I took a step out of narrative to do this piece for the massive Illustrative Zurich exhibit which opens on Friday.
Floaters from David OReilly on Vimeo.
The actual piece is a seamless loop.
“Floaters are deposits of various size, shape, consistency, refractive index, and motility within the eye’s vitreous humour, which is normally transparent. They may be of embryonic origin or acquired due to degenerative changes of the vitreous humour or retina… Floaters appear as shadow-like shapes that appear alone or together with several others in one’s field of vision. They may appear as spots, threads, or fragments of cobwebs, which float slowly before the sufferer’s eyes. Since these objects exist within the eye itself, they are not optical illusions but are entoptic phenomena.”
After several requests (and people started producing this stuff without permission!), I opened a store where you can buy some Octocat merch. I did a few other limited edition designs for fun. Take a picture wearing this stuff and you win a prize.
Also, I’m a ‘Boards magazine “director to watch” this month, which actually has nothing to do with surveillance. It’s great to see them interested in stuff outside the commercial world.
These Octocat plush toys were made by Gina Beastly, she rocks.
Unexpectedly there’s been a lot of discussion about my Rotating Grid Illusion… It got on the front of the TED blog and since has been exhumed, examined, ripped apart and reassembled by many people from the science community. As with Octocat, it’s great to see people reinterpreting my work, especially since I don’t consider myself remotely scientific (or in the case of octocat - retarded). I’ve updated the original post here.
In light of all this discussion about optical illusions, I present my rarely seen Ident animation, the original short film which I now use as a logo. The effect you see in this is called a bistable percept, an image or shape that can be interpreted in 2 ways at once. In this case, a rabbit and a bird. Other examples of bistable percepts here and here.
I’ve uploaded the latest installment of the animated pill-sized hyper-narrative Please Say Something.
The entire series has now migrated to Vimeo, which serves full HD versions of every episode. Enjoy!
There is also now an official Youtube channel which I’ll use for random clips that don’t fit the Vimeo page.
After recieving a bunch more Octocat fan art I created this dedicated page : http://www.davidoreilly.com/octocat-art
Founder of Digg talks about iHologram :
Full Octocat feature on g4 :
A conclusion finally comes to the Octocat saga.
With the release of Octocat 5, the last episode, it became impossible to hide I was behind it.
First of all, I’d like to thank everyone who made video responses and fan art. It’s been amazing to see this kind of reaction to my animation and it’s really humbling. I will collect and post everything over here, though it truly deserves it’s own site. Feel free to send anything I missed to octocat (at) davidoreilly.com
I hope none of you are disappointed that there’s no 9-year-old kid in Chicago named Randy Peters. I think the last episode should make up for any bad feeling. I wanted it to have such an ending because you all had so much invested in this.
Many of you are expecting the 18 disc Blu-Ray Octocat box set. It’s not quite ready yet, so for the moment I’ve uploaded a high-definition version of all the episodes back-to-back. The last episode can now be seen in it’s full quality.
FULL LENGTH OCTOCAT ADVENTURE
(click here for high definition)
I’m sure I’ll be accused of misleading people again, but I won’t apologize for that. Why? Because you’ve all proved one vitally important point: audiences don’t need polished, slick animation to find a story engaging. They are happy to follow the worst animated, worst designed and worst dubbed film of all time, and still laugh and cry and do all the things you do watching a so-called “high end” film. Its amazing, I’ve never been so excited about independent animation.
Octocat’s journey on Youtube has officially ended, but who knows what the future will hold for him.
CLICK HERE FOR OCTOCAT ART PAGE
*note* If you are reading this from a blog reader and it looks like the latest post, you will need to resubscribe by heading to davidoreilly.com and clicking on rss feed.
The iHologram has become one of the All time most popular videos on Vimeo in the space of a day, and is currently on the front page of almost every technology site… I’m getting way too many emails about it, so for those who had to know:
The iHologram app was not real. It was an illustration of an idea I had which I believe could work with the technology (combining anamorphosis and motion sensing). Unfortunately I’m just an ideas person, and I can show how things should look, but I’m no hardcore programmer.
I’d be happy to collaborate with a developer or studio who want’s to make it happen, I’m bursting with ideas for the interactive world, but right now all my attention is on filmmaking.
My aim with this was to tackle the problem of 3d viewing in an original way using current technology, not fool anyone… so for those who doubted but still supported it, respect. I hope it inspires some talented programmers out there.
?????
This is a subject which crosses my mind the more I see new animation work coming out. I’d like to share it in the hope its of use to image makers and viewers alike.
Everyone in the business of filmmaking is constantly aware of the rule relating to the Safe area (also called TV cutoff). All design for television is made with an invisible border which clips about 20% of the image. It’s a long established rule that all movement must take place within one border, and all text within another.
This rule is, in my view, completely outdated and unnecessary, and may be officially forgotten about immediately. It simply lacks any practical application considering how most video is viewed today, digitally, online and on modern screens.
As a symbol of where we are now I feel it’s time to drop it and start taking advantage of the full-frame.
From an animation point of view, it’s always been quite vexing to have to keep everything within a certain frame, but still to work to an outer frame just in case.
From a design and composition point of view you want to use your full canvas without restriction, to create a certain balance (or lack of balance) and know your audience will see the same thing. Unfortunately with the Safe Area rule you would have to make a composition work within one frame, then extend it out for posterity. (It must surely be frustrating to anyone involved to have all that old work now be seen exposing the full frame, not what the compositions were designed for.)
This was something I considered when doing my short film Wofl in 2006. The trees in certain shots fit into square shapes, a simple motif which helped establish that world. I can say that, less obviously, they were an expression of frustration at fitting things into this arbitrary frame. They are actually fitting snugly into the Safe Area.
Breaking this rule 5 years ago would be considered unprofessional, but things most certainly have changed, despite this so many still blindly cling to it. For example, a small segment I did for the Boing Boing blog some months ago had images with text that filled the frame. When the thing went online, an editor somewhere had gone in and neatly fitted the image down without thinking. There’s something inexplicably dull and mediocre about the result, small enough as the change seems to be.
The Safe Area is part of a long list of rules which I find useless in modern image making. They reoccur as default, unquestioned laws which will unfortunately paint all which we see as the 00’s style in 10 years.
I really believe we ought to be questioning every rule we are told, especially with animation, when - as trite as this remark will always sound - you can do anything.
David