Italo Bettiol, the creator of "Chapi Chapo", a legendary 1970s animation series, died on Wednesday at the age of 96 at his home in Aniane in Hérault.
The nonagenarian “died peacefully”, according to Éric Valin, “historic collaborator and friend of the family”, quoted in a press release from the company Magic, representing the rights of “Chapi Chapo”.
The characters of "Chapi Chapo" - a blue boy and a pink girl wearing giant hats -, their universe populated by magic cubes and the cult credits by François de Roubaix, appeared on the ORTF on October 16, 1974.
Their stories (60 five-minute episodes) were "broadcast worldwide, as far away as the United States on Nickelodeon's Pinwheel," the statement said.
Stop motion specialist
A specialist in the “stop motion” technique, which “consists of animating foam and felt puppets frame by frame in front of the camera”, Italo Bettiol was originally destined for a career as an artist-painter.
We also owe him "Pépin la Bulle", broadcast for the first time in the late 1960s.
The native of Trieste had left Italy for France in 1947 with his sidekick Stefano Lonati, freshly graduated like him from the Beaux-Arts in Milan.
Finally setting their sights on animation, the duo founded the company Belokapi in 1968, in association with Michel Karlof and Nicole Pichon, which notably produced numerous sequences for the program "L'île aux enfants" ("Albert and Barnabas”, “La Linea”, etc.).