"Masha and the Bear" is one of the most popular domestic cartoons to date. Adults and children look forward to new series. The history of the creation of the cartoon and some plans for the future toldby the way. by CEO studio "Animaccord" Dmitry Loveyko.
- How was the idea to create a cartoon born?
The author of the idea, screenwriter and one of the producers of the project "Masha and the Bear" is Oleg Kuzovkov, who has 20 years of experience in animation. The animated series was based on the fairy tale about Masha and the Bear, familiar to everyone since childhood, but significantly beaten, with the effect of novelty. Following the adventures of the heroes and laughing at the comical situations that the characters get into, especially the furry Mishka, the child will learn important lesson because the story is not only funny, but also instructive. According to Oleg Kuzovkov, the idea to make an animated series "Masha and the Bear" originated in his head 14 years ago after a vacation in the Crimea. There was a small but very active girl "without complexes" on the beach, who in a couple of days made all the adults burrow into the pebbles and swim behind the buoys. So fidget Masha has real prototype. In 1996, it was impossible to launch such a project due to the dismantling of the domestic film industry, so the implementation of the idea had to be postponed. I had to wait over ten years. In the second half of 2007, Kuzovkov returned to this topic, wrote a script for the presentation of the project, together with a group of like-minded people made a colorful booklet and prepared an investment proposal. Soon an investor was found, and the production flywheel began to unwind.
- How many episodes of the cartoon are planned to be released?
- How many people are working on the creation of the cartoon and how long does it take to create one series?
About 50 people. Work on one series takes from 4 to 5 months. But since up to 4 series are in operation at the same time, they come out about once every 1.5 months.
- Will there be a full-length cartoon "Masha and the Bear"? If so, when is it going to be released??
If it appears a good idea full meter, then we will start working on it. A feature length animation is more difficult to make and usually more expensive than regular movie, therefore, without a good idea, it makes no sense to take on such a long and expensive project.
How did you find main character(Alina Kukushkina) to voice Masha? By the way, many viewers notice the similarities between Masha and Alina. Was she (Masha) "copied" from Alina? Or is it just the imagination of the audience.
Alina Kukushkina is a wonderful little actress, we found her by chance, through friends. The similarity of our two heroines - Alina and Masha - is most likely the fantasies of the audience. Although it can be said that in the process of working on the series, Alina, of course, brings her own traits to the character of her heroine - since it is already difficult to imagine Masha without her voice.
The film is watched by both children and adults. Everyone finds their own meaning in it. Do you take this into account when writing the script?
To some extent, yes, since the series is dedicated to the interaction of children and adults, it is simply expressed on the basis of the plot. old fairy tale. Therefore, adults, too, are likely to see this interaction from their side, and try it on themselves.
- Do you take into account the criticism (suggestions) of the audience.
Necessarily. We carefully study the reviews of viewers on the Internet, sometimes they just help to look at the series from the outside. And constructive criticism has never made anyone feel worse.
Let's hope that "Masha and the Bear" will not cease to amaze both kids and adults with new series.
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Masha and the Bear is a Russian animated series aimed at a general audience. The cartoon was created using 3D graphics. Used for modeling, rigging and animation software package Autodesk Maya. Rendering is done on Animaccord's own render farm. Broadcast on the television channel "Russia 1" in the program " Goodnight, kids! and on the Carousel channel. It has also been shown in France, Switzerland and Canada. Since November 2009, the animated series has been licensed on DVD and Blu-Ray by the Mystery of Sound company.
In 2012, the first spin-off was released called "Tale Machines", currently consisting of 24 episodes based on Russian folk and foreign fairy tales.
Since 2014, the second spin-off of the series has been launched, which is called Masha's Scary Stories.
As of 08/13/2013, the cartoon is available on the official website for free viewing via YouTube in HD quality.
Characters
Masha
The only (except for Santa Claus and the Chukchi girl from the Hocus Pocus series) human character in the cartoon. She is voiced by Alina Kukushkina.
Masha has reddish hair and green eyes. Favorite clothes - a dark pink sundress, and the same handkerchief on her head. Very restless and playful.
- Likes lollipops, sweets, touching, rearranging, playing with Bear awards and cups, playing with a ball, jumping in a bucket, asking different questions.
- Able to do moonwalk". Sometimes he squints his eyes. Confuses "right" and "left".
- In sentences, he often says “already” 2 times: “Maybe we’ll have dinner already?”, “Maybe we’ll already ride already?”.
- Uses interesting word- “we lie” (a combination of the words “mode” and “lie down”).
- Owns the techniques of hand-to-hand combat (plot "Distant relative").
- It does not cook porridge and dumplings very well (series "Porridge + Masha" and "Bon appetit"), but it cooks jam perfectly (series "Jam Day").
- He plays chess well. He calls the chess horse "drooped" (from the word "pony").
- He is fluent in hand carpentry tools (episodes "First time in first grade", "Hit of the season"), knows how to play the electric guitar (episode "Hit of the season").
Bear
The bear "Misha" is a very popular circus bear in the past, for which he has many diplomas, medals and awards. He carefully monitors each cup and medal, periodically polishing them to a shine. Being on a well-deserved pension, he lives in the forest. He loves peace, silence, comfort, fishing, honey and football. He has a private household - several hives with bees, a flower bed and a vegetable garden. Plays guitar, trombone and piano. Knows how to ride a bike and roller skates.
Misha can't speak human language, but understands it, and communicates with Masha mainly with gestures, accompanied by a growl of different tones. Boris Kutnevich voices the bear.
Minor characters
- Bear- Beloved Bear and second female character. Coquettish, rather capricious. From time to time he quarrels with the Bear over trifles, and Masha has to reconcile them.
- Hare- a friend of Masha and the Bear. Often, like Misha, he suffers from Masha's mischief. Sometimes, together with the Bear, he picks in the garden, but most often he steals carrots from there.
- Wolves. These pretty scary characters more often suffer from Masha than emerge victorious.
- Squirrel. Masha responds to hooliganism by throwing pine cones.
- Hedgehog. Very rarely participates in Masha's tricks, does not like it when Masha spoils his mushrooms and berries.
- Panda- Misha's nephew. Masha's rival
- Pets- Goat, Chickens, Rooster, Pig and Dog, living in the courtyard of Masha's house and hiding from her wherever possible. The only animal that is not afraid of Masha is a Pig named Rosa
- Tiger- An old friend of the bear in the circus. Chess player.
- little penguin Misha's adopted son. Was thrown to him in the form of an egg, and later raised by Masha and Misha, and then sent home to Antarctica by plane.
- Father Frost- a little old man, slightly taller than Masha.
- Himalayan bear- decisive, lucky, physically developed, in relationships that discredit him (penguins, wolves, tigers, etc.) are not noticed. Real macho!
- bees- angry and aggressive. But in the "Photo 9 by 12" series, they are presented as very funny.
Awards and prizes
Series #1" First meeting"(2009, director Denis Chervyatsov).
"Masha and the Bear" is a children's animated series that tells about the adventures of the forest Bear and the girl Masha. The cartoon uses three-dimensional graphics, which the authors use the Autodesk Maya program. The script of each cartoon series not only allows you to laugh at the adventures of the characters, but also contains an instructive component.
History of creation
The idea of creating a cartoon belongs to the animator Oleg Kuzovkov. Oleg is not only the author of the idea, but also a screenwriter and one of the producers of the project. In "Masha and the Bear" Oleg managed to embody his twenty years of experience with animation.
According to Oleg himself, the idea of the cartoon came to his mind during a vacation in the Crimea. On one of the Crimean beaches, he noticed a small but very lively girl. She did not give rest to any of the adults and thanks to this she became the prototype of the girl Masha. The story took place back in 1996 - since then, Oleg began to hatch the idea of a cartoon. The idea was brought to life only in 2007. Oleg gathered a group of like-minded people, wrote the script for the pilot series and began looking for an investor.
Beginning of work
The search for an investor was successful, and soon a group of animators began working on the debut series of the cartoon "First Meeting". Animaccord studio worked on its creation together with the Asymmetric VFX Studio group. Annimmacord handled the character development, while Asymmetric VFX Studio handled the modeling, rendering, and animation. Sketches of the main characters were developed by Oleg himself back in 1996, when he got acquainted with the prototype of Masha. According to him, it took only two hours to create sketches.
It took eight months to create the cartoon's debut series - the first steps are always difficult. Over time, gaining experience, Animaccord reduced the time it took to create a series to four months. As the creators of "Masha and the Bear" themselves say, the most difficult thing is to fully work out the comic component of the cartoon. Most of the time is spent not on animating characters or creating special effects, but on inventing jokes.
Animaccord rises to its feet
The second series of the cartoon "Animaccord" was created jointly with the studio "Airplane". Later, Animaccord was already independently engaged in work on Masha and the Bear. The studio employs three compositors, five rendering specialists, five and a dozen animators. Working on animation of snow and water individual person. The Bear's coat is imitated using special program, developed by one of the employees of the studio.
"Masha and the Bear" is a Russian cartoon that has gained world fame. According to Kidz Global, 95% of children in Indonesia know it, and 88% in Italy. The Netflix service calls the cartoon a "Russian phenomenon". In February 2015, Animaccord, the creator of Masha and the Bear, won the Best Animated Series award at the Kidscreen Entertainment TV Summit in Miami. In 2015, manufacturers' revenue from the sale of goods licensed by Animakkord under the Masha and the Bear brands amounted to $225 million. In 2016, the company's managing director Dmitry Loveyko plans to increase it by 25% at the expense of foreign partners. The Secret tells how small company entered the top ten in the world animation studios and continues to conquer markets.
Breakthrough
When the photographer of "Secret" handed over to the general director of the studio Dmitry Loveyko teddy bear to take a picture, he was indignant: “Why am I holding a bear?” - and put him on the floor. “Why photographers always want to overlay me with bears and Mashas, I have nothing to do with them. By this I offend the artists - they created and painted everything. In conversations with journalists, he also says that he unwittingly became a public figure, he is just a manager, and the success of the cartoon is the merit of the creative team. Animaccord employs 120 people, 70 of them are animators.
For seven years, Masha and the Bear has become one of the most recognizable and vibrant Russian brands outside the country, it is shown in more than a hundred countries around the world, the cartoon has been translated into 25 languages. Toy Masha can be found, for example, in the largest Spanish hypermarket chain El Corte Inglés, six-minute cartoons are shown not only on European TV channels, they are shown even in cinemas - "Masha" hit the top 10 Christmas films in Italy. “Viewers vote with their wallets, buying new episodes, souvenirs, and motivate businessmen to acquire licenses. Build profitable businesses and drawing cartoons is not the same thing at all,” says Depot WPF, managing partner of the branding agency Depot. Loveiko is modest in vain, it was he who built a strong brand.
Why "Masha and the Bear" is a success in countries with different culture? Firstly, the plot is understandable and close to both children and parents, each episode is a story about the interaction of a child with an adult. “Masha and the Bear continue the archetypal relationship of the heroes of the Russian fairy tale, while Masha’s excessive mischief is in full accordance with modern child. There are only two heroes, and they are very bright - this is forte brand. In addition, the heroes are interesting conflict. All attention is focused on them,” says Olga Konovalova, CEO of BBDO Branding.
Secondly, the cartoon lasts seven minutes - the children do not get tired. Sitting in front of a screen for more than ten minutes can be difficult for them. The cartoon "Alice knows what to do" lasts 26 minutes, the producers specially cut it and post it in parts on YouTube.
Loveyko believes that the next success factor is "gagness" - like "Tom and Jerry" or "Just you wait!", "Masha and the Bear" is a series of ridiculous situations, funny antics and tricks. The absence of long dialogues makes Masha suitable for any age and understandable to residents. different countries. “In dialogues, you clearly define the audience, but in children's content it is very different - up to three years, from three to seven, from seven to nine. Therefore, for example, "Luntik" works in a narrow segment, - explains Loveyko - Everyone is interested in gags, but they are very difficult to make - you need to keep the rhythm, facial expressions are important, etc. In addition, many people remember the voice of Masha, who was voiced by Alina Kukushkina.
The story of "Masha and the Bear" began in 1996: the artist, cameraman and director Oleg Kuzovkov was relaxing in the Crimea and saw a girl on the beach, here's how he recalls this in an old interview: "A child is just the leader of the Redskins: someone, for example , eating chicken, she came up, also ate without asking. Two days later, people on the beach from her swam behind the buoys, buried themselves in the pebbles, pretended to be dead. But she raised the "dead", dug up those buried from the pebbles, and from behind the buoys they themselves sailed. He wrote the script for the cartoon, but had no idea where to find money for the project - in the 90s, neither the state nor private individuals supported animation. Ten years later, together with his colleague Andrei Dobrunov (since 2014, he has headed the Soyuzmultfilm studio), Kuzovkov found an investor, businessman Sergei Kuzmin. Who he is and what he does besides the studio, they do not tell in Animaccord. Now Kuzmin, according to the SPARK-Interfax database, owns 80% of the company. Together with him, Loveyko, a classmate of Kuzmin in Novosibirsk, came to the company. state university. Previously, Loveiko worked as a commercial director in several companies in Food Industry in Novosibirsk, and then - development director of the NPO Vzlyot airline in Moscow. He began to build the business processes of Animaccord.
The first two episodes of "Masha and the Bear" made a year, they appeared in the program "Good night, kids!" on the TV channel "Russia" at the very end of 2009. The premieres of other popular Russian animated series - "Luntika" (2006) and "Smesharikov" (2004) also took place in this program. On "Good night, kids!" Animaccord made a bet from the very beginning, which is why each episode lasted six minutes. VGTRK quickly agreed to put Masha on the air. According to Loveiko, the first few episodes raised the show's rating by one and a half times.
Although parents complain on Russian social networks that Masha teaches children to be capricious, millions watch the cartoon. In 2012, the series " Big Wash" topped the rating of the Russian-language segment of YouTube, in ten months it was viewed 36.5 million times. Since then, "Masha" has been breaking records - in 2015, one of the episodes collected a billion views, becoming the most popular Russian-language video on YouTube. In 2012, Animaccord released a new "kind project" - "Fairy Tale Machines": Masha retells the stories of Russian folk tales. Two years later, the studio figured that the children who started watching the cartoon in 2008 have matured and now love horror stories. They made another spin-off - Masha's Horror Stories.
Loveiko calls his company informal. Animaccord aired only eight episodes (60 minutes) per season, while the format of the TV channels was 26 (182 minutes). “In the first year we made two episodes, in the second - four, but they were of such quality that they immediately fell in love” - the production of the first episodes cost the company $3 million. never considered. Since 2012, all cartoon series can be watched for free on official channel YouTube.
Animaccord earns primarily from the sale of licenses: about 60% of the revenue comes from this direction, another 40% from the content itself (sale of the rights to display cartoons, advertising royalties, including advertising on YouTube). At the same time, 40% of the company's revenue already comes from abroad - these are royalties from foreign licensees and advertising on YouTube channels in different countries. There are many types of licenses, you can “use protected components complex work» - characters, music, locations and others - for the production of products and services. Since 2009, more than 150 companies around the world have acquired licenses. Among them: Danone, Ferrero, Perfetti van Melle, Simba Dickie Group and Ravensburger toy manufacturers, Crayola stationery and others. Bye most Masha and the Bear receives money from licensees in Russia, but the company believes that Italy will be able to generate comparable income this year. On average, the studio receives a royalty of 10% from the sale of each license, but the figure depends on the segment.
Competitors from Russia and giants like Disney and Marvel earn money in a similar way. In 2012, Animakkord was inferior in terms of license sales to Smeshariki, but by 2014 Masha caught up with them. According to the creator of the Smeshariki brand, Ilya Popov, his company's revenue is comparable to the deductions that Masha receives: "It doesn't happen year after year, in some categories we win."
Dmitry Loveyko
Photo: Photo: Pavel Aleksandrov/Secret Firma
Brand support and control
“You work to build fans and a loyal audience, and you get money from businesses that use the same group to sell their products,” Loveyko explains.
For cartoon fans, there are pages on Facebook (4.2 million subscribers), VKontakte (331,650 subscribers), Instagram (48.9 million subscribers) and Odnoklassniki (219,490 subscribers). On VKontakte, in addition to official page, the search returns 9000 unofficial. The company makes sure that five original messages appear on social networks every day: drawings, postcards, tips and other posts that users will want to like and share.
Animaccord carefully selects partners for the release of products under the cartoon brand. "For your characters' world to last, you have to control the products too," continues Loveiko. The universe of Masha and the Bear has not been limited to cartoons for a long time, Animaccord with partners is engaged in the release of games, magazines and books. In 2012, 335 different books about Masha were published: “This is from 3.5% to 5% Russian market children's books. Oversaturation is not good,” says Loveiko.
The company refuses some offers, even if they can bring profit. For example, Loveiko is against “repeat dolls”: “For people to say all sorts of nasty things, and then post it on the Internet with Masha’s voice, we don’t need this for nothing.” Another taboo is collaborating with manufacturers of low quality, cheap goods like t-shirts - in the short term you can make money on this, but in the end there will be more negativity.
Loveiko prefers to work with big players. Many suggested that he produce chocolate under the Masha and the Bear brand, but the manager waited until the Ferrero concern liked the brand. The Italian manufacturer of sweets might not be interested in Masha if the brand's reputation was tarnished by the release of low-quality sweets. In 2014, Ferrero sold 37 million bars and chocolate eggs with figures of Masha and the Bear in Russia.
Protecting its heroes and brands, Animaccord fights pirates and counterfeit goods, in 2014 the legal team hired by the company was involved in 3,000 court cases. There is someone to fight back: in 2012, when DVDs were still actively bought, the company sold a million discs with cartoons, and pirates, according to Animaccord's calculations, were four times more. There are now more than 1,000 unofficial products on AliExpress for the request "masha and the bear toys".
going abroad
"Masha and the Bear" is the first Russian cartoon that has become popular in the West. Smeshariki is also developing abroad, but Chinese viewers liked them and focused on this market.
Loveiko says that it was not so difficult to negotiate with foreign TV channels to show Masha. They were just waiting for more material - at least one season of 26 episodes. The French were the first to show the cartoon on Canal +, they agreed to take 13 episodes, but the effect did not appear immediately.
In 2015, the Italian newspaper La Stampa wrote that in Italy "Masha and the Bear" is loved more than the world celebrity "Peppa Pig". Journalists suggested that Italian children have much more in common with a girl than with a pig. In addition, unlike Russian parents, Italians find the cartoon kind and instructive. “The cartoon is useful for children precisely because it emphasizes the power of the child in his narcissistic phase of development. And if this phase (the illusion of one’s own power) is not allowed to be enjoyed by the child (as Masha does it selflessly), then adult life a sad depressive adult with a chronic sense of his own impotence will come out, ”says psychologist Yulia Burlakova. The Italian children's TV channel Rai YoYo shows "Masha" ten times a day, and the ratings do not decrease. “Masha and I broke all records. 800,000 viewers at the same time! Not a single cartoon is watched like that,” the director of the channel, Massimo Liofredi, is delighted.
Photo: dbqueen/Flickr/
In addition to the Italian RAi, the rights to show the series belong to the American Cartoon Network, the English Cartoonito, the German KiKa and Sony Music, the French France 5 and NBC Universal, the Spanish Panda and other channels. The cartoon has been viewed more than 6 billion times on YouTube. It outperforms competitors from Nickelodeon and Disney. Bloomberg Businessweek cited data from Social Blade researchers who estimate the monthly advertising revenue of a cartoon on YouTube at $1.5 million (now one view brings 50 cents, before the crisis it brought $1).
One of the problems that I had to face when going abroad was dubbing. On the English language the team translated the cartoon in Los Angeles, in addition to the translation, they changed all the inscriptions in the cartoon so that it would be “like a native” for the child. The German channel KiKa received the rights to "Masha" on the condition that it translates the series itself. Loveiko thinks the dubbing was bad and when Sony asked for the rights to release the DVD in Germany, he insisted on a new translation. "Animaccord" dubbed "Masha" once again on their own.
Loveiko can discuss the intricacies of adapting the cartoon for different countries for a long time. For example, to tell how partners from the UAE asked to cut out several scenes from the series with the participation of Rose Pig for religious reasons, or to argue than the mainland Chinese different from Chinese in Taiwan. In August, the first season ended in Taiwan and the Masha and the Bear holiday was held. The company is now planning to launch the series in China. “Who will answer the questions of Chinese children in Chinese social networks, throw out postcards with Masha there? Our Chinese partners, so we need to negotiate very thoroughly,” says Loveyko. There are cases related to the peculiarities of different countries.
When entering foreign markets, perhaps the most important thing is to find a partner who will stay for a long time and will treat the brand as if it were his own. Animaccord does not have internal specialists not only for China, but also for Portugal, France and other markets, it has to rely on local representatives.
Loveiko says that Russian animators are now asking him for advice on how to conquer Europe. “In the West, business is used to working with large structures like Disney or Dreamworks, there are a lot of rules: releasing style guides twice a year, registering trademarks, etc. You can’t come with a DVD and say: look what good cartoon. But we didn’t know all this, there was no one to tell,” he says.
One of the lessons is this: the first offer is never good. We need to wait until the wave of those who want to cash in on a fast-growing brand subsides. Then the big companies will come. Companies from all over the world are now fighting for the right to produce products under the Masha brand, but Loveiko is picky. To sell toys in Indonesia, where the cartoon is well known, you do not need a contract with a local manufacturer, the demand is covered by existing manufacturers in Russia and Germany, whom Loveiko trusts.
Animaccord directs most of its marketing efforts to foreign markets - it pays for advertising and promotion in foreign currency, and produces content for rubles. The company also earns the main revenue in rubles, but the situation may change soon.
Soon active work coming to the USA. In addition to Moscow, Animaccord has an office in Miami, which helps to promote the cartoon in the States and Latin America. In July last year, the authoritative American magazine Animation Magazine included "Masha" in the rating of "Top 250 TV shows that are destined to become classics." In August, the cartoon was added to the Netflix online cinema catalog. "We store on the service best programs from all over the world, this also applies to children's programs, and we really like Masha and the Bear, ”the Netflix press service told The Secret. The rankings and interest from Netflix means the show has a lot of potential in the States.
In September 2015, the Izvestia newspaper wrote that due to lack of funding, Masha and the Bear was closing. Loveiko quickly denied the sensation. But the Loveiko wall on VKontakte still managed to turn into the Wailing Wall - fans demanded the return of Masha and the Bear. The third season of the animated series should appear in mid-2018. One of the series "Visiting a Fairy Tale" is already available on YouTube, the studio plans to release the next one every one and a half to two months. Foreign channels are waiting for the finished season. The long wait only fuels interest in the Russian phenomenon.
Alexey Andreev Managing partner of Depot WPF branding agency (among clients: Nestle, Unilever, Xerox and other companies)
The creators of the product clearly did not limit themselves to the “cartoon” category. From the very beginning, it was about the formation of a serious commercial brand. Long-term strategy, analysis target audience, positioning, creative and brand book are reliable tools for turning cute characters into a money-making machine. This is pure marketing, seeking to cover as many points of contact with the consumer as possible. And here we see the competent use of foreign brand technologies everywhere.
Russian background, national color, clothes, names, and at the same time stories that are close and understandable to the whole world. The life of the main characters is a mirror of the relationship between a woman and a man, parents and children, weak and strong. The win-win context "treacherous hysteric and complacent fool" is used, exclusively universal visual images and codes are found, the characters evoke sympathy. If we add here one storyline, good soundtrack and equal in quality series, then we will get an excellent product suitable for worldwide replication.
Judge for yourself: adults and children like it, it is not strictly tied to culture, traditions and geography. The mass audience does not pay close attention details, the general feeling of a quality cartoon is enough for him. And this quality is made up of thousands of little things that strikingly distinguish this brand from other cartoons. The professional eye can see that the drawn characters exactly match the guidelines and are similar in all series. Masha, for example, can smile only this way and that - and nothing else. The Bear has so many fingers on its paws and the smile sparkles only from certain angles. For each of the characters, a whole constitution was written, where all the "possible - impossible" are taken into account! it internal laws crafts that are strictly observed in the same Disney and, as a rule, are completely ignored by us. Hence such a fantastic difference in the results that fall on wide screens.
Cover photo: Pavel Alexandrov / Sekret Firmy
How to create a cartoon
It all starts with a script written by Oleg Kuzovkov, the founder of the studio. The description of the entire action that unfolds in the series fits on just a couple of A4 sheets. After the script is ready, the artist draws each scene in accordance with it - he makes a storyboard. It's a storyboard that helps the team understand what's going on in the series. There can be up to 2 thousand drawings in a storyboard, and not all scenes will necessarily end up in a cartoon.
Then the storyboard gets into the 2D animatic department. Here, experts arrange the pictures in chronological order on the "ruler" and break them into episodes. It becomes clear how many minutes each episode will last, how the characters will interact and what is said main character- Masha. After that, they voice her - they record the voice of the dubbing actress Alina Kukushkina, who is now 14 years old. And she became "Masha" when she was only six. True, the new episodes of the third season are voiced by actress Varya Sarantseva. At the same stage, the position of the cameras is set.
Then flat 2D objects and characters are translated into 3D volumetric figures. This is what modelers do. The database stores all the items that were involved in the cartoon. Therefore, for example, for Masha or the Bear, it is not necessary to create new model(if they are in the frame in " classical form"). But in all series there are things that are present in the frame for the first time - for example, new hats, houses, vehicles. All these props are created from scratch: first they are drawn by the artist, then they are sent to the 2D animatic department and finally to the 3D animatic department.
Each such model goes to the setup. Here, the specialist attaches control elements to all moving parts, by pulling which you can animate everything that should not be static in the frame. All this is done for animators who can make the curtain sway in the wind, Masha - to dance, and the Bear - to be perplexed. Modelers are working on everything extreme forms emotions of heroes, such as laughter, crying, surprise. After the objects are modeled, they go to texturing. Here, a full-fledged color character is obtained from a gray blank. It is painted, putting on it a texture that was previously drawn by the artist.
Finally, the animators step in and control everything in the frame like puppets. That is, they literally open doors, take books from the shelf, do a lipsync - they put the position of Masha's lips in accordance with what sounds she makes. In this case, it is necessary to take into account the mood with which the heroine speaks - cheerful or sad. In order to know the text, the animators listen to its recording with headphones. This entire process can take two to three months.
After the animation, the cartoon gets to the renderer, where specialists apply textures to gray models and arrange the light in the frame. All the characters and their surroundings become as realistic as possible: characters get hair, animals grow hair, needles grow near Christmas trees. Plus, the render already appears the time of day, the season and the weather is set.
Then the cartoon goes to The final stage- composition, the specialists of this department work on the layers, processing them, aligning them in terms of color intensity, dynamics and combining them into one finished product. The final version of the cartoon is consistent with artistic director, and then the series is uploaded to YouTube and iTunes.
Photo: Yasya Vogelhardt
