The animated series "Mathematical Circle"

In the ninth and tenth grades of high school, I wrote out the Quantum magazine, solved the tasks of entrance examinations at leading universities, and sometimes the tasks from the Quantum Challenger. I remember one day I sent a letter to the editorial office of a journal with a solution to such a problem, putting an envelope with a return address in it, and received a decision analysis from a member of the editorial board N. Ya. Vilenkin.

I liked the style of articles and illustrations of the old issues of magazines, and although I am not an artist and not an animator, but an amateur programmer, ten years ago I tried to make a schematic cartoon about an extraordinary girl based on a riddle from the section "Quantum for elementary school students":

After 80% of the cartoon was done, the enthusiasm ran out, and the remaining 20%, gathering all my will into a fist, I completed in a year. It's funny, but people with a higher, perhaps even engineering, education could not understand what this mystery was about.

Even more from this section for younger schoolchildren I liked articles such as "Styopa Moshkina Distance". In them, searching and thinking students are trying to prove something, and a math teacher shows them where they made a mistake. And three years ago, the idea came up to make an amateur and humorous animated series "Mathematical Circle", to start the first series, and then see what the reaction will be and what kind of feedback. The series was intended for mathematics lovers from 12 years old and up to doctors of science.

For a long time I tried to find a novice animator who would agree to draw up my script for the portfolio, and in October 2018, one Kharkov amateur unexpectedly agreed to make one series for free for curiosity, it was done in the Moho program. In fairness, such a cartoon is too big for curiosity and enthusiasm can quickly end. This series was made about ten months. Some time after the start of work, the animator said that he was running out of money, so he needed to look for a freelancer job (do something like advertising with infographics) so that he had something to live on. Therefore, I began to transfer money to him so that there would be no interruption in work. And in the end, having filled his hand a little at my expense on animation, he was already rolling out a price of 200 rubles to me. per second of animation. My desire to do something significant was great, and I gradually spent about two hundred thirty thousand rubles on animation and scoring. Now the question sometimes arises: how would I return at least part of what I had gained through overwork? Here's what happened in the end:

The action of the first series takes place in the late 70's. in a provincial town school. Styopa Moshkin, a thin and soaring nature in the clouds, dreams of gaining fame, receiving the Nobel Prize and for this wants to prove a paradoxical theorem that will revolutionize number theory. How does he know that no Nobel Prizes in mathematics are awarded? Styopa is in a hostile environment of mediocrity and dullness, that makes him a little like me: in Soviet high school I heard the ironic and disapproving phrase "genius among fertilizers." Some active students, whom the teacher said about grading when writing grades, tweaked small dirty tricks: they’ll hide the briefcase, then throw gym shoes somewhere, or draw something in my notebook when I leave the classroom ... It’s unpleasant, because when a teacher asks something, and while you are trying to understand it, someone is already answering. If such will dominate, then those who have a place in a secondary school with a labor bias will remain to be livestock fighters, stokers, janitors and postmen. Therefore, the survival instinct prompted: in order to survive yourself, you need to unite and survive intellectually more advanced. According to my estimates, about twenty percent of students did not allow their level of intelligence to finish even the eight-year period: they could neither solve problems, nor write an essay in a complicated way. But with rare exceptions, everyone received a certificate of secondary education, and some went to institutes.

The Russian language also contains many other characteristic expressions: “don’t stick your head out,” “do you need more than anyone else?”, “(Look, what kind of) literate!”, “(Very) smart!” Just walking along the streets, almost every day you can hear how bickering citizens instead of the word "cunning" use the words "smart" and "literate" (and this is with universal secondary education). It would be incomprehensible to foreigners: they seem to be praising, but in a somewhat disapproving tone. Pondering why this is happening, I remembered that Nekrasov had the poem "Railway", and there was a line in it that read "letters of title to us". Illiterate artel workers did not like competent foremen because they deceived them. (You can also recall that in the USSR in the mid-30s the words "engineer" and "pest" were synonymous.) But these phrases are also pronounced by engineers with higher education! Why do they associate themselves with tramps and slaves?

So, the main character Styopa Moshkin feels that he is in an uncomfortable atmosphere, possibly under the hood of the KGB, so he is careful and inclined to create secret mathematical societies, as was the case under Pythagoras. For the same reason, the Stirlitz theme sounds in the cartoon. Styopa has a like-minded and like-minded person. In deep underground, they are working to prove the Styopa Moshkin’s Great Theorem, which should glorify them and replenish their modest savings at the expense of the Nobel Prize, making them immodest. But to get a prize you need the support of teachers. Among them, there is one teacher you can rely on. To get this support, Styopa decides to present his proof to the math teachers and assure them that he will share with them when he receives the award.

In the process of work arose, one might say, a brilliant idea to make a cartoon musical. Some time ago, I wrote poems with puns in rhyme, and comparisons with other authors throughout history show that my poems are among the best.

 About Barack Obama's Blue Dreams

 Dream at night obama
 Blue dreams about BAM
 True, Barack is not ready
 Change your house to a hut.

 Note: BAM - Baikal-Amur Railway,
 in the USSR was a romantic construction site of the century.
 ***

 Pun talk with Pushkin

 - Under the rustle of tender bedspreads
 Where have you covered the beauties?
 - Have you seen two sheds at melon?
 - There are those at Bakhchisarai ??
 ***

 Punishment about the Jackdaw and the Senegal

 "What did you find in the Seine, Gal? -
 I asked in the hay Galku.  -
 He went to Senegal
 And fell in love with a Senegal! "
 ***

 Someone bucks from the pipe,
 Who is threatened with a trial?
 And you and I would be in Istra
 Yes, sit with the rod
 Where goats grazed in Istra
 To the noise of the harvester and dragonflies.

After the puns, I wanted to learn how to write lyrics for my cartoons, like in the movie Sannikova Land, The Diamond Arm ... Vika Tsyganova's husband also wrote very good lyrics for her, for example, Love and Death. It’s not clear what is at stake, but very cool. By the way, in the lyrics of L. Derbenev, I found an incomprehensible jamb: "You called me smart, cute girl ..." It sounds as if they called me smart. This puncture is also found in other authors, and in this case it is corrected by a simple rearrangement of the words: "You called me a smart girl, a cute girl ..."

So I wrote the text of the song "We Love Math" for the animated series screen saver. It turned out something like a hymn to mathematics and an agitation for its study. In the original version it was like this:

We believe in math, it will help us

Gain immortality, become equal to the gods.

To become equal to the gods was a greater impulse to study mathematics than what appeared in the final version, but the animator began to object to the plural of gods: they say, I can not give up my religious principles. My explanation of what the ancient Greek pagan gods mean is not a ride. And in response, the animator pointed to such negative moments in the life of their gods, such as "patricide and all homosexuality." Indeed, not only their ancient Greek gods, but also world-famous philosophers often violated the Criminal Code of the USSR, take at least the unconventional thinker Plato or the shocking street bully Diogenes Sinopsky. Therefore, the line about the gods had to be replaced by "Learn the laws of eternity and race through the worlds." All in all, not bad either. According to the plan, the screensaver was supposed to end with the spacecraft landing on a mysterious planet with the crew entering the launch pad, but the animator was tormented with pyramids flying around for a week, so in order to save money, it had to be reduced. A scene was also shortened in which Styopa went home from school past private sector houses after demonstrating his theorem. The song "We love mathematics" was supposed to sound in it.

The living statue on the screensaver mimics the Mosfilm screensavers with the statue "Worker and Collective Farm Girl" and Lenfilm. This statue of Mukhina herself borrows a symmetrical stand from an ancient Greek statue on which two brothers, who saved their city from enemies, held swords in their hands. Therefore, Styopa holds in his hand, like a sword, a slide rule, and his like-minded Light holds, like a sickle, a protractor.

On the site "Unknown Genius" I met one Kazakh composer who, for the sake of reference, also wrote music for free in his portfolio and organized a children's choir. Seeing the screen saver, he said: "There is no dynamics, goodbye." Apparently, the dynamics meant chasing, shooting and scuffle. Yes, I haven’t planned this yet.

The next idea was to "translate" world hits into Russian, so that the Russian sound was similar to the original, but songs were sung about Styopa. This would be ridiculous, wit would be achieved due to the contrast between high foreign love afflictions and the cartoonish Soviet character, who has a collection of 20 kg of coupons for waste paper. I successfully found the first time a wonderful vocalist who recorded a song under She's A Lady Tom Jones and for the second series under Tombe La Neige (Falling Snow) Salvatore Adamo. The latter turned out to be very close in sound to the original and very humorous due to the use of children's slang words. A few minutes after the publication of the scene with the song for Tom, a letter arrived in YouTube informing that the song She's A Lady has a copyright holder, but it's okay: he monetizes this song and will simply receive income (or part of it) from viewing your YouTube video. Well, let him get it if he can ...

Styopa uses my aphorisms, which are divided into “questions by the edge” and “questions of the scientist that came in the morning of the first of January”, not everyone likes them. Here is a well-known example: "If there are polar bears, then there must be Cartesian ones?" Somehow I found this aphorism, but a search showed that it had already been found before me. This often happens when it comes to individual phrases.

Cartoon criticism

The cartoon turned out to be somewhat specific: it should appeal to people who want to understand where the error is in the proof of the Great Stepin theorem, as well as to the nostalgic Soviet engineers who read the Quantum magazine. Mostly the reviews were negative: apparently, this amateur cartoon does not look like cartoons that are made in an industrial way and are played on TV. I do not have enough directors, animators, soundtrackers and others. Humor is also incomprehensible: well, what coupons can be now? And why reanimate the annoying Stirlitz? And the laughter of the heroes is somehow prolonged and artificial ... As for the laugh, the fault is not mine, the animator did, and if you force him to make many corrections, he will not be able to earn. I ordered the voicing of children on a freelancer website and received only one offer - from the Kiev voice of “Europe +”. His children are small, 11-12 years old, and they are used to voicing advertising slogans. And the boy who voiced Styopa during the period of work underwent surgery on his throat. Part of the children’s voices had to be replaced with the voice of a familiar animator, because mistakenly, an animation with rough dubbing was first made, and dubbing by children was done without taking into account my request to get into lipsing , or at least so that the duration of the phrases coincided with the draft. The organizer of the work of the children admitted that it would be better to hire adults speaking under the children, but it was too late: twenty-something thousand rubles had already been paid.

I tried to find educational institutions where they write such term papers and diploma projects, but it didn’t work out well.

Of course, I would like to publish information about this cartoon in places like the journal Science and Life, and not on the forum of this magazine, which is unlikely to be read by candidates for doctors and doctors. When the editor-in-chief of NiJ was acad. I.K. Lagovsky, he published my articles on games, and he also published my, based on real events, humorous n / a short story “Jump through a goat” about how students of the mechmath of Dnepropetrovsk University get physical education credit with the help of W. Penny's nontransitive paradox , discovered only in 1969

You could, of course, hire professional animators and others, but then you would have to lay out eight hundred thousand. And also it would be possible to order a turnkey cartoon in some "Soyuzmultfilm" for some $ 75,000 in five minutes ...