Seneca students team up with award-winning filmmaker to bring The Spine to life.
The Spine, up for a Genie Award for Best Animated Short, received significant contributions from Seneca College animation students.
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Riding on the success of working with Seneca College animation students for his award-winning film Ryan, filmmaker Chris Landreth recently teamed up with 15 students to help with his latest film The Spine.
For 16 weeks beginning in April 2009, nine students worked as animators, one on visual effects and several on modeling and lighting to help bring the film to life.
The hard work paid off and now The Spine is up for a Genie Award for Best Animated Short.
The Spine, produced by the National Film Board of Canada in association with Copperheart Animation and C.O.R.E. Digital Pictures, with creative participation of Autodesk Canada CO. and Seneca College's School of Communication Arts, tells a poignant story of redemption that takes viewers into the relationship between a man and a woman trapped in a spiral of mutual destruction.
"Last time the partnership went so well that Chris approached Seneca to see how we could be involved," said The Spine's animation director Sean Craig. "I'd say 97 to 98 per cent of the film was animated by Seneca students."
In 2004, some of Seneca's animation students helped create Ryan, the computer-animated film that told the riches to rags story of Canadian animator Ryan Larkin, a film that garnered Landreth both an Oscar and a Genie.
Craig said students who worked on The Spine, which won the Best of the Festival award at the Melbourne International Animation Festival, are excited with the Genie Award nomination.
"The film has been showed in a lot of festivals to mixed reviews," he said. "They are all really proud of the work they put into it."
While Sheridan College in Oakville has an internationally-known animation program, Craig said word is spreading about Seneca College's animation program.
"The last couple of years we have put ourselves on the map," he said. "Sheridan definitely has a big rep but we're giving some good competition."
The 30th annual Genie Awards will be held April 12.