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.

MACHINARIUM

I don't like Starbucks.
But Mrs. Warburton does.
So sometimes  I walk around the corner, take a deep breath, go inside and order her a  decaf Americano one pump toffee nut little room.
Once, whilst waiting amongst the fussy rabble ("I asked for only 4/27th percent soy chai foam in my cup!) I picked up this:

Machinarium is an old point and click game. I played the demo ages ago and really liked it.
It's beautifully designed, has clever, eclectic gameplay and sooper fantastic sound.
So I figured, hey... FREE! (thanks starbucks)
Like I said... the game is real purdy:

If you wanna see more,

check out the official trailer:

I finished the game the other day  and walked away really happy. Although I totally had to cheat a couple times to get past places I was stuck. I hate using walkthroughs but I don't think I could have finished without sneaking a peek.
I think I might try  some of Amanita Designs other games!