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Get Animated 2009
Chris Landreth on the making of The Spine
October 26 - October 28, 2009
No organization has done as much for animation in Canada as the National Film Board, which is why we at Vancouver ACM SIGGRAPH are proud to announce that we are teaming up with the NFB to bring director Chris Landreth to Vancouver on Wednesday, October 28 as part of Get Animated. Mr. Landreth will be doing two identical talks, one at 2pm and another in the evening at 7:30pm after a 1 hour industry mixer at 6:30. He'll be showing his latest short film, The Spine, and talking about what he calls "psychorealism," a way of using computer graphics to show the realism of his characters' complicated, messy and very human lives, and best of all, both presentations are absolutely free!
Chris will show how his team modeled and animated the complex, detailed characters in his film, he'll talk about the challenge of the "Uncanny Valley" (the creepy effect of making CGI characters that are too realistic) and how The Spine attempts to avoid this problem. He'll also be showing how his animators used a Method-acting approach to mimic subtle gestures, ticks and micro-expressions in their characters' faces and bodies, and explain how his crew balanced realism and stylization to create characters that are Uncanny in a positive way.
Check out the Get Animated website to find out more about all the other events that the NFB is sponsoring around town that week, including three nights of speakers and films at Pacific Cinematheque and a fabulous family program on Saturday the 1st at the Central Branch of the Vancouver Public Library.
Sales are closed at this time.
SCHEDULE
SPEAKER SESSIONS
Wednesday - October 28, 2:00 PM
Get Animated with Chris Landreth
Afternoon Session
with Chris Landreth
Vancouver Int'l Film Centre (VIFC)
1181 Seymour Street (@ Davie)
Wednesday - October 28, 7:30 PM
Get Animated with Chris Landreth
Evening Session
with Chris Landreth
Vancouver Int'l Film Centre (VIFC)
1181 Seymour Street (@ Davie)
SPEAKERS BIOS
Chris Landreth
Director
Academy Award
Chris Landreth went into animation as a second career after a stint as an engineer. He received his MS degree in Theoretical and Applied Mechanics from the University of Illinois in 1986. For three years he worked in experimental research in Fluid Mechanics at the University of Illinois before making his leap into computer animation.
In 1994 Landreth joined Alias/Wavefront, where it was his job to define, test and abuse animation software, in-house, before it was released to the public. In addition to well-mannered software, this resulted in the production of animated short films, including The End (1995) and Bingo (1998).
In his surreal short The End, the animator discovers he's the character in his own work while trying to think of a decent ending for it (it will not be the first time that Landreth challenges the illusion he is trying to create). Bingo is a 5-minute computer animated adaptation of a live theatre performance called Disregard This Play by the Chicago-based theatre company, The Neo-Futurists. The recorded audio performance of this absurdist play was used in Bingo, which then incorporated bizarre visual imagery and exaggerated characterization to support the telling of the story. Both films have received wide international recognition and numerous awards, including an Academy Award nomination for The End in 1996 for Best Animated Short Film and a 1999 Genie for Bingo.
Now recognized as one of the animation world's rising stars, Landreth embarked on his most ambitious project yet: the animated documentary Ryan (2004), which marked Landreth's first co-production with Copperheart Entertainment and the National Film Board of Canada. Ryan, a portrait of animator Ryan Larkin, allowed Landreth to push the boundaries of the visual technique he calls psycho-realism — in which the body becomes a visual metaphor for a character's deepest inner states. Ryan immediately became a contemporary classic, and was honoured with more than 50 awards, including an Oscar®. Working with the same team of producers, Landreth has followed up Ryan with The Spine (2009), a film that continues his explorations in the use of unique imagery to represent human psychological turmoil.
IMDb.com
© 2009 · Vancouver ACM SIGGRAPH · info@siggraph.ca
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