5 June 1930
Born in Moscow Vladimir Popov — director and animator. Creator of the cartoons "Bobik Visiting Barbos," "Umka," and "Three from Prostokvashino."
Animation is necessary for everyone who still has childhood in their heart.
I made my first animation experiments back in school, in a communal apartment at home. I'd take regular film, wash off the emulsion, and mark out the "frames." Then, using a magnifying glass and colored ink, I'd draw caricatures and parodies of my neighbors in them.
The residents would gather in the spacious kitchen, and amid the bubbling of borscht and the sizzling of cutlets on the stove, the next session would begin, accompanied by my commentary. They would laugh so hard the dishes would rattle.
I'd dreamed of working at Soyuzmultfilm since childhood. At 22, I plucked up the courage to go to the HR department, showed them my drawings, and my dream came true.
He started out as an artist's apprentice. He worked as a draftsman and animator on "Moidodyr," "12 Months," and "The Adventures of Buratino." He was particularly surprised that voice acting in animation turned out to be more important than the images.
For us, everything starts with the voiceover. The actor, with his voice and intonation, sets a certain rhythm for the animators. To someone unfamiliar with animation, it might seem strange to see adults grimacing in front of a mirror, marching and limping, flirting and waving their arms belligerently. But this is commonplace; the artists get into character to ensure the movements and facial expressions of the characters they're about to draw match the actors' intonations. A titanic undertaking.
At 30, he made his debut as a director: he worked on the animated satirical magazine “Crocodile”.
At 40, he became famous after the release of "Umka": the image of a polar bear cub, music Evgeniya Krylatova And the lullaby of Mama Bear made it popular throughout the Soviet Union. The colorful illustrations, but the most important thing is the voice acting: all the characters speak and sing in soft female voices.
People are like bears that walk on their hind legs and can take off their skin. ("Umka")
In the 1970s, he worked as a director on the animated films "The Adventures of the Red Ties," "Treasures of the Sunken Ships," and "Bring Back Rex."
At 45, he made his debut as an independent director with the film "Rainbow" (1975), a fairy tale about two boys who are befriended by a rainbow. He received a prize for it at the 11th International Children's and Youth Film Festival in Tehran.
After "Umka," Popov's greatest popularity came with "Bobik Visiting Barbos," "Three from Prostokvashino," and "The Adventures of Vasya Kurolesov." The main characters were voiced by Yuri Nikulin, Oleg Tabakov, Mikhail Kononov, Yuri Yakovlev.
One of the most difficult characters to draw in Prostokvashino, oddly enough, turned out to be the jackdaw.
"The fridge is mine, and everything in the fridge is mine too! It's a useful thing, you know! You put a sausage in there, for example, and it lasts as long as you like." ("Bobik visiting Barbos")
He was known as the designer of the recognizable covers for Melodiya records.
He collaborated with the satirical film magazine “Fitil” (created the stories “The Virus of Indifference,” “More Than Yourself,” “Men and Women,” and many others).
Popov's latest work is the humorous film-opera "Academician Ivanov" based on a poem by Eduard Uspensky.
He died at 1987, in 56.
