‘Hand-painted’ film vies for an Oscar

65,000 frames are in van Gogh’s style

TO GO WITH AFP STORY OF MAJA CZARNECKA 
 Joanna Maleszyk hangs up recreations of Vincent van Gogh paintings at a film studio in the northern Polish city of Gdansk on December 5, 2014. She is one of dozens of Polish artists working on "Loving Vincent", the world's first painting-based animated feature film. AFP PHOTO/PIOTR WITTMAN +++ RESTRICTED TO EDITORIAL USE, MANDATORY MENTION OF THE ARTIST UPON PUBLICATION, TO ILLUSTRATE THE EVENT AS SPECIFIED IN THE CAPTION

Vying for an Oscar, Loving Vincent is the world’s first animated feature film painted by hand — all 65,000 frames — in the distinct style of Vincent van Gogh.

Centred on a probe into his untimely death, the film was shot on a shoestring budget of $5.5 million. That is 30 times less than Disney’s Coco , one of the film’s four Oscar rivals.

For director Dorota Kobiela,

Loving Vincent has been a seven-year labour of love combining her twin passions of cinema and painting.

“Van Gogh’s style was perfect for the project; his paintings show all the details of his life, his day-to-day habits, his house, his room, his friends,” Ms. Kobiela said ahead of Sunday’s Oscar ceremonies in Los Angeles.

Ms. Kobiela and co-director Hugh Welchman already have one Oscar under their belt; their BreakThru Productions film company won an Academy Award in 2008 for the animated short Peter and the Wolf , based on the story and music by Sergei Prokofiev.

“We are the underdogs! In our category it’s normally dominated by Disney and Pixar but I have a feeling we might be one of the big upsets this year,” Mr. Welchman, who is also Ms. Kobiela’s husband, said.

After five years of pre-production, it took another two years for 125 artists from around the globe to bring the opus to life under Ms. Kobiela’s watchful eye.

Working in a massive studio in Poland’s Baltic port city of Gdansk, they based their oil paintings on scenes initially shot on film with actors.

Painstaking task

Painting the 93-minute-long movie was a painstaking task. “The pace of work was very slow, averaging a quarter of a second of the film a day,” said Ms. Kobiela, who spent seven years on the project.

A single second of the film represents an average of 12 hand-painted frames.

Each artist completed an average of six paintings a day, amounting to a half-second of the film for simple scenes. But according to Ms. Kobiela, the quality of the hand-painted frames surpasses digital animation, making them well worth the extra effort.

“Often in animation, we have the problem that facial expressions are limited. But in oil painting, we can show even greater expression if the portrait is painted properly,” she said.