In Annecy 2004, the film Ryan by Chris Landreth was screened. All Ryan images © 1380098 Ontario Inc./National Film Board of Canada.

For the next four years, I worked on and off at the National Film Board of Canada in Montreal on several interesting short animated film projects, with some of Canada’s top animation directors like Ron Tunis, Michel Hébert, Ishu Patel and Jacques Drouin. It was a wonderful period in my career, I was young and enthusiastic, and working on projects I loved and believed in. At the NFB at that time, Ryan Larkin’s name was spoken in hushed tones. There were all kinds of rumors about how he had “lost it,” or worse yet, that he never really “had” it to begin with. I heard so many stories, I didn’t know what to believe. What was clear was that he had not been able to stay there, he had stopped making films, and he had developed a heavy dependency on alcohol and drugs.

In 1980, I was calling around my little animation community from the film board and my teachers at school, looking for new work. I was sent to an address in Old Montreal, where I met Gerry Potterton, who was a well-known animation director in Canada. Gerry had been hired to direct the feature film Heavy Metal, The Movie and was just beginning to get staffed up. Although my experience was relatively limited, I was in the right place at precisely the right time, and I began working on storyboards and designs for the film immediately.

Gerry was impressed with the fact that I just happened to have the entire collection of Heavy Metal magazine covering a three-year period, and I was completely familiar with the artists, stories and illustration styles of the magazine. At that time we were only two artists in a posh loft studio in the cobblestone backstreets of Old Montreal, working on what was going to turn into a massive feature film undertaking.

An undated early photo of Ryan Larkin at work. © National Film Board of Canada. All rights reserved.

A couple of weeks later, Gerry asked me if I would be interested in working with Larkin on a storyboard he was doing for the Heavy Metal movie, for a segment of the film that Ryan was going to direct. Well, I was too excited to even react. In my world, Ryan was the most important animation filmmaker alive. And here I was, being given directions to his home, where I was to go at once and introduce myself to Ryan as his new storyboard assistant. Damn! I was excited beyond description, and nervous too. And then there I was at Ryan’s house, and he was just a very sweet, extremely gentle little guy, who put me at ease from the very first moment. There was no pretension in his manner or his tone, he addressed me as a fellow artist, and he seemed as humble as can be.

The story that Ryan was boarding and was to direct for the movie, was called Shells and was written and illustrated by the Belgian artists François and Luc Schuiten. It had appeared in the June 1977 edition of the Heavy Metal magazine, and I knew it well. It was one of my favorite stories I had ever read in the magazine. In it, a young couple living in a post-apocalyptic wasteland where they have to wear protective shells over their entire bodies, decide to take off their shells to make love, and they are subsequently devoured by swarming insects. A lovely little yarn.

In the following weeks and months, I learned more about drawing, storyboarding, storytelling and filmmaking than I had in the previous five years. Ryan opened me up to a whole new way of seeing and thinking. His imagination was powerful and dynamic, and constantly shifting with ideas, firing off too fast to keep up with them. Ryan constantly tripped over his words, as if his brain was going faster than his tongue, and I was a captive and willing audience, eyes and ears opened. I was only 22 years old, Ryan was 14 years older than me, and I always felt I was in the company of a genius, albeit a madman of sorts too.

But if there was one thing I had learned in art school, it was to pay attention, and be ready when teachers and lessons appear. I was a captive student to Ryan, always enthusiastic, excited and at full attention, and this seemed to fire him up as well. Ryan and I worked closely together in his home for a couple of months, becoming lifelong friend in the process, and sharing a lot of our hopes, dreams, doubts and fears with each other.