iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Jack Gwilym Roberts @jackgwilym.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

‘The filter of film in this older work, once seen as dirt to clean up, feels a bit more like a layer of paint that was scrubbed away by mistake.’ Lovely piece illustrating what is lost in the rush to digital transfer.

07418

Jack Gwilym Roberts @jackgwilym.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

The editorial ethos of @mothership.blog is so refreshing. Totally reframes games journalism as a humanistic endeavour.

021

Reposted by Jack Gwilym Roberts

Kierán Suckling @kieransuckling.bsky.social · 19/02/2025

Lost words, lost worlds. "Bärenschliffe" means "bear polishes". It's the word for cave rocks smoothed to marble by bears rubbing on or past them over thousands of years. This one from Chauvet-Pont-d'Arc Cave, Southwest France, has a bear drawn on it.

312925

Jack Gwilym Roberts @jackgwilym.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

Look forward to reading more! My route in has been an interest in background design. Your recognition on Substack of the parallels between your own professional struggle and your subject's was touching btw. Beautiful articulation of what I'm guessing is a near universal experience for biographers.

010

Reposted by Jack Gwilym Roberts

Ann Leckie @annleckie.com · 18/08/2026

Suspense is not created by your audience not knowing what happens next. It's created by your audience CARING what happens next.

10559109

Jack Gwilym Roberts @jackgwilym.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

Very cool. As an aside Amid, I managed to obtain a copy of ‘Cartoon Modern’ after much online bartering. It’s such a beautifully designed and insightful book, I’m greatly enjoying…

110

Reposted by Jack Gwilym Roberts

Amid Amidi @amidamidi.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

Some of the incredible background paintings from Ward Kimball’s Magic Highway, USA (1958). Don’t know who painted these but the four credited BG artists are Gordon Legg, Barbara Begg, Irv Wyner and Al Dempster. Has this show ever been restored?

19522

Jack Gwilym Roberts @jackgwilym.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

Appreciate the clarity of @loripuma.bsky.social ‘s visual infographic approach to storytelling theory. Here’s an illustration of John Truby’s ‘Four Corners of Opposition’ model for dynamic character relationships in character-driven plots.

000

Jack Gwilym Roberts @jackgwilym.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

The seductive and illusory appeal of outsourcing…

000

Reposted by Jack Gwilym Roberts

Annalee Newitz @annaleen.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

A perfect conceit for the 20s: the world's biggest bookstore has become a destroyer of books

301941654

Jack Gwilym Roberts @jackgwilym.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

Breakdown of the virtual production techniques used by Dark Slope Studios in the Crave/HBO smash 'Heated Rivalry'. The ability to so convincingly recreate outdoor environments from around the world, without leaving a Canadian soundstage, is a game-changer.

youtu.be

Dark Slope's - Heated Rivalry Breakdown with BTS

YouTube video by Dark Slope

020

Jack Gwilym Roberts @jackgwilym.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

I often think of Daniel and Melinda Coleman, who have brought so much joy to my kids while enduring huge personal suffering. I think it's significant they and Rachel Accurso (Ms Rachel) cite Fred Rogers as their primary creative inspiration. In this era, more than others, the humanity cuts through.

youtu.be

Danny Go! on His Son Isaac, Childhood Cancer and Creating Joy in the Face of Grief

YouTube video by TIME

000

Jack Gwilym Roberts @jackgwilym.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

On books and their authors as 'plankton in the information ecosystem'...

000

Reposted by Jack Gwilym Roberts

Arthur Baron-Clément @arthur.baron-clement.com · 02/05/2026

Bouquets (2025)

Rough landscape digital painting of an old castle overrun by nature. In the foreground a couple of children are holding bouquets.

51772415

Jack Gwilym Roberts @jackgwilym.bsky.social · 10/08/2026

Fab, can’t wait. Couldn’t be more relevant to what I’ll be working on this year…

010

Jack Gwilym Roberts @jackgwilym.bsky.social · 10/08/2026

Super interesting thread about sovereign interest in immersive historical experiences. Eagerly awaiting the book, Adrian! Due next year, right?

120

Jack Gwilym Roberts @jackgwilym.bsky.social · 10/08/2026

Thought-provoking article, as ever, by kid lit phenom Katherine Rundell. The notes of entrenched hostility towards Gen AI are very consistent with my own conversations with friends and contacts in the book publishing world.

000

Jack Gwilym Roberts @jackgwilym.bsky.social · 10/08/2026

'I asked a contact who is the president of a billion-dollar tech enterprise, what would you teach your sons? He said he wouldn’t teach his children to use AI, because it will prepare them for nothing. He would teach them the humanities. Teach them who we are, who we have been, what we can make.'

100

Jack Gwilym Roberts @jackgwilym.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

Interesting evolution. Like Netflix House, but in reverse…

000

Jack Gwilym Roberts @jackgwilym.bsky.social · 04/08/2026

'Facts create norms, but truth creates illumination' – Herzog

000

Jack Gwilym Roberts @jackgwilym.bsky.social · 04/08/2026

Filing this one with 'La Soufriere', 'Cave of Forgotten Dreams' and 'Grizzly Man'... Love Herzog's refusal to draw a distinction between fiction and nonfiction filmmaking. He often quotes French author Andre Gide that 'I modify facts to such a degree they resemble truth more than reality'.

hollywoodreporter.com

‘Ghost Elephants’ Review: Werner Herzog Remains Our Most Intrepid Interdimensional Explorer in Beguilingly Spiritual Nature Doc

The German director follows conservationist Steve Boyes and expert trackers into the Angolan highlands in search of a possibly mythical herd of XL pachyderms.

100

Jack Gwilym Roberts @jackgwilym.bsky.social · 04/08/2026

'Facts create norms, but truth creates illumination' – Herzog

000

Jack Gwilym Roberts @jackgwilym.bsky.social · 04/08/2026

Elmore Leonard used to say the same about writing ‘authentic’ dialogue.

000

Jack Gwilym Roberts @jackgwilym.bsky.social · 04/08/2026

Harryhausen: ‘If you make things too real, sometimes you bring it down to the mundane…You have to be an illusionist and not a photographer.’

111

Jack Gwilym Roberts @jackgwilym.bsky.social · 01/08/2026

'Deep painting' immersive piece by NZ artist Gaku Tada for Artpoint public art experiences, inspired by the collage work of Masayasu Uchida.

010

Jack Gwilym Roberts @jackgwilym.bsky.social · 01/08/2026

Colour woodblock prints by Hiroshi Yoshida: Sphinx at Night (1925), Glittering Sea (1926), Ajmer Gate, Jaipur (1931) and Bamboo Wood (1939).

010

Jack Gwilym Roberts @jackgwilym.bsky.social · 01/08/2026

In a perfect world there is a version of this film where the writing is of the level of the production design.

000

Reposted by Jack Gwilym Roberts

Animation Obsessive @ani-obsessive.bsky.social · 11/01/2026

Concept art by Mark Whiting for The Iron Giant (1999), dir. Brad Bird, Warner Bros. Feature Animation

32289737

Jack Gwilym Roberts @jackgwilym.bsky.social · 10/07/2026

Two classic British children’s picturebooks, ‘The Tiger Who Came to Tea’ by Judith Kerr and ‘Gorilla’ by Anthony Browne, essentially tell the exact same story. But rereading with kids it’s interesting how they relate much more to Gorilla’s emotional complexity, even though they are still v.young.

010

Reposted by Jack Gwilym Roberts

Brent Shepherd (he/him) @shepcatzero.bsky.social · 24/06/2026

Today I stumbled across the album cover for jazz trumpeter Freddie Hubbard's 1962 Blue Note release HUB-TONES, and it is almost certainly the inspiration for the one-sheet of one of my favorite movies, Steven Soderbergh's 1999 crime-and-revenge drama THE LIMEY.

james spaulding/herbie hancock/reginald workman/clifford jarvis
hub-tones
freddie hubbard
84115 Blue Note

Against a field of white, nine identical black rectangles, long and narrow, stand equidistantly. The sixth from left, however, is dropped lower than the other eight. In its lower half it contains an image of Hubbard blowing his horn as seen through a red filter.

Terence Stamp
THE LIMEY
Lesley Ann Warren • Luis Guzman • Barry Newman
and Peter Fonda
produced by John Hardy & Scott Kramer
written by Lem Dobbs
directed by Steven Soderbergh

Against a field of white, four identical black rectangles, long and narrow, stand equidistantly. The third from left, however, is dropped lower than the other three. Spread across the four rectangles and displayed as seen through a red filter are an image of a commercial jet flying over palm trees and a larger principal image of the titular limey, Wilson (Terence Stamp), both hands holding a lighter up to the cigarette in his mouth, smoke trailing behind him toward the upper left corner of the image.

012

Jack Gwilym Roberts @jackgwilym.bsky.social · 20/03/2026

'Publishers are wary of A.I. content because currently, A.I.-generated text and art can’t be protected by copyright.' Otherwise, no problem! www.nytimes.com/2026/03/19/b...

nytimes.com

A.I. Is Writing Fiction. Publishers Are Unprepared.

010

Jack Gwilym Roberts @jackgwilym.bsky.social · 20/03/2026

Jonathan Djob Nkondo’s work is just beautiful — see also Scavengers Reign.

010

Jack Gwilym Roberts @jackgwilym.bsky.social · 20/03/2026

Epic and intimate at the same time.

000

Jack Gwilym Roberts @jackgwilym.bsky.social · 02/03/2026

Scenes in miniature from the Inside Aardman exhibition at the Young V&A.

000

Reposted by Jack Gwilym Roberts

likes2wander.bsky.social @likes2wander.bsky.social · 04/02/2025

Building More Stately Mansions Aaron Douglas 1944 #Art #Blackhistorymonth #Abstractart

0113

Jack Gwilym Roberts @jackgwilym.bsky.social · 01/03/2026

'I recognise no dichotomy between art and protest. Dostoyevsky’s Notes from Underground is, among other things, a protest against the limitations of nineteenth-century rationalism; Don Quixote, Oedipus Rex, The Trial — all these embody protest, even against the limitation of human life itself.'

000

Reposted by Jack Gwilym Roberts

Nnedi Okorafor, PhD @nnedi.bsky.social · 28/02/2026

When elephants fight, the grass suffers.

020433

Reposted by Jack Gwilym Roberts

Eleanor from outside @theboatfromjaws.bsky.social · 28/02/2026

I've had my This Is Fine mug so long that the dog has become a ghost and all that remain are flames

A mug depicting KC Green's This Is Fine dog comic, but tragically faded

15113809

Reposted by Jack Gwilym Roberts

Christopher Webb @cwebbonline.com · 17/02/2026

“I am somebody” shaped how millions of us saw ourselves as kids, including me. That message mattered. It still does. Rest in power, Jesse Jackson 🙏🏽

226112412603

Reposted by Jack Gwilym Roberts

Animation Obsessive @ani-obsessive.bsky.social · 09/02/2026

Prince of Persia was an experiment in rotoscoping. It put lifelike animation on '80s home computers. Designer Jordan Mechner converted VHS tapes and movie footage into pixels -- and went way beyond the tech of his time. We explore: animationobsessive.substack.com/p/how-the-li...

111315428

Jack Gwilym Roberts @jackgwilym.bsky.social · 10/02/2026

Buried in this article about slop-stirring is an intriguing curio: multiple AI programs describe acts of human consummation as ‘like a ragged prayer’.

000

Reposted by Jack Gwilym Roberts

Birds Are Dinosaurs @birdsaredinosaurs.bsky.social · 08/02/2026

The most realistic part of Lord of the Rings is that none of the characters are having a good time and everyone wishes the events hadn't happened to them

311918

Jack Gwilym Roberts @jackgwilym.bsky.social · 10/02/2026

This was a terrific lecture - thank you so much everyone. Saki’s points about cultural erasure and the urgency of documentation are highly relevant.

010

Jack Gwilym Roberts @jackgwilym.bsky.social · 09/02/2026

A recurring experience with young kids: pulling random items out of your pockets having forgotten how they got there. This is today’s discovery.

001

Reposted by Jack Gwilym Roberts

Marjorie James Keenan @unenthusiast.com · 27/11/2025

"I say we take off and nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."

Norman Rockwell's Freedom of Speech but it's Ellen Ripley

92110922472

Reposted by Jack Gwilym Roberts

David_j_roth @davidjroth.bsky.social · 20/03/2025

Reading this in the voice of Kevin Spacey's character from Seven.

A Mr. Beast tweet reading: "I have a pilot living in a $2.5m private jet and if he doesn't leave for 100 days he keeps it, a cop/criminal in a jail and if they don't leave for 100 days they win $500,000, and someone living in a gym until he loses 100 pounds for $500,000. Can't wait to upload these." With a kissy face emoji at the end, horribly.

1494719519

Jack Gwilym Roberts @jackgwilym.bsky.social · 20/03/2025

'Meta employees faced a simple ethical question. The AI program, Llama 3, would need to be trained on a huge amount of high-quality writing to be competitive with ChatGPT. Acquiring all that text legally could take time. Should they just pirate it instead?' Their answer: AUT ZUCK AUT NIHIL.

020