Conor Kehelly puts a silly face on just about everything in these lively animations

2D and 3D animator Conor Kehelly’s visual world is completely lawless. Whether it’s giant mecha-castles or steampunk tin men, Conor’s highly textural work is an utter delight. It’s so packed with colour, light bleeds, procedural grains, noises and scratches that it’s hard to not feel like these works are 4D – you can almost hear the yawps of his multicoloured singing characters.

“I like the idea of every frame feeling unique and manipulated in some tiny way just to counteract the usual digital sheen that comes with the perfect computer render,” says Conor. “I like to bathe my ideas in nostalgia for a time I wasn’t born in.” Arguably, Conor creates his very own time to exist in, a world that is a collage of influences – the golden age of 2D animation, the weirdcore of modern 3D animation, cathode ray tube glowiness and children’s storybook aesthetics all smashed together.

Conor is particularly interested in imbuing a little bit of melancholy in his eccentric ideas, influenced by the tragic anatomy of Doctor Who’s cybermen, indie animation from the peak of Newgrounds and Gary Larson’s surreal comics. It’s why he sometimes starts from a silly place then works his way to a serious feeling, and vice versa – he wants to keep people on their toes. “I like just adding faces to objects that have no right having a face. There are smart ways to implement a face onto a lot of objects but sometimes the crudeness of just drawing a line and two dots on anything is funnier,” says Conor. “ I like to remind myself and the viewer that I’m a single person just trying my best to make something, with limited resources and a big idea.”