Thursday, October 6, 2011

David O'Reilly

David O'Reilly is an Irish film director and artist based in Los Angeles, California, USA. He is known for creating animated short films with a stripped down aesthetic.

David presented several excerpts of his short films.

WOFL

Octocat

Please Say Something

The External World

Select one of his works and describe what you saw and why you chose the piece. Comment on the following questions.How does the humor work to tell the story. Does the "unfinished" look of the animation detract from the film or add to the overall presentation.


19 comments:

  1. Octocat is a very crude animation that David O'Reilly posted on YouTube under the alias of a fourteen year old boy. I thought that it was really interesting to see how such a simple and roughly done animation caused so much attention and parody etc in the virtual world. The way the work is presented here is definitely logical because if it were the work of a 'fourteen year old' then it wouldn't be as sophistically rendered anyway. Also, YouTube is such a viral and massive domain that something that simply can turn into a massive sensation. It is really interesting to see how people responded to it and how something that basic and crude can create so much attention.

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  2. Octocat:

    A lot of my appeal to Octocat was not in the film itself but in his presentation and explanation. Octocat was about a cat trying to find its parents. The cat red with 8 legs and poorly drawn. The humor worked well with telling the story, I found it really interesting how he could use a very emotionally sad idea and cause everyone to laugh while viewing it. It made me question if I should be laughing or if I should be taking it seriously. O'Reilly's "stripped down aesthetic" works very well for his films. It's intriguing that he includes his mistakes in his final pieces. I really like the idea behind Octocat and found it brilliant that he decided to post as a 9 year old boy on youtube and that it was so popular and successful says something about the fascination viewers have with his work.

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  3. Octocat

    I'm choosing Octocat because it was the most memorable. Due to our short class time, he could only show excerpts of his other pieces, which all kind of featured dark, twisted humor and similar animation styles. If I had seen more of them, I probably would have remembered them better.

    On the surface, Octocat is very strange. To me, the concept of doing something poorly in a technical sense on purpose is difficult to grasp. This animation wasn't so much about the animation itself or any of it's contents, rather was a social experiment and perhaps another way for David to poke fun at society.

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  4. Octocat.

    I chose the piece 'Octocat' because it amuses me greatly that this piece with the aesthetic of a child's crayon drawing became a viral video. However, knowing what I know about internet culture and phenomenon, it isn't all that surprising. The internet loves things with cats and uncompromisingly surreal and random things. Join them together and you have an instant hit. The bizarre humor of the piece encourages you to watch more, if only so you can brag later about the crazy thing you just saw. The random humor keeps you laughing, which keeps you watching, causing you to share it with your friends. The childish animation also adds to the humor and the oddness. The animation makes it highly unsophisticated and immature, which is exactly what the animator is going for. O'Reily succeeded greatly with his intention to think about the audience and reach out to them. I was highly entertained and amused when I saw his video mentioned on 'Attack of the Show'.

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  5. Octocat had no story. It really did come off as a neurotic 14 year old animating in MS Paint and Photoshop. I think the whole mix of having no story other than "I WILL FIND MY PARENTSSSSS" along with the terrible animation is what makes it successful. The finale, which was definitely done in a professional animation program (although it still had the rough look of all his other animations), is the only place that well-rendered work would've been acceptable. If he'd started it out with Octocat as a 3-dimensional, moving character, it would've made the lack of story and general insanity more of a hinderance than a benefit. The ugly needed to go with the ugly (except in the end, where the switch up in styles was viewed as hilarious in relation to how the Octocat style was up to then).

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  6. In David's piece Octocat, the story follows a cat with eight legs that is wandering around trying to find his parents. He has some small experiences along the way (like drinking tea) but this is the main drive of the story. Eventually, in installment four and five, he finds his parents although he cannot be with them and still ends up alone. I chose this piece because it's probably David's most widely viewed work and has five small segments to it. I think the humor in this piece is really well done and is necessary to still keep the piece light and fun since the subject matter (being an orphan looking for their parents) is quite heavy. The unfinished look of the animation also helps with this. It allows the viewer to not take the story too seriously and to find humor as Octocat goes along trying to find his parents. If the animation was completely finished I think the storyline would be actually quite sad, which was clearly not what David was going for.

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  7. The External World, to me, was the most interesting piece I've seen my O'Reilly. In this film, he makes references to many things that are somewhat inappropriate. While watching the film, I personally felt like I was constantly second guessing his motives, his humor,and if it was wrong to laugh. Especially things such as death. The piano player killed his teacher,and the boy and father were both killed by playing frisbee. Other parts of the movie that got me thinking was how the four year old was having sex with someone much older which was then said to be "illegal" only for the four year old to say she was 89 in animal years. Something about that didn't seem right to me, maybe because it made me think that people are getting away with lying and even lying their way into getting what they want. However, the film itself was very intriguing. It was very interesting to see how all the parts came together at the end when all the characters were in the same room. Because the film was somewhat disturbing, it got me thinking, which i believe was O'Reilly's goal. The external world was extremely well done and amazingly animated.

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  8. In The External World, it is showing a peak into his created world. He uses an animation aesthetic that is very unfinished, but you wouldn't know it unless you worked with 3D animation. Each scene has a set of different characters having a struggle, examples are: boy playing the piano with his father becoming more and more abusive, the piece of poop being denied a ride to the hospital, and the sketchy dude who realizes his lighter creates explosions. At first his humor appears hilarious, because of the combination of the character and act put into a fantasy setting as opposed to in the real world. However, after a while you begin to question what you are viewing, and it just all looks sad, as if all the obnoxious and upset in the world is put into this animation for your eyes only. It is clear that this is partially humor and his perspective on the world, but honestly it is not clear to me what the message is.

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  9. Octocat is an animation full of humor and low tech imagery. This strange cat roams around a two dimensional world in search of his long lost parents. David uses a drawing style that looks like it could fit a five year old child. This style really works for the series. I think what works best is how he used the low end quality up until the final movie where you can tell this really is NOT just a child but a professional animator. Without the quality I think that Octocat would not have been as big of a sensation as it is.

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  10. The External World is a piece that seems to be bringing out the flaws in our society. Throughout the piece, there are comedic situations that suddenly take a turn for the worse, but are able to keep the same happiness in a way. The humor style is very effective because it makes the viewer unsure whether they should laugh or think more deeply. It's very awkward and uncomfortable, which I think really adds to the piece.

    However, something that I think did not add to the piece was the lack of good rendering. The unfinished look really threw me off. In my opinion, if it had been made completely rendered, it would have looked more professional and made me want to watch and think about it, rather than just watching some guy's badly rendered Maya "trial".

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  11. In WOFL a little squirrel is running happily through a cubist forest when he sees one of his dead kin lying in the snow, and drags it to a hill, where a giant deer-head eats it and turns into a weird human head that breaths grey lasers that destroy the forest. Eggs begin raining in the forest and our squirrel comes to one that splits open with a larger squirrel head in it that cracks open and they both float to the moon. While i enjoy the inane and surreal story, the reason i chose this one is for its aesthetics, the first half of it is beautifully minimalist and holds strong imagery. The humor in this story essentially just serves as a device to make it a more strange narrative. I do enjoy his unfinished style, especially in black lake, but in WOFL it actually looks finished and serves a more directly artistic purpose.

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  12. In David O'Reilly's 'Octocat' we saw an animated cat with 8 legs drawn in a childlike and unfinished manner. He was trying to fins his parents and was just wandering, babbling, and yelling about random things. The series of episodes of Octocat are done in a simplistic style and the animation is almost 2-d in a sense. (the last series however has 3-d clips). The humor works really well in this series due to the fact that it is so random, absurd, and kind of stupid. While it is very abstract it is extremely appealing and comical to many audiences which is why it is so popular. The 'unfinished' nature of the animation adds to the overall tone and humor of the series. Because it is a very silly and bizarre plot, the scribbly, static and unfinished look made the overall series more extreme and ultimately funnier.

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  13. I loved watching Octocat- I think its really interesting to see what makes a video viral, and a lot of the time it is "random" videos with yelling screaming, repetition, etc. I thought it was hilarious that this little stop motion MS Paint-looking video got so much attention and a large fanbase. The humor is over exaggerated- repetitious screaming scenes, muttering of ever single action that a character does. It doesn't take a whole lot of effort on the viewers part to understand what is going on, even when what is going on doesn't make a lot of sense. I loved in the "Adventure 5" one how Octocat goes through a door and suddenly everything is in 3D- just knowing that people watching this were so bind-sided by that transition is awesome. I think the unfinished look of it if great, because it was simple, and therefore un-intimidating. Everyone can relate on some level to what looks like a child's MS paint drawing. Being able to keep that childish, simple look in something as complicated as 3D was hilarious.

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  14. In the film Octocat, David O'Reilly created a very rough animation and added his comedic twist. It looks like something that could have been drawn in a painting application. But the way he uses humor, it makes it an acceptable film. The way he uses humor really draws the viewer attention and holds it for the length of the film. The unfinished look adds to the comedic value of the film, but if it was meant to be a serious film, it wouldn't be accepted. Because its so poorly made, its that much more funny.

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  15. The piece of David O'Reilley's that stood out to me the most was his series on Octocat. It is the epitome of low grade animation, yet somehow it works. This style especially worked because is was created to be viewed on youtube, not a large HD screen. The audio especially helped with this piece. It really seemed like the drawings a young boy might make so I loved the idea of him pretending to be this young boy. The story line is so over the top, and all the audio is made up of is asking where are my parents and random grunting, crying, or moaning, that it is simply humorous. The unfinished look adds to it just to highlight the ridiculousness of the whole piece. I did like the very last section that he showed us where the character stepped through the door and became 3D animation. I thought it was clever to show that he actually did know what he was doing in his animation, and also looked very impressive if he was in fact the young boy.

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  16. The External World follows a period of time that leads up to a boy, the main character's piano recital. It's an amalgamation of story lines of the boy's audience during that period of time. These characters all converge at the recital, as the climax of the short film is reached, because the boy had been struggling a lot with the song he had to play. O'Reilly used a very raw, in-your-face, nonsensical humor in the piece. It's chaotic but if we were able to look into everyone's lives in a given period of time, I think we can find an equal amount of chaos and nonsense to be cut into a 17 minute short film. The non realistic look that each character has take the seriousness out of the truth that while we are sitting in our comfortable classroom watching it, something horrible is happening somewhere else in the world. It enables the film to explore such a heavy and complex idea without burdening the viewers with a light hearted feel.

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  17. What humored me the most was the "Octocat". David explained how it was just an animation that he did mostly for fun but it turned out to be major. The story line is basically about a cat looking for his/her parents. With eight long legs and a odd voice, the animation was so randomly put with so many ideas that just came into this one piece. I felt that the unfinished look of it is what really made the animation because that is what made it so interesting. If it looked as if it was finished and edited multiple times it wouldn't differentiate from other animations. I wasn't really sure what to think about his animation because it seemed to be a series of frames with randomly put ideas in it. Maybe there was a meaning, or maybe there wasn't but it was amusing to see many different element in the piece. It somewhat humored me but I felt that the subject matter was more serious than it appeared to be as it was about an orphan losing his parents.

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  18. I chose WOFL because it was one of the films where the "unfinished" looked turned out to be something quite beautiful. He used only black, white and red (along with that weird face that was brown) to create his film. He also used line to create the majority of his background. In the film, an animal (dog or skunk) is running around in the forest and find his/her loved one. When he find his/her loved one it turns out that they are dead. So it drags the dead body to the top and the hill and lies there. After a series of questionable scenes (random face popping out, a deer, and the body being revived), the two animals heads pop of and they float to the moon. For the majority of these films, especially this one, he discusses a loss. I think the only way he and people may deal with these losses is through humor. He also uses the element of surprise through the film. I think he uses it to express the idea of the unexpected in the life. I don't think his technique takes away from the film because even with the simplest form you can create a meaningful piece. As long as people are able to relate to the characters.

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  19. Among David O' Reilly's pieces, The External World was the most impressive. He showed many scenes, characters and situations. The most stories were depressing. He seemed to depict some of the social issues today. He used many violence. There were many death scenes. The boy who plays the piano killed his teacher and one who plays with the lighter killed several people. Throughout the film, I could not find emotions of characters. Even though they killed someone, they did not seem to feel guilty or remorse. However, those emotions came out at the very end. Everyone at the end gathered to see the boy's piano concert and cried. This scene is the most memorable. Through this scene, I thought that he wants to deliver some message through this film; however, I did not get the message.Most of David's works looks unfinished but this piece looked very clean and finished. So I liked it. Those unfinished look of animation distracted me on the other films.

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