SplineBomb!

Done by Adrian Williams for the first anniversary of Splinebomb
Done by Adrian Williams for the first anniversary of Splinebomb

I’d just like to take a minute to talk about SplineBomb. Splinebomb started exactly a year ago, by ninja animator, and top guy Matt Bugeja – it’s a website that he updates everyday on new and upcoming animation – which is pretty amazing!

The ‘About’ section states that “It ‘s (a site that) provides all the latest information related to the animation industry including movie trailers, tutorials and loads more…”

It was only a few months back, that I had the pleasure of working and sitting next to Matt over in Brown Bag Films, where I learned that it was him that was behind this amazing site. I quickly began sharing some links with him, which, in turn, made Matt make me an Admin for the site, which was a huge privilege  – being able to share animation news on one of the best, and most active industry sites out there.

Since then, the site has grown immensely. We’re super active, posting everything we find relevant, and we meet up online to discuss how we can expand, and enhance SplineBomb.

My current contribution is that every Monday, I write an article on the history of animation, titled ‘Chronicles of Animation‘ – which is something I’m personally really passionate about, as I love going back in time to learn more about things. It’s getting a really positive response over on Facebook and Twitter, which I’m really happy about.

SplineBomb continues to grow, as Matt has recruited some more people to help post, and to write product reviews on the site. If you’d like to get involved, please ‘like’ us on the Facebook  and follow on Twitter: @SplineBomb – we’d love to hear from you folks!

Stay tuned, as we’re just about to announce some epic news really soon.

Huge thanks to Matt for letting me help out with SplineBomb, I’m having a great time with it, and ‘here’s to another great year!’

Available for work

Hello, my contract over at Brown Bag Films is coming to an end – after a fantastic 9 months over in Dublin working on the beautiful looking Peter Rabbit, I’m back looking for work as an animator.

Peter Rabbit
Peter Rabbit

Please feel free to get in touch, as I’d love to hear from you.

A link to my current reel (I’ll be updating it really soon) can be seen below – together with my CV and reel breakdown.

Iestyn Roberts – Animation Demoreel

Thanks for reading, and I hope to hear from you folks soon!

Basketball, ‘AL1VE Magnetics’ commercial

Just before I moved over to Dublin to join Brown Bag, I animated the following basketball sequence for a AL1VE Magnetics commercial:

[vimeo]https://vimeo.com/62734751[/vimeo]

I animated both characters and props, together with some of the layout. The set, characters, lighting, shading and the HUD was done by Oasim Karmieh for pixelophy.com, and I can’t believe how beautiful everything came together, he’s done a fantastic job.

The full commercial can be seen here:

[vimeo]https://vimeo.com/58883454[/vimeo]

Continue reading “Basketball, ‘AL1VE Magnetics’ commercial”

Wyddfa from Elidir Fawr, 24 hours time lapse

I had this great idea of somehow using a webcam that’s beautifully located on top of Elidir Fawr in Snowdonia to create a time lapse video of Snowdon. After trawling through the net, I came across a script that would work – but needed some tweaking, but in the end I managed to create something that would download a .jpg at 2 mins interval, over a 24 hour period from a provided URL (in this case, the Elidir Fawr webcam)

Here’s the first result of the first test:

[youtube width=”640″ height=”360″]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v3yah64nsYA[/youtube]

There’s a few black frames towards midday when the sun was directly shines into the camera (I guess this is what’s causing this to happen?), but I think the test came out really well.

Yesterday, I asked a fellow colleague and super talented Luke Harris if he could think of a super efficient way of creating such a project, and he (within 15 mins!!) wrote a whole new script that does exactly what I want it to do, with all sorts of epic features – so stay tuned, I’m going to be testing his script over the next few days/weeks as I have something really cool in mind with this medium.

 

 

 

Llyn Nantlle, Dyffryn Nantlle, Snowdonia.

Hello, it’s been rather quiet here over the last few months – I’ll post an update fairly soon. I’m still working, and loving it over at Brown Bag Films in Dublin, so I’m extremely busy these days, with very little time to create my own animations – but I did head home to Wales over the weekend to see my family, and to celebrate Christmas.

It was super snowy, sunny and epic – I managed to sneak out for a quick few hours with my camera, so I thought I’d share this shot with the World:

Llyn Nantlle, Gaeaf

Llyn Nantlle, Dyffryn Nantlle, Snowdonia.

Brown Bag Films & the Italian Dolomites

I haven’t been around now for a couple of months but it’s been a really fantastic time, as me and Regi headed down to the beautiful Italian Dolomites for our vacay, but as I’ve just recently re-located to Dublin, Ireland – I haven’t got access to my iMac, and all the 1,300 photos I took from the vacation. For a small teaser, I uploaded this one to Flickr, and thought I’d share it here:

Brenta Group, Italian Dolomites

Also, in some very exciting news, I’ve re-located to the lovely city of Dublin to work for the really fantastic studio, Brown Bag Films. I’m now into my second week, and the vibe within the studio is just perfect, everyone is super friendly, and we’re working on some really great projects. Once I have all my stuff over here, I’ll be sure to post more information about it all soon.

Brown Bag Films

Syr Wynff a Plwmsan, y Cartŵn (the cartoon)

Over the past year I’ve been working on an animated version of my favorite show ‘Syr Wynff a Plwmsan‘, but unfortunately, S4C got in touch with me yesterday saying that they would not commission the show. So now, I feel I can show some of the work, as it’s been hidden away for a good year or so.

Here’s my version of the characters, all rendered out, as a teaser image for the show. I worked closely with both actors to get the characters to feel as close as possible to what they looked like in the 80’s. Plwmsan still needed a few more tweaks to him, but on a whole, it was nice to see them both working well together in 3D space:

Syr Wynff a Plwmsan Teaser poster

Here’s a story board panel, based on a new episode Mici Plwm wrote specially for the animated version I drew in Photoshop, and a screen grab of the kitchen set I was building, based on the original Welsh type kitchen from the TV show:

Storyboard panel
Work in Progress, The Kitchen set

The original episodes started by Syr Wynff greeting the audience in front of their house, and by letting the audience know what brilliant plan they had for the day (usually stuff for making them both rich, which never worked out). In the end, after talking with Mici, we decided against doing this for the animated version, but as a small test, I did build the set, and did a quick animation, just to see if the characters were working ok.

Front of the house, test render

And here’s a quick animation test I did, still in blocking mode, about 40% done (hence the rough-ness of it).

[youtube width=”645″ height=”375″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YvQShQMEI5c&[/youtube]

It’s sad having to give up the project, as I’ve spent a lot of time being immersed into the life of Syr Wynff a Plwmsan, but I’m personally not calling it quits. I will spend some time on it here and there, perhaps create a Youtube channel for quick 30 second shorts or something. We shall see!

All the production so far has been documented over on my Syr Wynff a Plwmsan blog.

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For those interested in learning more about the project, there’s an interview with me about Syr Wynff a Plwmsan, y cartŵn in this weeks ‘Golwg’ magazine.

I’r rhai sydd hefo diddordeb clywed mwy am y project ‘Syr Wynff a Plwmsan, Y Cartŵn, mae yna erthygl amdani yn y cylchgrawn ‘Golwg’ yr wythnos yma:

Erthygl ‘Golwg’ yr wythnos yma