Spirit_of_Fire said: Are there any big budget animation studios in Russia or at least prolific ones? Or are small time artistic shorts all there is to be had?
You mean budget like Hollywood production? Well there are couple modern ones... which I think don't hold a candle to the old ones, not only in terms of animation but also in terms of storytelling and cleverness. There are the Stalin era ones, where Stalin wanted to compete with Disney and some pretty bland rotoscoped stuff were done back then.
In terms of money poured into however...... in Soviet Union days huge amount of money was poured exactly to support "artistic" animation and exploration, pretty much all animation of that era is about pushing the limits of creativeness and anyone who complain about how animation doesn't meet its potential as medium need to check these. You say America produced the most content.... I don't know if it's true, I know however that Soviet animation amounts to about 3500 titles if not more.The point of these production was never to be "shiny" but to be educational and intelligent, to promote ideals such as friendship and kindness for the little ones. However that said one shouldn't assume that because the said animation was "education" it was dumb it always had a general appeal, they were all made in a way that they could be watched by the whole family. There is also a small but quality amount that were specifically made to go outside Soviet Union, they were specifically tailored to appeal to western tastes and were considered to be best of the best because they were "representing a country", sadly I can't find any of those, I once stumbled on the Shakespeare adaption but couldn't get a hold of it at that time.
There are some mainstream that were very popular like Nu Pogodi, but I don't know how much of appeal aside from a superficial one (oh it's silly/funny! sort) it would have to a non-Russian as most of actual charm of it lies in social commentary and Soviet pop culture, even if there is no dialogue aside from the titular catchphrase. Vinni Pukh's charm heavily relies on the dialogues, one interesting thing about it is that the Russian adaption is global while the original English material is UK oriented. Most Russian cartoons are very intelligent dialogue wise, the closest American equivalent that I can think of is Shrek and Monster Co. Things like Cheburashka and The Red Glove were met with big enthusiasm in Japan, Cheburashka even has its place in Ghibli museum.
I'm going to post Mowgli from the old era, since most people are familiar with the story and it's one of the longest one:
And here is Little Longnose, which is of the newer kind (one of the better ones)
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