The Labor of Loving Vincent: Animating Van Gogh to Solve a Mystery
Seven years in the making, "Loving Vincent" by Dorota Kobiela and Hugh Welchman is the first feature-length, hand-painted animation film. It explores the turbulent life and mysterious death of Vincent Van Gogh by bringing his own paintings to life to tell his story.
You'll learn the behind the scenes struggles, successes, and secrets that let its co-directors and a team of 120 highly-skilled oil painters produce a unique work of art. To complete the 90-minute film, they painted over 65,000 oil paintings, reinterpreting frame-by-frame in Vincent's vibrant style the traditional live-action performances of an international cast. The talk highlights the research & development required to perfect the oil-painted animation technique, motivates the use of black and white for flashback scenes, and explains numerous examples of the technical challenges involved in reimagining over 100 of Van Gogh's paintings into the medium of film. "Loving Vincent" won the Audience Prize at Annecy in June and opens in theatres worldwide in October 2017.
A passionate animation enthusiast and five-time attendee of View Conference, Steve Muench was an early investor in "Loving Vincent" and has been very involved in the project, giving notes on drafts of the script and early cuts of the film. He visited the studios in Poland multiple times during production and helped the crew with the events culminating in the world premiere at Annecy.
