David Shrigley

David Shrigley is a Glasgow based animator. He's been featured in many exhibits, and has had a lot of his work published, as well as being a magazine illustrator. Three of his more basic work is as follows which are the pieces most relevant to my project.

Laundry:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0LKnbI-bNJE&feature=related
Bad Elephants:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IgF-M5458dk&feature=related
Home Alone:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Fr42JFShkM&feature=related

All of these works are very similar to each other, from the way they are drawn and animated to the sound used. They all use very basic line drawing and as little detail as possible, which is probably because in this case Shrigley was more interested in the animation than in the artwork behind it. This is how I plan to do one of my animation drafts, that I will probably also include in my final piece. I want as little detail as possible as art is not my strong point, but it gets the message across. The actual animation is very fluid, but as the focus of the videos is more on the sound element it doesn't need to be very particularized or detailed. I think this is a clever way of animating as the video runs smoothly enough for it to work well, but as the sound is so important the other elements of the animation compliment each other.

The content of the videos is quite comedic, but in a dark manner. They follow no particular theme and the plot is really of no relevance to anything but the animation as a whole works well as that is just Shrigley's style. The animations vary in length, ranging from 20 seconds to 2 minutes 45, but as the animation style is exactly the same over all three videos it just proves that the length of the video is irrelevant when the animation is decent. The first animation, 'Laundry', is of a man riding his horse which then gets dirty. He takes the horse to the laundrette and cleans it in a washing machine. This in itself is quite odd and quirky which is a running theme of Shrigley's, as the content of most of his work is nonsensical. The man then has an argument with the owner of the laundrette about whether or not he is allowed to clean his horse. The animation ends with the horse getting dirty again. The only sounds in this video are the relevant audio tracks relevant to the animation such as the washing machine background noise and the horse's hooves hitting the ground. Other than this there is only speech which I think helps with the simple principle of the animation.
The second animation, 'Bad Elephants', is again very odd. It is a mere 45 seconds long but follows the same principles of the first animation, using only a line drawing and a quirky plot. In this case, it features two elephants throwing a human head back and forth. This results in a police van coming and taking them away, ending the animation. The sound alongside this animation is quite a techno sound, which runs throughout the video. This is the only sound bar the police siren at the end.
The third animation, 'Home Alone', is by far the simplest. It is twenty one seconds long and the animation's plot only starts half way though. The first couple of seconds is of a door, again very plainly drawn, then the sound of a doorbell, which is the only noise in the 21 second duration. A small boy opens the door, and a wolf walks into the room. Then the same 'The End' sign comes up as seen in the previous two animations. I think the only comedy value in this plot is that it's name is "Home Alone" and when you think of that and children, you think of scary adults and such that they should be afraid of. Whereas in this animation, a wolf appears.

All three animations all use the same basic animation, where not a lot of drawing is involved and have very basic, easy to draw frames. This is precisely what I plan to do when I test this variety of animation.