Aleksandr Petrov

Aleksandr Konstantinovich Petrov ????????? ?????????????? ?????? born 17 July 1957 in Prechistoye Yaroslavl Oblast is a Russian animator and animation director Petrov was born in the village of Prechistoye Yaroslavl Oblast and lives in Yaroslavl He studied art at VGIK state institute of cinema and TV and was a disciple of Yuriy Norshteyn at Moscows Advanced School for Screenwriters and Directors After making his first films in Russia he moved to Canada where he adapted the novel The Old Man and the Sea resulting in a 20minute animated short the first largeformat 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 slowdrying 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 A4sized canvas he had to slightly modify the painting for the next frame and so on It took him over two years from March 1997 through April 1999 to paint each of the 29000 frames For the shooting of the frames a special adapted motioncontrol camera system was built probably the most precise computerized animation stand ever made On this an IMAX camera was mounted and a videoassist camera was then attached to the IMAX camera The film was highly acclaimed receiving the Academy Award for Animated Short Film and Grand Prix at the Annecy International Animated Film Festival After this Aleksandr 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 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 27 August where it won the Audience Prize and the Special International Jury Prize On 17 March 2007 My Love was theatrically released at the Cinema Angelika in Shibuya Japan by Studio Ghibli as the first release of the Ghibli Museum Library theatrical and DVD releases of Western animated films in Japan In a 2009 interview Petrov stated that he was jobless and usingup the last of his previously earned money A 2010 article stated that Petrov wants to create an animated feature film with his technique but cannot start because of lack of funds Four years later he directed a threeminute animated sequence for the Sochi Paralympic Games called Firebird ???????? In an interview later that year Petrov confirmed that if he can find the funding he would like to work on a feature film in the future using his signature style and stated that he is currently working on a film project but that it is progressing with great difficulty In July 2016 Petrov sat on the board of directors for the International Film Festival of Poetic Animation held in Pergola Italy