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.

ASSORTED BITS OF OTTAWA 2014

I think I've made it 

abundantly clear that the

2014 OTTAWA INTERNATIONAL 

ANIMATION FESTIVAL

was 

Das Boomba.

So allow me to share some more

pics

tidbits

ephemera

and 

doodles

from my trip.

Here's a sketch 

Gary Schwartz 

did while I was being

interviewed for the 

Animation Pimpcast

The schedule for those of us on

 the feature jury wasn't too bad:

But it was busy enough that I didn't get to

see too many other screenings.

I 

DID 

make it to

PEN & INK:

CREATING CHARACTERS WITH NICKELODEON

Specifically, it was about Nick's upcoming new show

PIG GOAT BANANA CRICKET!

Creators Dave Cooper,

Johnny Ryan

and Executive Producer David Sacks

told us all sorts of fun stuff about what goes into the making of

this weirdo show.

They even did a live-drawing of a new character

where the audience was encouraged to 

suggest what body parts it was made up of:

And the name I suggested,

BACON-n-KEGS

(because of it's beer keg body and

umbrella with a piece of bacon on the end)

was picked,

which was kind of cool.

While we're on the topic of

live-drawing,

exquisite corpse

kind of stuff, 

we were out late one night and

Maya Erdelyi-Perez

introduced us to an interesting game.

We were each given five pieces of paper.

On the first piece of paper we were instructed to

"write anything in the world"

For example:

Then everyone passed their 

stack of paper to the left.

On page two we were instructed 

to DRAW what was written on page one.

The stack was passed again

and we were told to 

describe what was 

drawn on page two:

And on page four

the next person had to draw what 

was written on page three

And then one more time...

Essentially it's a surreal form of 

whisper down the lane.

I'd show you some of the other drawings,

but I'd get arrested.

Here's another caricature someone did of me.

At least I think it's me.

It might be Jay Leno.

And then there's the

forever awesome

ANIMATOR'S PICNIC.

As if eating and drinking 

in a park

on a beautiful fall day

isn't enough,

there's pumpkin carving:

{sigh}

The Ottawa International 

Animation Festival...

It's enough to make 

David O'Reilly hug

festival director

Chris Robinson:

GETTIN' JUDGY WID IT AT OIAF 2014

If you hang out with a lot of judges,

then you probably overheard them 

talking about me recently.

Because

there was a lot of

next level 

block rockin'

straight-up 

hardcore

JUDGING

all up in

Canada last week!

YES!

I had the honor of serving on the 

Feature Jury

at the

2014 Ottawa International Animation Festival.

AND I PASSED

MAD

JUDGEMENT!

But I couldn't do it alone.

I had two sooper talented

colleagues.

The first was

Ottawa's own

Patrice James:

As Director of the

Independent Filmmaker's Cooperative,

she knows a thing or two about film.

She also knows how 

to kick some style.

Patrice was our rock,

totally keeping us on topic

and making sure we didn't accept any bribes

of candy from

unscrupulous filmmakers.

The third of our trio 

was the 

insidiously brilliant

3-D animation deconstructionist

and

independent filmmaker

David O'Reilly:

Mr. O'Reilly

and I spent many hours

chatting over root beers,

fixing the world's problems

and fighting crime in Ottawa.

Hopefully we'll do so again here in LA.

Because he rocks pretty hard.

You can't really beat a jury 

like that, can you?

No, you can't.

There were five films in competition this year.

Lisa Limone and Maroc Orange; A Rapid Love Story

by Mait Laas, Estonia

Seth's Dominion

Luc Chamberland, Canada

Tanta Hilda

Jaques-Remy Girerd & Benoit Chieux, France

 Until Sbornia Do Us Part

Otto Guerra & Ennio Torresan Jr.. Brazil

Truth Has Fallen

Sheila Sofian, USA

Our choice,

by unanimous decision,

was

Seth's Dominion.

It's truly a charming, beautifully made documentary;

a mixture of live action interviews with the 

charismatic Canadian cartoonist Seth,

and perfectly animated versions of his comics.

Here's a picture I snapped of 

Luc Chamberland.

the film's

equally charming director

accepting his award.

This was my first time judging in a festival.

And I had so much fun 

I'm not sure I can go back to

NOT

being a judge!

Eleventy billion thanks to 

festival director

Chris Robinson

and

EVERYONE

at the 

OIAF

for having me this year.

Ottawa rocks!