Ohio State's College of Arts and Sciences presented a fantastic interview with award winning animator Chris Landreth along with professor and principle investigator Norah Zuniga Shaw ahead of his workshop and public screening along here at OSU. Find a snippet below and the entire article here.
Landreth's master class
"A recipient of multiple honors — including an Oscar for his breakthrough 2004 animated short Ryan — and the progenitor of Making Faces, a groundbreaking course on facial animation, Landreth is one of the most influential animators working today. In advance of his visit, Norah Zuniga-Shaw, professor and director of Dance and Technology and the principal investigator for Humane Technologies research, spoke with Landreth about his work.
Norah Zuniga-Shaw (NZS): I’m excited to talk with you about your upcoming residency at OSU/ACCAD and what “humane” might mean in relation to your work. First and foremost you are a storyteller, and the stories you tell are humane in the way you use computer graphics to reveal people’s inner lives. You address issues of addiction, marital dysfunction and grief in your work in nonjudgmental ways.
Chris Landreth (CL): You’re talking about The Spine and Ryan, probably. My ultimate goal is to tell a really great story, and the best and easiest way to tell a really great story is to tell it with empathy. In order for the story to succeed, I have to create a sense of empathy for the audience to have a way into the stakes of the story. The nice thing that comes out of that — at least I hope — and I’m glad that you picked that up, is that there is a sense of compassion and caring. "