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I Space | Alumni Interview | CRCE

ALUMNI INTERVIEW (continued) — May/June 2005


Art as Realism ...

"It was a class project," he said. "(The class) came up with the storyboard, and I came up with the modeling and animation. It was a big project and a lot of fun. I got quite seriously into animation later on."

Before carving a niche in that world, however, Landreth did a brief stint in engineering. From March 1991 until October 1993, he worked at a supercomputing center in Raleigh, N.C. "I did visualization, partially overlapping what I had been doing for Adrian, but it was much more extensive," he said.

Landreth found out it wasn't for him. "My particular specialty [at the center] was becoming more and more militarily oriented, researching the dyna-mics of nuclear explosions and the like," he said. "My world outlook is more pacifist."

In January 1994, Landreth changed direction and started to work for Alias/Wavefront, a Toronto firm that makes software for animators. "I was an in-house customer, which worked out very well for me," he said. "My job was to test [the software] as it was being created and tell the company what works and what needs fixed."

The best way to test the software was to make actual animated films with it. "I tested it more thoroughly than anyone else on site," Landreth said. "That's when I made 'the end' and 'Bingo.'"

He struck gold from the beginning with "the end," his first lead effort in producing an animated film, made in collaboration with fellow UI student Robin Bargar '95, whom Landreth had met as a research programmer at NCSA. The six-minute piece earned an Academy Award nomination, as well as at least six other noteworthy honors.

Produced in 1995, "the end" sets two characters, a man and a woman, on a surreal stage that looks like a chessboard. The characters' bodies of cable and string float and dance about as the pretentious pair spout artistic psychobabble that sounds important but means nothing. Their cult-like chant, "Speak to me now, bad kangaroo," had a practical motivation behind it: It was included as an exercise in facial animation to test the software, Landreth said.

As the film progresses, the characters learn they are mere animations. Incensed, the female character insists that she is creating the animator, not the other way around. As he does in "Ryan," Landreth inserts a scene of his own animated self, discussing with a colleague over the telephone how the movie should end. The colleague convinces Landreth that he, himself, should become the ending. As a filmmaker, Landreth said, "If you take on the point of view that you are the work of your own fiction, it makes for a bigger, more playful canvas for you to romp around on."

While "the end" had a tongue-in-cheek premise that poked fun at the characters for their self-importance, the award-winning "Bingo," released in 1998, created a much darker mood. The main character named Dave, told repeatedly that his name is Bingo, resists but eventually believes it. Landreth quoted Adolph Hitler's "Mein Kampf" in saying of "Bingo," "When given a lie that's told long enough and loud enough, a person can learn to believe that hell is heaven and heaven is hell."

The short films that Landreth has produced suit him, he said, because "you can create these great films, and it doesn't take that many people or that much time. Computer-animated feature films can take hundreds of millions of dollars, a major studio and a bevy of executive producers. Short films take way less.

"But first you have to have a story worth telling."

That story — of Ryan Larkin — was essential in Landreth's production of "Ryan." Larkin's animated short film, "Walking," is a whimsical view that captures, through thousands of sketches, the motion of a range of characters walking. The piece earned its own Academy Award nomination in 1968 and influenced a generation of animators. But by the time Landreth caught up with Larkin five years ago, cocaine and alcohol abuse had taken a toll on the once-genius artist, who was living on welfare and panhandling for spare change in downtown Montreal.

In its review of Landreth's film earlier this year, the National Film Board of Canada (which helped produce Landreth's work) stated, "In 'Ryan,' we hear the voice of Ryan Larkin and people who have known him, but these voices speak through strange, twisted, broken and disembodied 3D-generated characters ... people whose appearances are bizarre, humorous or disturbing." Although greatly realistic and detailed, the film was created and animated without live action footage, rotoscoping or motion capture. Instead it is born of an original, personal, hand-animated, three-dimensional world that Landreth calls "psychological realism."

That world took a while to create — three years' worth. "I spent months on a script before doing any computer graphics," Landreth said. "I was doing drawings of the characters and set early as well, and working the script out and the sketches, before touching a computer."

Landreth knew that the look of the film was vital in telling the story and that he had to reveal his character's emotional scars as well as Larkin's. "I wanted to set up a visual premise that would carry through the rest of the film," he said. "The characters' psychological states, damages and eccentricities are shown on their bodies and heads."

The damages Larkin incurred in real life concerned Landreth. "Here was a guy who, in his time, was one of the most creative artists around," Landreth said of Larkin. "I told him (during our real-life interviews), 'I would like to see you get back to creative work.' I wanted him to consider that, to do that, he couldn't drink like that anymore.

"I wasn't so much trying to rescue him as I was just thinking it was a waste," Landreth said. "I had been around alcoholics — my mother was one. She was a very brilliant woman, and she largely went to waste."

Image from the film "Ryan"

In "Ryan," an interview between Landreth and Larkin takes place in a gathering room based on the mission where Larkin sleeps. As Larkin's alcohol dependency becomes an issue, Larkin is stunned and silent. Then, as he shouts his excuses, blaming a lack of money for his loss of art, his temper rises and he jumps up from his chair as sharp red rays burst from his head.

"After the fact, I realized that I sounded pretty sanctimonious," Landreth admitted. He illustrated his regret in the film as the halo on his character's head burns out, then falls. Saving the fallen artist was never Landreth's motivation for making the film.

"It is about telling the story," he maintained. "[Ryan is] a friend of mine, and I've got selfish reasons for wanting another great film from him. But he's got to do what he wants to do."

Landreth hopes the attention the film has brought Larkin will be a positive thing for him. "I'm hopeful he's going to be a creative guy now," Landreth said of Larkin. "Ryan is working on an animated short film of his own. I don't know if he'll finish it, but he's working on it."

The film has had its own positive effect on Landreth's career, bringing him considerable rewards and possibilities. "It does mean I can get the resources together to do more stuff," he said. "Right now I'm doing consulting work, which allows me the luxury of traveling. I would eventually like to do a feature film. Doing this film, I had to go a couple of years on very low wages, so this has been worth it financially and otherwise."

But commercial success isn't the ultimate goal. After Landreth had shown Larkin the completed film for the first time, the two animators discussed filmmaking.

"It isn't the money, is it?" Landreth asked Larkin.

"No," answered Larkin in his shy, hesitant manner. "It's the art; it's the masterpiece."

Mumm, MS '92 COM, is an editor and alumni coordinator for the UI Department of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics.

Photo: ©2004 Copper Heart and the National Film Board of Canada