The life of Donyo Donev
45 years in creating animation
Donyo Donev came t
From his teenager years he played at weddings and restaurants. People used to glue good money on his forehead, that's why Donyo needed to keep his head looking upwards. But while he played the accordion, his friends took all the girls he wanted to talk to.o light 78 years ago in Berkovitsa. His father was a railwayman. Donyo was an average student and most of his grades were D's and even F's were . Was not good at drawing or gymnastics or singing. He made a deal with his father that he will get good grades if his dad buys him an accordeon. So he did get on a brand of "Traviata" with a maximum of 32 bass.
№ 1 animator in Bulgaria maintained a sort of "house museum" where he collected different brands of accordions.
He had fun not only playing them but fixing then aswell. The man just had a huge weaknes
an 40 years Donev discovers with great pain that his "fools" are not really his property, but the Cinema Center's. The popular characters were born in a very funny way. The first scenario was Atanas Pavlov's. Then viewers themselves began to suggest stories, and Peter Slabakov gave aliases to the "Fools". s for this instrument. After more th
-"During the creation of one of the series which both fools incubate an egg, from which pops the third fool out, Slabakov exclaimed:" Mityo ... Vatyo ... "La
ter with a smile Petyo told me that my third hero was named .....Donyo.
"Fool № 1 of the republic" was a victim of street beatings three times. Some guys attacked him in front of the church "St. George" and broke his jaw. Few millimeters - and the impact was going to sent him to the other world. Then he got beat in the City Park. Finally sprayed with spray and miraculously did not get blind, but for some time one of his eyes was closed. On several occasions, thieves stole things from his apartment in Sofia. Hijacking 500 BGN and one of his briefcases, inside of wich the
Donyo Donev really hated frawd. During his time there were a lot of his fellow animators that gained credit using someone else's works as their own. So he became an agent in the DS named Mr. Toshev. With that name he signed 11 documents that led to the firing of those who got some gold out of other peo
ple's backs. For that agent Toshev was rewarded with a 60 BGN rase of salary and was known as "the deserving artist".re were only drawings, two leva and one lev paper bill. Not much really.
His first cartoon as an artist is "Hulled and Grushko" (1957), but with "Duet" (1961) he made his debut as screenwriter and
director. He has worked as an artist in the "Evening News" (1954-1956), artist and director in the Department of cartoons in SIF (1956-1970) and the SAF "Sofia" (1970-1993), where he was the head of a creative team.
Working on the
animation series "Three Stooges" from 1970 to 1990. Donev is the main editor of the newspaper "Three Stooges" (1989-1997), and the "Four Fools" (1997) and the magazine "bang."
In 1998 he was an actor in the movie "Wagner."
As a cartoonist he was presented in many exhibitions in Bulgaria and abroad.
Donyo Donev was a professor at the NATFIZ animation accademy in Sofia and used to taught animation directing there.
Donyo Donev is an artist, writer and director of over 100 cartoons. Among the most popular ones are:
"Go back to Sorrento"
"Ekograma";
'Cause perduta ";
"Target";
"We called th
em and Kapuleti Montecchi";
"Serenade";
'Three Stooges' "Three Stooges - hunters" (1972);
"Three Stooges and the car" (1973);
"Three Stooges and the cow" (1974);
"Three Stooges - hunters";
"Three Stooges and the tree" (1977);
"Three fools and stupid" (1978);
"Three Stooges - athletes" (1979);
"Three Stooges - te
achers" (1980);
"Three Stooges - fishermen" (1982);
"Three Stooges in the restaurant" (1988);
"Three Stooges non-stop" (1990);
"Three fools in life and sport" (1993);
"Smart Village"
;
"Hamlet";
"Happy End";
"Joke";
"Diagnosis" (2000).
I personally had the extreme pleasure of not only seing him live, but talking to him about the path of the animator.
It hapened in the year of 2003 i think and i was a student in the National School for fine arts in Sofia Bulgaria then. So we had this drawing competition and i drew his 3 fools characters, not having the slightest idea that Mr. Donev was one of the jury. So the time for us came to stop drawing and we wai
ted for the jury to got rough each one of us and make a decision on a winner. Before i knew it Donyo was next to me and paprazi startew to take photos of him look
ing at my "stolen" idea. I was shaking and verry excited and afraid of what he might say to me about using his work as mine.
But my fears went away as soon as i saw him smiling and even starting to laugh. He said:
-"Boy, you have found the way of the Bulgarian animation at that age ?"
After that he t
In an interview Donyo Donev explained why he finds his 3 fools characters so interesting and unique.ook a photo with me and i was on the next day's newspaper next to the legend. I still have the page cut out somewhere at home and that memory really warms my heart and makes me go on with the path i have chosen.
"Self-irony is a
n important characteristic of the Bulgarian people, which rarely occurs in other nations, and I have developed it to its most clear and simple perfection. I am just the same fool as my painte
d characters. Because by being a bigger fool you can get rid of the real fools. If you show a fool that you are a bigger fool than him, you do is you tickle his pride and you manage to lose his attention. Fools love to look very smart and are very happy to make you a fool. Give them some fun and they will cease to annoy and bother you - you're so stupid in their eyes that they can safely leave you be- which is a real gift for you to be left alone with your own foolishness".
Self-irony is also a way to not go beyond your self. Many people, rising in their career or social status imagine that they are greater than others and that are special and deserve more. At such times, the abilit
y to see how stupid you are, helps to get your self back on the ground and in the reality as it is.
When Donyo joined the Academy of Fine Arts he had a band that used to play in pubs, weddings, christenings. He did not have time for his lectures and that drove him to be absences. He re-applied and entered the Academy for a second time. Elijah Beshkov once summoned him secretly in a corn
er: "Boy,choose one. Brush or accordion! Donyo suffered three days of dilemma - should he become a musician artist or a drawing artist?He started working in the" Evening News "as a cartoonist. After a month Todor Dinov, the father of Bulgarian animation visited the studio and showed him the art of making still images come to life. After that Donyo spent 45 years of his
life in the field of animation.
Sadly he died on
November 28, 2007 in Sofia.
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