On May 14th the Toronto ACM SIGGRAPH Chapter members and guests shared an intimate evening with Academy Award winning animator and director Chris Landreth. Excitement filled the air as the audience congregated at The Royal for an educational and entertaining evening.
Chris’s talk, titled “Walking Through the Valley,” began with an introduction to the robotics and CG concept of the “uncanny valley.” Briefly, this concept refers to the difficulty in producing believable and likable robots and characters that are life-like and realistic. Chris presented some of the evidence for this concept from Art History. Then, he switched gears and told us the story of how he got involved in computer animation as a tester and expert user of one of the popular animation software packages used today.
The magic really began once Chris began to show his films. Chris screened every film he has made to date: The Listener (rarely screened!), The End (1995), Bingo (1998), Ryan (2004, winner of the 2005 Academy Award© for Best Animated Short Film), The Spine (2009), and Subconscious Password (2013). Chris discussed what led him to make each movie and spoke about his artistic style which he has named Psychorealism.
At the conclusion of Chris’s presentation and movie screenings, Chris and our Chapter Chair Jacky raffled a Full Conference pass to SIGGRAPH 2014 in Vancouver, generously donated by ACM SIGGRAPH. Big congratulations to the winner Devon Evers!!
After the show, the crew met up at The Monarch Tavern to share some good cheer and for a chance to speak personally to Chris Landreth. Three movie posters of Subconscious Password, generously donated by the National Film Board of Canada, were signed by Chris and raffled to audience.
Don’t miss visual recap of the evening on our Facebook album!
The evening was a true celebration of Chris Landreth: his films, his art, his philosophies, and his subconscious!