Italo Bettiol, the creator of “Chapi Chapo”a legendary animation series from the 1970s, died this Wednesday, December 28 at the age of 96 at his home in Aniane in the Hérault, announced one of the relatives of the director of Italian origin.
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The nonagenarian, to whom we also owe “Pepin the Bubble”which first aired in the late 1960s, “died peacefully”according to Eric Valin, “Historic collaborator and friend of the family”quoted in a press release from the Magic company, representing the rights of “Chapi Chapo”.
Cult credits
The characters of the series, 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 episodes of five minutes) were “broadcast around the world, even in the United States on the Pinwheel show on Nickelodeon”underlines the press release.
Technical specialist “stop-motion”who “consists of animating puppets of foam and felt frame by frame in front of the camera”, Italo Bettiol was originally destined for a career as a painter. It is in this perspective that the native of Trieste had left Italy for France in 1947 with his sidekick Stefano Lonati, freshly graduated like him from the Fine Arts of 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 many sequences of the show “Children’s Island” (“Albert and Barnabas”, “La Linea”etc.). “A tireless inventor, retired Italo Bettiol continued to tinker with extraordinary machines in his workshop in Aniane, near Montpellier”the statement said.
