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:
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.
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).
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!
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:
I have just updated my showreel with some of my shots I did for the ‘You Get Me‘ music video I did over at Arx Anima:
All the information about the reel, and shots can be seen on the Showreel page : Iestyn Roberts – Animation Showreel. I’m currently on the lookout for some animation work, please feel free to get in touch if you require some animators.
I also want to thank my super amazing girlfriend for being so incredible to me whilst I’ve been working on my reel. Diolch cariad.
I had the chance to go back to my Cartoony Baseball Swing, and re-work into it a bit. I’m now much happier with how it’s looking. Here’s the final version all rendered out:
I’m currently in the process of working on my demo reel, everything will be new, a fresh start. Today I played around with the awesome Morpheus rig by Josh Burton, and came up with a nice little scene that I can test the rig out, and possibly animate a quadruped. Here’s a quick screen grab of what it looks like so far:
I’m going for a cartoony animation on this one, very stylised, as you can see from the arms and legs, so I’m pushing the rig as far as I can. I’ll be updating all week! Stay tuned for more folks!
I’ve started a new blog, documenting my progress building, creating, animating, designing – everything imaginable that goes into creating a short animated film, over here;
Please check it out, and feel free to give me some feedback. The film is a story my friend, Gafyn Lloyd a Music Engineer and I came up with about 4 years ago. I’ve decided that I would really love to get this film out there, and so I’m planning on working really hard on this, along with other animation projects to get myself back into the swing on things. I hope you’ll check it out often, as I plan on updating it weekly.
I find this wonderful animation Directed by Tobias Gundorff Boesen highly inspirational.
[vimeo 9335203]
The story is wonderful, with an awesome twist at the ending, with the lovely song ‘Slow Show’ by The National complimenting it quite nicely. There’s an awesome blog, documenting the process, from doing the models to the shooting, and tests on their blog;
