Loving Vincent's diary - 2nd week (2/2)

BreakThru's producer Hugh Welchman (Oscar Winner for producing BreakThru's Peter and the Wolf) and painter/director Dorota Kobiela (director of BreakThru's Little Postman and Chopin's Drawings) are co-writing BreakThru's latest film, Loving Vincent, the world's first feature length painting animation film. The film is a mystery thriller looking into the life and death of Vincent Van Gogh, and is told through bringing over 120 of Vincent's masterpieces to animated life...

The script is on its fourth, and final, draft, and wth production scheduled for spring 2013, the pressure is mounting. This weekly diary will candidly record their process of writing the elusive final draft.

Loving Vincent's diary - 2nd week (2/2)

Thankfully I have rarely suffered from hangovers, so I woke up at 9am, leaving Dorota to sleep it off a bit more and went and bought myself some clothes, seeing as we didn't have our washing machine plumbed in yet back in Warsaw, and I hadn't got around to going to launderette, I had to buy my clothes for the trip ahead. And of course my winter clothes were in the wrong city anyway, so I bought the cheapest hat and gloves that H&M had to offer.  

When we finally assemble all our stuff from the various studios, friends and relatives I'll probably realise we need to re-renovate our place with more storage. My itinerant life has been for three years, prior to that I moved only twice in a decade; Vincent was itinerant his whole adult life. But when he left a place it was often very abruptly, leaving his stuff behind, with a retinue of angry creditors making a return unlikely. For sure there were scores of early Van Gogh drawings and paintings that were left behind, and probably broken up and sold for wood by the creditors he fled from… amazing to think if they had just left it in their attics their children would have become multi-millionaires! This is to add to the Van Goghs destroyed in wars; stolen; and the one- a portrait of Madame Ginoux that Vincent set out from the St Remy Asylum on day release to give to her, but when he was found in the streets of Arles, dazed and confused, he was without the painting. Just imagine unearthing one of these after 125 years!! The nearest I have heard to something like this is the Finnish Department of Foreign Affairs. One of their junior employees in the French embassy was tasked with going out and buying some art, he came back with two Van Goghs, which appalled his conservative superiors, so he got demoted, or fired, or moved, and the two paintings sat in the attic of the Finnish embassy for 30 years, until someone realised they had two insanely valuable paintings rudely stacked among bric a brac. 

 Acceptably clad in clean warm clothes we struck out into the white grey gloom for Holland. Obviously Liege didn't want us to go, either that or I was over estimating my morning lucidity as we managed to re-enter the city twice before finally striking out on a long straight white road instead of the motorway (which was clogged with standstill traffic). The road was virtually empty, dissecting barren white fields. It was a relief to enter a forest, where all the branches bent ominously under piles of fresh wet snow. We passed Neunen, but decided that another standstill motorway was sufficient to deter us from seeing the place where Vincent spent more time than any other during his years as a painter, and the only place he didn't leave abruptly. This was where his ageing father had been sent, to preside over a small protestant community in an overwhelmingly Catholic village. His father and the parsonage were at the centre of the community, but this was disrupted by the arrival of the eldest son, who by now was an avowed atheist; who insisted in dressing in peasant clothes; and who would accost anyone he saw to come and model for him. At this time he worked furiously to master drawing, but also developed as a painter, painting what is heralded as his first masterpiece: The Potato Eaters. While he felt this was a breakthru, and he sent copies of it to many people who he wanted to impress, many of who had abandoned him, and in whose eyes he longed to be redeemed. But no one seemed to see what he saw, his friend van Rappard, put it:

 "Why do you see and treat everything so superficially? How far from true is that coquettish little hand of the woman in the background… And why isn't that man to the right allowed to have a knee, a belly and lungs? Or are they located in his back? And why must his arm be a yard too short? And why must he do without one half of his nose? And why must that woman on the left have some sort of little tobacco-pipe stem with little cube at the end for a nose?"

The friendship was crushed, as many of Vincent's friendships with other artists were, by bitter invective. van Rappard has a point, but as Vincent retorted, he also misses the point. And van Rappard's work is now a footnote in art history, mentioned only for his interaction with Vincent. Rappard was not the only one to scorn The Potato Eaters; his brother Theo rallied an array of criticism from himself, backed up by other artists and dealers in Paris. Wounded, but still belligerent Vincent conceded his figures were crude, but said that it had spirit and a life that would shine through:

 "I should be in despair if my figures were good rather…everything depends on how much life and passion an artist is able to express."

 On Sunday we would get to see this at the Van Gogh Museum but first we had to find out what was at the Hague. I was still getting stick for being stubborn and making us go to the Hague when there was only one van Gogh there. We arrived in the Hague to find the Maritshaus museum …. closed for renovation!!! What is going on - the van Gogh Museum, the Rijks Museum Maritshaus, all at the same time? What is so special about 2013 that they all need to be re-vamped for, or maybe the staff just want to party before the end of the world? Anyway precious museum time was being lost: did you know that museums in Holland close at 5pm (!?) as someone who has mainly visited art museums in London and New York this seemed seriously anti-social, and for the whole trip we felt like we were breaking land speed records to make it in time for closing. So onto Gementemuseum, with a time limit of 30 minutes. We went straight to see the three Rembrandts. One of his early works, that made him famous, 'Anatomy lesson of Dr Nicholaes Tulp', was flanked by two paintings from three decades later, towards the end of his career, 'Homer' and 'Two Negroes'. To be honest I wouldn't have given Anatomy Lesson a second glance if Dorota hadn't told me it was so famous, but even with my walking painting encyclopedia next to me, I had trouble studying it… when the other two are just so fascinating - the lighting in these and the way it is painted is impressionistic, counter to the realism of the earlier work, both early and late work have amazing lighting, but the later ones are dark, mysterious: something you can get lost in. There was no time to dwell on anything else; we scoured the rooms in search of the sole Hague van Gogh. Embarrassingly we both walked right past it, and had to have it pointed out to us: 'Garden At Arles', 1888.

 My heart sank; I had siphoned time away from museums with 100's of van Goghs for this.... It seemed a bit of a mess, not one of his great paintings, not one of the great Arles landscapes. I walked away from the picture, and turned to give it one last look… and from a distance it looked totally different. I was standing on the right of it facing it, at 10 metres away, and the painting… came alive. The path drew me in, the perspective was deep and intriguing, the staccato multicoloured brush strokes that seemed unnecessary up close cohered to give you the feeling of an over-flowing garden shimmering under intense summer sunshine. It brought a smile to my face. One thing I couldn't bear to, or afford to buy, was new winter boots, as I bought a very nice pair last year, so I had been walking around for the whole trip with my feet soaking in my summer trainers, and here- looking at this- I felt like I could walk down the path and be enveloped by cicadas and Mediterranean heat.

 As I am writing this, I am looking again at the painting on line: http://www.googleartproject.com/collection/gemeentemuseum/artwork/garden-at-arles-vincent-van-gogh/432790/ and it is just not the same painting. Here it is in high resolution courtesy of the Google Art project, but for this painting, well it seems almost pointless in reproduction. And that is the thought that I took away from the Hague. I have been looking at all his paintings in books, by necessity, and in books you miss the texture and you miss the depth/perspective in his work. This trip started with a reminder of the lengths that we went to achieve depth and perspective in our last films, winning the top prize for use of depth in film, and here I was struck by the unexpected and transformative depth in the first Van Gogh's painting that we had seen on this trip. I would be sure to be looking out for this on the rest of the trip. 

 A minute past our curfew, we raced back to our illegally parked car and drove furiously to Rotterdam under a glorious heavy orange sun, calling ahead to the museum to check they wouldn't close on us. When we arrived half an hour before closing they kindly decided not to charge us, and directed us to the van Gogh's. After my depth revelation we looked at the decidedly flat, portrait of Armand Roulin. And I was rather disappointed that it was the three quarter profile Armand, rather than the head on one of him in his yellow suit that we use in the Concept trailer. I am also influenced by the fact that I love our Amand Roulin character in the film; he will be the narrator for our film sequence that we are planning to use for Kickstarter- 'The Ear'. So I left Dorota to studying it carefully and moved on to the next ones. 

They had poplars near Nuenen, a painting I liked very much, mainly because I thought it was dramatically useful for the film. 

(source: wikipedia.org)

 It is from 1885, and I wondered from when in 1885, whether it was after his father's death in March of that year. Centre of the picture is the church spire in black silhouette, and under it in the foreground two women in black, and of to the side of them a man in peasant blue overalls, Vincent's default clothing at the time, who is holding some unidentifiable white stick in his hand. And it is an avenue of poplars, a tree that signifies loneliness, artisticness, and lacking in confidence... Could it be symoblising that he has lost his way in the wake of his father's death, and the black figure is mother and sister who turned their back on him, and all is dominated by the dead pastor, in the form of the silhouetted spire at the heart of the picture? Maybe the unidentified white is a blind man stick- symbolising Vincent's blindness. I have to check the date of the painting, and also whether I can find any references in his letters to the paintings, or to poplars, and check when the white cane first started to be used. Whether I am finding symbolism that isn't there, this painting has great dramatic potential for Vincent's departure from Nuenen in the film; and the fact is that most of Vincent's subjects were highly symbolic and much related back to his family, his mother's love of nature, and his father's religious teaching. 

1885 was a key year for Vincent. On the one hand he was super prolific, and had the breakthru of the Potato Eaters, on the other hand his relations with his family deteriorated disastrously, and the sudden death of his father made things worse, as his mother and sisters in part blamed him for the death of his father. Vincent had terrible and violent rows with his aged father, and to a lesser extent with his mother and sisters. He desperately wanted their love, as you can see from his letters when they are apart, but in these two years he railed against the views and authority of his ageing father- openly drinking, whoring, declaring his atheism, trying to tear down his father's world view- even as his father was bemusedly trying to understand and accept his son's chosen vocation, one that produced no money, just sucked it out of the family at an alarming rate. After his death he was hounded out of home by his sister and mother, and… would never return home or see them again. Once again he was leaving a place under a cloud, but not just any place, he was leaving the family that he so wanted to be loved by, for good. But... he was leaving as a painter; the die was cast. 

The one painting where there can be no doubt of its symbolic meaning, painted just after his father's death, is Still life with a Bible. This would be a treat for the following day. 

Having lost myself in thoughts on Poplars near Nuenen, we then used the final minutes to scout around the gallery. I was struck by the work of the Hague School, especially a large painting by Anton Mauve, the star of the Hague school, who was an uncle to Vincent by marriage, and who can be credited as the man who persuaded Vincent to paint. Until his apprenticeship to Mauve, Vincent was completely set on being an illustrator. Inevitably they had a seismic falling out, but Van Gogh always thereafter sought Mauve's approval, which was never forthcoming. When Mauve died Vincent sent him 'Peach tree in blossom' to his widow, and Mauve's granddaughter, three decades later, sold this for a hundred times more than the highest selling of her grandfather's paintings. I only knew Mauve through his role in Vincent's story, I had never seen his work, so I was surprised to be very struck by his paintings. While he might have been chained to the dealer system, his paintings were often pre-sold by Tersteeg (Vincent's nemesis), who harried him for as many paintings as possible, churning them out for the American market, he is someone with sensitivity and passion for his work. The Hague school duly visited, we had 30 seconds to admire Pieter Bruegel's the tower of Babel. Too short, a great affecting image whether on a postcard or on the Internet; it was a complete treat to see the actual painting, even for under a minute. Not for the first or last time on the trip we were escorted from the premises!!!

(source: wikipedia.org)

 by Hugh Welchman

Filming Vincent - 56 years of Van Gogh on Screen

As the trailer for BreakThru Film's upcoming Loving Vincent debuts at Cannes, we take a short look at earlier representations of the great artist on film.

BreakThru Films upcoming animation Loving Vincent

Lust for Life (1956)

Presented in splendid MGM Metrocolor, the first major adaptation of Vincent Van Gogh's tragic and tumultuous life stars Kirk Douglas as the artist tormented by his obsessive personality and eventually driven to suicide by an inability to realise his aesthetic ambitions. Lust for Life relies on the now unfashionable assumption that Van Gogh painted as he saw the world, that his paintings are intended to be accurate representations of a hallucinatory world which he was uniquely privilaged to. This view tends to work reductively against his achievements as a painter, suggesting as it does that his work is more the product of a fevered imagination than artistic skill.

Kirk Douglas makes for a dashing young artist

The film does have its strengths, however, Douglas is commanding as the tragic painter, and the film's warm and sometimes sickly colour palette is an excellent match for Van Gogh's style, and both the scenery and the many reproductions visible throughout the film look beautiful. 

Vincent (1987)

This US production, directed by Paul Cox, uses a vast range of images in a strange but moving documentary narrated by John Hurt. Making extensive use of Van Gogh's own diaries, Vincent tells the painter's story in his own words, and in combination with the startling and vivid visuals, the simple approach is remarkably powerful. Far less sensational than the MGM drama which preceded it, Vincent is indicative of Van Gogh's gradual movement into the centre of the global art canon.

The poster for Paul Cox's 1987 documentary

Illustrated with works created throughout Van Gogh's career, it also offers an opportunity to appreciate the development of his style, the labour he poured into finding his true direction in life and his struggles with poverty and the blank incomprehension and apathy of his peers, and the art world he at once despised and desperately sought entry to.

Vincent and Theo (1990)


A less well-known TV drama directed by Robert Altman, Vincent and Theo is notable for its concern with the wider Van Gogh family. Telling the story of the painter's brother, and the support he gave throughout his life, it is a stirring family drama that strips away a few of the layers of myth which had accumulated over the Dutch master in previous decades. Theo Van Gogh's own ambitions as an art dealer are dealt with, and the image of Vincent as a lone voice bellowing in the wilderness is dispelled.

To save money, art students were employed to paint many of the
film's numerous reproductions in their various states of completion

Tim Roth makes for an often despondent Vincent, while Paul Rhys excels as his beleaguered brother, whose life and home are gradually swallowed up supporting his brother's apparently directionless talent. A meditation on the conditions genius needs to prosper, Vincent and Theo is something of a neglected classic.

Vincent and the Doctor (Doctor Who) (2010)

Matt Smith's first series as the mysterious Time Lord took his TARDIS to the fields of Provence where, together with his companion Amy Pond (Karen Gillan) he encounters the artist at the height of his powers, but plagued by a vision of a strange beast that only he can see. Tony Curran is a superb Vincent, with shades of wicked humour to balance out his darker moments, particularly in his brief and unrequited passion for flame-haired Amy. There are shades of the 'magical eyes' trope last seen in Lust for Life, but the manner in which they are delivered, in a spectacular animation that sees the night sky morph in imitation of his most famous landscape, more than justifies it.

Vincent takes a trip in the TARDIS

Best of all is a time-bending finale in which Van Gogh finally gets to see the praise his art attracted years after his death, as the Doctor takes him on a trip to a modern museum where a present-day art-critic (Bill Nighy) unwittingly tells Van Gogh that he is regarded as 'the greatest painter of them all'. Richard Curtis penned this unashamed love-letter to the artist, and it's filled with beautiful images and highly intelligent writing.

Loving Vincent (coming soon...)

Loving Vincent is a spectacular animation composed of over 57,600 individual oil paintings. Every frame of the film has been hand painted in oils by a team of 30 painters, led by Polish painter-director Dorota Kobiela.

Famous images are brought to life in ground-breaking
painted animation

The story takes the form of a murder mystery and an exploration of Van Gogh's tortured imagination. More information is emerging all the time, but with the film in pre-production an early concept trailer has been released, revealing the incredible undulating style created by the pain-staking technique.

- Stewart Pringle

Tim Allen - Interview with an Animator

BreakThru talks to animator extraordinaire Tim Allen about his life in animation, Tim Burton and his incredible work on Peter & The Wolf and Magic Piano.

Tim Allen on the set of Corpse Bride

- When did you first become interested in stop-motion animation? Were you interested in art as a child?

Yeah, I was always drawing, making models and reading comics. I think my earliest ambitions were to make comic strip cartoons along the lines of Garfield, and I copied this format with vampire and ghost characters. As a teenager I’d moved on to Batman and my dream had now progressed to drawing superheros (or maybe being one!). I opted out of conventional A-levels in favour of a 2 year Art Diploma, as we knew I was going down the road of an artistic career. At this stage, I honestly can say I hadn’t even considered you could animate for a living!  

Somewhat lost for what to do after my art course, I was looking at modelmaking degrees and accidently stumbled upon an animation degree. At this time Nightmare Before Christmas had recently come out in cinemas & the idea of working on something like that just blew me away. Cheesy as it sounds, it was a moment of complete certainty, a true calling. I looked around & found a very good stop motion course at Glamorgan University and my very first animated steps began...

- How did you first 'break into the industry'? Was there a particular project that helped solidify your interest into a career?

It was tough getting going and those that get a break shortly after college I think are the very lucky ones. As I graduated, the industry was just starting a quiet patch which was leaving lots of established professionals on the job hunt. I contacted & tried to visit pretty much every stop motion company in the UK. In retrospect it was good experience in that it taught me who was who in the stop motion world as I literally knocked on almost everyone’s door. I did a fair bit of work experience & trainee model making where I learned quite a bit about studio practise.

I guess I did the classic of casting my net wide and after 1 and a half years I finally made a catch! I was asked to come for an animation audition for Ealing Animation in London. I think I got the job for two reasons - I would work very hard to impress and I was cheap!

One of Tim's first jobs in animation came with the BBC's
fondly remembered stop-motion education show 'El Nombre'

It was a low budget educational programme called El Nombre and so long as we told the educational part properly we had some creative freedom within the rest of the episode. For months, my animation was mostly long drawn out shots of gerbils counting money, very slowly. Fortunately the characters were charming and I had some very interesting and challenging sequences to work on for the action parts of the story. I was one of only two animators on the show so had my fair share of variety and tricky animation. A junior animator wouldn’t normally get the difficult stuff, but they only had two of us to delegate to! After 8 months the series finished & I was looking for work again, but this time I had some half decent shots under my belt & could pretend I was a professional!

- How did your involvement with Tim Burton begin? Were you a fan of his work before you were recruited for Corpse Bride?

I’ve always had a huge appreciation for Nightmare Before Christmas as it was the project that inspired me into this business. I loved Tim’s visual style and to work on a giant set from a Nightmare or Corpse Bride movie felt like the ultimate career moment at that time. Back then the only place that made feature films was Aardman. They already had a full time animation crew in place, which left most other animators around the UK (myself included) working on children’s TV series. This meant that when Corpse Bride came along it was a big deal – a chance to work on a big Hollywood size Tim Burton movie! I’d now been animating children’s series for 6 years and this movie felt like the opportunity of a lifetime!

However my showreel was rejected, as was my second attempt and only 6 months later did my third showreel (I kept working on it and updating it) earn me an audition. I had to do a nerve-racking 3 day test, but this time around, I made the right impression. It didn’t end there of course as you need to continue earning the directors trust for him to delegate what sequences you get to animate.

- Can you describe what an average day is like for an animator? Do you specialise in one particular area of it or is there a lot of variety?

On a film you often get typecast and could spend most of your time with a handful of characters. On Corpse Bride I was mostly cast as Barkis the sinister psychopath for 6 months. On Magic Piano I developed how to animate the Flying Machine & spent a good 6 months pushing it to the limits! On children’s series & commercials you can get a lot of variety quickly which is great for learning your craft.

An average day? It always depends on the project and the company you’re working for. Each studio has slightly different working practices so I could answer differently for each production. Here’s a generalisation:

Tim worked extensively on bringing the villainous
Barkis Bittern to life in Corpse Bride

As an animator my role tends to function like that of an actor in a live action film and I must be cast for the role. This is all based on what the director needs and I will work to his/her instructions to try and find the best way to approach the shot. From here I’ll plan the shot out with the camera crew to ensure I’ll be keeping the puppet in focus and making good use of the lighting. Next the model/puppet makers and riggers will help me with any details so that I can create the shot as close to the director’s needs as possible.

A quick note about time keeping: There’s normally pressure to get things done as quickly as possible (for understandable financial reasons!). In fact the key to making beautiful stop motion fast is all in the preparation time. It’s like struggling through an obstacle course when you’d be better off removing the obstacles and just sprinting to the finish line. You’ve got to take responsible decisions to get the balance right.

Once I start animating, you’re kind of on your own – for many many hours until the work is complete. You have to embrace & love the creative freedom to ‘perform’ your shot as a live action actor would. You have specific instructions that you need to get right but at the end of the day you’ll be relying heavily on your instincts. In truth you’re normally under pressure to get it done as quickly as possible!

- Could you tell us a little about your involvement with BreakThru Films? How was it working with Suzie on Peter and the Wolf?

I came onboard Peter & the Wolf about 2 months into the shoot and it was quite an exciting time in those early stages. I was the first animator to come over from outside Poland for the project. Suzie was great and had such a clear vision of how every detail should be. The challenge for me was being able to give her the detailed performance she needed in the limited time we had.

Initially Suzie was hoping I could do lots of work establishing the wolf, but the puppet wasn’t quite ready and I started working with Peter. She liked my close up acting work and basically I think most of my time was spent doing close-ups of Peter face. It was tricky as only the eyeballs could move and Suzie needed very specific emotional reactions from a completely static face! The shot that stands out in my memory is where Peter sees Duck, his childhood pet and closest companion, eaten alive right in front of him. Suzie asked for Peter to display utter shock, then overwhelming horror, followed by a shiver creeping up his spine, climaxing into trembling realisation. All this when the only facial movement I can get is moving the head and eyeballs!

- And what are your thoughts on The Flying Machine?

Oh quite simply it’s the most challenging project I’ve ever worked on! It wasn’t just because I was animation supervisor this time round, though certainly that in itself was an interesting new challenge. It wasn’t just that it was my first time shooting in 3D or that every action had to naturally sync with Chopin’s music. No the film had so many unbelievably ambitious but potentially beautiful sequences. To try and coordinate shots with thousands of flowers blowing in the wind, or epic long shots or the entire junk yard coming to life was complexity on a grand scale - and I didn’t even animate those pieces myself!

Most of my time in the studio was taken up trying to get a 2 metre high flying machine puppet to soar through the sky convincingly. It was a fascinating yet intimidating character/machine/force of nature (we called it all these and more!). We had a lot of practical hurdles to overcome (I sense I’m making a gross understatement here!) and it was really tough getting such a big complicated model to do what I wanted. I sometimes get more satisfaction seeing the shots before post production than after, the only reason being that you can see all the rigs moving that control it. Then you get a very real sense of what a technical accomplishment it was.

But the real beauty of the film was that Director Martin Clapp had worked so hard to make these sequences flow to the music and tell some beautiful moments. Each shot was utterly complex, but you knew it was justified and would be worth it. I’m very very proud of all we did on Magic Piano and feel lucky to have been so heavily involved with it.

- You've most recently completed work on Burton's Frankenweenie, can you tell us a little about the animation approach in this new film?

The cloth will come off Tim's work on
Frankenweenie when it's released this October

Well I can’t give too much about the film away yet, but again I’m really excited to be a part of this gem of a movie. It may initially look similar visually to Corpse Bride, but the animation is much more dynamic and lively. It really tested your timing as an animator. I did a lot of work with central characters Victor and his pet dog Sparky. This meant animating a four legged character who had to behave like a loveable but realistic dog. I looked at live action videos of real dogs regularly to try and get Sparky’s running and mannerisms accurate.

- Do you think there's a bright future for stop-motion animation, and if so, what can explain it's continued appeal?

It looks like we’re starting a golden age of stop motion now. There’s going to be a lot of films coming out of America, as well as several European ones on the cards soon. After a dry spell for children’s series, there’s suddenly many happening in the UK simultaneously. Aardman continue to keep as busy as ever too. We could be looking at 6-10 years rife with stop motion productions.

As for the appeal, I guess it’s the age old tangible quality, that you feel you can touch it and you can see it’s not perfect. I think people find a model set and a puppet very immersive. You can literally walk on that set and more easily imagine being in that world. We all had toys or dolls we had a close attachment to as children & perhaps puppets tap into this primal bond with our imagination.

It’s been such a blast working with so many different talented people and I feel so Iucky I found an art form I love and can earn a living from. I even went to Ray Harryhausen’s house recently to discuss stop motion techniques with him – I mean how cool is that?! It is not an easy career and won’t suit most people but there can be a lot of highlights. I’m trying to settle down more but there’s a lot of stuff tempting me right now. I believe even BreakThru Films aren’t done with stop motion...!

Tim’s website: www.TimAllenAnimation.co.uk

Follow Tim’s adventures in the world of stop motion on Twitter: @TimAnimation