Pilot (studio)

Pilot was a Russian animation studio based in Moscow. It was founded in 1988 by Aleksandr Tatarskiy, Igor Kovalyov and Anatoliy Prokhorov, becoming the first private animation studio in the Soviet Union.

History

Until his death in 2007, Aleksandr Tatarskiy was the studio's artistic director; since then, the position has been filled by Eduard Nazarov. The studio has made over 130 animated films.

A subdivision called "Pilot-TV", founded in 1997, produced satirical animated series using 3D motion-captured characters, the most famous of which were the studio's mascots: the Pilot Brothers (Chief and Colleague).

The studio has received over 50 awards at international film festivals during its existence and is best known for animating the popular Cartoon Network series Mike, Lu & Og.

Many famous directors have worked in the studio, including Aleksandr Petrov, Rinat Gazizov, Konstantin Bronzit, Mikhail Aldashin, Igor Kovalyov, Ivan Maximov, Andrey Sokolov and others.

Starting in 2004, the studio has worked on the enormous project Mountain of Gems, which is meant to consist of 52 films with a combined length of over 11 hours. Each film narrates a fairy tale from one of the many ethnic peoples of Russia. The project has won numerous awards at Russian and international film festivals. 48 films were completed as of 2010.

As of July 2010, the studio is about to shut down because of lack of money.[1] The four final films of the "Mountain of Gems" series were supposed to be finished in July 2010, with Goskino paying for them in February or April; however, the money was never received. Studio producer Lev Bubnikov has said that suing Goskino to make them uphold the contract would have been "pointless".[2]

See also

• History of Russian animation

External links

• Official website (Russian)
  • "Mountain of Gems" project page (Russian)
  • "Animated Russia" project page (Russian)
• Database of films by Pilot studio on animator.ru
• Video-montage made by Vitaly Shafirov shortly after the death of Aleksandr Tatarskiy, covering the early days of Pilot Studio