davidbourne.com

Once again, I am reminded that STORY is king in my business. If you want to see what I mean, go watch OCTOCAT ADVENTURE, a funny, sick, loud, but ultimately deeply moving animation. It was mostly made in  MS Paint, which is a very basic image editor.

I’ve made a few comments below the video, (with spoilers, so don’t read it yet - watch first).

So…

When I first saw, Octocat Adventure, I already knew that it was created under a the guise that the creator was a 14 year old in Chicago named, Randy Peters. Visually and thematically, it does look like a 14 year old could have made it. It certainly resonates with my 8th grade sense of humor which, much to my wife’s chagrin, has stuck with me.

So why do I think this is a big deal? Because, I think we all need to be reminded that high production values don’t matter as much as story, in the end. In my business, I put a lot of emphasis on making good visuals, and good sound. Don’t get me wrong - these matter. A lot. But story and the characters that create them matter more.

In the case of Octocat Adventure, a very talented person (David OReilly) made something that LOOKS pretty bad but IS very good. Why do I think it’s so good? Well, like I said, it’s funny, sad, annoying, cute, gross and touching - all at the same time. I also like it because of the extremes between the bad visuals and the good story. But OReilly has a real talent that shines though the rough of this piece.

The synopsis of the work is that a weird looking cat has lost his parents. He looks in doors and boxes which make odd things happen. He jumps fences and bludgeons a giant worm. When he sees his parents, they get carried away by a big, black monster.

So far it sounds like the imaginings of a 14 year old mind, but it still hits me in a deep place: a kid loses his parents. We have all been there, and on many levels we will be there again and again.

In the end, the creator of Octocat Adventure reminds me that a good story uses deep psychology and myth to make a mark on us. And that’s something I wish I could do in every project.

Go see more of David OReilly’s work, as most of it is equally mythic AND very cool looking to boot.

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 25th, 2008 at 10:42 am and is filed under Bourne Media, Media.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.