David Delany

House Share poster

2012-02-10T18:07:00.000Z

I put this together last night to try and find some awesome housemates for a new place in Dublin. I'd be surprised if it hasn't been done before, but I couldn't find anything on google.

'Animation for Beginners' Evening Classes

2012-02-01T00:17:00.000Z

Animation Classes Dublin has launched it's first course: Animation for Beginners. I will be
leading this module which is designed the teach the fundamental principles of animation to those with drawing skills and an interest in animation. Read more about it here.

WIP: Screw the Pooch

2011-12-07T02:21:00.001Z

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

WIP: Greetings

2011-12-07T01:51:00.001Z

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

2011-11-17T21:47:00.002Z

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

2011-11-17T21:43:00.003Z

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

2011-06-17T10:12:00.000+01:00

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

2011-06-14T11:45:00.000+01:00

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

2011-06-10T17:15:00.003+01:00

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

So I had a little spare time at lunch, made a funny...

Barry's Ices Online Launch Coming Soon...

2011-05-20T15:18:00.001+01:00

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

2011-05-13T18:48:00.000+01:00

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

BROTHER!

2011-05-13T18:32:00.000+01:00

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

After Shinkawa

2011-05-13T18:27:00.000+01:00

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

WIP: Portrait 2

2011-05-13T18:25:00.000+01:00

Detail added to the buttons and rope.

Camo Man

2011-05-11T17:19:00.000+01:00

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

WIP: Portrait 2

2011-05-03T18:35:00.000+01:00

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

WIP: Portrait 2

2011-05-02T15:33:00.000+01:00

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

2011-04-29T10:48:00.000+01:00

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

2011-03-22T13:31:00.001Z

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

2011-02-23T22:41:00.003Z

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.

“Steeped in tradition, the Festival has always accompanied, or even anticipated, new trends in creation and broadcasting. Encouraging creation on the Web with this competition is consistent with our original mission to bring together talents beyond all borders” said Tiziana Loschi, CITIA Managing Director.

“Building on the success of the first Annecy/YouTube competition, we wanted to once again offer animation creators a place of expression to unleash their talent and creativity” said Anthony Zameczkowski, Director of partnerships YouTube France. “We are convinced that animation needs to be supported and encouraged on the Internet and this competition is a unique opportunity for artists to show off their work to the general public as well as professionals.”

Participants should submit an animated short film on video of a running time of no longer than five minutes, taking into account the specific theme: “Animation, land of freedom”. This original creation must make a reference to and contain the key words “International Animation Film Festival” and “Annecy 2011”.

The short film is to be put online on the YouTube channel of the Annecy Festival from 7th February to midnight 1st May 2011 to the following address:

www.youtube.com/annecyfestival

The winner will receive prizes including a Cristal trophy, a diploma and a week at the Annecy Festival from 6th to 11th June 2011 where the flm will be screened.

Event partner, Autodesk, leading publisher of design, engineering and entertainment software, will also be offering licences to 3 prizewinning shorts.
Annecy 2011 is particularly focusing its programme on the USA and a reference to this country can also be included in the film.

Barry's Ices Wins First Award

2011-02-22T17:37:00.001Z

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

2011-02-15T19:49:00.000Z

More WIP

WIP: Portrait 2

2011-02-15T17:00:00.000Z

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

Barry Tours the World

2011-02-14T15:22:00.000Z

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

2011-02-13T14:45:00.000Z

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

WIP: Portrait

2011-02-11T01:01:00.000Z

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

2011-02-10T19:31:00.000Z

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

2011-02-10T19:28:00.000Z

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

2011-02-10T11:53:00.000Z

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

2011-01-19T22:04:00.000Z

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.

Barry's Ices - Character Design

2009-12-30T21:09:00.001Z

This one has no place within the film, but I did it cos I'm a rebel and all that, and I like war. Hypothetically that is. Oh and its great for fleshing out the character and creating a back story yadda yadda.

Barry's Ices - Storyboards I

2009-12-30T21:06:00.001Z

So here is my first post of stuff from the present day - I would love to say that I will be posting 27 content-rich posts every month, but that won't be happening. This is work that I did for Barry's Ices, an amazing short film that I'm working on which you will shortly be seeing on every '1000 things to do before you die' list compiled between here and Patagonia for the next millenia.

First up: some storyboard panels done with felt tips and that.

This one has had the contrast played with on photoshop, hence it being darker than the other one.

The credit for this composition should go to JD (who will get a link once I find out what his blog address is), but I did the pretty picture so there.

Retroactive - Foundation Grad Film: PreProduction IV

2009-12-30T00:04:00.000Z

Here is the storyboard for the middle part of the film. The beginning was going to be his introduction and why he decided to come to Earth, the end is what later became the Grad Film.

Retroactive - Foundation Grad Film: PreProduction III

2009-12-29T23:51:00.001Z

Here is a background I was experimenting with, the idea was that the city would look inviting and clean during the day but seedy and crappy during the night.

Retroactive - Foundation Grad Film: PreProduction II

2009-12-29T23:45:00.000Z

Moar

Retroactive - Foundation Grad Film: PreProduction I

2009-12-29T23:37:00.000Z

Here are some of the original storyboards and concepts for my foundation grad film Spaceman.

Retroactive - Foundation Grad Film

2009-12-29T20:41:00.000Z

Here for the first time since 2006 is my graduation animation from Bournville Centre for the Visual Arts.

The film is about 1:00 without credits and titles, and the production itself took 3 intensive weeks. The pre-production was much slower, as the original project was intended to be much longer, but as I realised that it would be impossible to do everything I wanted with the time that I had, I cut the story down a lot and ended up with this.

At the end credits it thanks some people, they really saved my ass when it came to the deadline as I was trying to display the animation on a monitor set 3' back inside a wooden box which was about 7' h, 2' w, 5' d. They helped me put this together at the 11th hour and I should thank them again.

I will be posting the original concept art and storyboard to give you an idea of what it was supposed to be like.

Retroactive - Animation Exercise I

2009-12-29T20:31:00.000Z

Here is an animation exercise from the spring/summer assessment 2009, apologies for the playback speed as youtube is playing a 25fps clip at 30fps. I will try to fix this later

Retroactive - Foundation stuff I

2009-12-26T19:48:00.000Z

I did my foundation at Bournville Centre for the Visual Arts, which is located in Bourneville, a suburb of Birmingham, but more significantly, the model village designed by the Cadbury family to house their workers. The BCVA is situated right next to the chocolate factory, and as you can imagine, the campus smells lovely.

Anyways, I specialised in Visual Communication, more specifically, animation. I had messed around in flash before, doing kung-fu stick figures and the like, I even tried a short film with the worst character in the world - Mr Face Man, which was basically a floating yellow emoticon. If I can find them ill post them, cos I'm sure they're good for a laugh, although I shouldn't be too hard on myself - if I hadn't experimented with those, then I would never have gotten to where I am today and would probably be studying fine art instead. That was a near miss...

I have always like animation, but I never really connected with it until I came across flash animation. My previous flip-book attempts were frustrating and I never had the patience or the motivation to plan and finish them properly. When my dad brought home a copy of Macromedia Flash MX 2004, I had access to a program that allowed me to do complex animation with comparative ease. As a result, I started to experiment with the stick figures and blobs and all that stuff, but eventually I wanted to try something with a narrative. I searched the web for good examples of flash animation, and for me, the stuff at Newgrounds was entertaining, but I couldn't see anything that compared with the atmospheres and plausible worlds of David Firth's Salad Fingers and Adam Phillips' Bitey of Brackenwood. I liked the pacing of Bitey and the creepy atmosphere of Salad Fingers, and so I set about trying to emulate them.

This first example was to see if it was possible to do shadow layers.

It was a nice clip, but it took a lot of work to do this level of detail, so I kept the shadows and the sepia look and went for something a bit rougher.

The result was this next animation called solar flare. I was listening to a lot of Boards of Canada at the time, particularly this song, and so the result was intended to be a little creepy (hence the cutaways to teeth).

The next one was to try and refine the style a bit more.

I have the storyboard for whole animation as it should be, I'll be able to post that as soon as I scan it in.

The next one was just a bit of fun, a response to an animation my friend did of his character acting bad-ass with some guns, so I thought I'd do this. Again, I'm afraid that it's unfinished, but as it wasn't storyboarded I don't really see it going anywhere else at the moment.

I did however do a more detailed character design in my first year, I think he is called Krunk, but thats probably a shit name.

Retroactive - Naked People VI

2009-12-26T19:39:00.001Z

More stuff from the spring/summer assessment 2009

Retroactive - Naked People V

2009-12-26T19:32:00.000Z

This is a selection of life drawing which I handed in for my assessment in spring/summer 2009.

Retroactive - The Long Way

2009-12-26T19:19:00.000Z

The Long Way is the working title for a short film that I pitched in summer 2009. The film is based on the journals of a life-long sailor and circumnavigator. I would love to be able to tell you more about it, but I'm a little nervous of the idea being stolen. I have an animatic and some basic character designs, at the moment the running time is 2:30. I will probably set up a password protected blog just for the film. In the meantime, here is a teaser poster.

Retroactive - Sol Animation I

2009-12-25T15:57:00.000Z

Here are some rough animation clips from Sol which I handed in for the Spring 2009 assessment, the work I did after this wasn't marked, unfortunately, but I've still got it somewhere I think...

For ease and enjoyment, please loop the animation video files, as they are very short.

Retroactive - Sol Environment Concepts

2009-12-25T15:48:00.000Z

Here are some environment concepts for Sol, the oil paint nebula was used in the film after it was digitally touched-up by Harry.

Retroactive - Sol Storyboards

2009-12-25T15:30:00.000Z

I did a bit of storyboarding for Sol, specifically the sequence with Phaeton's father, Helios. In this sequence, which is near the begining of the film, Phaeton pleads with his father to take the Mondeo out for a spin, but Helios tells him he can't cos he hasn't got insurance, so later that night, Phaeton nicks the keys and takes the car for a midnight spin, only to crash it into a ditch.
At least that's about the gist of it.

Retroactive - Sol Character Design III

2009-12-25T00:15:00.001Z

And some photoshopp'ed ones. The fire effect on the fourth one was nice I thought, but too much to animate unfortunately.

Retroactive - Sol Character Design II

2009-12-25T00:10:00.000Z

Moar Horses!

Retroactive - Sol Character Design I

2009-12-24T23:49:00.000Z

In my second year 10/2008 to 06/2009, I worked as an animator on a graduation film directed by Harry Wormwald. The film is finished now, but as the university still holds the copyright for it, I can't link it here, but I will do in two years when it expires (I think). I did some character design and animation for the film, but my main role was to design and animate the horses (or rather one horse then draw it twice), which I did.

The brief was to design the horse of Helios/Apollo/Sol, and therefore had to be the meanest, most badass sonofabitch of a steed that could totally wipe the floor with those horses the ring-wraiths had. So I did what any character designer would do and turned to my little pony. The one in the field next to uni that is. What did you think I meant?

Retroactive - Maya lip-synch I

2009-12-24T23:02:00.000Z

This is a lip-synch exercise for my Winter assessment 2008, I couldn't tell you what film the audio is from, but the aurally astute among will may recognise Joe Mantega aka Fat Tony. The clip was provided by 11 second club a monthly lip-synching competition website well worth checking out. I did not enter this in the competition unfortunately but will do at some point this year. I know the body is a bit static, but I was working to a deadline so cut me some slack.

Oh yes, and I should make it clear to those of you who don't recognise the character rig, it is Max for Maya and was modelled and rigged by some other guy

Retroactive - Wall Art

2009-12-24T22:52:00.000Z

These two I did on the wall of my old house in the first year, I was sad to paint over them, but I needed the deposit. As it turned out though, I painted over them with gloss paint, and so had to
sand them down and then coat all four whole walls with emulsion. That was balls.

Oh and the first one is not a reference to the twin towers, unless you think that's particularly brilliant. Shiny things go to whoever can spot which feature-length anime the robot appears in.

Retroactive - Naked People IV

2009-12-24T22:47:00.000Z

More prints which I don't know the name for, and some kind of pencil drawing that was in the same folder.

Retroactive - Naked People III

2009-12-24T22:37:00.000Z

Here are some more life drawings from Autumn/Winter 2008, these are (insert word for 'putting some paper on top of an inked acetate sheet and drawing on the back' prints) some of which I was quite pleased with.

Retroactive - Naked People II

2009-12-24T21:04:00.000Z

More of the same. I'm putting some shit ones up, which I may take down at a later stage, but they are intended to make my recent work look better, yeah?

Retroactive - Naked People I

2009-12-24T20:49:00.000Z

This is a collection of some of my second year life drawing stuff, I believe it is also from Autumn/Spring 2008. Apologies if all the stuff from 2008 is a bit dark, I was using a camera to digitise them cos I was too lazy to scan each one twice and stitch them together on Photoshop. Incidentally, there is a great free program you can use to do just that, it is called Microsoft ICE, cool name eh? Sometimes I think companies make up an acronym and then find a product name that fits it, although some companies miss the point entirely.

Retroactive - Still Life I

2009-12-24T12:39:00.000Z

This is from Autumn 2008, it took about 4 hours, in the morning before the deadline. The thing in the bottom left is an 8-ball ashtray which I'm sure I filled in that night... ouch.

Retroactive - Photoshop goodness II

2009-12-23T15:12:00.001Z

This one I did in september 2008, it was intended as a lighting exercise. The mirrorball effect was acheived using the sharpen tool on CS3.

Photoshop goodness

2009-12-23T14:43:00.002Z

Here is a thing I did in June 2008, the end of my first year. Never in all my years did I think I would be able to get marks toward a degree by handing in pictures of men with guns. Who'd have thunk it? Check out the original pencil sketch after the jump.