[Black Mirror] Metalhead – DNegTV & VES awards!

Hello! It’s been a while.

Just a quick update – I was very fortunate to be leading the amazing animation crew at DNegTV on the Black Mirror episode ‘Metalhead’ last year.

The whole department did an incredible job bringing the killer dog-robot to life, I’d go as far to say that it’s been the most incredible project to be a part of in my whole animation career so far. To add to the epic-ness of the whole experience, back in January, word came through that the animation on the robot was nominated for a VES award for ‘Outstanding Animated Character in an Episode or Real-Time Project’ – we couldn’t be happier – what an incredible honour!

Stafford Lawrence, Steve Godfrey, me & Andrew Robertson

Myself, Stafford Lawrence, Steve Godfrey & Andrew Robertson were all invited to beautiful sunny L.A. to attend the awards – so we did just that :D Unfortunately, we didn’t win on the big day – but we all had an incredible time all the same.

One of my BM shots

As you can see, I’ve been neglecting this blog for quite a while – the site got hacked a while back, but a big thanks for my brother Celfyn (diolch!) for bringing everything back – I plan on updating this a whole lot more, with mostly animation tips/notes, and some more photography.

Cyfweliad / Interview

Ddaru’r rhaglen ‘cylchgrawn’ sy’n cael i’w ddarlledu at S4C; Y Lle ddod draw i Double Negative i siarad gyda fi am yr holl bethau dani wedi bod yn gweithio ar, yn cynnwys fy ngwaith i DNegTV, be yn union dwi’n ‘i neud fel animeiddiwr bob dydd, ag am ychydig o daith o amgylch yr adeilad hynod wych sy gynom ni yn Double Negative.

Dyma’r tro cyntaf imi neud ffasiwn beth – ond roedd hi’n rili cŵl. Ddaru ‘Y Lle’ neud joban go wych yn editio o gwmpas fi’n ffafflo – a dwi’n meddwl ddoth o allan fel darn bach difyr iawn! Diolch Y Lle!

For those who wants to see me give a tour of Double Negative, and speak Welsh – the show ‘Y Lle’ has gone ahead and uploaded my interview/tour to Youtube! I talk about what we do at Double Negative, and what I personally do at DNegTV, especially on the show I helped to animate; ‘Fungus the Bogeyman’, and ‘Braindead’.

“Do you floss?”

Here’s a short personal project I’ve been working on. It’s a short dialogue piece I animated using Long Winter Studios’ excellent ‘Tom‘ character.

I had a great time animating this one, and had some great help from my old colleagues (thanks Mariano!) as I progressed through it.

Huge thanks goes to Oasim Karmieh for whacking together a nice shader and light setup for me to render with Viewport 2.0.

Sketchbook!

Just a quick post to say that I’ve created a new page for my ‘Sketchbook‘. Over the Winter months, a few of us from work headed every Thursday to the Trinity Arts life drawing classes, which I really loved, I haven’t actually sat down in a life drawing class since my collage days, so it was a fantastic break to the week attending these classes.

As the Summer months are upon us, classes have stopped, and in order to keep up with my drawing, I’ve come across two great life-drawing websites (Quickposes &  Figure a Gesture Drawing) which I set to anywhere from 30 seconds to 2mins, and draw away. I’m very new to drawing on a Wacom, but it’s great! I’ll be updating my Sketchbook page hopefully every week with a new page or so.

30 mins for all 4
30 mins for all 4

I’ll also upload a selection of pages from my actual sketchbook that I took with me to the life drawing classes.

Froot Fly – ‘Merry Christmas’

After three weeks of intense late nights, we managed to roll out the first episode of Froot Fly – ‘Merry Christmas’, just in time for Christmas. Here she is:

[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/82649280[/vimeo]

I animated the last three shots, from around the 0:40 second mark to the end, and also arranged the Layout for the whole short. It was Directed by Matt Bugeja, and information on the rest of the crew can be found over at Froot Fly’s Crew Page. Fantastic team, one I can’t wait to work with again.

Huge thanks goes to Oasim Karmieh, as the poor guy was left texturing, lighting and rendering right up to Christmas Eve on the short, but he did a fantastic job as I love how everything came togethe. Such a great project to work on, and stay tuned for more episodes in the very near future – I’m going to be Directing the second short, which sould be out in the coming weeks.

Froot Fly Shorts

After years of talking about it, I’m finally teaming up with a few of my friends (who are also my epic co-workers here in Dublin) to work on our own animated project after-hours in work. They are: Matt Bugeja, Glen Southern, Oasim KarmiehPaddy FinnIbrah ChaffardetLiam Neville  and Cormac Phelan.

It’s going to be a series of short-shorts about a fly and his pal. We’re currently working on the Christmas episode which is due to be released in a few weeks, but in the meantime we’re trying to get a following by setting up the website and a facebook page etc.

We’ll be releasing a ton of ‘behind-the-scenes’ type material over the coming weeks, and some insight into our studio over here, how we work – from starting with a cube to the final model, to the texturing, rigging, animation and composting stages, together with a few competitions to win some of the artwork etc.

I created the ‘teaser poster’ for the shorts that we’re currently using to promote it. Introducing: ‘Froot Fly’:

Froot Fly Shorts
Froot Fly Shorts

Our website is over at FrootFlyShorts.com where we have a wallpaper of the above image, and also a Facebook page: Froot Fly shorts – Facebook page where we’ll be announcing the competitions and posting daily about our progress on the shorts.

We’d love to hear your thoughts, and we look forward to be sharing the adventures with you.
Cheers!

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]

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