die murmilen: Influences

Flee Flee

Doesn't this cat look great! She lives on the front of a 'wooden finger puppets' box. She and her friends look like they were born in the 70s.

Quipic the Hedgehog, Pere Castor

What a deliciously enchanting story by Pere Castor, about a little hedgehog who enjoys going for solitary walks, only to end up having many an exciting adventure. Quipic encounters travellers who are intent on cooking him in clay and a snake who likes to pick a good fight. Our brave and gallant knight wages a merciless war on all vipers and manages to outsmart those ravenous humans all by himself! This story is fantastic and beautifully illustrated and the lithographs by Rojan are so fresh with colour. It reminds me of stories that my grandma used to tell me when I was little, about the wildlife that surrounded her farm in Iselsberg.

Alice, Jan Svankmajer

The Tough Guy

Bruin the Deep Sea Diver, Vilhelm Hansen (1959)

This is a short story that I found in an antiquarian. It is laid out like a comic and is based around Bruin, Pingo and Wilmot who sail the seas in search of the North Pole. They meet several perculiar characters along the way, for instance Oswald the octopus who is incredibly helpful, Father Neptune who insists on a 'crossing the equator' ceremony and a friendly dolphin who helps them to find a lost hat. These creatures may not sound strange, but if you ever manage to locate this twee and charmingly illustrated book, you will know what i mean.

Ladislaw Starewicz

Bimbulli

Bimbulli is a lovely childrens book that I bought in Austria, about a little doll that two children make, as part of a game. The doll comes to life and meets a newly hatched chick named Prinz Kueken. The two of them embark on a perilous venture, which involves being swept downstream during a terrible storm and being saved by a rather surly old frog. I initially bought this book for its attractive and vibrant illustrations, but now that I have read it, my inner child is screaming for me to make my own Bimbulli as instructed on page one.

The Moomins

Bretislav Pojar

I love love love love this! Its called Pojd'te pane budeme si hrat and was designed by Miroslav Stepanek and directed by Bretislav Pojar. I discovered this joyful and incredible animation in a shop in Prague. It was an extraordinary find and like nothing I've ever seen before.

The series is over 40 years old, however looks fresh, stylized, effortless and is as vital as any stop motion animation created today. Although pojd'te pane is in another language I can understand how the characters feel just by looking at them. The furry felt like bears, with their distinctive voices were animated on top of a sheet of glass so only half of the puppet was constructed. These enchanting creatures work so well in a flat enviroment yet still look fully dimensional.

My favourite episode, 'Opardalu kitery vonel,' sees the two bears competing to win the affections of a beautiful, alluring, mysterious cat. The small bear morphs into different articles in the attempt to tend to the feline's every need. The big bear becomes increasingly jealous and decides to win the fair lady for himself. When we see him pummeling his chest in a Tarzan manner, we know that he means business. It all goes terribly wrong and as we suspected in the beginning, the kitty is not a fan of cross breeding and finds herself a tom cat to spend the rest of her days with. The bear's heartbreak is short lived and before too long they are back to playing and morphing again.