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.

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

A je to: minutiae #1

In this series of posts, I will discuss minutiae from the ... a je to! series. One definition of the word minutiae reads as precise details; small or trifling matters and that is what this is all about. Small or not so small details you probably never even noticed or you didn't think about them. The TDK masters made me rewatch the entire series a couple of times, this time in a new light, and these are some interesting bits and pieces a person who has watched these episodes so many times thought it would be nice to share. The screenshots are all raw, as they are on the DVDs, without any editing.

Tapety

No, the title card for Tapety is not green, but grey! The titles on the TDK masters look unusual for the 1979, almost as if they were sourced from different materials than the rest of the films, especially on the next episode.

a bit of a scratch, as if somebody sprayed the frame with gulaš

Mat has so much junk in his kitchen. I wish some other episodes also showed their homes full of items which don't belong there. It doesn't sit well with me when their living spaces are tidy. Previously, I didn't notice how the iconic gulaš can (that is, two cans, but you'll have to wait for another edition of minutiae to see an explanation) has a dark blue, not black outline around the words.

I already mentioned how Mat's living room looks very drab at the beginning, as if the crew did not yet have a sense of how to light up the set and started with too much white light. They gradually dialed it back a bit and introduced warmer colors, even in the same episode.

on the contrary, this shot needs some more light!

gulaš and bread, classic. or is it a croissant?

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

Uncredited animation scenes in ... a je to!

As a follow-up to my post about Jan Klos and his uncredited animation work in three episodes (link here), here a few scenes from other ... a je to! episodes which were done by animators "dropping by" to episodes assigned to their colleagues.

Skokani
Credited animator: Jan Klos

Notice anything different? The first scene of the episode was in fact animated by Karel Chocholín or somebody using his puppets (from the credited crew, this could only be assistant animator David Fílcik). The first scene is followed by one with a butterfly Pat notices and then we cut back to the two characters, but the puppets have changed. The rest of the episode is all Jan Klos' work.

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.