Vincent Van Gogh: World's first painted film debuts in London

The world's first ever fully painted film, Loving Vincent, is set to preview in London after five years in the making.

Digital animation and computers have been shunned to explore the tortured life and mysterious death of Vincent Van Gogh.

Instead, 124 painters from around the world have been employed to paint 64,500 frames on over a thousand canvasses in order to tell the painter's story.

The brains behind the project are Oscar winning director Hugh Welshman and his wife, painter and animator Dorota Kobiela.

In an interview with Sky News, Welshman said he "wanted to tell the story of Vincent's life through his own work" - and painting the film was the only way to do justice to one of the world's greatest artists.

He said: "I've done a lot of computer animation and if I thought I could get the same effect in another way I wouldn't have gone to the trouble of finding 124 painters in three different countries, setting up three studios to achieve this and do it so painstakingly by hand.

"They actually move each brush stroke frame by frame - we have definitely, without a doubt, invented the slowest way of film making ever devised in 120 years!"

Thousands of painters from around the world applied to work on the film, with auditions taking three days and many being rejected.

Those chosen are not only expert painters but have been taught how to animate, using the same techniques that Van Gogh himself used.

Despite their small budget the filmmakers still managed to get a stellar cast on board including Chris O'Dowd, Saoirse Ronan and Douglas Booth.

Booth told Sky News he was "bowled over" by the premise and the execution of the project.

"There's two artists, there's the actor and the painter and you both work to bring it to life," he said.

"I love that you can see the human touch to it, it's not perfect because the brush strokes are moving the whole time but it feels alive and the paint is alive," he explained.

"And when you have it on that scale, on a cinema screen - hopefully it will be magical."