Inspiration to do animation

I grew up like any other child. I loved watching children’s television. The animated films and shows offered a fantasy world where anything could happen. The last few years I have noticed that most of the shows I watched as a kid were Eastern European. They display an idealistic world where unity and brotherhood plays a very central part. Making my own animation I get to create my own fantasy lands, although this is more through story telling animation, a tool that helps me make it happen. I love the moment where the character comes to life and acts out situations in my make-believe world.

Good old favourites of mine are:

The Czech show Pat & Mat directed by Lubomír Beneš.

Pat and Mat are two friends who build and mend things together. They destroyed more than they built, but always stayed good friends helping each other out.

The East-German The Sandman

where a superhero (of sorts) put children to sleep all over the world. There have been discussions since, whether this show pure communist propaganda designed to brainwash children. If this is the case, they got to me, I think the values in this show are far better than the values in the western-world. Whether communism works or not is a different matter.

The Seventh Father of the House (1966) and The Boy who Vied with the Troll (1967)

by Ivo Caprino and Kjell Aukrust. These are two films of a four-part series, depicting Norwegian fairytales. I was petrified of the trolls in these stories. Living on the edge of the forest, many a time I thought I was being chased by them and ran as fast as I could wherever I was going.