Aleksandr Petrov (animator)

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The Old Man and the Sea from 1999 (Academy Award for Animated Short Film)
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The Old Man and the Sea from 1999 (Academy Award for Animated Short Film)

Aleksandr Konstantinovich Petrov (also Alexander or Alexandre) (Russian: Александр Константинович Петров) (July 17, 1957) is a Russian animator and animation director.

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[edit] Biography

Petrov was born in the village Prechistoye (Yaroslavl Oblast) and lives in Yaroslavl.

He had studied art, in particular at VGIK (State institute of the cinema and TV). He was a disciple of Yuriy Norshteyn in Advanced School for screenwriters and directors (Moscow).

After making his first films in Russia, in Canada he adapted the novel The Old Man and the Sea, resulting in a 20 minute long animated short — the first large-format animated film ever made. Technically impressive, the film is made entirely in pastel oil paintings on glass, a technique mastered by only a handful of animators in the world. By using his fingertips instead of a paintbrush on different glass sheets positioned on multiple levels, each covered with slow-drying oil paints, he was able to add depth to his paintings. 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. It took Alexandr Petrov over two years, from March 1997 through April 1999, to paint each of the 29,000+ frames. For the shooting of the frames a special adapted motion-control camera system was built, probably the most precise computerized animation stand ever made. On this an IMAX camera was mounted, and a video-assist camera was then attached to the IMAX camera. The film was highly rewarded, receiving the Academy Award for the best animated short and Grand Prix at the Annecy International Animated Film Festival. After this, Alexandr Petrov has maintained a close relationship with Pascal Blais Studio in Canada, which helped fund The Old Man and the Sea, where he works on commercials[1]. He returned to Yaroslavl in Russia to work on his latest film, My Love, which was finished in spring 2006 after three years' work and had its premiere at the Hiroshima International Animation Festival on August 27, where it won the Audience Prize and the Special International Jury Prize.

[edit] Style

Petrov's style can be characterized as a type of Romantic realism. People, animals and landscapes are painted and animated in a very realistic fashion, but there are many sections in his films where Petrov attempts to visually show a character's inner thoughts and dreams. In The Old Man and the Sea, for example, the fisherman dreams that he and the marlin are brothers swimming through the sea and the sky. In My Love, the main character's illness is represented by showing him being buried beneath freshly-fallen snow on a dark night. There are many other examples as well.

[edit] Filmography

[edit] Awards

[edit] External links

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