Amazing artist gives classic TV and photos a new lease of life

If you loved these shows the first time around, you won’t believe what a US artist has done to The Munsters and I Love Lucy.

Zach Smothers is a ‘colour artist’ who adds ‘colourisation’ to black-and-white photographs and television, with some amazing results, which he posts on his YouTube channel.

He told Cnet that some of his favourite shows to recolour were from a production company that made The Addams Family, The Beverly Hillbillies and other classic TV series.

“I grew up with these shows and I still watch them today; they are very important to me,” he told the tech site. “Colourising is my art and although I was never able to work on them during the time of their filming, it is my way of honouring them and I would love to be a part of their legacy.”

Smothers released a newly recoloured short video from I Love Lucy on YouTube yesterday, which had already attracted plenty of compliments.

It’s painstaking handiwork so it takes up to 10 days to colour just 40 seconds of footage, using techniques also employed by artists and animators, Smothers says on his Instagram account, but doing so means that he can achieve realistic colours, unlike the “flat-looking” ones that traditional colourisation processes create.

Some of Smothers’ work on still photos is equally eye-catching, particularly when he shows the ‘before-and-after’ images side by side.

Did you love these shows? What do you think of them in colour?