{"id":85038,"date":"2024-04-30T00:01:30","date_gmt":"2024-04-30T07:01:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cartoonresearch.com\/?p=85038"},"modified":"2024-04-28T13:58:26","modified_gmt":"2024-04-28T20:58:26","slug":"argentine-advertising-animation-garcia-ferre-aka-the-one-man-band","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cartoonresearch.com\/index.php\/argentine-advertising-animation-garcia-ferre-aka-the-one-man-band\/","title":{"rendered":"Argentine Advertising Animation: Garc\u00eda Ferr\u00e9, aka ‘The One Man Band’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Continuing our overview of the Argentine animated ad in four parts. Today, part 2: Manuel Garc\u00eda Ferr\u00e9.<\/p>\n\"\"\n

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Garc\u00eda Ferr\u00e9 is best known as an independent producer, but since advertising was the backbone of his not so small usine, it works perfectly as a showcase for the whole. <\/p>\n

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Manuel Garc\u00eda Ferr\u00e9<\/p><\/div>Manuel Garc\u00eda Ferr\u00e9 (1929-2013) was a Spanish-born cartoonist, director and editor who built his career in Argentina. He was known as the creator of famous children’s characters, comics, cartoons, advertising, animated series, animated feature films and a true publishing industry generated around his creatures. After his arrival to Argentina in 1947, he worked in advertising agencies, studied Architecture and prowled magazines with an art portfolio stucked under the arm. In 1952, his character Pi-P\u00edo<\/em> was accepted in the children’s magazine Billiken. P\u00ed-P\u00edo<\/em> (a little chick dressed as a cowboy) lived extravagant adventures in a universe where many of Ferr\u00e9\u2019s characters first appeared. His na\u00eff style was nothing like that of his colleagues, fitting perfectly to the dreamlike universe proposed by his stories.<\/p>\n

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Pi-P\u00edo<\/p><\/div>Garc\u00eda Ferr\u00e9 was interested in animation from the very beginning: shortly after arriving in Argentina, he started to make cartoons with a Bolex, in 16 mm, to sell copies of the films to the projector shops, as samples offered to the buyers. Around 1959, Ferr\u00e9 also directed his efforts towards advertising animation, for which he created numerous characters, such as the \u201cMamita wool\u201d cats, a celebrated hen that promoted mayonnaise and other similar fauna. Some of them would become more famous than what they advertised, because Ferr\u00e9 had a particular trait: in many cases, he retained the rights over his advertising creatures, who also participated in his more personal work, so that the differences between his personal dreamlike world and the advertising one were constantly blurred. One of these “commercial creatures” caught on with the public. His name was Anteojito and he was a little boy carrying a pair of glasses bigger than his head, accompanied by a kindly uncle who wore an ominous mask, rightly called “Antifaz” (\u201cmask\u201d). \u201cAntifaz\u201d was goodness personified and yet his black mask gave him an unsettling appearance. And that\u2019s the fuel that made Ferre’s creations work. His was a universe made of contrasts, where characters could become their opposite, where silly word puns gave way to fake Latin or strange Lovecraft-like curses such as “Intr\u00edngulis Ch\u00edngulis”; where surrealism was literally used to sell candy. Dal\u00ed would have been delighted.<\/p>\n

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Anteojito Ad.<\/p><\/div>\n

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In 1964, Ferr\u00e9 launched the magazine “Anteojito”, from where he developed a publishing enterprise in parallel to his production company. It was a resounding success. <\/p>\n

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Anteojito magazine cover (first issue)<\/p><\/div>\n

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Around 1967, in partnership with Osvaldo Dom\u00ednguez (in charge of photography), he started the production of an animated series for Channel 13. “Las Aventuras de Hijitus” (originally “Minutos Hijitus”) were daily episodes of one minute of animation around the adventures of the main character, with the corresponding cliffhangers. In 1942, the lushful produced Dante Quinterno\u2019s “Upa en Apuros\u201d did not appeal to the public. Hijitus was its exact opposite: a rather synthetic animation, where Ferr\u00e9’s original designs had suffered some standardization imposed by the hands of several animators, and a rushed production (given that the minute of animation had to be produced in exactly one day), achieved an unexpected success that made the series be exported to all of Latin America and cemented Ferr\u00e9’s film career.<\/p>\n