Chris Landreth

Chris Landreth
Born	1961 Hartford, CT
Occupation	director, animator, writer

Chris Landreth (born 1961) is an American animator working in Canada, best known for his work on the 2004 film, Ryan. He has made many CGI animated films since the mid-90s, including The End, Bingo, The Listener, Caustic Sky: A Portrait of Regional Acid Deposition, and Data Driven The Story Of Franz K.

Biography

After being an engineer for years, Chris quit and began a second career as an animator. He received a BS(1984) in General Engineering and a MS(1986) degree in Theoretical and Applied Mechanics at the University of Illinois. Three years following, he experimented in fluid mechanics research, until he made baby steps into the world of computer animation. Afterwards in 1994, he was hired to define, test, and sometimes even abuse computer graphics software products. Such products include "movie Grade" software, not limited to but including programs, such as Maya, from the Toronto-based animation firm, Alias (formerly Alias|wavefront, now owned by Autodesk).

This resulted in the productions of The End and Bingo. The End was nominated in 1996 for an Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film. Afterward, he met Ryan Larkin, a renowned animator in the 60s and 70s, who had recently fallen in a spiral of excessive drinking, cocaine abuse, and homelessness. This resulted in the 2004 production of Ryan, which won an Oscar the same year.

Landreth's 2009 film The Spine won the Best of the Festival award at the Melbourne International Animation Festival. Produced by the National Film Board of Canada in association with Copperheart Animation and C.O.R.E., The Spine depicts a man who's physically and figuratively spineless and the breakdown of his marriage.^[1]

Landreth is currently working on a feature length adaptation of Hans Rodionoff, Enrique Breccia and Keith Giffen’s graphic-novel biography of H.P. Lovecraft.^[2]

His films: Ryan and The Spine were included in the Animation Show of Shows.

"Psychorealism"

Chris Landreth uses standard CGI animation in his work, with the added element of what Chris calls Psychorealism. This often puts a surrealist styling into his work, notably The End, Bingo, and Ryan. For instance, in Ryan, as people get distraught, their faces distort. At one time in the interview Ryan gets so upset he literally flies apart.

Psychorealism is a style first put to words by Chris Landreth to refer to what Karan Singh described as, "the glorious complexity of the human psyche depicted through the visual medium of art and animation." [1]

Sources

• Studio Daily
• Who's Who entry on Landreth
• Ohio State University

References

1. ^ Dixon, Guy (Jul. 03, 2009). "Landreth's Spine named best of fest at Melbourne". Globe and Mail. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/movies/landreths-spine-named-best-of-fest-at-melbourne/article1201607/. Retrieved 2009-07-06. 
2. ^ Wilner, Norman (Jun 12, 2009). "Spine-tingling short". Now Magazine. http://www.nowtoronto.com/daily/story.cfm?content=169908. 

External links

• Watch Ryan at NFB.ca
• Psychorealism (Computer Graphics World, July 2004)

Persondata
Name	Landreth, Chris
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	1961
Place of birth	Hartford, CT
Date of death
Place of death