Heroes of my childhood

Let me tell you a little story.

Asterix and Obelix were the true heroes of my childhood. You know? The two gauls with superhuman strength (thanks to the magic potion made by the village druid) always ready to smack down any bypassing roman soldiers. I really loved those stories. And I still have ALL the comic albums in my bookshelf, the complete series!

The very first animation attempt I ever made was a shot with Asterix walking across the screen. I was about 9 years old and had decided to make my own feature film with Asterix and his friends. So I nagged on my parents for a couple of weeks until they finally bought me twenty celluloids and a couple of pens with ink that you could wash away with water.   (See? I was smart! I was planning to reuse those celluloids for the whole feature!)   I borrowed my father's double-8 camera, which you could cheat to take just one frame at a time if you hit the record button hard and fast.

And so I drew and painted my 20 celluloids with Asterix walking across the screen and recorded it one drawing at a time, slamming that record-button on my father's camera once for every piece of celluloid.  Then, after everything was filmed, the filmcassette was sent away to be developed at Kodak's factory somewhere in Germany, I think. I had to wait for over 2 weeks to get the developed film back, and by then I was shivering with excitement to see my completed masterpiece.

And yes, sure enough, my Asterix took his two steps across the screen........ but for some strange reason that I couldn't quite understand my hero kind of shrunk by half of his length while walking that short distance AND somehow he was also deformed into a increasingly shapeless blob by the end of this masterful 2 second shot.
- I was so disappointed! I put the celluloids and the pens in a drawer and didn't touch them again for almost 30 years.

But I never stopped re-reading the comic books.   :-)



Here are some fun interpretations of the two characters, made by different artists, googled from the net....