Director - Eugene Bugaev

Eugene Bugaev was born on 28.09.1962 in Odessa close to the seaside of the Black sea.

Mother Halina Bodareva - lecturer of Odessa polytechnic university. Kind, well educated and beautiful woman always was reliable friend to Eugene.

Father Alexander Bugaev - writer, architect, sculptor, composer, musician. His life’s credo: “If you will be obsessed with material things you can loose creative and spiritual things”.  There were ups and downs in his life. He was taught interior and design in Riga International School of Economics and Business Administration (REBS). Alexander also created the monument to liberators in Riga. In USSR he got the state award.
Eugene’s father was an artist. He used to work with oil, watercolour and pastel.
It seems that genes made Eugen such a creative person, professional in work and good friend.

Eugene was studying in school #35 which is located on Gagarina street in Odessa. In 1979 he entered the faculty “Refrigeration technique” in Odessa State Academy of Refrigeration.

An irony of fate is that in this university were studying many creative people - directors, artists, dancers. In the university he met Serge Zarev, Alexey Khitrow, Aleksey Gilko and others.
After graduating in 1984 Eugene was directed to oxygen factory “Kislorodmash” for practice. He didn't like that activity, but he promised his mother to try, after that he certainly understood that he want to work in the other sphere, he started to discover the field he was interesting the most - cinematography.

At the beginning of 80th Eugene had passion for photography and shooting videos. He entered film fan club “Dolphin” which was located in the basement of the student palace named by Dzerzhinsky (in past – south-Russian Agrarian Bank). His first teacher was Boris Timkovsky - the famous cameraman and director. Eugene began his career in cinematography from shooting wedding - first editing, first sound correction... All these things helped Eugene to understand where the real movie came from.
Using 8mm film camera he shot such movies:

• “The story about tram” - about the first tram in Odessa;
• “The sketch about flowers” - about every year exhibition of flowers;
• “The secret of death earth” - about ecological problems.

The interesting thing was that Eugene and Artur Galliulin created synchronized sound for 8 mm film. Аor that time it was really incredible.
Along with the film shooting, he began to work with  the main business in his life -creating the cartoons.

In May 1989 in Vilnius (Lithuania) he got the grand prize in the film festival for the animation film “Syndrom K” - it was shot on 16mm film, grandmother stitching machine became the machine of creating cartoons. The music was “Dovregubbens Hall” by Edvard Grieg. After that Bugaev understood what he wanted to do in his life.

In 1990 Bugaev and artist Tadeusz Tsehovsky created the 1st drawn cartoon “Last visit”.
Next cartoon “Repka” was created in 1991 with caricaturist Kirill Dremlukh, artist-animator Yuriy Greenevich and background artist Sergey Cheban. Many times this cartoon was shown in the famous program on the central television “Vzglyad” in USSR.

In 1991 Eugene Bagaev, Yuriy Greenevich and Sergey Cheban created the 1st animated signature tune for television in Odessa. They got 200 russian rubles for this project.

December 1991 was started creation of the 1st full length animated film in Ukraine - “In Alkhocks’ country”.  The technology was classical - film-technology. Using celluloid, paint, brushes and cartoon-film machine. Without any experience in creating  animated feature film they finished producing anyway - studying with worldwide classics and practice made the film ended.
During that time Odessa animation studio appeared.

In 1991, in the film club “Dolphin” Odessa animation studio was founded by Yuriy Greenevich, Sergey Cheban and Eugene Bugaev. The first location of the studio was in the basement of the student palace named by Dzerzhinsky (in the past – south-Russian Agrarian Bank).

December 1992 begun the creation of the first full-length cartoon “In Alkhoks’ country”. Started to find the professional people – and found a lot of talented ones.
Finally the happy September of 1995 became… There was the debut of our first full-length cartoon “In the Alkhoks’ country” at the animation festival “Krok-95”. The audience and experts of animation were happy to watch this cartoon. Aleksandr Tatarskiy the expert also liked our work, and after that we become partners for a long period. Odessa Animation Studio thankful to Aleksandr Tatarskiy for the devotion to animation.  

The producers, directors, places were changing, but still we were still one big team.

The location of the studio had changed – cinema “the star”, communal apartment, the cap factory.

We took the inspiration from everywhere, even from the world revolution.

Eugene Bugaev (28.09.1962 - 10.08.2010)

Аuthor: oleGey (Oleh Hei)

Using materials reference to the site of Odessa Animation Studios (www.osm.od.ua) is required.

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