Chris Landreth has gone from animator to director. Popularity came to him after the release of the cartoon "Ryan".
Chris Landreth is an animation artist based in Canada. Had a great influence on the development of 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: childhood
Chris Landreth was born on August 4, 1961 in Northbrook, Illinois. He attended Glenbrook North High School and was later educated at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
When Chris was a young boy, he underwent a series of psychological tests to determine what he might become when he grows up. One of the confusing results of this was that Chris was found to have "mixed brain dominance." When Chris later discovered computers, he found that when he was using the tablet with his left hand, he was using the mouse with his right. This mixed brain behavior has since become a staple of Chris's career.
Early creativity
After many years as an engineer, Chris gave up and began a second career as an animator. He received his BA (1984) in General Engineering and in 1986 received his MA in Theoretical and Applied Mechanics from the University of Illinois. He then helped develop a method for measuring liquids called "Particle Image Velocimetry", which has since become the main method for measuring fluid flow.
But Chris's right brain soon took over. He discovered computer animation when he met Professor Donna Cox at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA). Chris then produced his first short film, The Listener (1991), which earned him fame on MTV's Liquid television that year.
In 1994 Chris joined Alias Inc. (now Autodesk Inc.) as an in-house artist where he defined, tested, and abused animation software as it was developed.
Chris decided that animation was the best way to develop both sides of his brain equally.
Famous animator
Chris's work was the driving force behind the development of Maya 1.0 in 1998. Maya is the most widely used animation software in the world and won an Academy Award (Oscar) in 2003. During this period, Chris was the director of "The End" (1995) and "Bingo" (1998). The End in 1996 was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film.
Bingo won the Canadian Genie Award in 1999 and was ranked 37th on CG Magazine's 100 Most Influential Moments in 2003. After that, he met Ryan Larkin, a famous animator in the 1960s and 1970s, who recently fell into a spiral of excessive drinking, cocaine abuse and homelessness. This led to the production of "Ryan" (2004).
Ryan quickly became one of the most famous animated short films of all time. He pioneered what Chris calls "psychorealism," using surreal CG imagery to show the psychology of his characters. Ryan won an Oscar for Best Animated Short Film of 2005 and over 60 other awards including the Cannes Film Festival and the 2004 Ottawa International Animation Festival Grand Prize.
In 2009, Chris released "The Spine", again with NFB, Copperheart and Seneca College. This film was nominated for a Canadian Genie Award in 2010 and was one of the "Top Ten Canadian Films" by the 2009 Toronto International Film Festival.
Chris's latest film, "Subconscious Password," is a psychological exploration of how we remember the names of old friends. The premiere took place at the Annecy International Animation Festival, where he was awarded the main prize of The Annecy Crystal for Best Short Film.
Chris remains obsessed with both new techniques in CG and new ways of telling stories using these techniques as both hemispheres of his brain continue to try to outdo each other.
He is an expert in facial animation and has developed a course called "Face creation" which has taught at Dreamworks Animation, Seneca College, The University of Toronto and Ecole George Melies in Paris.
In 2016, he created the animated vignette "Be Cool" for the satirical NFB public service announcement series, Naked Island.
Landreth is currently an in-residence artist for the Dynamic Graphics project at the University of Toronto. He is working on a full-length adaptation by Hans Rodionov, Enrique Breccia, and Keith Giffen's graphic novel, The Biography of H. P. Lovecraft.
Chris Landreth is also a Master of the Beijing DeTao Masters Academy (DTMA), a high-level, multi-disciplinary, application-oriented higher education institution in Shanghai, China.
Psychorealism
Chris Landreth uses standard CGI animation in his work with an additional element of what Chris calls psychorealism. This often puts a surreal style in his work, especially The End, Bingo, Ryan. For example, in Ryan, the psychological trauma of people is represented by distorted, surreal ruptures and deformations. When the people in the film go berserk, their faces become distorted. At some point in the interview, Ryan gets so upset that he literally shatters into pieces.
Psychorealism is a style first formulated by Chris Landreth to refer to what Karan Singh has described as "the magnificent complexity of the human psyche depicted through the visual medium of art and animation."
Family and personal life
Chris has never been married, no children. He has a younger brother and two sisters.
