Chapi and Chapo delighted children by the millions. © Screenshot/DR
Published on 30.12.2022
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Disappearance ” Italo Bettiol, the creator of the animated series shorty shortypassed away at the age of 96.
Italo Bettiol, the creator of shorty shorty, a legendary 1970s animation series, died the day before yesterday at the age of 96 at his home in Aniane in the South of France, announced one of his relatives. The Italian-born director “died peacefully”.
The characters of the series, a blue boy and a pink girl wearing giant hats, their universe populated by magic cubes and the cult credits by François de Roubaix, appeared on the ORTF on October 16, 1974. The 60 five-minute episodes were “broadcast all over the world, as far as the United States in the broadcast Pinwheel on Nickelodeon”, underlines a press release from the company Magic, representing the rights of shorty shorty.
Technical specialist stop motion, which “consists in animating puppets of foam and felt frame by frame in front of the camera”, Italo Bettiol was originally destined for a career as a painter. It is in this perspective that the native of Trieste had left Italy for France in 1947 with his sidekick Stefano Lonati, freshly graduated like him from the Fine Arts of Milan. Finally setting their sights on animation, the duo founded the company Belokapi in 1968, in association with Michel Karlof and Nicole Pichon, which notably produced many sequences of the show children’s island (Albert and Barnabas, The line, etc.).
“Tireless inventor, retired, Italo Bettiol continued to tinker with extraordinary machines in his workshop near Montpellier”, further specifies the press release. ATS/AFP