The Animators Who’ve Spent 40 Years on a Single Film
For the past forty years, Russian animator Yuri Norstein and his wife Franceska Yabusova have been working on one film, a full-length animated feature called The Overcoat. Unlike Walt Disney or Hayao Miyazaki, little is known about the Russian couple. Despite this, Norstein and Yarbusova are widely considered by other internationally renowned animators (including Hayao Miyazaki!) to be the greatest animators of all time.
The Overcoat currently has the longest animated feature film production cycle in history. Since Norstein and Yarbusova are in their 80s, they’ve been working on it for most of their lives. They started the project in 1981, but suffered major delays after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The highly anticipated movie, which doesn’t yet have a release date, is already legendary – and that’s tied to its two creators.
Norstein and Yarbusova met in 1967 and started working at Soyuzmultfilm, the Soviet state animation studio. They have produced a large number of promotional videos and animated teaching materials for public schools. They also learned their “cut animation” technique, in which characters are hand-drawn and then “cut and puppeteered” between takes. Her unique style has also been dubbed “a paper doll shot in 3D”.
Yuri and Francheska worked together and were married, their lives so intertwined that they were called single artists. Both are extreme perfectionists with such a solid unified vision. Yuri served as director, cinematographer and animator, while Francheska hand-drawn everything from the impressive and lush backgrounds to all the characters and their movements. Her drawers are filled with tiny drawings of eyes expressing hundreds of emotions, and she poses with her hands in every imaginable pose, allowing Norstein to piece them together to create mesmerizing, delicate, seamless and surreal Animation sequences, which are famous for.
The entire process was done by hand without any computer animation or effects. He actually used multiple layers of glass panels and a top-mounted camera to create different layers for each shot. His meticulous attention to detail and obsession with every detail earned him the nickname “The Golden Snail,” which is why they only have a handful of animated shorts. But despite their limited features, the two have won numerous awards worldwide.
It appears that “The Coat” will take about 25 to 35 minutes to complete, and the two are already telling everyone not to hold their breath. Many offered their support, such as Wallace & Gromit creator Nick Parker, but the two seemed content to work alone since Norstein only asked for a bunch of light bulbs.
It’s almost a cautionary tale about obsession and a case of letting your creations eat you up. In the never-ending struggle between achievement and perfection,
It seems like perfection always wins.
