Apr 3, 2012

Animate a 400-year-old painting in Maya

Many artists have animated famous paintings before, but the husband-and-wife artistic team Rob and Nick Carter have taken it to a whole other level. They created a a three-hour animated version of an Ambrosius Bosschaert still life painting from 1618:

They worked with a team of nearly two dozen artists from the vfx house Moving Picture Company where they first recreated all of the painting's elements in Maya. Then they spent two-and-a-half years animating the film. If you go to Rob and Nick's website and click on #10, you can get a taste of the exceedingly subtle and meditative quality of the real-time animation.

This article in Computer Arts offers more details of the challenges involved in creating such a slow-paced animated sequence. The digital artwork, titled “Transforming Still Life Painting,” is being released in an edition of 12 (plus 5 artist proofs). Each one is valued at £50,000 ($80,000). The Mauritshuis Museum in The Hague, which houses Bosschaert's original painting, has already agreed to acquire one of the Carters' digital reproductions for its collection.

(Thanks, Alex Rannie)