Aleksandr Petrov’s Oscar-winning “The Old Man and the Sea” animated short all started in March 1997, when he and his son, Dmitri Petrov, started hand-painting each of the film’s 29,000+ frames. They used the pastel oil paintings on glass technique, which has only mastered by only a handful of animators in the world. Petrov even used his fingertips in addition to various paintbrushes to paint on the various glass sheets positioned on multiple levels, each covered with slow-drying oil paints. Continue reading for another video and more information.
“After photographing each frame painted on the glass sheets, which was four times larger than the usual A4-sized canvas, he had to slightly modify the painting for the next frame and so on. For the shooting of the frames a special adapted motion-control camera system was built, probably the most precise computerized animation stands ever made. On this, an IMAX camera was mounted, and a video-assist camera was then attached to the IMAX camera,” reports Twisted Sifter.
