Johnson
03-06-2004, 09:19 PM
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/06/international/europe/06FPRO.html
PRAGUE — In America, anvils were falling. A coyote strapped on Acme rocket skates. A slobbering duck kept getting his beak blasted off and, sadly for him, it may actually have been wabbit season. It was quieter here in 1954, when a frustrated Czech animator went for an evening walk in the woods searching for his own blockbuster of a cartoon character.
"It was already dark," the animator, Zdenek Miler, now 83, remembers. "It was kind of hard to see. I tripped over something and I fell. I turned around to see what I fell on. It was a mole's burrow. I said, 'Here's a good idea.' "
It took three months of artistic tweaking to turn the real animal's blind face into Krtek, or Little Mole. Over nearly five decades, Krtek starred in 62 short animated films for children that thrived despite the complete absence of exploding cigars. Krtek outsells Disney here, his anatomically incorrect eyes poking out from book bags, puzzles and pillow cases everywhere.
He is shown around the world, and is especially popular in Germany and Japan. (A 20-something Iraqi recently turned to goo when he spotted a foreigner in Baghdad wearing a Krtek T-shirt).
But Krtek never caught on in the United States.
....
http://neuromancer.freeblog.hu/Files/pic/krtek_notesz.jpg
PRAGUE — In America, anvils were falling. A coyote strapped on Acme rocket skates. A slobbering duck kept getting his beak blasted off and, sadly for him, it may actually have been wabbit season. It was quieter here in 1954, when a frustrated Czech animator went for an evening walk in the woods searching for his own blockbuster of a cartoon character.
"It was already dark," the animator, Zdenek Miler, now 83, remembers. "It was kind of hard to see. I tripped over something and I fell. I turned around to see what I fell on. It was a mole's burrow. I said, 'Here's a good idea.' "
It took three months of artistic tweaking to turn the real animal's blind face into Krtek, or Little Mole. Over nearly five decades, Krtek starred in 62 short animated films for children that thrived despite the complete absence of exploding cigars. Krtek outsells Disney here, his anatomically incorrect eyes poking out from book bags, puzzles and pillow cases everywhere.
He is shown around the world, and is especially popular in Germany and Japan. (A 20-something Iraqi recently turned to goo when he spotted a foreigner in Baghdad wearing a Krtek T-shirt).
But Krtek never caught on in the United States.
....
http://neuromancer.freeblog.hu/Files/pic/krtek_notesz.jpg