In collaboration with Michael Holt Communication + Design we produced the CGI elements for an advert for Büroextrem Austria. It was a construction style animation with the building and contents flying in and popping out of the ground, something we have looked at before but it was an excellent opportunity to use this style in a live project.

We are not entirely sure what they're saying as, to be honest, our office German / Austrian knowledge has slipped a bit over the years but we think it looks good, and that's what counts surely?...!

You can view the animation below:

Klimax Haus from Lee David on Vimeo.

The Royal Society of Architects in Wales (RSAW) revealed the 2010 shortlist for their top award in Wales this month.

A link to a Wales Online article on the nominations can be found here.

It was great to see so many local projects nominated, particularly Hyde + Hyde Architects for Pennard House and Idle Rocks and Loyn & Co for the Margam Discovery Centre, good luck to all those involved!

 [FIRST LOOK] FAT has submitted plans for a new BBC drama centre at Cardiff Bay, which could proceed on site within months if given the go-ahead by planners

The proposed television production centre will be the first part of a new digital media hub, masterplanned by DEGW, at the 27-acre Roath Basin site, owned by the Welsh Assembly Government. Holder Mathias is also understood to be working on the waterside development.

The 300m-long facade features a decorative precast element of Gothic and space-age quality; a wave motif referring to water, hills and coal; and openings that reference dockside industry, BBC hospital dramaCasualty and the architecture of William Burges – according to the developer Igloo Regeneration. The wider scheme also includes a new ‘winged’ bridge by Studio Bednarski.

Menna Richards, director of BBC Cymru Wales, said: ‘This is a fantastic opportunity to build on the success of BBC Wales drama production and the wider creative industries in Wales.’

She added: ‘We look forward to welcoming the cast and crew of the enormously successful Casualty to this new centre of excellence to work side-by-side with the other award-winning dramas which are already made in Wales’.

The drama centre will allow the BBC to double its television production in Wales by 2016.

Casualty will begin production at Roath Basin in summer 2011.

We've recently finished a presentation of a large mixed use development  to show potential clients the proposed use and location of the site to Cardiff City centre.

This particular sequence was constructed using SynthEyes for camera tracking into helicopter filmed HD footage, then textured, lit and rendered using VRAYforC4D.

The 2 sequences can be found in the Projects/Recent Projects page (the 2 animation icons on the lower right hand side of the page) .

The project was output to HD, dvd, web and mobile media (ie, iPhone format).  A high-res MP4  version (59 MB zipped) can be downloaded from here.

Our new website is now up and running!  

Full of imagery, animation and general archi-viz content, the site will hopefully evolve into an invaluable resource depot for all budding vizualisation artists out there - from nubies to seasoned pros alike. It's great to share some of the exciting projects that we have worked on over the past few months and also get some of our animation work out there for people to see.

We have also formalised our tutorials section so people can register and download some of the useful FREE content that we have uploaded as well as catch up with what we are up to via our blog. The blog will be a mixture of news, stuff we like, things that might be useful and anything that falls in between!

Check back when you have the time and please feel free to contact us if you have any queries, suggestion or just ideas you might feel like sharing!

The Buzzbox Team

We have a selection of our SketchUp models available for download free on the Google 3D Warehouse.

The models can be found here.

We are continually creating new and diverse models so check back to see what has been added.

The inaugural Buzzbox Conker Championships took place last week.

Lee provided the conkers 36 hours prior to the battle. Steve decided that conkers was really not his bag while Will decided, after some google based research, to bake the conker at low heat and then soak it in vinegar for 24 hours. Lee left his conker well alone, instead relying on his choice of smaller nut to lead him to victory.

High noon came on that fateful friday and two colleagues stepped into the dusty length of office space adjacent to the magic whiteboard.

Battle commenced but it was truly one sided. Will managed one strike from approximately 18 attempts while Lee slowly opened up the cracks on his opponents far larger conker. With strike 19 the pressure was too much and Will's Goliath to Lee's David was split clean in two.

Congratulations go to Lee David, Buzzbox Conker Champion, 2009.

In partnership with Feast Creative Ltd. Buzzbox were commissioned to produce an image to promote ICExperience at Wembley Stadium, an ice skating rink at pitch level that will open this winter in the capital.

Feast Creative Ltd. wanted a dramatic image to include as part of the ICExperience press release and we put together an exciting evening shot within an extremely tight time constraint.

The subsequent image and press release appeared in theEvening Standard, Time Out magazine, The Daily Mail and other publications across the capital. 

In an ongoing battle against deadlines and various projects we have been piecing together the bare bones of a showreel to wow people into procuring our services.

As a disclaimer if it fails to impress you it is far from finished or complete and if it does bowl you over with its amazingness imagine what it will be like when its finished!

Buzzbox Architectural animation from Lee David on Vimeo.