Tony Wolf is the professional pseudonym of Antonio Lupatelli, an Italian artist, illustrator, and writer born in Busseto, Parma, in 1930. He began his career in the 1950s, collaborating with the Pagot brothers before working with the British publisher Fleetway on comics such as Playhour and Jack and Jill. Later, his work appeared in the Italian children’s magazine Corriere dei Piccoli, and he went on to have a long association with the publishing houses Fratelli Fabbri, Mondadori, and Dami Editore, for which he illustrated numerous traditional stories and children’s books. Over his career, he produced more than two hundred children’s books and also used the pseudonyms Oda Taro, L’Alpino, and Antony Moore.

His most significant connection to anime and manga comes from his book series Storie del Bosco, known in English as The Woodland Folk. This series of illustrated children’s books served as the foundation for the Japanese anime television series Bosco Adventure. Produced by Nippon Animation, the show originally aired in Japan from October 1986 to March 1987 under the title Bosco Daibōken. The series follows the journey of Princess Apricot and her friends from the Bosco forest, and while it is loosely based on Wolf’s original characters and settings, it remains one of his most notable works in the context of Japanese animation.

Beyond this connection, Wolf is widely recognized as the creator behind the visual concepts for the globally popular animated series Pingu. The character and its world originated from his illustrations, which were later adapted into the acclaimed stop-motion clay animation by Swiss filmmaker Otmar Gutmann in 1986.

Antonio Lupatelli passed away in Cremona, Italy, on May 18, 2018, at the age of 88.