Articles Available Online

  The External World from David OReilly   BASIC ANIMATION AESTHETICS   For the purposes of talking about animation, aesthetics are simply any of the elements thatmake up the world of a film, the building blocks of images and soundsThe importance of animation aesthetics is such a subtle yet vitally important one It mightseem superficial to discuss these things, especially because cinema is so much more todo with content and story than a pure aesthetic experience, but nonetheless the visualnature of animation calls for debate on the subject There is a continuous raft of animation,both commercial and independent, which looks the same, and I don’t believe it has to beso The more we think about the subject the more playful and interesting computeranimation becomes, the medium feels to me like a recently opened Pandora’s box which isstill being examined, understood and tamed   Equally, we can often explain why a story works or doesn’t work, but the way pixels mix on the screen is just beyond our verbal grasp Despite this we know that some things can just feel wrong in an image, even if we can’t explain why An animation can seem simultaneously real and unreal Bad aesthetics can make a film say things it’s not supposed to, look unprofessional and disengaging Attention to aesthetics gains an audience’s trust, makes them forget they are watching a film and by extension feel any emotion you can think of My goal is thus to explain why certain things work and others don’t 3d animation is at a stage where many people have access to the tools but very few have any meaningful guidelines on how to use them The problem is that there is simply too much power and very little control, essentially you get too much for free Other forms of animation have benefited from their inherent limitations, but largely these do not exist with 3d   This essay will mainly centre around my latest short film, Please Say Something, which won the Golden Bear for Best Short Film at