Who invented the crocodile gene and Cheburashka the author. Cheburashka - the hero of E.N's books

The image of Cheburashka known today was created by the animator Leonid Shvartsman.

Origin

According to the preface to the book Crocodile Gena and His Friends, Cheburashka was the name of a defective toy that the author had in childhood, depicting a strange beast: either a bear cub or a hare with big ears. His eyes were large and yellow, like those of an owl, his head was round, like a hare, and his tail was short and fluffy, such as is usually the case with small cubs. The boy's parents said it was unknown to science a beast that lives in hot tropical forests. Therefore, in the main text, whose heroes are, allegedly, the children's toys of Eduard Uspensky, Cheburashka is really an unknown tropical animal that climbed into a box of oranges, fell asleep there, and as a result, along with the box, ended up in Big city. The director of the store in which the box was opened called it “Cheburashka”, since the animal, which had eaten too many oranges, was constantly falling (cheburah):

He sat, sat, looked around, and then he took it and cheburahnulsya from the table to the chair. But he did not sit on a chair for a long time - he cheburahnulsya again. On the floor.
- Fu you, Cheburashka what! - the director of the store said about him, - He can’t sit still at all!
So our animal found out that his name is Cheburashka ...

Novels and plays about Cheburashka were written by Eduard Uspensky (plays - together with Roman Kachanov):

"Crocodile Gena and his friends" (1966) - story
"Cheburashka and his friends" (1970) - play (together with R. Kachanov)
“Vacation of Crocodile Gena” (1974) - play (together with R. Kachanov)
"The Business of Gena the Crocodile" (1992) - a story (together with I. E. Agron)
"Crocodile Gena - police lieutenant"
"Cheburashka goes to the people"
"Kidnapping Cheburashka"

Based on the book, director Roman Kachanov created four cartoons:

"Crocodile Gena" (1969)
"Cheburashka" (1971)
Shapoklyak (1974)
"Cheburashka goes to school" (1983)

After the release of the first series of cartoons, Cheburashka became very popular in the USSR. Since then, Cheburashka has been the hero of many Russian jokes. In 2001, Cheburashka gained great popularity in Japan.

At the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, he was chosen as the mascot of the Russian Olympic team. At the 2006 Winter Olympics, Cheburashka, the symbol of the Russian Team, changed into white winter fur. At the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, Cheburashka was "dressed" in red fur.

At the 2010 Winter Olympics, Cheburashka the mascot won blue fur.

In the 1990s and 2000s, disputes broke out over the copyright for the image of Cheburashka. They concerned the use of the image of Cheburashka in various products, the names of kindergartens, children's variety studios and clubs (which was a common practice in Soviet time), as well as the authorship of the very image of Cheburashka, which, according to Eduard Uspensky, belongs entirely to him, while his opponents argue that the characteristic image of Cheburashka with big ears known today was created by Leonid Shvartsman. In the 1990s, Eduard Uspensky also acquired the rights to the Cheburashka trademark, which had previously been used in products such as sweets and children's cosmetics. The use of the name became the subject of a dispute between the writer and the Krasny Oktyabr confectionery factory. In particular, in February 2008, the Federal State Unitary Enterprise Film Fund of the Soyuzmultfilm Film Studio (the owner of the rights to the image) expressed its intention to demand compensation from the creators of the film The Most best movie» for using the image of Cheburashka without permission.

The origin of the word "cheburashka"

The version about a defective toy, set out in the introduction to his book, Ouspensky rejects as composed especially for children. In an interview with a Nizhny Novgorod newspaper, Eduard Uspensky says:

I came to visit a friend, and his little daughter was trying on a fluffy fur coat that dragged along the floor,<…>The girl was constantly falling, stumbling over her fur coat. And her father, after another fall, exclaimed: “Oh, she’s gone crazy again!”. This word stuck in my memory, I asked its meaning. It turned out that "cheburahnutsya" - it means "to fall." And so the name of my hero appeared.

IN " explanatory dictionary living Great Russian language" by V. I. Dahl is described as the word "cheburakhnutsya" in the meaning of "fall", "crash", "stretch", and the word "cheburashka", defined by him in various dialects as "a checker of a burlak strap, hung on the tail ”, or as “roly-poly, a doll that, no matter how you throw it, gets up on its own”. According to Fasmer's etymological dictionary, "cheburakhnut" is derived from the words chuburok, chapurok, cheburakh - "a wooden ball at the end of a burlak tow", of Turkic origin. Another related word is "chebyrka" - a whip, at the end of which there is a ball on the hair.

The origin of the word "cheburashka", in the sense of a tumbler toy, described by Dahl, is due to the fact that many fishermen made such toys from wooden balls, which were floats for fishing nets, and were also called cheburashka.

Reminds me of Lenin, and showed what he looks like new hero Cherry, developed by him by order of the Japanese.

War

In the first days of the war, I did not die thanks to chance. A believer would certainly see divine intervention in such a combination of circumstances. But I'm an atheist, an agnostic, whatever you want to call it, and I think it's just a coincidence.

In the summer of 1941, I turned 21, then it was just the draft age. I studied in Leningrad, at a school at the Repin Academy of Arts. In May I received a summons. I come to the recruiting office, a huge room of the military registration and enlistment office, full of people, they call everyone, but I'm not there. I go up to the window, I say: “Why don’t you call Schwartzman?” And a young man in civilian clothes answered me: “Don't make noise, brother. Just between us: looks like we lost your case. When we find you, they will call you with a new summons.” Thanks to this clerical error, I am still alive today. If I had been called then, I would have died in the first weeks of the war. All my close friends my age died then.

On June 22, the radio message about the beginning of the war, Molotov's speech, sounded completely unexpected. Everyone knew that we had a non-aggression pact with Germany, and this was such a stab in the back. It became clear that it would be bad, but then I could not imagine what awaited my family.

I realized that I needed to help my family with food, so I became a turner's apprentice at the Kirov Plant, formerly Putilovskiy. Immediately began to receive more bread, it was then the main thing.

Leningrad was quickly surrounded. My mother and sister remained in the city with her husband and small child. I realized that I needed to help my family with food, so I became a turner's apprentice at the Kirov Plant, formerly Putilovskiy. Immediately began to receive more bread, it was then the main thing.

First, my four-year-old nephew Alik died: he contracted meningitis in a bomb shelter and literally burned out in a few days. Then my sister's husband died. In November, the Kirov Plant was evacuated to Chelyabinsk and I was evacuated along with it. There I already worked as a turner, turning rollers for heavy tanks IS - "Joseph Stalin". From my brother's letter, I learned that my mother died of starvation.

I was often sent from the factory to work outside the city - to dig anti-tank ditches. In early September, we were digging in the Strelna area, it was getting dark early, and suddenly we see an amazingly beautiful glow over Leningrad in the rays of sunset. It soon became clear that it was the Germans who bombed the Badaev food warehouses. From that moment hunger began: they immediately cut the norm on cards. Workers received 500 grams of bread, employees - 300. Then even less. First, my four-year-old nephew Alik died: he contracted meningitis in a bomb shelter and literally burned out in a few days. Then my sister's husband died.

In November, the Kirov Plant was evacuated to Chelyabinsk and I was evacuated along with it. There I already worked as a turner, turning rollers for heavy tanks IS - "Joseph Stalin". From my brother's letter, I learned that my mother died of starvation. And then I worked for 14-16 hours in a cold shop, where the metal literally froze to my hands. Hungry, naturally. I don't know how long it would take me. But in the spring, the administration of the plant found out that I was an artist, and I was instructed to work on visual agitation: to make posters, slogans, portraits of leaders. For example, on the anniversary of Kirov's assassination, on December 1, I made a huge portrait of him, five meters by three, it was hung over the entrance. This transfer to the work of the artist, in fact, saved me: some rations began to be given out, attached to another dining room.

In 1945, in the spring, when it became clear that the war would soon end, I wrote to the Leningrad Academy of Arts, but received no answer. I also sent a letter to VGIK, they had just returned from the evacuation of the art department. The war is over: victory! And I receive a letter from Moscow: "Come to us to take entrance exams." It was very difficult to leave the factory, but I was lucky. The deputy party organizer who oversaw my work signed my application. I received a passport from the personnel department and went to Moscow to enroll.

All the relatives who remained in the city died, all childhood friends. I couldn't find anyone.

Later I happened to visit Minsk, where I spent my childhood. The area in which I lived - Rakovskaya Street, Nemiga - was turned into a ghetto under the Nazis. All the relatives who remained in the city died, all childhood friends. I couldn't find anyone.

"Soyuzmultfilm"

I passed the exams at VGIK and became a first-year student. He lived outside the city, in a hostel in Mamontovka: on the train as a hare to the platform "Severyanin", there he crammed onto the bus to VDNKh - and to classes, at VGIK. And all this was running and running, all with evading the controllers, there was no money.

Soyuzmultfilm was our home, a huge family of five hundred people. The atmosphere of friendship and brotherhood united us all. Modern people, even creative professions, is little known. There we had loves, and marriages, and carnivals, and funerals. What kind of people were there!

In The Snow Queen, Schwartzman created the images of all the characters, except for the robbers.

Starting to work, he moved to Moscow. I didn’t even rent rooms, but corners: in the area of ​​lanes not far from Sretenka, on Kirov Street, now it’s Myasnitskaya. So I lived until 1951, when I married my beloved Tatyana and moved to her in a communal apartment on the corner of Herzen Street and Garden Ring, in a two-story house that had been preserved from Napoleonic times. We lived there for eleven years until we got a cooperative apartment, and it was very, very difficult conditions. Suffice it to say that for 25 people there was one restroom, in which our neighbor Vanya liked to drink, huge growth loader. He did not open the door until he had drunk his half liter, and it was a tragedy for the whole apartment. Our other neighbor, one-armed Zhora, liked to beat his wife after drinking. She, excuse me, in a jumpsuit regularly broke into us, and my wife and I had to save her.

Of course, Tanya and I disappeared day and night at Soyuzmultfilm, it was our home, a huge family of five hundred people. The atmosphere of friendship and brotherhood united us all. Modern people, even creative professions, are little familiar. There we had loves, and marriages, and carnivals, and funerals. What kind of people were there!

In the cafe there was a machine of a rare model, where you could throw a token bought at the checkout, and he poured you a glass of wine. It was called "throwing the disc". Men, first of all, of course, it was they who, at the beginning of the day, went to “throw the disc”, and only then, having warmed up, lukewarm, they sat down to work.

Studio "Soyuzmultfilm" is located near the metro station "Novoslobodskaya". There was a small stadium nearby and a glass pavilion of a cafe, where there was such a machine of a rare model, where you could throw a token bought at the checkout, and he poured you a glass of wine. It was called "throwing the disc". Our men, first of all, of course, it was they who began their day with a trip to the machine. “Throwed the disc”, and only then, warmed up, lukewarm, they sat down to work.

When I graduated from VGIK in 1951, Lev Konstantinovich Atamanov invited me and Vinokurov, with whom we studied together, to be production designers. For me, these first ten years were the happiest years of my work at Soyuzmultfilm. It was an amazing time. How long did we sit, doing a selection of materials for sketches, in Leninskaya public library, in the theater library, where I later transferred many of my storyboards. We made cartoons, at the same time we worked on the Filmstrip. Traveled all over the country to festivals, traveled. When they filmed snow queen”, Of course, they could not go to Copenhagen. But we found all the necessary nature in Riga, Tallinn and Tartu and had a great time there.

Cheburashka

In 1966, Kachanov invited me to his place, and so I ended up in puppet animation. Our first work, “Granddaughter Lost”, came out very nice. After that there was "The Mitten", which I think is the best film that we have created together.

Copies of dolls of Shvartsman's heroes made in the workshops of Soyuzmultfilm are on a shelf in his office.

And then off we go, "Crocodile Gena and his friends" began. Amazing story connected with how this book by Uspensky generally got to Soyuzmultfilm. My director, Roman Kachanov, wanted to enlist the support of Khrushchev's son-in-law, Alexei Adzhubei. And asked him to write us a script. Adjubey then worked as the editor-in-chief " Komsomolskaya Pravda”, visited many countries, often traveled to Africa, and in 1969 he wrote us a script,“ Rivals ”, in my opinion, not very successful. About African football players and some monsters.

I began to draw Cheburashka's ears: at first they were at the top, then gradually began to slide and grow.

We started making this film, Adzhubey began to go to the studio, and Kachanov - to Adzhubei, who had two little sons. And somehow, while visiting, Kachanov saw that they were reading a book with enthusiasm. It was Ouspensky's Gena the Crocodile and His Friends. The next day, he bought the same book in the store, brought it to Soyuzmultfilm and said: "That's it, we're making a film based on it."

I got the crocodile pretty quickly. It was written in the script: “The crocodile worked at the zoo as a crocodile. And when the working day ended and the bell rang, he put on his jacket, hat, picked up the phone and went home. This was enough to give me the image of a gentleman with a bow tie and a white shirt-front.

With Shapoklyak, too, everything turned out simply. Shapoklyak is, as you know, the name of a folding cylinder. This is the 19th century, and everything else came from here: a black strict dress, a frill, white lace cuffs, pumps with heels. Since she is such a naughty grandmother, I made her a long nose, rosy cheeks and a prominent chin. A White hair and I borrowed the bundle from my mother-in-law, from Tanya's mother.

It was Leonid Shvartsman who came up with how the crocodile Gena, Shapoklyak and Cheburashka would look like. The dolls for the cartoon were made in 1968 according to his sketches. In the photo: work on the film "River of the Crocodile Gena", February 1974.

Vladimir Rodionov / RIA Novosti

Five months is the preparatory period for the film, and half of all this time I was busy with Cheburashka. His eyes immediately turned childish, surprised, human. Although large, but not "like an owl." Ouspensky, in his “preface, which is not necessary to read,” says: “When I was little, my parents gave me a toy: fluffy, shaggy, small. WITH big eyes like an owl. With a round hare head and a small tail like a bear. All. Not a word about big ears.

I began to draw Cheburashka's ears: first at the top, then they gradually began to slide and grow. Kachanov regularly came to me, I showed sketches, we discussed them, argued, he expressed his wishes, I redrawn them. Thanks to such joint efforts, the final sketch arose, it is kept at my house, signed in 1968. On it, however, Cheburashka still has a bear's tail, which was then greatly reduced. And the legs were longer at first, but Norshtein advised me to make them small, as they are now. After creating a sketch in color, I made a drawing, and the puppet masters made Cheburashka, and he began to live his own life.

Nakamura asked me to draw the main character. This is the heroine's favorite toy, also "an animal unknown to science", which can become big or small. I drew this character, he will be called Cherry. The Japanese made a doll, everything has already been filmed, now they are voicing it. When they finish it, they bring it, they show it to me.

Sergey Melikhov / MOSLENTA

The Japanese fell in love with Cheburashka, they call him Chebi. You probably know that several new episodes have been released based on their scripts, but with our characters. They were made by director Makoto Nakamura, he came to Moscow and visited me. Now he does new job, and asked me to draw the main character for him. This is the favorite toy of the heroine, a little girl. Like Cheburashka, “a beast unknown to science”, and besides, he knows how to become either big or small. I drew this character, he was called Cherry. The Japanese made a doll, everything has already been filmed, the twenty-minute film is over, now they are voiced. When they finish it, they bring it, they show it to me.

Parrot and Ilyich

There was a period when I simultaneously worked on hand-drawn and puppet animation. In 1976, director Ufimtsev invited me to be a production designer for the TV series 38 Parrots. And at the same time, Atamanov invited me again, we began to shoot "A Kitten named Woof." And both series are scripted by Grigory Oster.

Then I made sketches all the time: in the subway, and in the tram, and in the yard, and on the boulevard. He loved to draw small children and animals. All my life I went to the zoo, drew from life - it was necessary to create characters. But I can't stand snakes. And yet, when I started creating characters for 38 Parrots, I had to constantly draw a boa constrictor from nature. This character did not work out in any way, at first he was very unpleasant. And only when I pulled out his face, drew a nose, freckles and made the eyebrows a house, he healed with me, became a dreamer, a philosopher.

Norshtein said: "The tail is in the way, it must be removed." They removed it, and immediately the parrot became nimble, began to walk vigorously in the frame, he appeared oratorical gestures. We began to think, who is this? At first we decided that this was our director, Boyarsky. And then they realized, no, take it higher - Ilyich! And we began to make and shoot it like that, with all the Leninist habits.

1968. And before that, Lamis Bredis made a cartoon about the Marshall Plan, where Marshall was portrayed as a boa constrictor, and European countries- like rabbits. He, too, was closed. I don't remember any other such cases.

It helped that they didn't take us seriously. In the ministry, they patted on the shoulder and said: "Go, play your dolls." We had only internal censorship. Hence the quality. Our cartoons were watched and loved not only throughout Soviet Union. Back in the days iron curtain Pope Pius XII said that children should be raised on Soviet cartoons, because they are good and teach only good things.

On August 14, 2018, one of the most beloved children's writers, whose works have become classics of literature and animation, Eduard Nikolaevich Uspensky, passed away. His books have been sorted into quotes in the post-Soviet space, his characters are very popular in Japan, his books have been translated into 20 languages ​​of the world. And thanks to him, everyone knows exactly how to eat a sandwich correctly - “You need sausage on your tongue.”

The naive Cheburashka, the intellectual crocodile Gena, the charismatic old woman Shapoklyak, the independent Uncle Fedor, the controversial Pechkin, the janitor from Plasticine Crow - all his heroes became real encyclopedia Russian life. His books and cartoons have long been sorted into quotes, and they miraculously and today they help fathers and children to find a common language.

How it all began

The first literary work of Eduard Nikolaevich Uspensky is the book "Uncle Fyodor, the Dog and the Cat". He wrote this story while working in the library summer camp and could not even imagine that both adults and children would love his fairy tale so much.

And when a cartoon was made based on the book, the army of fans of Uncle Fyodor and his friends increased many times over. By the way, each cartoon character had his own prototype - one of the members of the team that worked on the cartoon or their relatives.

Cheburashka and all-all-all

The story of Cheburashka and the crocodile Gena was invented by Eduard Uspensky in Odessa. He accidentally saw a chameleon in a box of oranges and decided to embellish this story a little. The writer made a friendly and sweet animal out of a chameleon, but he didn’t really break his head over a name for him: Cheburashka! So the writer's friends called their little daughter, who was just learning to walk.
However, all other residents fairyland also did not appear out of nowhere. Ouspensky did not try to hide that his first wife became the prototype of Shapoklyak, and the young friends of the crocodile Gena were kids who lived in the same yard with the writer.

worldwide fame

Nobody expected this, and Ouspensky himself in the first place. But his fairy tale about Cheburashka made a splash, and not only in the vastness of the USSR. In Japan, a strange animal with huge ears became a favorite character. And in Sweden, comics based on the works of Ouspensky were published more than once. In Lithuania, the cartoon was translated into the state language, with some changes in the names of the characters. And in Russia, August 20 is declared the birthday of Cheburashka.

plasticine crow

Ouspensky's poem "Plasticine Crow" was born quickly and spontaneously. Once, for almost a whole day, he hummed an attached Irish folk song, and he himself did not notice how Russian words fell on this motive. As a result, the work, on which the cartoon was later shot, was born in just half an hour.

However, from the ease of its birth, the fairy tale did not lose at all and became really popularly loved.

And quite uncartoon projects

Were in creative biography Eduard Uspensky and projects that had nothing to do with cartoons, but they were still dedicated to children. He was the creator and host of the popular children's program "Abgdijk" and was the first to open a system of interactive communication with young viewers. He taught the kids the alphabet and grammar from the TV screen, for which he received a lot of grateful feedback from parents. Later, Ouspensky would write the book School of Clowns, which is still an excellent study aid today.

In the 1980s, Uspensky hosted the Pioneer Dawn radio program and turned to his young listeners with an unusual request - to send them invented or heard horror stories. The result of such creative communication was a book of stories with unusual plots, and each child could feel involved in writing it.

Travel lover

Ouspensky loved to travel, and at the same time he knew exactly in which countries his books were translated and what were his favorite characters in a particular country. Explain why in different countries he himself could not be popular with different characters, and preferred to simply rejoice at the popularity of his books.

Some recent years Eduard Nikolaevich fought with cancer. In August 2018, he returned home from Germany, where he was undergoing treatment, and his condition deteriorated sharply. He refused hospitalization and last days spent at home without getting out of bed. On August 14, he passed away. Bright memory...

Remembering the work of Eduard Uspensky, the story of that.

Cheburashka is a character invented by the children's writer Eduard Uspensky, a cute furry animal with big ears, resembling either a hare or a bear cub.

No matter how ridiculous the animal Cheburashka is, absolutely everyone loves him - both children and adults. Indeed, it is simply impossible not to love a cute, shy and harmless animal with huge and ridiculous ears. Moreover, Cheburashka wants to be protected and protected from dangers, and it is precisely this participation in his hard fate and deals with it main friend- Crocodile Gena.

The history of Cheburashka began in 1966, it was then children's writer Eduard Uspensky first came up with his hero. How exactly the writer came up with the fantasy to create such a ridiculous beast is unknown, but there are several versions. So, according to one of them, in childhood, Uspensky had an old defective toy, which his parents called "a beast unknown to science that lives in hot tropical forests." According to another version, thoughts about a strange animal came to him visiting friends, whose little daughter walked around the house in a huge fluffy fur coat, constantly stumbling and falling. Her father commented on her fall as "cheburahna again."

Be that as it may, there is still a hint that Cheburashka is a tropical animal, because according to the plot of the book and cartoon, he first appears in a box with oranges, which probably arrived from a distant tropical country.

Everyone called him Cheburashka for the same reason as a play on words - the animal could not sit still and "cheburah" all the time. The manager of the store, which received the oranges, tried to attach a strange animal to the zoo, but they could not find a place for him, he did not fit

what kind of animal, and therefore, as a result, the unfortunate Cheburashka ended up on the shelf of a discount store. By the way, this is what is sung about in the famous song "I was once a strange nameless toy, which no one approached in the store ..."

However, in further fate turned out to be more favorable to Cheburashka - he met with best friend His Life - Crocodile Gena. I must say that Gena, who "worked at the zoo as a crocodile," was endlessly lonely, and it was loneliness that made him put up ads with the words "A young crocodile wants to make friends."

So the shy furry creature with huge ears ended up on the threshold of Gena the crocodile's house with the words "It's me, Cheburashka."

As a result, Gena and Cheburashka became great friends, and just as a couple - Gena and Cheburashka - Russian children of several generations learned and fell in love with these heroes.

It is not known whether Cheburashka would have expected such a resounding success if not for a very successful screen image. Cartoons about Cheburashka and Gena were created by the talented director Roman Kachanov, the first cartoon was released in 1969. The production designer was Leonid Shvartsman.

Then came Cheburashka (1971), Shapoklyak (1974), and later, already in 1983, Cheburashka Goes to School.

Surprisingly, it was Cheburashka who became very famous hero and outside our country. So, he was especially loved in Japan, where they not only showed Soviet cartoons, but made their remakes, and also filmed several

How many own projects like "Cheburashka Arere?".

In Sweden, Cheburashka is known and called Drutten (Swedish "drutta" - to fall, stumble), and the plots of their cartoons are completely independent. In general, Cheburashka got into the cartoons of many countries - German viewers know him as Kullerchen ("Kullerchen") or Plumps ("Plumps"), in Finland Cheburashka is called Muksis ("Muksis"), and Lithuanian children know him as Kulverstukas.

In 2008, the Cheburashka Museum was opened in Moscow, among the exhibits of which there is an old typewriter, on which Ouspensky first created the image of this cute little animal. And Cheburashka has already become the mascot of the country's Olympic team several times.

By the way, in 2005, Eduard Uspensky himself announced that the official birthday of Cheburashka was August 20.

It is known that already in the 2000s, Eduard Uspensky repeatedly tried to defend his copyright in the image of Cheburashka, but lost several times. At the same time, Leonid Shvartsman also claimed the image of Cheburashka - despite the fact that his writer came up with it, it was the image of Cheburashka drawn by Shvartsman that the audience liked so much, and it was thanks to the cartoon that Cheburashka became so popular.

However, whatever the litigation of the creators, millions of Russian children continue to grow up with good cartoons about Cheburashka and his friends.

Infinitely charming, charmingly defenseless and kind Cheburashka is simply impossible not to love.

Soon forever young Cheburashka will celebrate his 50th birthday.

I must say that this simple question (or rather, the answer to it) is not so unambiguous as it seems at first glance. funny hero literary works, cartoons, concurrently being the official symbol of the Russian national team on Olympic Games, at one time became a stumbling block in several litigations at once. About why this happened, and who actually invented Cheburashka, we will try to tell in our article.

literary character

On the one hand, this is a bookish image. And the writer Eduard Uspensky came up with it. Yellow eyes (like an owl). Round big head (like a hare). The tail is fluffy and short (like a little bear). By the way, in the first editions of the book about Cheburashka and Crocodile Gena, published even before the appearance of the famous cartoon in 1966, the animal looked different. So his image was seen by two other artists Alfeevsky and Kalinovsky. In short, we can say: not at all similar!

cartoon character

The bright and unforgettable image of Cheburashka from the Soviet cartoon, published in 1969, was created by the animator Leonid Shvartsman (real name is Israel Aronovich Shvartsman). And after that, in all the other cartoons about Cheburashka, it is this brilliant soviet artist created the characters. So the right to the cartoon animal belongs to him.

Name origin

According to Uspensky's tale, an unknown animal, when transported along with oranges, strove to “cheburah”, that is, to fall, simply speaking. Hence the name - Cheburashka. In Dahl's dictionary, the concept of "cheburakh" is described as: "crash", "stretch", "fall". And the word "cheburashka" means: a doll like a roly-poly, which, no matter how you throw it, gets to its feet.

Brand Sharing

Litigation between Uspensky and Shvartsman began after the collapse of the USSR, in the nineties. The peak was in 2004-2007. The artist drew attention to the fact that the image of Cheburashka in the first editions of the books differs significantly from the cartoon character drawn later. And there is clearly a difference. Therefore, it is still reasonable to talk about two different author's characters: a cartoon character and a literary hero.