Igor Kovalyov

Igor Adolfovich Kovalyov (; born 17 January 1954) is Russian animator, director and educator, co-founder of Pilot — the first private animation studio in the Soviet Union. From 1991 to 2005 he worked at Klasky Csupo where he co-created Aaahh!!! Real Monsters and co-directed The Rugrats Movie. He currently serves as a creative producer at Soyuzmultfilm. Kovalyov is also known for his auteur films for which received multiple international awards, including three Grand Prizes at the Ottawa International Animation Festival. Soviet period Igor Kovalyov was born in Kyiv, Ukrainian SSR (modern-day Ukraine). When asked in 2002 whether he feels himself as an American, Russian or Ukrainian artist, he answered "I feel myself Russian, because I am Russian. I have 50% of Russian, three litres of Ukrainian and three litres of Polish blood... But I will never become an American". He finished animation courses at Goskino where his teachers were Yevgeny Sivokon and David Cherkassky. He also met Alexander Tatarsky during the studies, his closest friend since. In 1972 he joined the animation department at Kievnauchfilm to work in clean-up, inbetweening and animation. Simultaneously Kovalyov and Tatarsky started an "underground" home studio and created the Speaking of Birds comedy shorts using a handmade animation stand. They brought it to the High Courses for Scriptwriters and Film Directors and were invited to join the animation faculty. Kievnauchfilm refused to let them go, and only in 1979 Kovalyov was allowed to leave, while Tatarsky fled to Moscow on his own. Igor studied under Fyodor Khitruk, Yuri Norstein, Vladimir Pekar and Violetta Kolesnikova. He also got into art films by Robert Bresson, Ingmar Bergman, Carl Theodor Dreyer and experimental animation by Borivoj Dovniković, Walerian Borowczyk and Priit Pärn in particular. Upon graduation in 1981 he joined Tatarsky at the Multtelefilm division of Studio Ekran as an art director. Their debut work Plasticine Crow consisted of two shorts based on "kids drawings" (in fact all of them were drawn by Kovalyov using his left hand) and one made of plasticine, becoming the first Soviet claymation film. Due to his father's sudden death Igor left for Kiev in the middle of production and stayed there for the next several years working at Kievnauchfilm again. He then returned to Moscow and started directing films alongside Tatarsky. Their most famous work was Investigation Held by Kolobki.