A FEATURE‐LENGTH ANIMATED FILM ABOUT "TEDDY FLOPPY EAR" IS IN THE MAKING
The work is underway on the feature‐length animated film about Teddy Floppy Ear, directed by Grzegorz Jonkajtys.
Teddy Floppy Ear appeared for the first time in 1957 in a children's book by Czesław Janczarski with illustrations by Zbigniew Rychlicki. Over the next few years, you could follow the adventures of the amiable and curious teddy bear in a children's magazine "Miś." In 1975, commissioned by Polish Television, the studio Se‐Ma‐For in Lodz started the production of a puppet animation series, in which Mieczysław Czechowicz lent his voice to Floppy Ear. Until 1987, 104 episodes of the series were made, but the bedtime TV show is often broadcast on various television channels, thanks to which Floppy Ear is known by all generations.
On March 4, there was a conference and a meeting with the makers of the planned feature‐length animated film about the legendary teddy bear. The trailer of the project was shown, which can be watched here.
"Our goal was to create such a way of film‐making, in which we would combine the traditional method of stop motion animation with the contemporary teddy bear, so that the effect is attractive to contemporary young viewers. The technique, which we use, gives such an opportunity. What is very interesting is developing the stage designs on special maquettes. In turn, the characters in our film are generated using the traditional 3D technique. For us, the trailer was a trial and a test of how the three‐dimensional figures would work together with the stage design, which was photographed and shot earlier. The test went very well, and now we will work so that it will be even better," said Magdalena Zimecka from Studio ORKA.
The author of the script and the originator of the reboot of Teddy Floppy Ear is Piotr Jasek. The film will be directed by Grzegorz Jonkaitys, who works at Industrial Light & Magic in San Francisco, a studio founded by George Lucas. His original film "The Ark," a combination of 3D animation and shooting a factory mockup in studio was shown at the festival in Cannes in 2007. Maciej Stuhr and Czesław Mozil will lend their voices to the main protagonists. TFP and FremantleMedia Poland have already started to work on the film. The film's co‐producer is Studio ORKA, responsible for animation and post‐production. The animation is a combination of 3D animation and shooting a factory mockup in studio. The start of the film's production is scheduled for the beginning of 2017. The development of the project was co‐funded by Polish Film Institute