, is Alfons Mensdorff-Pouilly.

at work in 2019 (photo: ČT)

Biography

Alfons Mensdorff-Pouilly was born on January 9, 1948 in České Budějovice. He is originally from a known aristocratic family whose roots are in Czechia, France and Austria. Actually, Alfons is a count, which makes him probably the only count to have worked on Pat & Mat. ČT produced a documentary about his family as part of their Blue Blood series. It can be viewed here, but only if you access it from Czechia.

He joined the Jiří Trnka studio in 1969 and started animating sometime in the 1970s, working on many important films, with different directors such as Stanislav Látal and Jiří Barta. When Lubomír Beneš opened his aiF Studio, Alfons followed him there and worked up to the 1997 Jája a Pája series. When aiF went to pieces in 1998, he joined Hafan Film, while also working on some episodes for Patmat. In the next decades he again worked on some feature films, most notably Toys in the Attic and Fimfárum 2.

Even though he is about to turn 72, Mensdorff-Pouilly is still working on Pat & Mat, animating some of the episodes of the new 39 episodes due for TV release 2018-2020. Along with puppet armature maker Ondřej Zika, he is the only member of the current production team who had some involvement on the original ...a je to! series.

Pat & Mat career

His Pat & Mat career spans four decades. After animating on the 1982 episode Mal'ovanie, he worked on the episodes made in aiF, three from 1992 and four from 1994. He handled the episodes which took place outside, while František Váša worked on the indoor sets. Interestingly, in one recent interview Váša stated that a mishap happened to one of his colleagues, presumably this animator, when during the replicating process a negative cutter severely damaged the negative on which a Pat & Mat episode had been filmed, which meant that the whole short had to be reshot from scratch. I wonder which episode was affeceted by that.

at work on ep. #45 in 1994 (photo by I. Vít)

Animator switch: Mal'ovanie

Mal'ovanie is one of the best episodes of this stop motion series. Although its plot is essentially a re-hash of Tapety, it combines good action and timing with probably the greatest slapstick humor of the series. This was aided by Alfons Mensdorff-Pouilly, a great animator whose only outing on the original series was this episode. More on him will follow in the next post.

This post shows an interesting production detail which rarely shows up. Although the vast majority of the episode was animated by Mensdorff-Pouilly, the first few scenes were handled by Karel Chocholín, most likely to save time.  Update: These scenes were, in fact, animated by Jan Klos, for reasons explained here. They also take place on a different set (the kitchen).

Apart from the animators' different styles, the switch after the first three shots is easy to notice because the puppets are different as well. See the differences for yourself:

There were other episodes animated by two animators, for example, Tapety, Výlet or Parkety, but I don't believe that any had such an easily observed switch which happened at the beginning of the episode. I will cover some of these later on.