WIP: Screw the Pooch

I wanted to work on capturing expressions, I thought this was a good moment. Prizes to anyone who can guess the film.

WIP: Greetings

I drew this after watching a TED lecture about human interaction with machines which included a couple of interesting facts: In one experiment, people were given either a laptop computer or a simple robot which communicated with them every day over the course of a week using text to speech software. In every instance the participants connected more to the robots than to the laptops, and in some cases when it came time for the researchers to collect the machines, people were so attached to their robots that they came to the cars to say goodbye and had even given them names. People did not miss the laptops.

Updated Showreel

The lastest version of my showreel is up on Vimeo. I will be replacing the work from I'm A Monster with HD footage soon. As always, send any feedback you have to david.j.delany@gmail.com

New Portfolio Site

I've relocated my portfolio to the DAPortfolio site until I have my own domain up and running and can have everything all in one place. It has a variety of work from the last 3-4 years. Feel free to send any feedback you have to david.j.delany@gmail.com

Portrait of a General

The Final version of the portrait of my friend. This is the low-res version believe it or not, the full resolution is 5000 pixels high as it was destined for print. It took about 40+ hours of work and went through a lot of revisions, I hope you like the finished product.

Barry Goes to Zagreb

Barry's Ices has been selected for the 'Films for Children and Youth' competition of  the Supertoon International Animation Festival which takes place from 31 July - 4 August in Zagreb Croatia. I think at this stage Barry has travelled to more countries than me! Congrats again to the crew and staff at AUCB.

The Best Job In the World

There's a rather naughty comic strip below the jump, but you probably wouldn't be interested, it's not your kind of thing...

Barry's Ices Online Launch Coming Soon...

Barry's Ices will be soon be available to watch in full online in shiny HD! Plans are underway to create a special website for the launch which will be backed up by one week of focused online publicity. Will post more news next week.

WIP: Portrait 2

To celebrate a little spike in traffic yesterday here is a 100% zoom detail of the jacket ;)

BROTHER!

Another lunchtime speedpaint (a request from Kayvon Darabi-Fard). This one took about 30 minutes

After Shinkawa

A lunchtime speedpaint In honour of Yoji Shinkawa - about 30 minutes.

WIP: Portrait 2

Detail added to the buttons and rope.

Camo Man

A speedpaint from lunchtime, I'm going to work on light and reflection for a few weeks.

WIP: Portrait 2

More colour work and revised collar - taking a lot of reference from the portrait of The Duke of Wellington

WIP: Portrait 2

I worked on the face paying more attention to the reference instead of working from memory, and also started using the CS5 brushes to add some texture. I'm much happier with this now and will move on to the colour.

WIP: Portrait 2

Posting the latest work in progress for my friend's portrait. I had started in colour already, but I went back and re-worked the grayscale painting and I'm going to start the colour again this weekend. It needs a little more work before then though, I am going to darken the right side of the face a little more and increase the contrast on the right side of the body - also lighten the background to lift the silhouette. Will post more soon.

The Big Gaddafi

I saw on this site that Gaddafi had quoted The Dude in his attempt to disuade the coalition forces from commencing airstrikes, and couldn't resist making this one up.

Annecy/Youtube Competition Open

Annecy International Animation Festival and Youtube have announced they are launching the second edition of their online competition which is open to all. I am a little late hearing the news, but the competition is open for entries on Annecy's Youtube channel until May. It is a good opportunity for animators to get their films seen by a huge audience, and will hopefully act as motivation for some of us to get together and collaborate. Read the press release after the jump.

Barry's Ices Wins First Award

I'm delighted to announce that Barry's Ices has taken home 2nd Prize in the category of Best Student Animation at Animated Exeter Festival!

Congratulations again go to Dan, Ibs, Rachael and Jonathan and the staff at AUCB especially Anne.

WIP: Portrait 2

More WIP

WIP: Portrait 2

Here's the new sketch for the portrait. Looking like a proper Gaddafi

Barry Tours the World

Barry's Ices has been selected for a number of festivals:

Animabasauri-Animabasque Apr 2011, Bilbao, Spain – In consideration for Karratu Short Film
Section
REDCAT International Children's Film Festival Mar-Apr 2011, Los Angeles, USA – In consideration (category TBC)
Stoke Your Fires, Feb-Mar 2011, Stoke, UK – In consideration for Best Student Animation
Animated Exeter, Feb 2011, Exeter, UK – In consideration for Best Student Film
Children's Film Festival Seattle, Jan 2011, Seattle, USA - Screened
Aniwow! International Student Animation Festival, Oct-Nov 2010, Beijing, China – Screened

Well done Dan, Ibs, Rachael and JD and everyone from AUCB who was selected too, fingers crossed!

WIP: Portrait

More WIP with a detail of the head - the hair needs more work, needs to look more greasy. Perhaps a combover.

WIP: Portrait

Ok, so here is another WIP from the portrait, I'm going to try and throw together all kinds of materials and textures in here to give myself a challenge. Here I have used a polished silver breastplate and blocked-out sash, obviously it needs more form, I'm just trying to nail the pallete at the moment. My aim is to really give convincing textures, I really want to nail satin, but I'm not sure I can put that on this kind of character. I think I might take it in another direction and make it more of a faux 19th century portrait.

Also the right upper arm (his right) is too long.

WIP: Portrait

Okay, I'm doing something a little different for the commission, but I'll continue on this as a personal project. Here's a WIP for the face, with a detail from the high-res version below.

WIP: Portrait

This is basically same as the last WIP but with the sketch on top, I don't know how most of you do it, but I often prefer to block it out before sketching. I guess that's kind of backwards. I'm trying to draw the fine line between Fascist and Pirate here, it turns out that line is mostly in the choice of collar and cuffs (no innuendo intended).

WIP: Portrait

This is a work in progress of a portrait I'm doing on commission for a friend. Initially I did a couple of pencil sketches to work out the costume, then did some small thumbnail sketches on photoshop to get the pose and composition and here I went straight into blocking it out in grayscale. The first time I did this I actually started on the background first to get the colour and lighting right, I even spent about an hour doing the flag in the background using a lot of ciaroscuro - but unfortunately I managed to accidentally pull the plug on the mac before saving it. Boo.

As for the proportions it is quite chariacatured (sp?) with big hands and limbs, but I want the lighting and colouring to be fairly realistic. I will talk about the colour and style more in later posts.

FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU

In between drawing and looking for jobs, I downloaded an emulator and have been playing some super mario bros 3. Time to make an old meme.