Adventure time David O'reilly special - A Glitch is a Glitch

Whilst having a break from all things game related, I thought I would catch up with Adventure Time, one of my favourite cartoons on Cartoon Network, and watched this Mondays episode. To my surprise it was produced by David O'reilly, one of my favourite 3D animators, and was just as weird and wacky as his usual stuff. As Adventure Time has never done a 'special' episode before, I was intrigued to see how it would differ from the usual show, and to start off with it was created in 3D. I have to say, if someone were to say 'Someone is doing an episode of Adventure Time in 3d' to me before seeing this, I would probably be severely upset and probably would refuse to watch it, as dramatic as that may sound. I struggle watching 3D animations, as often it is style over substance and is often poorly animated due to the ease of allowing the computer to simply in-between for you. But David O'reilly has really made this episode his own, with his usual distinctive style, but also with choppy and jaunting animation to give the idea of glitching. Why I love his work so much, especially in this episode, is that he has clearly done the in-betweening by hand to create the over exaggerated shapes and stretches. Below I will go on to discuss different sections of the episode, with screen-grabs I took myself along with images and GIFs that I have found.

I think that David O'reilly has done an amazing job with the character design in 3D, by still retaining all of their characteristics yet clearly animating and finishing the characters in his own style (especially with the characters facial expressions).

This GIF really made me smile, as Jake's personality has been captured perfectly, by his sudden changes in expression.

Here is an image of the dreaded glitch which will wipe out all the characters and environments, which I feel is the most like O'reilly's own work, using strange patterns and textures, put together to create an almost recognisable shape (in this case Princess Bubblegum).

Jake's flashback was also stereotypically portrayed in black and white, with the key memory (Jake's character) being in colour, but this time with an interesting border of Jake's arms wrapped and intertwined. I chose this moment to discuss though as I love the depth in the environment, as well as the animation of Jake skipping and his arm kite's movement.

A wonderful example of exaggerated curves, with the Ice King's movement, playing on the fundamental principles of animation.

These two GIF's I decided to post up on here, simply because I think it sums up all animators perfectly! I also love that he is then forced to punch himself for saying it, and the movement of his arm is so extreme I love it!!

I particularly liked this section of the episode, as Jake still manages to retain his flexibility even though he is now in 3D, and this GIF clearly demonstrates it. I absolutely love the amount of squash and stretch in his movement too, as David O'reilly has clearly used the basic principles of animation laid out in 2D animation, to enhance his 3D animation skills, making the unbelievable believable.

This is another GIF which I managed to find of the episode, which was another of my favourite short sections of the episode, where both the main characters Finn and Jake clearly appear but with their 3D net geometry on display before becoming coloured and textured. This was a clever move by O'reilly in my opinion, as it shows how he has purposefully finished off the characters with a flat texturing (with no shadows) to clearly show that it has been created in 3D. It also allows us to see a small part of his design process.

Now people may wonder why this has had such an impact on my thinking for this module in particular. As I have never really been a gamer, or that much of a fan of 3D animation, I often find it difficult to find digital 3D work off-putting and struggle to gain any inspiration. Of course the likes of Pixar are out of this world with the quality of modelling and animation that they create, but in a way I find watching their work off putting for inspiration as they have so much intricate detail, likewise with some of the more hyper-realistic games such as Skyrim. Which is why I get so much more out of less detailed and stylised 3D animations and games, making this animation one of the most influential pieces of (accidental) research!