7 Billion

Posted on Jul 5, 2016

Have you ever wondered what 7 billion of something looks like?

The idea for this video began a couple of years ago when the population of the world had passed the 7 billion mark. It has gone way beyond that since then, but I always wanted to see what that many people would look like. We have become used to hearing about billions of things, but the number itself lives in a strange middle-ground between being too large to understand and yet common enough to seem almost trivial.

So, instead of people I used rabbits. Are there really 7 billion rabbits in this video? Did you count them all?

Well, to tell the truth, I didn’t myself either. But after some very rough calculations I came up with the following image. On the left is the rabbit made of rabbits made of rabbits made of rabbits from the end of video, and next to it is a solid cube of 7 billion rabbits. And the Eiffel Tower.

rabit-cube

As you can see, the journey of the rabbits-rabbits-rabbits-rabbit is far from over.

Composer Quest Podcast

Posted on Apr 18, 2016

Cyriak-MIDI-1

Last November I did a podcast interview about my music, which is something not many people ask me about (or even like), so I figured it was worthy of mentioning. The above image is what one of my tunes looks like in the software I use. Looks a bit like a knitting pattern for a Scandinavian jumper.

I have also updated my “about” page with a bunch of other interviews I found from searching Google. There should be enough information there to reconstruct your very own virtual Cyriak, should you so desire.

Things I Like, Things I Hate, and Horrible Things

Posted on Apr 13, 2016

While I’m on the subject of influences, anyone lucky enough to have experienced my amazing powerpoint slide show may be familiar with this Venn Diagram of where I get my crazy ideas from:

venndiagram

For a more in-depth exploration of my psyche here is a playlist of all my youtube favourites:

By the way, if you see any of my own videos on that list, its just my way of bookmarking things of mine that are on other people’s channels. I’m not that vain, honest!

Animation Influences

Posted on Apr 13, 2016

I was doing a talk recently for Confetti Industry Week in Nottingham, and one of the questions I was asked was about my animation influences. I grew up at a time when kids animation was weird, and grown ups animation was even weirder.

Children’s tv shows like Ivor the Engine, Bagpuss, Magic Roundabout and Chorlton and the Wheelies all had vaguely nightmarish qualities, and if you stayed up late you might have been lucky enough to catch some surreal arty animations on BBC2 or Channel 4 that were seemingly sneaked into the schedules to fill a gap that no one else wanted.

So, because this is a question I am often asked I decided to make a youtube playlist of some of the few that I could remember. There are many more that I can’t, but hopefully this will give some kind of insight into the development of my style, and if I do remember any more I will try to add them to the list.

Titles & Titles & Titles

Posted on Feb 16, 2016

I made a couple of title sequences recently so thought it would be a good idea to mention it, and then I remembered a couple of other titles I made over the years, so here is a title sequence bonanza.

Tripped

This was a four part comedy drama for E4, involving misadventures in parallel realities. They gave me a bunch of footage to work with and this is what emerged.

W/ Bob & David

A Netflix comedy show from Bob Odenkirk and David Cross. Unusually they asked me to make the music for this as well.

Impractical Jokers

This the UK version of the show, made for BBC3 back in 2012. The show is about making people do silly things, hence the puppet theme in the titles.

Genius

Dave Gorman’s BBC2 show, I made these titles in 2009. The show was about thinking up of unusual ideas to make the world more interesting.