Chris Landreth

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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.

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[edit] Biography

After being an engineer for years, Chris quit and began a second career as an animator. He received his MS degree in Theatrical and Applied Mechanics in 1986 after graduating 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 from the Toronto based Animation firm, Alias (formerly Alias|wavefront, now Autodesk). This resulted in the productions of The End and Bingo. Bingo 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.

[edit] "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, Chris uses emotional disraughts in people's lives to appear on their face.

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]

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