Darcy Prendergast is an Australian animator, whose passion
can be traced back to a young age; with Darcy claiming he could always be
"found with a lump of clay in his hands". Since then, his creativity
has grown and, with the aid of the £20,000 Nescafe Big Break Prize, Darcy was
able to buy his own studio, camera equipment and an abundance of plasticine.
Darcy’s animation can be seen
across a range of work, from commercials for Cadburys and ABC kids, to music
videos, working with bands, such as All India Radio and Gotye. He was even personally
selected by friend Adam Elliot to work as lead sculptor on an animated feature,
Mary and Max. In addition, Darcy’s own short films, such as the darkly humorous
Ron the Zookeeper, have received international recognition, being selected for
festivals including the Annecy International Film Festival, the Stuggart
Festival of Animated Film, and the San Francisco Film Festival. Darcy has also
recently formed his own production company, Oh Yeah Wow.
A lot of Darcy's work contains a
fairly dark sense of humour. When talking about Easy Way Out - Gotye, Darcy
stated, "I guess an audience is generally used to seeing escapism in
animation and the beauty of the medium is that you can get away with creating
things that you can’t in live action. I guess the audience comes to expect
something different from animation, as a medium. For me, the ability to
stylistically exaggerate in different ways allow for this kind of humour to
work. An audience isn’t going to simply find coughing up smoke humorous - but
when the smoke is made up of hundreds of cotton balls- its something fresh and
unexpected. Same with the abundance of plasticine blood thats seen as Wally
slams his head against the typewriter".
Darcy's work appears to have a
very distinct style. In particular, Easy Way Out - Gotye, is very clever in the
way the shot has bee constructed, to suggest a continuous spinning shot. Darcy
also appears to try and capture the mood, tone and message of the song, in
order to demonstrate the depressive elements of repetition, as the audience see
the main character, unable to break free of his own routine. Darcy said,
"I wanted the rotation to be almost like a clock - turning in accordance
with the day, but on every pass, he falls slightly behind and before long
becomes a victim of his own making." Darcy has used many different forms
of inspiration for this video, one of which being a 1980s animation 'Tango',
which became an initial point of reference, due to it's clever use of loops.
Darcy Prendergast is an Australian animator, whose passion
can be traced back to a young age; with Darcy claiming he could always be
"found with a lump of clay in his hands". Since then, his creativity
has grown and, with the aid of the £20,000 Nescafe Big Break Prize, Darcy was
able to buy his own studio, camera equipment and an abundance of plasticine.
A lot of Darcy's work contains a
fairly dark sense of humour. When talking about Easy Way Out - Gotye, Darcy
stated, "I guess an audience is generally used to seeing escapism in
animation and the beauty of the medium is that you can get away with creating
things that you can’t in live action. I guess the audience comes to expect
something different from animation, as a medium. For me, the ability to
stylistically exaggerate in different ways allow for this kind of humour to
work. An audience isn’t going to simply find coughing up smoke humorous - but
when the smoke is made up of hundreds of cotton balls- its something fresh and
unexpected. Same with the abundance of plasticine blood thats seen as Wally
slams his head against the typewriter".
Darcy's work appears to have a
very distinct style. In particular, Easy Way Out - Gotye, is very clever in the
way the shot has bee constructed, to suggest a continuous spinning shot. Darcy
also appears to try and capture the mood, tone and message of the song, in
order to demonstrate the depressive elements of repetition, as the audience see
the main character, unable to break free of his own routine. Darcy said,
"I wanted the rotation to be almost like a clock - turning in accordance
with the day, but on every pass, he falls slightly behind and before long
becomes a victim of his own making." Darcy has used many different forms
of inspiration for this video, one of which being a 1980s animation 'Tango',
which became an initial point of reference, due to it's clever use of loops.
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