the NFB and was a producer for Larkin in the 1970s. He used the interviews and reference material to create a script, which he completed by December. The animation used the technique of psychological realism, blending dialogue from interviews with subjective screen characters who are "sometimes fragmented, distorted, or in some way unusual". The representation of the characters was partly inspired by Body Worlds, a travelling exhibition of human bodies preserved by plastination to reveal internal anatomical structures. Landreth has stated that Larkin's character in the film is a subjective interpretation based on his own ideology and experiences, citing one of his favourite quotations "we don't see things as they are, we see things as we are". He animated Larkin as a beaten character "battered by years of substance abuse and still bearing the scars of his artistic failure". Landreth stated that the visual appearance of the characters "reflect pain, insanity, fear, mercy, shame, and creativity", and that the effect was to show the characters' "souls or mental states or psyches". Landreth incorporated Larkin's alcoholism as part of the narrative of the film, at first in the background as Larkin sips from a thermos, and later directly as Landreth asks Larkin about his alcoholism. The attention to Larkin's alcoholism also reflects Landreth's mother's troubles with alcohol. Pre-production and production took about 18 months. Use of the Seneca College computing infrastructure, which was loaned for free for the production, was valued by NFB producer Marcy Page at about . Intel donated the use of a render farm for the production. The overall cost to produce Ryan was about . The film was dedicated to Landreth's mother, Barbara. Animation The animation consists of three-dimensional avatars representing the interview subjects, each "mutilated and deformed in ways expressive of emotional and artistic trauma". The film uses emotional realism instead of photorealism, using graphic elements to represent the characters' state of mind. There is a shift between techniques throughout the animation, particularly the use of hand-drawn vectors, rotoscoping, and 3D rendering of characters and the environments in which they are set. The setting is a dilapidated cafeteria in which the characters representing Larkin and Landreth are seated across from each other at a table. It was chosen to bring the characters into one setting for interaction, instead of having to deal with multiple settings. It also provides a neutral setting with a relaxed atmosphere to