Czech animation at its best: Popular Czech bedtime story character Maxipes Fík turns 50
He is big, shaggy, kind-hearted, and loves his best friend Ája – Maxipes Fík is an animated fairy-tale character who has been wishing children good night for five decades. Nevertheless, it is also a prime example of Czech animation resulting from the collaboration of top Czech creators.
Večerníček, Czech television’s popular bedtime story series, has been part of the bedtime routine of several generations of Czech children for over 60 years. Over the decades, it has become an institution, which has consistently combined the talents of excellent Czech illustrators, writers, animators and directors. The animated fairytales broadcast in Večerníček have won over not only generations of Czech children but also many adults. One of the most popular fairytales that first appeared in Večerníček on 14 May 1976 is called Maxipes Fík. The series tells the story of Fík, an oversized, talking, intelligent dog, and a little girl named Ája, who lived together in a small village in northwestern Bohemia. The series was entirely narrated by the Czech actor Josef Dvořák.
Dvořák: “I was offered the chance to narrate the bedtime story Maxipes Fík, and it was my very first children’s TV series. To my great surprise, it became a huge success right away. When I started working on it, I honestly had no idea what it would involve or whether anyone would even like it.”
Maxipes Fík eventually became an iconic animated character – not only in Czechia, but also abroad. Alongside the unmistakable voice of Josef Dvořák, one of the first things that captures attention is the visual style of the series. Fík’s appearance was created by the late illustrator Jiří Šalamoun, whose style oscilates somewhere between naïve art and art brut. This approach is also reflected in the illustrations of Maxipes Fík – details fade into the background, giving space to bold lines that at times look as if they had been scribbled by a child’s hand.
Šalamoun: “I try to hang on to my initial sketches, so that I have a kind of retrospective control. Sometimes those sketches are more interesting than what later goes out. Most of the time I’m sitting at a desk and as I work I comment a little, even out loud; that helps me to remember what I’m doing and to take it in. It’s basically a job like any other.”
The look of Maxipes Fík was inspired by a real dog named Elster, an Old English Sheepdog, also known as a Bobtail. Šalamoun had once seen a Bobtail in England and liked it so much that when his daughter wanted a puppy, he decided to get her exactly that breed. Fík is therefore big and fluffy, and his long white fur, as well as his kind gaze, radiate warmth and gentleness. Despite his size, he never seems frightening – quite the opposite. Fík is peaceful, kind-hearted, and loves his Ája more than anything.
The creator of the story, the late writer Rudolf Čechura,was a passionate dog-lover. As he revealed in an interview for Czech Radio, he did not hesitate as a child to crawl into his dog’s kennel to be with him.
Čechura: “I had a dog from the moment I was born. Usually, it is children who get a dog from their parents, but in our case, it was the other way around. The dog had long been part of the family before I even came into the world. Our dog was called Jiskra. He was gentle and watched over me from an early age. Later, when I learned to walk a little, I used to crawl into his kennel. He had a big, spacious kennel – not quite as big as Maxipes Fík’s, but certainly large enough for me to fit inside.”
Rudolf Čechura began writing the stories about the oversized bobtail dog and his friend Ája in 1975 in the village of Ahníkov, the very place where the story is set. But in the mid-1980s, the village was forced to make way for surface brown coal mining and was gradually abandoned and demolished. Today, only a few traces of it remain.
Yet Ahníkov lives on elsewhere – in the world of Maxipes Fík and in the memories of generations of Czech children who fell asleep each evening to the adventures of Fík and Ája in the Czech treasured bedtime series Večerníček.