In order to celebrate the fact all important Dingo Pictures works were found (there might be more though) I decided to visit the birthplace of those masterpieces. You can find their address at the website or at Baidu Maps (with some reviews, mostly in English and Swedish).
Without further ado I present to you the studio:
Yes, this is really the place of people who gave us (or at least me) many hours of fun and joy.
Here’s a postbox with some familiar names if you don’t believe it.
And if you search local news you might learn that those people were local legends probably even before they were immortalised by cartoons. But before only the area around Frankfurt on Main knew about their talents and now the whole world does. And I’m grateful for having an opportunity to discover this whole new genre of German anime which would not be possible without them.
Amazing that someone has actually visited the site of the studio! Despite not living in Germany myself, I have actually tried to contact both Simone Greiss (the animator who seemingly just suddenly appeared in 1997 alongside Ickert) and Georg Feils (one of the music composers and voice of John Smith) through email. Greiss has not yet replied, but Feils has.
According to Feils, he was friends with Roswitha (referred to as Rosy Haas in the email) and worked for her occasionally without paying. Roswitha died somewhere around 2016.
Judging from the bits and pieces of information, Ludwig Ickert should be over 70 years old himself (also he was a very famous local guitarist). And Armin Drogat seemed to be involved in theatrical plays along with Simone Greiß (music, acting and such).
When I wrote they were local talents I was not joking.
Do you dare go in there? Just wondering.
I meant DID you dare go in there, cannot edit or delete my own comments.
Of course not. But there is a video from some Russian-speaking guy living in Germany who did the same trip later—www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAKwkGPHux8
He claims the house is empty and a woman looking after it said the inhabitants moved out in 2006 or so.
There is a Dingo Pictures Wiki now. I put these pics into this article about dingo there
I’m glad to see they were useful for any purpose (and that somebody documents everything about The Studio at last).
Now all that’s missing are the original German version of the second Easterbunny storybook movie (it is available in Italian) and Sing mit Aladin.
Which is not much really and I’m pretty sure they’ll be uncovered eventually.