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Hello.  

If you have found this, I don't really use it anymore.

Find new things at:  - rorywt.com

Ta

colour test

telemiscommunications

1:54

bam

pieces and bits and bits and pieces

I try to post on here every now and then to remind myself that I am doing things.

Here are some doodles I gone and did at work and tarted up with colour. The work I like most is always done on crappy lined paper for some reason.

Also, merfolk got in to BeThere Corfu Animation Festival. Very exciting.

Also I am working on an other thing. But I'll show you that when it's done. OK.

x

new news

Oh hey

As I mentioned before I spent christmas working on the Deadmau5/Imogen Heap video. Above is an image from my bit which I finished last week, kind of experimenting with shaders and such. The other people working on it are amazing, and I'm chuffed to be a part of such an interesting project. It should be out fairly soon, I'm not too sure when exactly but its all quite exciting.

Also I've just started a cool job at Hasbro, doing flash visualisation stuff, designing animation and interactive elements for some established brands. Its research and design concept work so I can't share too much as its secret in development bits and bobs ooooh la la but its great fun.

Merfolk has been selected for a couple more screenings. It'll be shown at Animated Exeter next month, and also One World Human Rights Film Festival in Prague. 

I'm also working on a short film in my spare time, going to start recording dialogue soon. The narrative allows it to be released in episodes, and then probably compiled into one short when its done.

Noice.

I'll try to draw and post more x

HeapMau5

WIP 3D head after using 'scrumple' script

The next few weeks I'm going to be working on a section of the new Deadmau5 and Imogen Heap video for Telemiscommunications.  The video is going to be comprised of 20 sections by different animators, and I was chosen to contribute, which is awesome. This is a great oppurtunity and I'm really excited to be apart of such a big project. It will be cool to see how the whole thing is going to fit together.

I've started work on a some concepts.  I want to go in quite an experimental direction with it, similar-ish to my uni innovations project.  I want the movement to feel almost stop-motion like, animated at 12fps and not smooth and finessed.  This fits the brief for the project of a lonely businessman in an airport.  I have also written a python script that adds imperfection to 3D models, giving a kind of 2D hand-drawn feel to the piece (see above image).  It goes through each object selected and offsets each vertex a tiny bit for whatever time frame you choose. Obviously it's only really useful for low-poly models (or Maya will likely crash out), but the animation can be cycled so its not too heavy for non-smoothed meshes. You can do cool things with it, like increasing the offset to create a kind of scrunched up paper look. I am quite happy with the result, and when I pimp it out with nice GUI I'll stick it online to download.

I'll upload more progress as it happens. Peace out.

animation test

gifs

Jolly Garden walk cycle

Colin the Sponge

thangs

updated animation reel

and a gif for good measure:

airport concept

Scribbles

Some scribbles:

Here are some character design for a short 2D film I'm working on. The premise is that one of the characters is trying to get on with his everyday life, but is trapped in a children's television show. More to come!

Here's a few photos from Interfilm Berlin Festival (13th-18th November). I'd never been to Berlin before, it's a beautiful city. 'Merfolk' was played at the opening ceremony, and twice as part of the 'Confrontations' programme. It was a great experience having my work shown on the big screen, amongst such amazing films.

Festivals and Jobbies

I thought I should update on what I've been doing since I got back from my travels (I should probably post more often).

Firstly, my film Merfolk won best animation at Purbeck Film Festival, which is awesome. Unfortunately I didn't get to go, but it seems like a really cool little festival, and I am very grateful! 

It also got accepted in Interfilm Internation Short Film Festival in Berlin. I'm going there tomorrow to see it and plenty of other awesome looking films, so I will keep you posted. It's in competition too so wish me luck!

Also, for two weeks in October/November I was lucky enough to work as a runner on a short stop-motion animation for Sesame Street! It was a Blink production directed by Sumo Science (who did the Nokia ads 'Gulp' and 'Dot') and was great to get experience on a professional stop-motion shoot, having worked primarily, so far, in CG.  I met some awesome people who had worked on Chicken Run, Fantastic Mr. Fox and Frankenweenie and had a sick time.

At the mo I am working on a couple of different projects that I will share soooooon, applying to festivals and continuing my quest for some kind of employment! I'll stick my showreel here for you to have a looksie.


Any way, I've got to pack for Berlin. Cheerio x

hundreds and hundreds of stuff

I haven't done a blog in a bazillion years. I've spent the last 3 months in America. More about that later, but first here's some stuff:

I got a first in my degree what I did! Very happy with that, feels like all the hard work paid off. Woooo Yeahhh etc.

Also I started sending my major project off to some film festivals, and it has been selected to be shown in competition at interfilm Internation Short Film Festival, Berlin. It's from 13th-15th November, so if you're in Deutschland check it out. You can see it here on vimeo or on the NCCA's youtube here.

Any way, as I was saying I spent the summer in the USA. I spent the first two months working as Arts and Crafts Specialist at Camp Seneca Lake, NY.  This was my second year working there and I love it. It's a great environment, the people are amazing and I basically get paid to muck around and make stuff, which is great!

Paper mache snowman

Cartooning

Triptych

Hidden UV paint

I also ran a cartooning hobby group where a bunch of kids would make comics and learn how to animate.  It was really fun, they would each come up with a character that they would design and voice, and then we would all come up with the story. They have some crazy imaginations, and it was pretty impressive what they could produce in such a short space of time (about eight or nine two-hour periods). Check it out:

August 2011




July 2012




August 2012



After camp I went on a road trip from New York to LA which was incredible. Saw amazing cities of New Orleans, Vegas and San Francisco, and natural wonders like Monument Valley, Grand Canyon and Zion NP. It's an incredible country with so many different breath-talking landscapes. I'll post more stuff about it at a later date as I'll probably do some work based on what I saw. So inspiring. I arrived back a couple days ago, and now my priority is getting a showreel put together. I am also starting work on a VFX shot, with some nice matchmoving in there so watch out for that. Sorry this post has been a bit of a shambles but so much stuff going on!

merfolk - done

final major project:

After weeks of slaving away, it is done.  I feel like I have learned a huge deal throughout production, especially being involved in all aspects of the project, from conception right to the end.  After all the modelling, rigging and animating of multiple characters, compositing and background painting and editing, I feel my skills, both technical and creative, have certainly improved.  I am pretty happy with how it turned out, and feel it has definitely given me the confidence to make another (better) film, and keep working on developing narratives and telling stories. 

I would like to thank everyone who helped, gave advice etc. etc. anyways, have a looksie.

enjoy

x

jawlensky

I really need to update this more. Anyway, today I got bored of revision so I rejigged my passport photo to fit the proportions of this Alexej von Jawlensky portrait.  He was a member of the expressionist group der Blaue Reiter with Kandinsky and that lot and probably one of my favourite artists ever.  The colours he uses are amazing

In other news, I have pretty much finished my film and it should be online soon hopefully! Workworkworkworkwrkrwkrworwokrwkw

merfolk WIP

 Not long until deadline now. I have been working flat out on the animation for 'merfolk' recently and should have it all completed by the end of the week, leaving time for compositing and matte painting.

Here's a small example of what to expect:

Our heroes with Colin the sponge

Cheeky bit of police brutality

Satire ohohohoho

Flock The System

Programming assignment complete.

I haven't blogged for a while.  Along with the ongoing major project progress, I have been working on this:

Flocking system for maya, created as a group programming project with Jeremy Booth and Nathan Hayles. The system itself is an openGL application written in C++, using Jon Macey's NGL (NCCA Graphics Library). The maya GUI uses Maya Python API, and launches the executable from within maya to provide an efficient workflow.

My individual responsibilities were the python GUI, the curve/obstacle importers/exporters (file write in/out) allowing for real time updating, goal following (allowing sub-flocks with multiple curves), and some work on the final interface and xml exporter.

The aim was to create a flocking system to be used with maya to provide a fast efficient workflow, allowing lots of user control over the behaviour of the flock, and look of the final piece.  When the python script is run, the user will be asked to create/select a project directory where exported files will be written to and read from, allowing the exporting to work seamlessly in the background as changes are made.  Initial values for number of boids, time taken for flock to follow curves and frame-rate can be set in maya using the GUI.

The user can create curves in maya to be used as paths for the flock to follow.  The flock is split into sub-flocks depending on the number of paths to follow.  These can be edited/created/deleted and updated as the program is still running.  Spheres and cylinders can be created as proxy geometry to act as obstacles that the boids avoid.  There is also a predator mode, that can be toggled on and off, where the flock disperses to avoid a predator that is chasing them.

There are many attributes that can be modified using the GUI such as seperation, cohesion and alignment; max speed, max force, mass and scale of boids/predator; and influences of obstacle avoidance, predator avoidance and goal following.  Boids can be added and deleted on the fly, and there are animation controls to pause and reset positions of flock and goals.  When the flock is behaving as the user wishes, it can be recorded.  This writes out the position and rotation data for each boid each frame as an xml file.

The xml file is then read into maya and the flock is created as locators.  A user defined mesh can be duplicated across the locators using the 'post-flock' section of the GUI.

The video demonstrates a quick example of what it can do.  I will create a more polished example, including renders to show the full potential, but over all I am pretty happy with the outcome.

Innovations - Done

Watch HD fullscreen and tilt your head yo


If you don't wanna fuss about with funky aspect ratios/want to see comp layers. Also you can laugh at how I sound like a drunk toad.