Loving Vincent

Van Gogh is one of the world’s most recognised artists; his self-portraits gave us a face to the man behind the paint.

Even the brush stokes themselves are famous, from his stylised oil paintings such as the Starry Night to the Sunflowers still life. These days, vast collections and permanent exhibitions of his oil paintings can be viewed at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.

Vincent Van Gogh's life has been portrayed onscreen many times, from film to TV, including an adventurous episode of Doctor Who. The upcoming film Loving Vincent is a story telling of his life using inspiration from 150 of his own paintings, influences of the people around him and some 800 letters that he wrote before his mysterious and controversial death. Loving Vincent has gone above and beyond standard animation methods, this is certainly an experimental film, one, which I hope, succeeds.

It's not just the poster that's painted, its the entire film!  

Every single frame of the animation is hand-painted in oil colours in the style of Van Gogh. This has been achieved by a combination of storyboard layouts and real actors, which have provided the artists with compositions to work on. Around 100 skilled artists taking part in Poland will have completed vigorous training as they will need to produce around 3,500 paintings each. I can't begin to imagine the amount of paint and turps they're going through - let's hope they have well ventilated studios.

Astonishingly it will take 12 oil paintings to make up only 1 second of animation. You do the maths! The cast includes actors Aiden Turner, Jerome Flynn, and Chris O'Dowd. Written and directed by Polish painter and animator Dorota Kobiela, and Hugh Welchman.

Loving Vincent is released in the UK on October 13th, coming to a cinema near you.

The paintings really do come alive, take a look at how it was made:

All images rights reseved to the artists, Breakthru Films and Trademark Film.