Alexander Petrov: Animation as art

Aleksandr Konstantinovich Petrov (July 17, 1957) is a Russian animator and animation director. Petrov won an Oscar in 2002 for his cartoon adaptation of Hemingways "The Old Man and the Sea".


Petrov's style from the late 1980s onward 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 depict 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.


His technique involves oil painting on glass. But how does such an artist feel about working in an industry dominated by computer graphics?