just joined us for a moment and this is our team live here in the russian capital top stories now. mahmoud ahmadinejad slams the u.n. and nato over the military action to the libyan crisis and says iran will never have nuclear weapons he speaks exclusively to the iranian president. as people flow into the streets of israel continuing the country's biggest social protest summoned sort of if say the demonstrations are only benefiting the privilege. members of insider trading and an accounting error worth two trillion

dollars we have the standard and poor's rating agency facing a vengeful washington inquiry even as world markets continue to shift for the unprecedented us down three. i'll be back with more news for you more developments in less than thirty minutes from now in the meantime nazi scotland place host to a russian cartoonist an art director now working in the u.s. who explains why america's most successful animated shows including the simpsons may have a slight russian accent that's next. for the full story we've got it for. the biggest issues get a human voice face to face with the news makers on. hello again and welcome to spotlight. and party i'll bring up and say my guest is

more like. the simpsons has become so popular in the united states it made it to the big screen but only few people know that this typical american family actually has groups so are several others super popular animated show in the u.s. how could this happen are the russians still coming or are they already there we're asking the censors are that it might. give them a launch it was a part of the award winning any mission studio called pilot but after the fall of the soviet union he moved to america only to help create the country's best animated cartoons to join his friend and colleague david cohen of another tale of russian and the cost animation studio together they created one of the most successful animated how the ninety's called rug rats the movie dream has also been our director for the simpsons movie and the television serious of the simpsons.

and she was into the show thank you thank you very much for being with us well first of all here in russia as we just heard you worked in the best cartoon studio that that we had at that time and maybe maybe the best still is so why did you decide to move and start working in the u.s. for economic reasons for for political reasons but certainly not political ones. probably because of the reasons at the time of ninety four i was out of a job for probably more than a year i was there it was already dwindling economically so when i got the invitation from the president of course can triple triple and definitely a record of insistent. on having me over there so i

gladly accepted his invitation and at that time it was just invitation to come over for here probably toward and to see if i like it or not and we'll go from there was a decision and we went to los angeles and one year passed another one and i'm still there well. it makes make stuff which is pretty different from what you were making when you were working here in russia and they knew that so why do you think what if you have an opinion on this matter why do you think they decided to invite you they wanted they wanted you to somehow change and they they the the image of the face of the. american cartoons or what. i believe the reason was that since our. way and his wife early in class kid they started their own studio basically in the bedroom of their apartment that's how

they started the series. so probably governors business model was to. i have a studio which is not like any other studio so our he wanted the constant edition of the prayer a lot of the fresh blood and him being an artist himself he really liked or water or even a dude and we're going to nation. he was a huge fan of it so i he constantly infused fresh blood from western europe i believe that was the reason and at the time and that was pretty successful. later his policy changed he lost a little bit an interest in animation itself. and the studio started to stall a little bit technically officially it still exists but it's not of the business well let's take

a look at some of the recent russian animation success stories and they reported but what i feel and i didn't either. impressionist painting is moving that's how alexander the troves cartoons are often described the artist is drawn releasing the tape so gloss that they can it brought him international recognition and the highest possible award an oscar russian cartoons have lately been more often nominated for the cademy awards than russian mores the latest nominee was a simplistic black and white animation by constantine brown's eat and although the oscar ski team then ransey against two goals to at least twenty international awards for the scot to lose what might make russian animation particular interest into western audiences is that there are you fix leaks in which cartoons are banned to relive times of a saga to learn the russian animation industry enjoyed substantial state support

which allowed for creativity and the russian cartoonists had to go through harsh adaptation to market economy rules their creativity survived it was demonstrated to the full in the land in ninety's when a moscow animation studio christmas did the series known as the animated shakespeare for the b.b.c. half hour adaptations of shakespeare's plays produced using different animation techniques enjoyed international success. russia's biggest national success an animation so i thought is this your response i'm sorry the popularity of the week to round belly characters is so huge that the decision was made to distribute the good to an international but still the real pride of russian animation and non commercial projects. like the recently released ferry board in stop motion the ugly duckling. music as the soundtrack only for you should make money out of

current will be made at the wall destruction part to make in company so use made film. and i think you're one of the best people to ask what's the main difference between russian and american approaches to animation well old examples what we just saw. we can talk about success when. those aren't really deeply individual pieces been made by great artists and. targeted towards. the mass and i actually thought the same episode of the same kind of episode though like week after week after week and that's all generation is really great and that is great only and mainly because of that he does what he feels he has to do and exactly the way. he feels it has to be done

i can easily imagine that if it was. really on a production level new episode every several weeks could have been so much different so of course. there is testable kind of animation is way much different from. the imation which is done for cartoon network's theirself so many of them i've talked to a number of people working working in animation and this is strange they usually not the people working in the movies but people working in courtrooms in russia say here they have more freedom then they would have had in their colleagues have people like you who work for big studios in the west do you agree. probably probably again it really depends on the project because there are projects. where certain level of freedom is really welcome but again only

a certain level when we talk about the russian emitters working on their own pieces which may be not targeted directly to bring commercial success your list but even more freedom is that what you're trying all that's always you know he says it is not there of invention so yeah when you. have a lot of limitations you really have to be extremely in with inventive so that really pushes you to wants more and more creativity you said you said if he had to do an episode every week yes are you envious to people that you don't have to do an episode every week would you prefer to work this way rather than doing commercially successful but i had a chance to compare working on the mass production. imation and on like

really individual. festival oriented this is a by. from creative standpoint it's much more interesting and. there are really no boundaries for creativity on project the problem is that they happen like once every five years. they last for six months they do not pay much so. a project like yours was happening every other month i would be ecstatic about that but it just cannot happen who we are of the same generation you remember like in the seventy's i think the series union. appeared cartoons for the adults we feel we love the garden for adults and this was something need to do you think this is adequate to have cartoons for children for the snow white and the seven dwarfs i watched the other day i think it's for absolutely for adults only for the kids love it. good

information of course you know if it's all the edges. i i really don't like this approach when sometimes a lot of corner is being caught because there's all this is how kids it is to be simple it has to be. maybe not that much you know creative energy and it could be extremely simple because kids are rather stupid and they don't understand the difference between good and really good so it can be simple i don't buy into this theory so if. animation piece is done for kids but. it's done by the great effort and creativity of everybody going to like it most likely in america it is extremely important even when the project is oriented towards the kids kids not going to go to the theater by themselves they're going to

go with parents so it is very important so that the parents not going to get bored in the first fifteen minutes and want to walk out of the theater and so they didn't want to have those parents stay throughout the movie so it has to have some elements which will be of interest of interest to the parents as well at last they have somebody who understands me because i have to go to the movies with my side and when i have to well when i have to go i have to go and watch with them movies like avatar and he he's ecstatic about it i mean i mean i can't stand this is too much for me but the only thing i agree that there are great for kids and edible edible fragments and this is this is i think great ok we're talking to dmitry milan achieve just your money he's the i our director of the simpsons movie spotlight will be back shortly we'll talk more about his work in a minute after a break so don't go.

wealthy british scientists think it's time to cut. their. market so why not. find out what's really happening to the global economy because a report on r.g.p. . welcome back to spotlight time i'll bring up in just reminded of my guest in the studio today is the mutiny of milan each of the art director of the simpsons movie

and also he worked on the rug rats movie that's from yes well. actually what you made sense of the series you made it into a full size widescreen movie what was the hardest part come while i'm working on that because we all we all are used to simpsons being like a series like like like like little nothing like a smile that said but you made me work what was it was it really hot i was really hard because two main challenges were about first of all of those translate the format which is familiar to a major if you're a audience been seeing a lot like twenty inch screen and then you have to splash it over a hundred of those and screen in a movie theater and if you'll just. project

it on such a huge screen it's not going to hold up to the. just in physics of the human reason because we are much of your color and it's going to work with family who had to learn all the god also the needed the technique that you're drawing it's because all their attention is going to be visible so you have to use a lot of enhanced moments to basically fill out that it was up to us as an object and yes you change it to come up with ideas but the second challenge which pretty much cancels out the first challenge was to make it in such a way so that nobody would notice it again simpsons is such an icon in american culture are you do not treat it with such a freedom so that it changes its look and starts to look like something different that was the main goal of the creators of the movie not to make it like a one huge extended episode but it has to it had to stay true to the origins of the

t.v. series and what about another thing did you did you ask yourself the question is anybody going to go to the movies and buy a ticket to watch this for two hours to know that they now had i had no dog there no i had no doubt at all. the biggest challenge was you know knowing that expectations were so high is what the expectation is is not to disappoint because again the biggest fear was that it would look just as a overly extended t.v. episode and. we just you know had no right to make that mistake so the stakes were really high. and this year expects the the rate of success where will the movie. it wasn't just it was just not disillusioning people in

a disappointed but it was real success was it yes i was serious i was certainly hoping for that i was surprised what a big that is it's. i have read in one of the incident here is that grant to one of the american papers that you worked so hard and you were so much occupied. when you were in that movie that you were sort of depressed after it all finished after the work was terminated is that true while not depressed probably is not the right word. it's human nature you're getting used to extremely high pressure pretty much you know becomes your. way of life the way of thinking you start thinking yellow a senior in your dreams or nightmares so when the whole thing starts

it really is very abrupt and bizarre feeling because the world goes back to what it is not. you need some time to adapt to that because you described it the work work on this and this piece you describe you have as working under restrictive conditions being very restrictive while the charlatans best was mostly the dairy beginning of the project because of course our we started working on a project and the script was not still there it was changing it changing pretty much on a daily basis and our creators they didn't quite know what to do or with the visuals of the movie it was not their main concern at the point so they wanted something by they didn't quite know what they want at some point the consensus on their side was that it's probably going to be safer just to go with

what what we used to have on a t.v. series and not do anything because then we start tampering with it and we lose some i think the city of the show and might lose something it's not going to be quite the same as it used to be. and that was a little bit. chance for quite some time. later when the actually be were we to busy with the visuals and that was really a blessing in disguise because they just forgot to think about the way the movie is going to look so at that time i was pretty much free to come good solutions that i in the end offer it to them and they were very happy about. the russians work and movies in the united states lots of russians in hollywood. but we never

see them working as a team and as a russian teen. it occurred to me when i when i read about these sciences the guys are good nobel prize and physically see they have a russian floor whole the whole floor all the rooms they're all russians with the oh this is the russian like you know but it doesn't happen in movies in the united states why russians represent a great school cinematography why don't you flock together why don't you work hasn't seen because because you quote it you want to do it to make american movies in america or because the producers try to keep your point and not cheer or not pleasure if not i but i wouldn't say that there is a there is an attempt to really spread people around depending on their ethnicity actually a class teachable there was some moment where a group of three or four maybe five russians were working together as a team but. i don't know it's just my observation probably it's not very welcome to

have people of the same cultural group be in a looked out from from the rest because initially but i guess that in live action movies it's the same communication is the key it's extremely important to communicate with all the other people and when the people start to be in the lookout and be like isolated in a small group of their own something goes wrong communication wise and that usually is a really bad science so you think that you have to keep keep it multicultural and this we're getting back to currently the nickelodeon a great channel a great a great. market for for for a cartoon do you think russia needs a channel like that absolutely absolutely and. of course from my not indicated standpoint or russia desperately needs and elated we do have little

content you know that's the problem because there's there's tons of content are like imported content. these name and searched thousands of projects which could easily fill out the space on the such channels i strongly believe that russia needed some content and nickelodeon has a very very strict requirements for animators for example they don't allow cartoons and events of the past is that it's not true why that used to be it also don't know are because when i was describing the situation in one of my interviews that was the end of the ninety's quite likely this. time this policy has changed at that point yes and that was one of the rules which were not pardon still but we've been told several times there are some projects that are close kitchen i was

working on and let's say all the events were taken place in a like seventeenth century. nickelodeon it vies does not to do so because they preferred to have. all the action take place in your present time or in the future. your colleague eagle colorado said in one of his employees i quote i like to draw like children do in primitive tipping eeks what do you think makes such technique. so tracked for contemporary artists in animation while our ego is a very strong artists and. yeah he might wish that here he will drop like a kid even though he really admires the drawings that my daughter made when she was three years old he still has a few of them are on his wall kids three they think different they are they're

different they have such a freedom in their life and at the same time they're not burdened with the years of training in their lines and not straight or really thought out they just draw from hard and that what probably it were means because he wants to make his art you know really coming from your soul and from your heart the way kids do it is the reason why my son when he was about three four five years of age he did wonderful drawings i have them as you said on the wall but now he's like eleven and they and they try to teach him to draw a school he's awfully he and i need he's worse than anybody i've ever seen the same happened to my daughter i was absolutely sure that i have a genius on my hands because she was doing absolutely amazing drawings when she was like three fighting five year olds freedom yeah billion that because you know several years passed and all you could see you know those princesses. you know

little dragons extremely steve. is that it does that mean that an artist a true artist is the man that somebody who managed to sustain his keep his freedom while growing up. yes of course even going to see him since you know since becoming bigger louder brighter the huge change even from technical standpoint and thirty sixteen point happened about two years ago when the show was switched the high definition format. again the typical normal t.v. screen in the average american household it's not a twenty inch tube anymore it's like a fifty inch plasma so a lot of information has to fill out the screen so with the transition to the high definition show became much more sophisticated visual wise yet at the same time i

have really strong the style just for the very first years of simpsons when it was really clumsy crude me. and beautiful at the same time it was not so clearly drawn perspective. it was not sophisticated yet it had a really strong sense of passion which was coming from creators thank you thank you very much for being with us and just a reminder that my guest in the studio today was neatly maligned chip our director of the simpsons movie and also the rug rats that's it for now from all of us here if you don't have your sense part like just drop me a line moved back with more first hand comments on what's going on in and outside this country until then stay on r.t. and take a. home

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