Cyriak Harris, known mononymously as Cyriak (), his

B3ta B3ta (stylised as b3ta) is a popular British website, described as a "puerile digital arts community" by ''The Guardian''. It was founded in 2001 by Rob Manuel, Denise Wilton and Cal Henderson. B3ta's main feature is a newsletter featuring ...

username Mutated Monty, and Mouldy in the

Doom Doom is another name for damnation. Doom may also refer to: People * Doom (professional wrestling), the tag team of Ron Simmons and Butch Reed * Daniel Doom (1934–2020), Belgian cyclist * Debbie Doom (born 1963), American softball pitche ...

community, is an English freelance animator, artist, composer, and author from

Brighton Brighton ( ) is a seaside resort in the city status in the United Kingdom, city of Brighton and Hove, East Sussex, England, south of London. Archaeological evidence of settlement in the area dates back to the Bronze Age Britain, Bronze Age, R ...

. He is known for his surreal and bizarre short web animations with the frequent use of the

Droste effect The Droste effect (), known in art as an example of ''mise en abyme'', is the effect of a picture recursion, recursively appearing within itself, in a place where a similar picture would realistically be expected to appear. This produces a loo ...

Animations

Cyriak has been a regular contributor to the British website

since 2004. His YouTube channel was launched in March 2006. Cyriak's YouTube account features a compilation of his animations, which have been popular throughout the

blogosphere The blogosphere is made up of all blogs and their interconnections. The term implies that blogs exist together as a connected community (or as a collection of connected communities) or as a social networking service in which everyday authors can pu ...

and noted by ''

Wired Wired may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Music * ''Wired'' (Jeff Beck album), 1976 * ''Wired'' (Hugh Cornwell album), 1993 * ''Wired'' (Mallory Knox album), 2017 * "Wired", a song by Prism from their album '' Beat Street'' * "Wired ...

's'' Eliot Van Buskirk. Most of his videos are made with

Adobe After Effects Adobe After Effects is a digital visual effects, motion graphics, and compositing application developed by Adobe Inc.; it is used for animation and in the post-production process of film making, video games and television production. Amo ...

and

FL Studio FL Studio (known as FruityLoops before 2003) is a digital audio workstation (DAW) developed by the Belgian company Image-Line. It features a graphical user interface with a pattern-based music sequencer. It is available in four different ...

. Cyriak's animation "MOO" has featured on the front page of ''Wired''. His 2009 video "poo pants" features an animated sample of broadcaster

Alan Titchmarsh Alan Fred Titchmarsh (born 2 May 1949) is an English gardener, broadcaster and writer. After working as a professional gardener and a horticultural journalist, he became a radio and television presenter and a novelist. Early career Alan Fred T ...

singing a repeated refrain (a pitch-shifted excerpt from children's music artist Ann Austin's "The Poo Song") from the bowls of a series of toilets, some of which fly through space. As a freelance animator, he has been commissioned by the video sharing website

Sumo TV Sumo TV was a free-to-air television channel owned by Cellcast Group. On 1 July 2006, You TV was relabelled as Sumo TV. Sumo TV was officially launched on 28 November 2006, claiming to be the world's first user-content TV channel. Through the ...

, and a music video for

Grand Popo Football Club Grand Popo Football Club was a French electronic music group of DJ Ariel Wizman and classically trained musician Nicolas Errèra. The duo adopted their moniker after Ariel Wizman visited Grand-Popo in Benin to film a television programme and deci ...

, among others. Cyriak made the "Spaceology" animation in the third episode of the fourth season of the TV series ''

The IT Crowd ''The IT Crowd'' is a British television sitcom originally broadcast by Channel 4, created, written, and directed by Graham Linehan, produced by Ash Atalla and starring Chris O'Dowd, Richard Ayoade, Katherine Parkinson, and Matt Berry. Set in th ...

'' and the "Goth to Boss" animation in the sixth episode. In 2015 he created the opening credits for the

Netflix Netflix is an American subscription video on-demand over-the-top streaming service. The service primarily distributes original and acquired films and television shows from various genres, and it is available internationally in multiple lang ...

series ''

W/ Bob & David ''W/ Bob & David'' is an American sketch comedy television series created by and starring Bob Odenkirk and David Cross that premiered on Netflix on November 13, 2015. The sketch show consists of four half-hour episodes plus an hour-long making- ...

''. Cyriak has directed a number of music videos, including videos for

Bonobo The bonobo (; ''Pan paniscus''), also historically called the pygmy chimpanzee (less often the dwarf chimpanzee or gracile chimpanzee), is an endangered great ape and one of the two species making up the genus ''Pan (genus), Pan'' (the other bei ...

's "Cirrus" and

Bloc Party Bloc Party are an English Rock music, rock band that was formed in London, England, London in 1999 by co-founders Kele Okereke (lead vocals, rhythm guitar, piano, sampler) and Russell Lissack (lead guitar). Their first four albums all featur ...

's "Ratchet" in 2013,

Flying Lotus Steven Ellison (born October 7, 1983), better known as Flying Lotus or sometimes FlyLo, is an American record producer, DJ, filmmaker, and rapper. He has released seven critically acclaimed albums: ''1983'' (2006), ''Los Angeles'' (2008), '' Co ...

's "Putty Boy Strut" in 2014,

Run the Jewels Run the Jewels, also known by the initials RTJ, is an American hip-hop Supergroup (music), superduo, composed of Brooklyn-based rapper and producer El-P and Atlanta-based rapper Killer Mike. They released their critically acclaimed Run the Jewe ...

’s "Meowpurrdy" in 2016, and Sparks' "The Existential Threat" in 2020. His videos "Baaa" and "meow mix" have amassed more than 100 million views. Other popular uploads on his channel include "Welcome to Kitty City," "Cycles," and "7 billion."

Music and other activities

Long before Harris started creating animations, he composed a considerable amount of surreal music. On 19 August 2008, Harris uploaded a music video of the song "My Territory" by

. It features a landscape that has been made entirely out of a woman's body, and is a metaphor for consumerism and the treatment of the female body. On 9 September 2009, British illusionist

Derren Brown Derren Brown (born 27 February 1971) is an English mentalist, illusionist, and writer. He is a self-described "psychological illusionist" whose acts are often designed to expose the methods of those who claim to possess supernatural powers, ...

, live on UK television, claimed to predict the National Lottery numbers. Cyriak uploaded a possible explanation, to his YouTube channel, which gained half a million views within a week and attention from national press. In September 2010 he appeared at "Flash on the Beach" in Brighton and in September 2014 appeared at "Reasons to be Creative", also in Brighton. In December 2013, he released the mod "Going Down" for the 1994

first-person shooter A first-person shooter (FPS) is a video game genre, video game centered on gun fighting and other weapon-based combat seen from a First person (video games), first-person perspective, with the player experiencing the action directly through t ...

Doom II ''Doom II'', also known as ''Doom II: Hell on Earth'', is a 1994 first-person shooter game developed and published by id Software for MS-DOS. It was also released on Mac OS the following year. Unlike the original '' Doom'', which was initi ...

.'' In March 2018, he started working on a partly

crowd-funded Crowdfunding is the practice of funding a project or venture by raising money from a large number of people, typically via the internet. Crowdfunding is a form of crowdsourcing and Alternative Finance, alternative finance, to fund projects "withou ...

book ''Horse Destroys the Universe''. The book was published in September 2019. It is about scientists who experiment on a horse named Buttercup until they are given superhuman intelligence, until they eventually become an omnipotent being and destroy the universe. On 8 February 2020, Cyriak showcased his music for the first time, as he performed as a

disc jockey A disc jockey, more commonly abbreviated as DJ, is a person who plays recorded music for an audience. Types of DJs include Radio personality, radio DJs (who host programs on music radio stations), club DJs (who work at nightclubs or music fes ...

at the Zanzibar Club in

Liverpool Liverpool is a port City status in the United Kingdom, city and metropolitan borough in Merseyside, England. It is situated on the eastern side of the River Mersey, Mersey Estuary, near the Irish Sea, north-west of London. With a population ...

. In August 2022, he released another ''

'' mod titled "Overboard".

Awards and recognition

On 3 December 2009, Cyriak was announced as the winner of the 2009 E Stings competition, run by television channel E4, with £5,000 for his video ''Recursive Culture''. In 2006 he also received a special mention in the results of a

Photoshop contest A Photoshop contest, or sometimes Photoshop battle (often abbreviated to PS Battle), is an online game, in which a website or user of an Internet forum will post a starting image — usually a photograph — and ask others to manipulate the image ...

run by the technology series '' Click''. In 2012 and 2014 he was awarded with two

Cacowards The Cacowards are an annual online awards ceremony which honors the year's most prominent " ''Doom'' WADs", video game modifications of the 1993 first-person shooter ''Doom''. Such modifications may be single levels, level packs, or " total conv ...

, an annual online awards ceremony which honours the year's most prominent modifications of ''

'', being recognized for his outstanding level design and sophisticated technical approach to achieving complex sequences and impressive comedic timing. In 2022 he was awarded with another Cacoward for his mod "Overboard", which was praised for its silliness and fast-paced gameplay.

McDonald's advertisement feud

In 2016, Cyriak accused fast food chain

McDonald's McDonald's Corporation, doing business as McDonald's, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational fast food chain store, chain. As of 2024, it is the second largest by number of locations in the world, behind only the Chinese ch ...

of plagiarizing his animated video "cows & cows & cows". The studio that animated the advertisement,

Buenos Aires Buenos Aires, controlled by the government of the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires, is the Capital city, capital and largest city of Argentina. It is located on the southwest of the Río de la Plata. Buenos Aires is classified as an Alpha− glob ...

-based Juan Solo, openly admitted that they used Cyriak's work as "reference". After Cyriak's tweets about the theft went viral, the advert was pulled. The original video, featuring dancing cows, had received more than 67 million views.

Filmography

References

External links

Cyriak's website
* * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Cyriak 1974 births English animators YouTube animators Living people Psychedelic artists British surrealist artists Musicians from Brighton Surreal comedy YouTube channels launched in 2006 YouTubers from Brighton and Hove