Thursday, October 2, 2014

THE ALL POWERFUL DAVID O'REILLY

Last week I was telling you about 
how I got to hang with
independent animation 
rock star
David O'Reilly
at the
2014 Ottawa International Animation Festival.
If you're not familiar with his work
you should have checked out
 the David O'Reilly retrospective, 
GOLD STAR FOR ROBOT BOY,
at Ottawa this year.
If you missed it,
I'll try to explain.
But his style is hard to pin down,
so ima just steal this from his wikipedia page:

O'Reilly's work is often characterized by the use of 
intentionally stripped down 3d graphics. 
He is known for popularizing the use of low-poly 3d 
and the use of 3d software as a personal and artistic tool, 
as outlined in his 2009 essay "Basic Animation Aesthetics". 
He was an early adopter of glitch effects
and uses elements of the software used inside his work.
"[David] has been the man to lead animation through a conceptual blockage—
3D animation was being dominated by commercial aesthetics....
he deconstructed 3D to the point of absurdity."

Truth.

The first film I saw by Mr. O'Reilly was
PLEASE SAY SOMETHING
which went on to win the grand prize at the
2009 Ottawa International Animation Festival:
OCTOCAT ADVENTURES 
started out as a series of youtube videos by some 
12 year old kid
named Randy Peters.
As the pieces got crazier and crazier it was 
revealed to actually be done by
Mr. O'Reilly.
On the slicker side of his work
is this video for U2.
But you've gotta go to youtube to see it:
Recently,
Mr. O'Reilly
has taken to making,
and tearing down,
video games.
Case in point,
MOUNTAIN,
which has no controls,
levels, or goals.
He even made an entire episode of
Cartoon Network's
Adventure Time:

For someone who's spent his entire career
on the more commercial side of things,
David's work makes me feel 
boring and stoopid.
Yet 
INSPIRED.
And that's why you go and meet other artists.
To take what you can from their work and hopefully improve your own.
Or just hang out and have a
root beer with then,
That's good, too.

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