PLEASE INTRODUCE YOURSELF
Hello! I’m Ryan D. Anderson (@itsryandanderson on Instagram) I grew up on a farm in Ontario, Canada and moved to Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada where I went to school for cinematography. I’ve worked as a director, cinematographer and editor for various projects since 2008 and started teaching myself 3D modelling and animation in 2017. A few months after the pandemic hit the isolation had me thinking of the farm I grew up on and the family I hadn’t seen. It put me in a very nostalgic mindset and since my childhood home was demolished a few years back I decided to make a few animations of how I remember it. Out of that came a series of animations exploring different facets of nostalgia in scenes reminiscent of fuzzy memories or dreams.
HOW WOULD YOU BEST DESCRIBE YOUR STYLE?
I try and recreate dreams and memories of places that no longer exist so they have somewhere to live where others can experience them to some degree. Sometimes these places are made up but the settings will be based on a theme relevant to nostalgia. I always want them to feel like a hazy memory.
HOW DID YOU GET INTO ART?
I was really into stop frame animation when I was in grade school. I had an old Hi-8 camcorder that I’d make animations using action figures and clay. From there I became interested in film and photography which lead to me learning and experimenting with composition while studying cinematography.
WHO OR WHAT ARE SOME OF YOUR MAJOR INFLUENCES?
Most of my influences are film based – David Lynch, Denis Villeneuve – anything Roger Deakins has shot really. I think a lot about how they shot landscapes, the camera moves from specific scenes and how they told certain stories through picture. Aside from film I’m mostly influenced by memories of places that no longer exist as they were. Either from how I knew them or how I wonder they might have been. Abandoned spaces are VERY interesting to me.
CAN YOU TELL US ABOUT YOUR WORKING PROCESS?
I usually take something I’ve been thinking about during the week and boil it down to how it’s made me feel and what the underlying concept of it is. I’ll use that as the theme for the animation I want to work on. Previously I would either source music or ask a friend for a composition but now I write my own music based on that theme. I’ll then start building a scene in 3D space either based off a specific place or something representative of the theme.
WHAT MOTIVATES YOU TO CREATE?
I’ve always liked creating things – having something you’ve created after spending so much work on it is incredibly rewarding. I spend most of my time creating as an escape from anxiety. It’s a good way to focus my mind on something productive rather than let my thoughts run wild on reasons I should be upset.
WHAT IS YOUR STUDIO LIKE?
I work from home and have a small office space where my desktop lives. I spend the vast majority of my time in this little room going back and forth between working on animations and staring out the window aimlessly.
WHAT ARE YOU CURRENTLY WORKING ON?
I just finished a music video with another music video or two on the horizon. I’ve been doing some brand work through my agency Oskar Illustration and recently I’ve been creating NFTs on SuperRare. I’m always working on new animations for social media every week. It’s such a good way to experiment and reach new audiences at the same time.
