As a member of the AMPAS (Oscars) Visual Effects Branch, Lyndon Barrois boasts a 30-plus year career in art and animation distinguished by a practice that encompasses many facets of his field. While a master’s candidate at California Institute of the Arts, his early stop motion work won accolades for its unique and innovative procedure utilizing chewing gum wrappers as the medium of choice to create “sportraits” of historic athletic figures and events. Barrois continues use of this technique today, with the added component of shooting and editing his films entirely on the iPhone.
In 1990, after officials from the Ripley’s Believe It Or Not! Museums saw an NBC Today show segment highlighting Barrois’ wondrous work, Ripley’s curators purchased 15 original sculptures, and have since displayed his “sportraits” around the world.
In later years, Barrois has garnered additional film credits, directing an episode of The PJs, helping to shape the groundbreaking CGI visual effects of The Matrix trilogy, directing sequences in the Oscar-winning Happy Feet, and supervising the nuanced dinosaur performances in The Tree of Life. In addition, Barrois directed a massive team of animators for Alvin and the Chipmunks, vaulting the franchise into a billion-dollar phenomenon. He has been recognized by the Visual Effects Society Awards and nominated for his work on The Thing, as well as for his work as a captain and co-author in the VES industry guidebook.
In 2018, Barrois exhibited FútBallet, a miniature sculpture and animation installation at the Pérez Art Museum Miami, in a show titled The World’s Game: Fútbol and Contemporary Art. And his film Prizefighter debuted on the film festival circuit as an animated “sportrait,” recreating three pivotal days in the life of Jack Johnson, the first African American heavyweight champion of the world.
In 2019, Barrois’ animated profile of author Ta-Nehisi Coates for topic.com (@topicstories) was shortlisted for an Emmy Award. The year 2020 began with Barrois’ For ... Freedom, an animated short film commissioned by ForFreedoms.org, that premiered at the MOCA Geffen Contemporary Museum in Los Angeles.
Barrois has been affiliated with and/or served on the boards of numerous cultural institutions such as Santa Monica Museum of Art (now ICA LA), the William H. Johnson Foundation, YA/YA, Inc., LACMA, and MOCA Los Angeles. He serves as a commissioner for the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery in Washington DC. He is also a member of the inclusion task force for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Museum.
