Filmmaker Focus: Chris Rutledge

10 Questions with the CG Artist, Animator, Director & Silver Lake Shorts Regular

Christopher Rutledge is a CG artist and animator based in Los Angeles who likes to make floppy characters who are slightly ugly and grotesquely detailed but still charming. He specializes in the 3D software Houdini, which enables him to create realistically simulated and rendered characters with satisfying yet unsettling movements. He is always interested in exploring new techniques, tools, and helping others learn 3D and animation. Working independently and in collaboration, his films have screened at festivals like Annecy and OIAF, among others. He co-runs the creative production studio Grin Machine alongside Cole Kush and Dan Streit where he has created work for TV, advertising and music videos, and his collaborations include YONK, Takeshi Murata, BRHTR, MSCHF, Cuco, Nike, Apple, Brockhampton, Abra, Lil Nas X, Sam Rolfes, Hellavision, and Deaton Chris Anthony.

Karissa Breuer:
I remember first seeing your work in our March 2022 line up when we screened your Adult Swim Smalls short ‘Man’s Best Friend’. It immediately stood out as such a bold creative vision. Your work is very character driven and dynamic. It blows my mind how you achieve such expressiveness with characters in all of your shorts. The textures also really add a whole other element. The way you use texture in your films gives them a visceral feel that makes the characters seem more real even though they are so stylized. It’s entrancing!

Over the past few years, Silver Lake Shorts has screened a number of shorts you’ve made like ‘The Loaf Zone’, ‘Small Talk’, ‘March of the Ding Dings’, ‘Larry Dunks’, ‘Turbulence’. You recently premiered a new short called ‘Street Race’ that was featured in Vernon Chatman’s ‘Off the Air’ episode “Growth” on Adult Swim and worked as a Post EP on A$AP Rocky’s music video ‘Helicopter’ with your production company Grin Machine. Needless to say, we are always excited to see your work and will be looking forward to seeing what you cook up next.

KB: Do you have any core memories with animation that influenced you? For example, I remember my art teacher wheeling one of those chunky TVs into our class one day in Elementary school and putting on ‘Spirited Away’. I have never been the same since.

CR: Definitely as a kid watching Wallace and Gromit. I think that and the rareware games like Banjo Kazooie which are both very British influenced by character design a bit. The big googly eyes that they can sort of put on anything and turn it into a character. Ultimately I got really led down the path I am now being influenced by seeing indie animation on the internet, particularly flash animation on sites like Newgrounds.com. It was so inspiring seeing what people could be capable of on their own without the resources of a big studio, that’s what made me realize I didn’t need permission to do animation.


KB: How did you get into 3D & what about it appeals to you the most?

CR: I always knew I wouldn’t be like Richard Williams or Glen Keane, I didn’t want to rely on grinding out 100k hours of life drawing practice to get really good at painstaking hand drawn animation. I love that stuff, but I wanted to figure out how to leverage my technical skills and alternate techniques to make my own style. I loved the work of Cyriak which inspired me as a form of animation that was made without drawing. I love learning different tools and incorporating techniques, and ultimately the thing that really appeals to me about 3D/CG is that it’s just such a vast and infinitely expanding toolbox that you can never stop learning. There’s so many ways you can use the tools and combine different techniques in ways that have never been done before to arrive at a unique look and style.

KB: How have you approached developing your style?

CR: I have always loved drawing weird characters and faces, and I especially love bizarre stylized and cartoony designs. Computer hardware and software has gotten so good over the years at rendering surfaces and materials in a realistic manner, as well as simulating realistic physics. I think that juxtaposing this realistic rendering style / animation with super stylized weird, and even f*cked up or ugly looking characters is awesome. I am visually influenced big time by Mindbender Studio, MEAT DEPT, and Tumblehead. They all do really interesting things either with stylized characters, stylized animation, realistic gross detailed texturing and simulations, or all of the above.

KB: You have taught classes for 3D animation at UArts and Cal Arts, have been a large advocate for Houdini and have a variety of tutorials on your Youtube as well as your Patreon. What advice would you give to someone thinking about getting into 3D animation?

CR: There’s never been a better time with the amount of resources out there, tools, tutorials, and free software, to get into animation. Learning 3D animation definitely makes the most sense if you already have started dabbling in some kind of animation. I like to encourage writer friends or people with ideas to try animation because it’s a type of filmmaking that you can do on your own. If your strength is the idea / writing, even if you just have shitty drawings to tell the story, it’s still going to be entertaining, and you learn a lot about filmmaking in the process.

For 3D animation specifically, it can definitely be a challenge learning some of these tools, some are easier and more intuitive than others, like VR sculpting (which unfortunately requires a VR headset and PC) or something like Nomad Sculpt on the iPad. Those can be great entry points as well. Blender is of course an incredible 3D software that is an amazing starting point as well, but for sure can be intimidating, along with Houdini, Maya, or any of those other 3D apps. There’s a ton of great tutorials out there, but I recommend starting with Joey Carlino’s tutorials on youtube. He has a beginner series, but in my opinion his tutorials are the ones that I wish existed when I started learning 3D. They really teach you every aspect of 3D and how to do things quickly so you can conceivably make shorts entirely on your own.

With any of this stuff, there’s a difficult learning curve in the very beginning, but if you are determined you will quickly (in a day or two) start to have fun, and that will make learning a lot easier. Then from there, before you know it you will realize you have a pretty good idea of how to accomplish anything you’d want. It’s really fun and the struggle in the beginning definitely pays off.

For anyone getting into 3D and especially Houdini, feel free to reach out to me, join the houdininerd.com discord, and also I offer private lessons on my Patreon.

KB: What was one of your most challenging projects & why?

CR: The most challenging projects are always the ones I’m not excited to work on. The mental hurdle is the most difficult to overcome. It’s important to figure out how to get excited about the things you’re working on so you can stay motivated to make it good. Also, try to take on projects that excite you more, and give yourself smaller goals. I like to try to give myself goals that I can realistically complete in a day. Doing daily projects is always a great way to learn.

KB: What are some projects you’re especially proud of & why?

CR: I’m really proud of the new short Street Race made with Tumblehead. It’s an idea I’ve been thinking about for many years at this point and I’m really happy to finally make it come to fruition. I’m also really proud of the whole team on it, getting to work with Vernon Chatman who is a hero of mine and helped make the idea a lot better. And also getting to work with my insanely talented brother (Dan Rutledge) who helped direct and storyboard the project, as well as doing the voice of the scary muscle guy.

I’m also really proud of this new A$AP Rocky video (‘Helicopter’) and all the work I’ve done through Grin Machine in the past. The entire team on that project absolutely crushed it and it was an honor to be able to assemble the avengers for that.

I’m really proud of a lot of my collaborations, especially ‘Larry’ with Takeshi Murata which has taken us to Sundance and a bunch of other cool festivals. I’m also insanely proud of my collaborations with Tom Goulet who is one of my favorite people and such a pleasure to work with every time. Specifically the shorts ‘Small Talk’ and ‘Man’s Best Friend’ we made for Adult Swim Smalls back in 2019-2021. I’m hoping we can do more of these live action animation hybrid shorts together some day :)

KB: Your work has been featured in festivals worldwide, not to mention you have been nominated for various awards and won the Animated Series competition with ‘Eggland’ last Fall at OIAF 2025. What are your top three festivals and why?

CR: This is easy. My number 1 (or maybe tied for number 1) is definitely The Ottawa International Animation Festival. I went there for the first time in 2016 when I was still learning 3D in school and it absolutely blew my mind and made me realize what I wanted to do (make unique independent animated short films). In particular my favorite film I saw there was Velodrool by Sander Joon who is still a huge inspiration to me today. I love all of his films.

Also tied for first is Pictoplasma. This was the first big festival that accepted my work, and I feel like the sensibility of it really fit in there. It’s in Berlin and just full of amazing super talented and friendly people who are so inspiring to be around. It’s a “Character Festival” and not just an animation festival, but they get a lot of great speakers and I was honored to be able to speak there in 2024.

Thirdly, the Annecy Animation Festival in France is the biggest animation festival in the world and so much fun to hang out at. The one reason it scores less highly than the other two on my list is just because it’s a terrible location for a festival. Who wants to sit in a theatre and watch animation when you are in literally the most beautiful medieval French lakeside town imaginable? I consider Annecy almost to be an incredible vacation with the rest of the industry. It’s a total blast.

With all these festivals I just love meeting new animation filmmakers and getting to understand them through seeing their work screened. It’s really a magical experience. I love that at animation festivals nobody is famous, so it doesn’t feel pretentious at all. Everyone is there and super friendly and just hangs out together. It’s heavenly.

KB: What artists or work are you inspired by lately?

CR: Maks Rzontkowski from Poland is one of my favorite recent animators. His graduation short film ‘The Martyr’s Guidebook’ played alongside Larry at Sundance and then it was an honor to get to spend the rest of the year going to festivals with him mostly sharing the same screening blocks. I think he is a genius.

I’ve always been hugely inspired by the work of David O’Reilly and Alan Resnick. Some other big inspirations over the years have been Sophie Koko Gate, Kirsten Lepore, Sean Buckelew, Joe Cappa and Joe Bennett, Felipe Di Poi, Alanthebox aka Alan Saunders, Flora Anna Buda, but I’m also hugely inspired by my close friends and always surprised by the amazing brilliant work they are making like Tom Goulet, Lindsey Demars, Will Wharton and Hugo Shiboski, YONK, and too many other amazing people to name I’m sorry this would go on much longer and those are just some of the people who popped into my head! Many other amazing filmmakers too whom I have met through Silver Lake Shorts. I’m supremely honored to be surrounded by such amazing and talented people.

KB: You’ve been going to SLS since early on and still continue to be a regular at our screenings. Once you spread the word back then, people really started coming out and it helped it become more of a scene, especially for animation. What does Silver Lake Shorts mean to you?

CR: Silver Lake Shorts is just an amazing consistent monthly hang with some amazing people. I feel like it is the opportunity for all of us to congregate on a monthly basis and stay in touch in person. It is like church for me. Something that is much needed that I am glad SLS is filling!


KB: What are your goals moving forward & are there any dream projects you’d like to work on?

CR: I’d love to just continue making cool stuff and collaborating with amazing filmmakers, musicians, writers, animators, etc. I can never quite imagine a “dream project” because I always feel like I am getting insanely lucky having the opportunity to work on projects cooler than I could have dreamed of. I hope this continues! I think for me I have benefitted a lot from just being excited about all this stuff, wanting to help get cool things made, getting psyched about cool work, sharing my techniques and insights, making tutorials, teaching others and wanting to spread the knowledge and support. It really helps make me feel fulfilled and seems to result in so many cool opportunities for me as well. My main goal is to just help get more cool shit made, whether that’s through making it myself, producing stuff for other people, connecting two people together that end up collaborating, helping teach students and inspire them to make cool work, or whatever else, I just wanna see more unique, inventive, interesting, groundbreaking work out there. There’s so much left to make and explore and things that haven’t been done yet that I’d love to see.


Thank you so much for reading!
<3
Karissa
& The Silver Lake Shorts Team