Erika Brueggemann with Pingu in 2004.
Erika Brueggemann (also spelled Brüggemann) is the co-creator of the Pingu TV series alongside Otmar Gutmann.
All of the early Pingu stories were written or co-written by Erika Brueggemann. She said "at first Guido [Steiger] and I wrote the stories, later just me. They were mostly stories from my childhood, and I had plenty of those to offer. Otmar managed to translate them [into animation] incomparably well."[1]
History with Pingu[]
In an interview from 2004, Erika Brueggemann explained the origins behind the show. She was working at Schweizer Fernsehe (a Swiss TV channel) in the early 1980s when she met Otmar Gutmann. Otmar introduced Erika's team to his clay animations, and he wanted to make a show starring sea lions who crawled around in a silly way. Erika instead pointed to one of his penguins and suggested "Why not the penguin?" since she wanted the main character to walk upright like a person. Otmar wasn't immediately onboard, since he had modeled lots of clay sea lions at that point, but he eventually warmed up to the idea.
She said that she had to give a lot of feedback on how Pingu should act: "After countless demonstrations on my part about how 'my' penguin should move and act, the character was born. A penguin who doesn't look like everyone else - and yet represents everyone at the same time."
Eventually, Erika and her team scraped together enough money for a pilot film. It was finished but quickly ended up in a drawer in the TV department. Nobody was interested in the film. She then sent the pilot film, slightly shortened, to a children's festival in Berlin. There, the pilot won a prize called the 'Silver Bear', and the show was approved for a first season shortly after.
After the original batch of episodes, Erika Brueggemann did not actively work on Pingu anymore, but she still met with the new team at HiT Entertainment after they bought the show. She said, "Last year a production company from England bought everything... I traveled to Manchester last summer and met their highly motivated team who worked with great commitment, humor and responsibility towards children. I think Pingu is in good hands now."
The Pingu end credits of Series 5 and 6 begin with "Originated by Otmar Gutmann & Erika Brueggemann." She is also mentioned in newer Pingu booklets.