I’m sorry to learn that director, writer and artist Gideon Baws died today. He was 33 years old.
Gideon was one of the warmest, most talented and intelligent people you could ever meet. He just radiated creativity in painting, animation, design, drawing, language…everything. His whole character was just formidably talented. He had a wit as sharp as a pin and had an gift for effortlessly making people laugh. He was so funny you would regret not taking notes when you were around him.
Gideon’s contribution to animation isn’t appreciated as much as it should be. His influence as part of Shynola can be seen all over the animation world, and it will probably take some years for people to fully realize how significant his team has been. Gideon has had a hand in so many great works which have been imitated and continue to be imitated by countless other animators and directors. Gideon never had a shortage of ideas, he never stopped having them. I’ll remember him for being one of the very few genuinely honest people out there. In an industry which is often more interested in congratulating itself, Gideon was never afraid to give his honest opinion about something, often getting right to the truth of it and expressing what no-one else had the courage to.
I owe a great debt to Gideon, he effectively gave me my start in animation. Several years ago as a frustrated student I sent Shynola an email, it was Gideon who received it. I’ll never forget the day he replied and offered me my first job in the animation world. He helped me find an apartment when I first moved to London. When I was stuck or didn’t know how something was done, which happened often when we shared a desk, he would patiently take time to explain it. If it wasn’t for Gideon I wouldn’t be what I am today.
What makes this so tragic is that he was enjoying life so much recently. He was in his prime, and was by all accounts in great form. lt’s just so cruel and confusing his life has been cut short. The world won’t be the same without him.
interview with Gideon and Kenny from 2004.
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
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