Ben Bays

Chromakey and Greenscreen

2011-11-01T18:13:00.001-05:00

assignment: We are shooting some footage this week. Next class, you will receive it and key out the background greenscreen, then composite the footage onto a new background.

Q. What will it be?

A. It will be awesome

create a clip of your greenscreen footage composited over a BGD and post to your blog.
Due next week.

Next week in class: final projects begin...have a pitch ready and be ready to discuss with class

Motion Tracking

2011-10-27T17:41:00.001-05:00

Assignment:

Stabilize some footage or Track a feature on a video clip.

(Composite something new into the shot)

Render a movie and post to your blog.

Be amazing!

3D in After Effects and Photoshop

2011-10-10T12:53:00.000-05:00

Assignment: Create an Animated clip: (any length)

at least 2 3D layers (the more layers, the "better" the result)

billboards/postcards

vanishing point

shapes, meshes

volumes

displacement map

at least 1 camera

animated

lens effects

at least 1 Light

Particles

2011-10-03T14:57:00.000-05:00

assignment:

Create at least 3 particle effects using the Effect of your choice.

The 3 effects can be layered to create a a compound, multi-layer particle (e.g. explosion with flames, smoke and debris)

assignment must be rendered as (a) movie(s) and posted to your blog

Text

2011-09-27T11:56:00.000-05:00

Assignment:

Create a text animation:

Must use text animators!

min 5 seconds - no maximum time limit

suggestions:

logo

kinetic typography

titles/credits

information overlay (ESPN, video Game UI)

special effect Heads Up Display or Overlay (a la Terminator Vision)

thought/speech bubbles (motion tracking later in the semester)

Typography in Motion from ilovetypography.com on Vimeo.

Abbot and Costello Typography

Pulp Fiction Typography

V for Vendetta Typography

Devil's Advocate Typography

Shapes, Masks, Mattes

2011-09-20T17:14:00.000-05:00

ASSIGNMENT:
Your assignment this week is to create a composition which demonstrates at least 2 of the following:

animated shapes (path)
the repeater
paint effects (paint, clone, erase)
original transition using an animated mask (wipe)
split screen effect
innovation with animated masks
luminance matte from a video clip
stencil effect

clip can be any length, can build upon a previous project or be entirely fresh.

Please post clip to your blog with an explanation of what you did.

Advanced Animation

2011-09-13T17:04:00.000-05:00

Assignment:

Animated clip that demonstrates at least 2 of the following

parenting

expressions

nested compositions

eases

advanced animation with curves

time effects (stretching, Time warp effect, time remapping)

Bugs!

2011-09-06T11:51:00.001-05:00

Intro to After Effects

2011-09-06T11:49:00.001-05:00

Assignment:

create an animated clip, under 10 seconds, which has:

1.) multiple visual layers (still images, movies, etc)
2.) an audio layer
3.) demonstrates at least 1 basic transform (position, rotation, scale, anchor point) animated over time
4.) uses at least 1 "effect"

5.) is completely original

Due NEXT Thursday

Intro to the image: Photoshop

2011-08-30T06:47:00.000-05:00

assignment:

Create a composition in Photoshop which fulfills the following criteria:

multiple layers

image adjustment

masks

image must be exported as a .PNG and posted on your blog by NEXT Thursday.

Intro to 344M

2011-08-24T18:08:00.002-05:00

Assignment #1

Create your blog and introduce yourself

Include a summary with links and/or embedded material, if possible

Digitize your portfolio

Due: Next Class

email me your blog address

benbays@mail.utexas.edu

Looking ahead:

Photoshop

collect images you might want to manipulate or combine

ProRes codecs

2011-06-29T11:48:00.000-05:00

Mac:
http://support.apple.com/downloads/Apple_ProRes_QuickTime_Decoder_1_0_for_Mac

Windoze:
http://support.apple.com/downloads/Apple_ProRes_QuickTime_Decoder_1_0_for_Windows

Introduction

2011-05-19T14:46:00.002-05:00

Hello. I am Ben Bays. My friends call me Beans. Here is a picture of my lovely wife, Tiffany, and myself in Bodrum, Turkey. Beer in foreground, castle in background. A good day.

I have been making cartoons and video games professionally for about 15 years now. Take a look at my resume if you are interested.

I love to draw and build models in 3D packages like Maya, Max, and Mudbox. Environments are my passion. When I watch a cartoon, I am usually looking past the characters into the world. When I play a video game, I usually go very slowly and check out every little detail the artists have paced in the world. I am fascinated by world building, which has led me to build a career out of making environments for video games and backgrounds for cartoons.

I have had the opportunity to work on console games and Gameboy DS games, which was a great joy to me. Here is a sample of some games I have recently worked on:

Environment Reel 2009 from Ben Bays on Vimeo.

On my own time, I am working on a project which involves taking hand drawn images and moving them into 3D space. I love to celebrate the texture of paper, pen and pencil into the context of motion and 3D space:

Asteroids from Ben Bays on Vimeo.

I have a lot of influences: Miyazaki, Moebiius, Bilal, Herge, Uderzo, Syd Mead, even some guys I have met along the way, like David Levy, Thierry Diozon, Jason Manley, Manny Carrasco. I love French comics and a lot of Anime. Although most Anime is garbage, some of it is really stellar. I love cheesy science fiction book covers from any era and old 1970's space station art. I love special effects in movies and can forgive just about anything in a flick if there are cool explosions and matte paintings.

I have a job. A few jobs actually. I teach motion Graphics and Visual Effects at the University of Texas, I teach 3D Modeling and rendering at ACC and I am the In-World Composite Director for Videoranch. I have had my share of cool jobs, and every job goes away at some point, only to be replaced with something better. These are the three best jobs I have ever had in my entire life. I also do contract work just about every chance I get. When you do something like making games, or visual effects, or motion graphics, jobs just seem like extra fun.

If you are interested in me, in my work, 3D modeling, Motion Graphics, After Effects, or Photoshop, you should take a look around this blog. There are links all along the right side that should take you to cool places. If you just want to peruse my work without a bunch of text, you can check out my portfolio. As always, I welcome any and all feedback.

Space Station Watercolor

2010-08-23T18:11:00.002-05:00

Syllabus

2010-08-20T20:00:00.012-05:00

RTF 344M, Visual Effects and Motion Graphics, unique # 08295

Fall 2011

INSTRUCTOR : Ben Bays

TA : TBA

Class time: Tues/Thurs 6:30-8 pm
Lab Time: TBA

Class Location: CMB 4.110

Final Screening: TBA

Office Hours: I have no office. MY office hours will be during the lab. If you cannot make it to lab or would like to meet privately, please send me an email. I would be happy to schedule a meeting that works for both of us.

Office Location: UT
Office Phone Number: 947.6162 (cel)
Ben Bays’ e-mail address: benbays@mail.utexas.edu

A NOTE ON THE LABS:
Lab hours will be a time for you to gain extra knowledge and to get personal help with class work. I encourage you to work on your assignments during lab and class hours if possible. The computer lab itself will be available for you to work in anytime that no other class is using it (and during other classes there should be a computer available in the control room to work on). If you need extra help, THIS IS THE BEST TIME TO GET IT.

COURSE DESCRIPTION:
This is a production course designed to introduce and expand your knowledge of the world of motion graphics and special effects. In contrast to the animation course, this class will focus on advanced compositing and techniques to enrich your video, stills, typography and to get exactly what you want to see on screen. You will not be required to draw anything (complicated). Consider this more of a course in design than art.

In addition to class participation, there will be assignments of varying scope. These projects will involve using the computers. If you feel that you lack the necessary skills to do any of the assignments, please talk to me. I will be happy to work with you during lab times, but you will be responsible for putting in the extra work that is necessary to complete the assignments.
Additionally, I will require that each student keep a production blog. This is how your work will be turned in.
The assignments build upon each other and require a pretty fast turn around time. For this reason, I expect your work done and turned in on time.

Late Assignments are completely unacceptable. If, due to some emergency, you will not be able to finish your assignment within the allotted time, you MUST make arrangements with me.

Remember this is a production course and will require many hours of work outside of class.

COURSE EVALUATION:
Grade Breakdown:
1. Class Participation. Come to class, listen, be involved, this will be 10% of your grade.
2. The first 10 assignments will make up 70% of your grade.
3. The final project will make up 20% of your grade.
You will be given between 1 and 10 points for class participation.
Each of the first 10 assignments will be worth 7 points. You will be given a grade of 1-7 on them.
The final project will be worth 20 points, and you will be given a grade of 1-20 on it. I am going to break this assignment into more digestible chunks and grade you on each individual piece.
Your final grade will be the total of these numbers. Your total will be between 0 and 100.

Grading Criteria
1.) Promptness: Each week's assignment is due at the beginning of class the following Thursday. If your assignment is not ready, you receive a “zero” and must see me privately to get partial credit.

2.) To my specifications: each assignment will have a set of requirements for completion. Missing any part of the specifications will result in points being subtracted.

3.) Quality of work : in addition to merely fulfilling the basic minimum requirements, I expect you to submit work which is polished, bold and creative. Simply going through the motions, "dialing it in" as it were, is unacceptable.

I keep a running tally of your grade as the semester progresses. You may ask me for a status update at any time or check egradebook in the UTDirect online system. If you ever have questions about your grade, I am happy to talk about your work during my office hours.

ATTENDANCE POLICY:
If you miss class you will likely fall behind. I expect you to attend every class. Obviously, this isn’t always possible. If you must miss a class, talk to me when you return to class so we can catch you up.

LATE ASSIGNMENT POLICY:
Assignments are due at the beginning of class on the day they are due. They must be in the proper format on your blog. For every day late, I will subtract one point from your assignment grade.

NOTE ON ASSIGNMENT FORMATS:
You will be instructed on the proper format for each assignment. It is your responsibility to make sure you can get your projects output to the proper format. In the past students who worked at home often had difficulty exporting the proper formats, so if you choose to work at home, I recommend you work on the assignments early and make sure you are able to export the proper formats. If you have trouble you must seek help during office hours or lab time BEFORE the assignment is due. Having the wrong format will not be an excuse for late assignments.

THE COURSE SCHEDULE:

Week 1: INTRODUCTION: Let’s get to know each other and see what everyone is interested in learning.
assignment: create your blog and post an introduction

Week 2: PHOTOSHOP: Proper preparation of raw assets is pivotal to the success of your work.
assignment: create an organized layered composition AND several images that have alpha channels

Week 3: AFTER EFFECTS INTRO:exploring the interface, setting up a project, importing, compositions, the timeline, basic transforms, markers for video and audio clips, keys and curves, previewing, rendering, etc
assignment: create a clip that utilizes basic transforms and keyframes and audio

Week 4: ADVANCED ANIMATION: animation curves, holds, trimming layers, nesting compositions, parenting, morphs, fake slow motion, time echoes, etc
assignment: create a clip that demonstrates an understanding of animation curves, parenting, nesting

Week 5: SHAPES, PATHS, MASKS, MATTES and TRANSFER modes: animated mattes, split screen, transition effects, color correction and tinting, rotoscope
assignment: animate a shape, path, mask or matte

Week 6: TEXT: Everything you ever wanted to know about text and text animation
assignment: create an animated text clip

Week 7: PARTICLES: emitters, dynamics, rates and physics
assignment: create 5 original particle effects

Week 8 and 9: 3D: working in 3D space, lights and camera
assignment: create a 3d animated scene; add lights and camera effects to your 3D scene

Week 10: MOTION TRACKING: using some handy tools to sync up graphics to video...either manually or automatically
assignment: utilize 2D motion tracking to composite either a still or an animation onto a reference point(s).

Week 11: CHROMA KEY INTRO: clean up, color matching, garbage mattes, etc
GREENSCREEN SHOOT: Now that you know what problems can pop up with chroma key and greenscreen, we will set up a shoot, light it, and shoot some footage.
assignment: help grab some green screen footage in class, then key it out and composite it into a new, exciting background

Week 12
Final projects
PREPRODUCTION:
PITCH, PROPOSAL,STORYBOARDS, ART BIBLE (FINISHED SHOT EXAMPLES), SCHEDULE, ASSET ACQUISITION

Week 13: ANIMATICS

Week 14: (short week) FINAL MOTION -- Thanksgiving Vacation

Week 15: POLISH
Complete Final Projects

Final Screening:
Final Exam location: TBA

Of course any part of this syllabus may change.

Now for the general University stuff:
Regarding Scholastic Dishonesty: The University defines academic dishonesty as cheating, plagiarism, unauthorized collaboration, falsifying academic records, and any act designed to avoid participating honestly in the learning process. Scholastic dishonesty also includes, but is not limited to, providing false or misleading information to receive a postponement or an extension on a test, quiz, or other
assignment, and submission of essentially the same written assignment for two courses without the prior permission of the instructor. By accepting this syllabus, you have agreed to these guidelines and must adhere to them. Scholastic dishonest damages both the student's learning experience and readiness for the future demands of a work-career. Students who violate University rules on scholastic dishonesty are subject to disciplinary penalties, including the possibility of failure in the course and/or dismissal from the University. For more information on scholastic dishonesty, please visit the Student Judicial services Web site at http://www.utexas.edu/depts/dos/sjs/.
About the Undergraduate Writing Center: The Undergraduate Writing Center, located in the FAC 211, phone 471-6222, offers individualized assistance to students who want to improve their writing skills. There is no charge, and students may come in on a drop-in or appointment basis.
About services for students with disabilities: The University of Texas at Austin provides upon request appropriate academic accommodations for qualified students with disabilities. For more information, contact the Office of the Dean of Students at 471-6259, 471-4641 TTY.

1. Copyright and Fair Use: For Production Classes Only
You may find the need to use copyrighted material this semester: music, photographs, movie clips, or any other expression. For many of your uses, you need to find the copyright holder and negotiate a license. You own the copyright to the work you produce in this class. As a copyright holder yourself, you understand the importance of copyright ownership. It is your responsibility to secure music and archival footage licenses as well as artwork, location and personal releases. You will find release templates on the RTF website.

For some uses, however, neither you nor anyone else needs to license copyrighted material. This is because copyright law exists to encourage and support creativity. Copyright law recognizes that creativity doesn’t arise in a vacuum. As creators, we all stand on the shoulders of giants. New works of art (such as films, books, poems, paintings) all make use of what has gone before. Thus, copyright law not only protects authors with a copyright that lets them decide who can use their works, but also offers exemptions from the author’s control. For filmmakers, the most important exemption is the doctrine of fair use. You can rely on fair use, where appropriate, in the film and media projects you undertake for this course. If you are making adocumentary film, consult the influential Documentary Filmmakers Statement of Best Practices in Fair Use (http://www.centerforsocialmedia.org/files/pdf/fair_use_final.pdf), which was created by a group of national filmmaker organizations, has been endorsed by the University Film and Video Association, and is now relied on by film festivals, insurers, cablecasters, distributors and public broadcasters. Fair use also applies in the fiction film environment, but not necessarily to the same extent or in the same way.

As always, the central question is whether the new use is "transformative" -- i.e., whether it adds significant value by modifying or recontextualizing the original. For more understanding, including information on when you can use works for free (http://www.centerforsocialmedia.org/files/pdf/free_use.pdf) without even using fair use, why you (mostly) don’t need to worry about trademarks (http://www.centerforsocialmedia.org/files/pdf/free_use.pdf), what is in the public domain (http://www.centerforsocialmedia.org/rock/backgrounddocs/copyrightterm.pdf), how fair use lawsuits (http://www.centerforsocialmedia.org/videos/sets/fair_use_case_studies) have been settled, and on how fair use has been employed successfully (http://www.centerforsocialmedia.org/videos/sets/fair_use_case_studies) in documentary film, visit centerforsocialmedia.org/fairuse

2. RTF SAFETY POLICY
Special safety precautions for your crew, actors and others in the area are required if you are undertaking any hazardous activities while filming, including but not limited to ANY driving or horseback/livestock shots, shooting in or around water or heights, or if you are using stunts, flames, pyrotechnics, squibs or simulated weapons (real weapons of any kind are never permitted). In addition, you must follow all federal, state and local laws and the rules of any venue or location at which you are filming regarding hazardous activities, including University of Texas at Austin rules if filming is done on campus.

Student filmmakers must submit a detailed safety plan to their course instructor and the RTF Technical Facilities Manager if a script or project involves driving or horseback/livestock shots, shooting in or around water or heights, stunts, flames, pyrotechnics, squibs, weapons or any other hazardous activities (this requirement applies to all shoots, including documentary projects, but please see the special guidelines for documentary driving shots below). It is the responsibility of the student to hire experts in the field and budget at least $600/day for expert consultation and on-set supervision if, in the judgment of the class instructor and the Technical Facilities Manager, such expert consultation or supervision is necessary.

Students should understand that driving while filming will be permitted only in strictly limited circumstances, such as on a private road or drive. In most circumstances, students who wish to undertake driving shots will be required to arrange for a police escort and a city permit. Monitors inside the vehicle will NOT be allowed while filming in a vehicle. Filming from the back of trucks is not considered safe and is not permitted under any circumstances.

Documentary filming of an interview while the interview subject is driving is only permitted if the cameraperson is secured in a seat belt and is not directing the driver of the car in any way, besides engaging in a conversation in which the driver/interviewee has been informed not to look at the camera or the interviewer at all during the interview. In addition, any filming from a vehicle, for drive-by B-roll, must be done by a cameraperson secured in a seat belt, where the driver is not being directed in any way by the director, so that they are driving as they normally would. As noted above, any documentary student planning on filming in any vehicle must submit a safety plan to their course instructor and the RTF Technical Facilities Manager.

Students who fail to comply with this policy will receive a failing grade in this class and will be barred from future access to RTF production and post-production equipment and facilities.

Sketches

2010-05-17T10:33:00.002-05:00

First use of colored markers in awhile. 3 colors: grass green, peach and a slightly redder melon. Interesting how it reacts to the paper.

island in the sea? island falling into the sea? island emerging from the sea? This one actually needs an animation for it to make sense, I think. Want to makes splashes and debris raining down.

I wish I had canted the city about 20 degrees.

Giraffe and whale.

Did some horse sketches. The rest were a wreck.

Mars Layouts

2010-04-27T18:42:00.002-05:00

Working post here:

Here are the title layouts for Geoff Marslett's Mars feature. Each plate will be de-rezzed, interlaced and up for about 2-3 seconds underneath the opening credits.

No particular order...

Sketchbook Scans

2010-04-14T08:01:00.001-05:00

This is kind of a follow up to a previous post of drawings.

I continue to use pastel paper, greyscale prismacolor markers, brush pens, and sharpie white paint pens...both oil and water based. I really love the speed with which I am able mass things out. Its a very intuitive process. I find as the markers (inevitably) break down, or fuzz out, it makes even more interesting textures.

------------------------------------

This was inspired by a friend of mine who is making a 2D side-scroller (my favorite type of game to work on). I wanted to take something thematically similar to what I have done before, but I worked with a more game-y mindset (but not too much). I tried to make top surfaces a little more clear and flatten out action Z-depth, while still forcing some depth.

This was a follow up and, though it may not be apparent, a very successful extension of the idea of the 2D scroller. If you imagine the brightest area (white) to be walkable and nothing else, then it works well upon closer inspection. There is a lot of depth and shading, but while it impinges upon the play area, it never goes white...it always drops down in value. So the rule of the game here is that white is safe. As long as I stick to that rule, I have every other value to work with.

a cross section view of a space station -- open top torus. Gravity is straight down in this one, so as you try to climb out on either side of the endless valley, it gets steeper. If you can summit the mountains, there are 2 large mega roads. I used white for water in this one. You can see underground pipes, reservoirs and pump station. This water also supplies towers and cities on the underside, or exterior circumference of the torus.

some robot plans. It is quite large. Notice the plush couch inside the observation room. This is for re-entry and other environmental hazards. The robot is designed to be the ultimate protector. I imagine it has a pleasant, but somewhat dull disposition.

This was drawn from a fossil in the Texas Memorial Museum. Best museum on campus. Best place to draw stuff you have never seen. Dinosaurs, meteors, gems, etc.

After drawing some fossils and weird bone growths, I returned to some older themes in my work--the hose headed people. Formally called the "prosthids" in days of yore. I worked in a new element--the texture of bone. I added the plates, made them distressed and aged them. Fossilized them.

There are 2 drawings here. The one on the left is a further exploration of the bone plates idea...getting more interesting. The face on the right is an idea I had on how to express a hologram--texturally the opposite of bones. The hologram is a 3D projection, but requires smoke or vapor to create a volume to project into. I wanted it to feel soft, gaseous, but inhabited by the digital texture of the hologram...hence the vertical lines.

Yet another bone-plated machine creature. This one a bit more threatening. The white marker was falling apart and getting dry. I used to work back into previously white areas and it scratched some of the white away. If you look closely at the embiggened image, you can see the stroke. I also leveraged that moment to create the splinters. Best bone texture yet. The multiple human arms make it seem like it is a serpent formed out of people sitting one on top of another's shoulders. Something creepy about that.

This is something similar that might be clenched up, defensive, or guarding something within.

Aquatic Theme

2010-02-06T18:11:00.001-06:00

Submarine with extras bits to animate.

The sea floor.

Sea floor composed as a BGD for After Effects.

Holiday Space Station Drawings

2009-12-19T12:31:00.001-06:00

I have been working on some drawings during the holidays. As usual, they are all about my little space station. None of these has been digitally touched in any way. They were drawn on pastel paper with watercolor pencils, various grey brush pens and markers and several methods of bringing the values up, including white wax pencils, white watercolor pencils, and both oil and water based white paint pens. Water based white paint pen sharpies work the best, by the way. A nice, flat opaque white which really jumps off the page.

The throne room in the Kingdom of Swords. Hard stone, sky and light.

A rocket launching into space. Kingdom of swords in its inexorable slow motion explosion in the background. I like the airiness of this one.

A detail of the rocket.

Some more kingdom of swords. This time a shot of their mountaintop city.

This might not look like much in thumbnail, but I spent a lot of time blending the colors on the hillsides, really softening it out and making it look friendly. This is from the hinterlands.

A hanging tower...on the outside of the torus. Note the waterfalls and bits of debris falling off. The rocket is deliberately fish-like.

A corollary to the hanging tower above. This one has a different texture and juts up. I wanted it to seem strange and ominous.

This is from the Kingdom of Wands...nature focussed. It is probably my least favorite, but it was everyone else's favorite when it was up on the wall. I mean everyone.

A wider shot of the kingdom of wands. Organic growth, a living complement to the cold stone of the swords.

Asteroids

2009-11-03T15:37:00.000-06:00

I like space.

Asteroids from Ben Bays on Vimeo.

If you click through to the original vimeo, there is an HD version.

This next one is a little stranger, sort of a post apocalyptic ashen wasteland. Hence the title.

Wasteland from Ben Bays on Vimeo.

Short and sweet, but total execution was about 3 hours, including all drawing, matting, and compositing.

Anatomy of a 3D Model

2009-10-01T09:49:00.000-05:00

Here is a render of building I created.

Next gen game model from Ben Bays on Vimeo.

Normal mapping on the bas-relief, upper windows, tiles, trim and bricks in back. Specular mapping on most materials. 9 Materials total, 21 1024x1024 textures. 6889 polygons.

Here is a clip of just the model. The polygon budget of 7500 initially seemed extravagant to me, but I quickly overcame my low-poly habits.

building model small from Ben Bays on Vimeo.

The next step was to texture. I was given the option to use both normal and specular maps in addition to a diffuse map.

Here is the texture for the upper windows, along with a specular map in the middle and a normal map on the right. White means shiny on the specular map.

Here is the brick texture. It has a normal map as well, but no specular map, because they are not shiny.

To really bring out the normal and specular maps, you need to light the scene. I did 2 versions, a pleasant and neutral midday render...

Day lighting from Ben Bays on Vimeo.

...and a more dramatic nighttime version...

building night small from Ben Bays on Vimeo.

Here are some stills which show off some of the normal/specular maps along with some of the smaller details.

Book Camera Mapping in Maya

2009-10-01T01:20:00.000-05:00

Book Camera Map from Ben Bays on Vimeo.

camera map inside cover from Ben Bays on Vimeo.

Constellations from Ben Bays on Vimeo.

woodcut camera map from Ben Bays on Vimeo.

jung camera map02 from Ben Bays on Vimeo.

jung camera map 01 from Ben Bays on Vimeo.

animated camera map from Ben Bays on Vimeo.

forest camera map from Ben Bays on Vimeo.

camera map Bruegel from Ben Bays on Vimeo.

Camera Mapping in 3D

2009-10-01T01:14:00.000-05:00

Working in After Effects can be so liberating, but often you just HAVE to do something in 3D. I am not going to get into how to work in 3D here, but I am going to show you a fantastic trick I learned. Its fast, its easy, and it works really well under certain circumstances.

For the purposes of this lesson, I am going to assume you already know how to model some things in 3D, but you definitely don't have to be advanced use to do this.

I learned this method while watching a video about how they do those big matte paintings for movies. At the time, I was working on 2.5D platformers. In case you don't know what I am talking about, a 2.5D games is one in which the world is constructed in 3D (versus hand drawn), but the camera is locked in a certain plane. You can't spin the camera around the Y axis. Its like looking at a stage play.

For thse big matte paintings, much of the time, the camera is locked to a very limited space. This is not the kind of environment that you fly through, this is the kind of massive backdrop of the entire city. In a 2.5D setting, the camera is very much locked, so you take advantage of some of those big movie concepts to create something pretty cool looking.

Let me give you an example: 9

My studio pitched a game based on Shane Acker's animated short called "9". We had limited time and limited assets. What we did have were a couple of stills and clips to work from.

Here is a sample...

The movie poster.

Looking at this poster and thinking about turning it into something like game presents quite a challenge. For one, there are some really subtle and beautiful lighting effects...something that is tricky on the DS. There is a lot of atmosphere...also tricky. It is realistic, but fantastic at the same time. Normally, I might look at this shot and say..okay, I will need to buiuld some books, and some garbage, I am going to need rusty pipes and rebar. I am going to have to be very careful and place some glows judiciously so as not to overlap them (and break the DS--overlapping alpha doesn't play well). This is going to take a lot of polygons to vertex light. I am concerned I am not going to be able to match the look very well given all the technical constraints.

But what if I could leverage this beautiful shot? I mean, I would probably borrow from it anyway, for textures...and I would try to match the lighting. But why should I break it down into its separate elements and put them all back together in a sort of gimped out way?

Let's take a look at a method which uses the source concept in a great way to speed up the process and render better results.

First of all, I need to clean up my image...maybe do some prep for camera mapping.

here we go...

clean up

As you can see, I pulled the characters out...I AM an environment guy...characters are for animators to handle. Since the sky is so far removed from the garbage pile, I pulled it out, too. Usually, the sky is something you can fake even more than your usual action plane stuff, so I am not going to sweat that too much. I have a good looking pile of garbage...now its time to go to 3D! You may have noticed I cropped the texture a bit off the top. I actually madeit square, but have not reduced yet. I happen to know video game engines LOVE square textures, but haven't quite decided on the resoution for this one, so I will leave it as big as I can for the moment.

In my 3D program, i am going to create a plane that is the same ratio as my image. As my image is square, this is easy:

A square plane...viola

I apply my image:

garbage pile

So far, pretty easy. Maya auto maps the image to the plane and since they are both 1:1, it is effortless. Now comes a bit of setup. I need to duplicate the plane and pull one forward in space. This forward plane will be the one I work on and the back one will be my control reference.

duplicate my plane

Something I like to do at this point is make the forward plane have a transparent texture. Personally, I set the vertex alpha to zero, but you could simply create a transparent material to apply to it as well...switching back and forth between materials as we go.

invisible fore plane

Now, the key to camera mapping is that you always map from a front view...it will project your texture image onto the shape from the front (honestly it could be any camera you are looking through). Since we are using a controlled camera, we can "aim" our mesh at it. As long as the mesh bounds do not appear to have changed when we look from the front, the image will map the same no matter how much we distort our mesh in the Z plane from the camera. Take a look...

beginning to form the poly to the image

Moving vertices ONLY in the Z plane (depth), I very simpy suggest how the hill would look in full 3D...it would have a slight slant, kind of a flattened semi cone.

From the font, it still looks the same...

from a front view, the forward poly never extends beyond the bounds of control/reference plane

The effect of this process really becomes apparent when you start working on the details...let's take one of the books. I duplicate my control and cut a book shape out of the flat plane like so...

cutting a book out

I can remove the extra polygons around the book until I have just a small shape surrounding the object...notice I have also cut edges where the book planes would meet if it were full 3D.

the mesh follows the silhouette from the front

Using the basic edges I cut into the interior of the silhouette, I pull the verts and edges until the book has a 3D shape to it. I only move edges and verts on the Z, though...never X nor Y...the silhouette of the book must remain, but its depth can mimic how its volume would extrude from the garbage pile in 3D space.

I can scale in Z to recreate the volume of the book (har har)

As you can see...it is aactually 3D, but if I look at it from the front, you can't tell. The beauty of a constrained camera is that while it is a perpective camera, it is locked into a front view.

One thing that ofetn happens is that I smear the UVs of my smaller object while I am working. That is why you set the mesh to be transparent. Just match the wireframe of the book mesh around the image of the book in the texture...you can reset the UVs to match perfectly by re-camera mapping. Select both your control AND your new object and apply the UV camera map to them both from the front view.

I apply camera map UV to BOTH my new book and the control

from the front...a perfect synch

looked at too far off the front view, it starts to look odd...the farther off plane you get, the weirder.

So far I have only shown you perfectly mapped or way off axis. The merit of this effect comes when you moves the camera in a pan past the mesh:

Camera Map test 01 from Ben Bays on Vimeo.

See how the book not only parallaxes against the pile, but actually moves as if it were folly modeled out. Thus far, I have used on 12 triangles in the shot! 12! To give you some perspective (har har) on that number, consider that a fully 3D world on a PS2, or Xbox or Wii would probably be around 15,000 polygons. You can imagine how hard you would have to work to match the style as well. Let's keep going and finish the effect out.

I am going to do the same thing to each book or brick...

cutting them out

various states of Z axis extrusions...giving them depth or volume

One thing I like to do, especially when pieces are sort of jammed in like we have here, is to arrange them into the pile and make sure they are legitimately jammed into the sloping base mesh. This makes them look so grounded and creates cool overlaps. It completely hides the edges of your cuts where they meet the mesh behind it. It makes the whole thing look super high poly.

jamming the pieces in

Another quick render...

camera map lg from Ben Bays on Vimeo.

So there is the garbage pile...it completely looks like the movie still, so I know the client will be happy. If I duplicate it a few times and mirror it on the x for variation, scale for variation...I can puit a few together and throw in some characters.

junk pile from Ben Bays on Vimeo.

The entire environment is about 500 polygons. That is less than even a single one of those characters!

You can see the benefits of this system...less textures and polygons is great for games. I can use still right from concept art OR from a movie if we are adapting something like that. That is ideal because we never have to worry if the client is going to not like something. If they give us a still or some concept, we give them that EXACT thing back.

Just to sort of finsh the shot out, I pulled the background out of the poster:

Not cleaned up, but it will do for now.

Here is as far as I will take it for now. If you ever run into a situation where you have controlled camera, or even in a full 3D world...if stuff is high upon a ridge or something you can get to, but you want to make it look spectacularly 3D, this a very cheap way of doing so.

garbage pile with sky from Ben Bays on Vimeo.

Garden of Unearthly Delights

2009-09-30T22:01:00.000-05:00

Garden from Ben Bays on Vimeo.

For this project, I created an environment with the following constraints: 75000 polygons, 1024x1024 textures, diffuse, normal and specular maps. I used the Quinta de Regaleira as my concept source. The goal was to create an environment which demonstrated some of the qualities you might expect in a current home console video game system.

The process:

I love the grounds, not least of why was because they reminded me so much of the area around Austin: limestone, hidden springs and caves, little grottoes and over all this, the rambling walls and paths that lead through the wild gardens. Creating a strong, organic terrain was paramount to laying down the strongest foundation possible. Much of my work in the past has been for the DS, where building a mesh from scratch was the fastest way of creating game assets, given the timetable and resources. For this exercise, I needed something a bit more robust to create my terrain. Not having z-brush, I opted for the trial version of Earth Sculptor, which is a fantastic little terrain/heightmap generator.

Here are some of the screens.

Additionally, I created several extremely organic forms for the cave I wanted to add. Stalactites, stalagmites and flat topped boulder.

There are options for painting the terrain in Earth Sculptor as well, but I felt the brushes were slightly inadequate for my needs.

After exporting the heightmaps as .obj, I brought them into Maya to refine and texture.

Moving over to Maya, I was glad to see Earth Sculptor had aligned the mesh to the grid, which would make texturing the terrain with a single large image, in this case 4096x4096, then cutting both the texture and the UVs into 1024x1024 sections very easy to organize.

At this point, I made a critical error. While keeping the UVs on a grid was certainly easy to deal with, it caused some deplorable stretching on the most vertical sections, as the texture was essentially mapped from a top view. In my excitement at having the terrain done so quickly, and anxious to begin texturing, I left the UVs as they were. The stretching would become apparent after texturing for a bit. Next time, I will make sure to relax the UVs. While this will throw them off a gris, and make organization a bit trickier, I will get better mapping results.

I modeled out some more boulders and under cut the cave area for my final base terrain mesh.

Before I began texturing the ground, I needed to give it a rough population pass. I created a library of architectural and floral pieces and scattered them around until I started to get (68k) to my polygon budget.

a wall to place around

mocked up

At this point, I had everything at least generally in place to begin working on the terrain map. I wanted to give it a nice hand painted look, so I looked into a couple of options.

The first option, to paint in 3D within Maya was initially very attractive. I created a texture, only 512x512 to begin blocking out some of the features of the landscape.

While this was great fun, I felt the brushes in Maya to be awkward. Also, at the final resolution, I knew the latency f each stroke was going to become crushing. Besides, I am much more comfortable painting in Photoshop.

Before I went there, I decided to create yet another texture from Maya: an ambient occlusion map. Not only would this help me when painting the details, but it would give the terrain texture something special.

terrain with ambient occlusion texture applied

At this point, I was ready to begin painting my base terrain in photoshop. I won't go too much into all the gory details, but here is my base diffuse texture:

At this point, I am pretty happy with the texture, but my deadline is approaching, I need to get to work on the normal and specular maps, because I am going to need some time to chop the large texture down into 16 smaller ones, and re-UV everything. Next time, I'll keep it a bit more modular. Perhaps a chain of tiny islands--ha ha.

I have a small amount of experience working with normal and spec maps on this model:

Next gen game model from Ben Bays on Vimeo.

But in that case, the normal maps were bas reliefs or tile-able textures. I felt pretty confident about tiling textures, like my boulders, or the fitted limestone walls, stairs and towers.

I used Crazy Bump for my normal and spec maps. I know there are probably a lot of solutions out there, but I know Ryan Clark, the mad genius who wrote it, and he kindly set me up with a license. Much appreciated.

Here is a sample of the normal and spec maps I made for the tower walls.

The base flagstone texture on the walls and towers.

Crazy Bump works on with shape recognition, so often I would create an intermediate texture to generate my shader maps. In this case, I simplified the stones considerably to get them to jump out, not get lost in the noise.

normal map

specular map

For the terrain, I wanted to use the entire image, to really take advantage of the grass edging, the broken flagstones and all the details I had painted into the diffuse texture. This turned out to be...difficult to say the least. In an image that complicated, you have to prepare it pretty extensively to get a good normal map.

Prepping my base texture for normal maps via Crazy Bump

The normal map

In prepping the spec map, I wanted the stones to be the shiny bits in the level, so I isolated them. Rather than silhouette them, I kept the painted data intact and tweaked the values in Crazy Bump until I got this:

The spec map.

Personally, I feel like the terrain normal maps are a bit of disaster. Given enough time to prep the painting, I am sure I could have gotten much much closer. My biggest problem is that the rubble would emboss itself and seem to live in a crater before coming up. When I would get one section, say the grass, looking great, the flagstones would fall apart, or vice versa. What you see here is the result of many iterations and it does seem to be getting close, but I still have a lot to learn about normal maps.

After getting my normal and spec maps in, I took a last pass at the vegetation, and added some smaller boulders all over the level for accent.

In the end, I am fairly happy with the Garden. The painted terrain texture was very promising until I added the shader maps. I feel like I am on the verge of mastering normal and spec maps, at least generating them off still images. I would very much like to try generating them off a high poly mesh next, but I will save that for another post!

The Broken Star

2009-09-20T20:11:00.000-05:00

"The Broken Star"--A large artificial star orbited by the wreckage or a ruined space habitation.

The "Lost Colony"--a large chunk of space debris inhabited by people.

various bits of detritus and debris

The Broken Star from Ben Bays on Vimeo.

Introduction: Ben Bays

2009-08-25T10:55:00.000-05:00

Hi. This is me, Ben, and my wife Tiffany. We are in Bodrum, Turkey. That's a castle of the Knights Templar in the back.

I make video game environments for the Gameboy DS for a living. Here is the kind of stuff I work on.

Environment Reel 2009 from Ben Bays on Vimeo.

I also LOVE to make backgrounds for cartoons. Here are a couple:

As a young boy, I really loved drawing castles and big machines, conveyer belts, robots and mega spaceships. By the time I got to U.T., I was pretty good at drawing so I became a studio art major. My focus was pen and ink, lots of markers, very sci-fi graphic sensibility. Moeubius and Miyazaki were tremendous influences. I took a video performance class and got to play with AVID, which was fun, but sort of left me feeling like maybe video wasn't my thing. Then I heard about an animation class in the RTF department. I begged Francesca Talenti to let me in, which she did. We worked on the Oxberry camera and I really gravitated to working with cutouts, mechanical things. I did a little clip of a gyrocopter flying through some landscape...probably a castle. For the final I made an animation in premiere using a lot of moving layers to create a parallax effect. I set it to some cool Beatles song .

I started using After Effects soon after and used to create my demo reel. I worked for a month solid on it.

Here it is, from 1998, my college demo reel.

Portfolio old from Ben Bays on Vimeo.

After I graduated, I got a job in video games (eventually). I worked at Acclaim, where I got to do my first concept art, which was terribly exciting.

I learned 3D and worked on a couple of titles: Vexx and 100 Bullets, which sadly never shipped.

After that I managed to squeeze into a job working on A Scanner Darkly. Everyone there could draw SO much better than I could, but as usual, I found myself gravitating to the backgrounds. The program , Color Engine, was all vector based and really brilliant. Bob Sabiston wrote it. I used a lot of distortion planes, motion tracking, parallax effects, masks and interpolation.

Now I work at Fizz Factor, a game studio located downtown. Its so much fun. I have worked on some hand drawn games,

some full 3d, tile based and 2.5d games. Everyone is super nice and we eat candy all day and play video games whenever we want.

Anyway, here is my resume:

Here is a my portfolio.

A good example of an actual production post I have done is this:

An Old Post

So, that's about it for now. You pretty much know all about me. I can't wait to meet you and get started working on some really exciting projects.

-Ben

Environment Reel

2009-07-04T09:28:00.000-05:00

Best viewed full screen.

Environment Reel 2009 from Ben Bays on Vimeo.

UT Summer Camp!

2009-06-25T11:04:00.003-05:00

Know any teenagers interested in film and video effects, animation or video games? I am teaching a class this summer at the U.T. Summer Film Camp.

Animation, Motion Graphics & Visual Effects - Two-Week Session

DATES: July 20-30 2009, Mon-Thurs, 9am-1pm

Age Range: 7th-12th graders

http://rtf.utexas.edu/camps/

POST-PRODUCTION CAMP: ANIMATION, MOTION GRAPHICS, & VISUAL EFFECTS

Digital post production skills are used in film, video, online and games. This hands on camp session for 7th-12th graders covers rotoscoping, green screen, 3D, particle explosions, time warps, animated typography, and many more techniques. Photoshop image manipulation basic and advanced. Flash animation, onion skinning, tweening. Adobe After Effects compositing software. You do not need to be good at drawing to make amazing special effects! This camp's only session meets Monday-Thursday, July 20-30, 9am-1pm.

It will basically mimic the upper division class I teach to university students. More activities, though. We DO have 4 hours to kill each day. ;)

Bridge Concept

2009-02-24T11:27:00.001-06:00

We begin with a few rocket sketches...working towards the idea of creating a cockpit. I'll start with the exteriors to get a feel for the interior space.

bridge under nose. I knew I wanted to do this because I would want to see the planet below me if I were in a rocket. Having the bridge up top wouldn't give me the best views

variations: note design with landers mounted on side wings, or one in which the lower section is detachable as a lander. It could also spin, so every direction out of the center felt like down.

quick material sketch: shiny, sleek, retro, brass?

study of bridge

same bridge, top view

uninked variation

cutaway: captain's chair up front, crew chairs to side, couch in back

rework: removed Captains chair, deepen couch area

After Effects Introduction

2009-02-01T22:04:00.010-06:00

Welcome to Adobe After Effects!

We are going to be setting up our first project and using some basic transforms and keyframes.

Setting up a project

assets: images, fonts, clips, audio files etc

A quick sketch of my airship

My final layout with layers expanded

I am going to add some turning gears and I happen to have this lovely page full of gears

importing...bringing your footage into after effects...how it is organized, lessons from photoshop

The structure of a project: clips, stills, composition, nested compositions

Creating a New composition: composition settings

The Timeline

Navigating

layers

creating new layers

types of layers

Audio...viewing and previewing a waveform

Markers...synching up audio to your animation

The composition window

navigating

Basic Transforms

Position

Rotation

Scale

Anchor Point

Opacity

Anchor Point

Pivot, root, handle, center of gravity

its position informs ow the rest of your transforms are going to work

think ahead!

Position

location onscreen

motion path...a bezier curve

some handy tools:
wiggler
smoother
motion sketch

Rotation

around anchor point

repeating keys vs rendering and re-interpreting footage

orient along path

Scale

from anchor point

anchor point to vanishing point

exponential scale

Opacity/Transparency

Motion Blur

composition settings to control shutter angle

set per layer

enable over all

Effects

like photoshop, but with keyframes

parameters

Compositions

parenting

nesting compositions

pre compose

pre render

Rendering

play

Ram preview--sound

make movie--settings for blog

Embedding

learn how to get your finished movie onto your blog

Airship First Pass from Ben Bays on Vimeo.

After working out my motion, I went back to the Photoshop of my airship and refined and repainted it.

a polished version of my original layout

Airship polish pass from Ben Bays on Vimeo.

Voila! A nearly finished shot! I was up and running as quickly as possoble. Its all refinement from here! Total time spent was about 8 hours!

Airship polish pass from Ben Bays on Vimeo.

Assignment:

Assignment – graphics in motion… Create a 5-10 second animation using the basic Transforms: Position, Rotation, and Scale and opacity

You do not have to use all of them

Motion Graphic and Visual Effects Introduction

2009-01-18T12:11:00.023-06:00

Motion graphics are graphics that use video and/or animation technology to create the illusion of motion. Motion graphics are usually displayed via electronic media technology, but may be displayed via manual powered technology (e.g thaumatrope, phenakistoscope, stroboscope, zoetrope, praxinoscope, flip book) as well. The term is useful for distinguishing still graphics from graphics with a transforming appearance over time without over-specifying the form.
or a transforming appearance. These motion graphics are usually combined with audio for use in multimedia projects.

Perhaps one of the first uses of the term "Motion Graphics" was by animator John Whitney, who in 1960 founded a company called Motion Graphics Inc.

Visual effects (commonly shortened to Visual F/X or VFX) are the various processes by which imagery is created and/or manipulated outside the context of a live action shoot. Visual effects often involve the integration of live-action footage and computer generated imagery (CGI) in order to create environments which look realistic, but would be dangerous, costly, or simply impossible to capture on film. They have become increasingly common in big-budget films, and have also recently become accessible to the amateur filmmaker with the introduction of affordable animation and compositing software.

Norman McLaren

C.C., C.Q. (April 11, 1914 – January 27, 1987) was a Scottish-born Canadian animator and film director National Film Board of Canada (NFB). known for his work for the

Len Lye

(5 July 1901, Christchurch, New Zealand - 15 May 1980, Warwick, New York), was a New Zealand-born artist known primarily for his experimental films and kinetic sculpture. His films are held in archives such as the New Zealand Film Archive, British Film Institute, Museum of Modern Art in New York City, and the Pacific Film Archive at University of California, Berkeley. Lye's sculptures are found in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Albright-Knox Art Gallery and the Berkeley Art Museum. Although he became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1950, much of his work went to New Zealand after his death, where it is housed at the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery in New Plymouth.

Oskar Fischinger

(22 June 1900, Gelnhausen, Germany — 31 January 1967, Los Angeles) was an abstract animator, filmmaker, and painter. He made over 50 short animated films, and painted c. 900 canvases which are in museums, galleries and collections worldwide. Among his film works is Motion Painting No. 1 (1947), which is now listed on the National Film Registry of the U. S. Library of Congress.

Saul Bass

(May 8, 1920—April 25, 1996) was an American graphic designer and Academy Award-winning filmmaker, but he is best known for his design on animated motion picture title sequences.
During his 40-year career he worked for some of Hollywood's greatest filmmakers, including most notably Alfred Hitchcock, Otto Preminger, Stanley Kubrick and Martin Scorsese. Amongst his most famous title sequences are the animated paper cut-out of a heroin addict's arm for Preminger's The Man with the Golden Arm, the text racing up and down what eventually becomes a high-angle shot of the United Nations building in Alfred Hitchcock's North by Northwest, and the disjointed text that raced together and was pulled apart for Psycho.
Saul Bass designed the 6th AT&T Bell System logo, that at one point achieved a 93 percent recognition rate in the United States. He also designed the AT&T "globe" logo for AT&T after the break up of the Bell System.

Maurice Binder

(August 25, 1925 - April 4, 1991) was a famous title designer best known for his work on 14 James BondDr. No in 1962. He was born in New York City, USA, but worked mostly in Britain from the 1950s onwards. The Bond producers first approached him after being impressed by his title designs for the 1960 Stanley Donen comedy film The Grass Is Greener. films including the first,

More James Bond Stuff

Kyle Cooper

is a designer of motion picture title sequences. His work includes the opening credit sequences of Se7enThe Island of Dr. Moreau (1996), Flubber (1997), The Mummy (1999), Spider-Man (2002), Dawn of the Dead (2004), Spider-Man 2 (2004), Godzilla Final Wars (2004); and the video games Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty (2001) and Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater (2004). His work in the credits field is often compared to Saul Bass, of whom replaced his role as title designer for Martin Scorsese's 1990 film Goodfellas.^[1] (1995),

Interview with Kyle Cooper

another interview with Him

Pablo Ferro

(born January 15, 1935) is a graphic designer and film titles designer.

He was born in Antilla, Oriente Province, Cuba. He was raised there on a remote farm until emigrating to New York with his family as a teen.

Danny Yount

RockNRolla opening credits
Iron Man

Various other Motion Graphics examples from around the web...

More Title Sequences

What are we going to learn this semester?

PHOTOSHOP

ILLUSTRATOR

ADOBE AFTER EFFECTS

BASICS TRANSFORMS AND KEYFRAMING

ADVANCED ANIMATION: CURVES

SHAPES, PATHS, MASKS, MATTES

TRANSFER MODES

TEXT

PARTICLES

CHROMA KEY

MOTION TRACKING

MOTION SMOOTHING

PROJECT MANAGEMENT

What you will need.
Books? None. This blog is all you need. I will post examples and techniques right here. Each week, I will create a post that shows you the basics of what we will learn in class. But if you are looking to by some books on Motion Graphics or Visual Effects, I would recommend:

After Effects Apprentice by Chris and Trish Meyer

Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects: Essential and Advanced Techniques by Chris & Trish Meyer

The Art and Science of Digital Compositing By Ron Brinkman

Additionally, I have found a lot of great tutorials on this website:

Creative Cow

Assignment:
Your first assignment is to create a Blog and create your first post, your introduction. It should tell me a little about yourself, your interests, perhaps post some examples of your work, if you have it available online. There are many ways to start a blog, but I use this one:

Blogger

Its free, and I can use my Google username, so it is integrated into all my other tools, likke google reader, and gmail, and all that. If you have google, you should use it.

Here are some examples:

benbays.blogspot.com

yeojeongshin.blogspot.com

geoffallison.blogspot.com

julietjkim.blogspot.com

caitlindiaz.blogspot.com

Nothing to it...keep it as informal as you like, but include some interesting stuff!

Have some movies you have always wanted to get online? There are lots of different options, but I use this one:

Vimeo

Its free, you have a pretty good amount you can upload each week, and the picture quality is pretty good. It also gives you some interesting metrics about your video. You may be surprised to find out how many people are watching your stuff!

Once you have created your blog and your first post, please email me your blog address.

benbays@yahoo.com

Resume

2009-01-13T16:54:00.000-06:00

Ben Bays

benbays@yahoo.com

512.947.6162

Hand drawn Environments

2008-present University of Texas Austin,

Department of Radio Television and Film

Adjunct Professor

I teach an upper division and graduate level class in motion graphics and visual effects.

2005-present Fizz Factor Studios

Lead Artist

Created a variety of environments and backgrounds for the Gameboy DS. Managed team of artists, animators to produce high quality games. DS games are a lot of fun and present quite a technical challenge. I have learned a lot about making environments very efficient and lightweight. Plus, I have had the opportun ity to work on hand drawn environments.

2006-present The Ted Zone

Background Artist

Created backgrounds for an animated series.

2004-2005 Detour Productions

Animator

Animated characters and backgrounds on “A Scanner Darkly”, a feature film by Richard Linklater

2003-2004 Acclaim Studios Austin

Assistant Lead Artist

· Created concept art for, modeled, textured and lit environments for a 3^rd person action game for console video game systems

· Developed a workflow pipeline for art assets on a 3^rd person action game for console video game systems

· Trained artists in the use of in house tools

Worked with lead artist to maintain a consistent style and level of quality throughout the project

2001-2003 Acclaim Studios Austin

Environmental Artist

· Created concept art for, modeled, textured and lit environments for a fantasy platform game for console video game systems

· Converted art assets for low end system considerations

Assisted in the testing and training of new tools generated in studio for art management

2000–2001 Swerve Pictures

Lead Animator / Art Director

· Keyframer, InBetweener, Backgrounds (hand drawn)

· 3dStudio Character animation, Special Effects, Backgrounds

· Storyboards, Visual Design

Managed 7 animators

1996–1999 The University of Texas at Austin

Teaching Assistant

· Taught the computer aspect of the animation class.

Moved the animation department from all film to an 80% digital curriculum

1999–2000 Mother’s Café and Garden

Manager

· Regularly updated and reprogrammed computer systems.

· Designed children’s menus and prepared any other artwork needed

Was the all-around-do-anything-you-need-at-all guy .

1998–1999 Vespaio Restaurant

Manager

· Implemented the computer system and opened the restaurant.

· Designed and altered menus, gift certificates, business cards, advertising.

Managed a staff of 15 waiters and support personnel in a high pressure environment.

1995–1998 Pizza Nizza

Manager

· Set up and maintained three separate computer systems.

· Implemented the change from dine-in to delivery, created a database of clients.

Trained waitstaff and managers.

1992–1998 University of Texas

B.A., Studio Art, with a concentration in animation.

Software Proficiencies:

Adobe Photoshop

Adobe After Effects

Adobe Premiere

Maya

3d Studio Max

Painter

Adobe Illustrator

Flash MX

Games:

Vexx

100 Bullets

The Legend of Spyro:Eternal night

The Legend of Spyro: A New beginning

Other the Hedge: Hammy Goes Nuts!

Wizards of Waverley Place

The Incredible Hulk (DS)

The Tale of Despereaux

Another night at the Museum

The Tale of Despereaux

2008-12-04T13:13:00.012-06:00

The Tale of Despereaux came out for the Nintendo Gameboy DS on Dec. 2nd. This was the first game I was lead artist on and I had a great time.

Anyway, the reviews are strating to come in, so I thought I might create a little post where you can get to them all in one place!

Gamespot

Rate: 8/10 by Gatcho

“The graphics looks great. They're vibrant and colorful. The environment looks smooth and detailed as well. The animation is also quite impressive. Add to that the character grunts when getting hit and shouting "wohoo!" when being able to execute acrobatic moves makes this game an enjoyable experience.”

“The levels are well made and you'll be able not only to do the usual running and jumping but perform acrobatic moves such as: rappelling, jumping/bouncing of walls, etc.”

“But surprise, surprise the game is actually better in my opinion when compared to games like Prince of Persia: The Fallen King and Assassin's Creed.”

http://www.nineoverten.com/2008/12/12/the-tale-of-despereaux-nds-a-review/

"...While all these games are 2D platformers, a judicious amount of 3D textures and 3D backgrounds are used to flesh out the level environment. The art direction on TToD however, brings things up a notch.

I was pleasantly surprised with the opening levels, with beautifully rendered graphics, not to mention varied 3D backgrounds. The same thing can be said when I encountered the dungeon levels..."

Here is one from IGN. They can be pretty rough on the DS games sometimes. Especially kids games.

http://ds.ign.com/articles/938/938314p1.html

The graphics also help add to the scope of the levels. Though you'll be traversing the environment with a fixed side perspective, the backgrounds are fully fleshed out. Just because you can't move around a whole room, doesn't mean it's not there. As you make your way across the dinner table for example, there will be objects you pass behind, things you pass in front of, objects that you can jump on, and set pieces that stretch from the foreground way off into the distance. Backgrounds are multilayered as well, so it always seems like there is more to the world than just the stuff you interact with. In many other side-scrollers, levels often feel closed in and claustrophobic, but in this game, environments always feel wide open, even though you may be stuck on a fixed path.

Here is one from Variety:

http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117939266.html?categoryid=1079&cs=1

A brief snippet:

"The graphics are surprisingly good for Nintendo’s handheld system, with lovingly illustrated levels including the mazelike chutes from the kitchen to the coalmine-like castle dungeon. The rat’s coliseum, where two rather clever boss battles take place, rewards combatants with a colorful three-dimensional backdrop and silhouetted rodents who jeer from the stands."

Cheat code central gave it a 7.6

http://www.cheatcc.com/ds/rev/thetaleofdespereauxreview.html

and says:

"Speaking of color, Despereaux is definitely a cartoon-come-to-life. Everything from the animation to the static storybook panels exhibits a quality generally lacking in movie-inspired games."

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/columnist/jinnygudmundsen/2008-12-25-despereaux_N.htm

"The version for the Nintendo DS is an Everyone-rated side-scrolling game about navigating through interesting environments, with occasional combat. If you are trying to decide between the two, choose the Nintendo DS version — it's the better game."

http://www.gamerankings.com/itemrankings/launchreview.asp?reviewid=987876

"Visually the game takes on a life of its own thanks to the perspective and the amount of detail portrayed in each background. While you are on a set path the interaction with each level is brilliantly displayed with objects presented in both the foreground and background giving a nice multi-tiered look and feel."

and

"Tales of Despereaux is a surprisingly fun title that takes the basis of what makes these types of game fun and runs with it. The controls are spot-on and the level design is immaculate making this a solid experience for anyone who enjoys the characters it is based on. If you are looking for a good platform experience for your Nintendo DS you may want to give this title a look as it will end up surprising you. With a history of poorly rushed licensed games for Nintendo's portable juggernaut it is nice to finally see a game that takes the simplest design and builds a fun game around it as opposed to building the game around the license."

http://www.ztgamedomain.com/6477/Tales-of-Despereaux.html

As a very special added bonus, here is a reel from the game!

Despereaux Reel from Ben Bays on Vimeo.

Ben Bays

Chromakey and Greenscreen

Motion Tracking

3D in After Effects and Photoshop

Particles

Text

Shapes, Masks, Mattes

Advanced Animation

Bugs!

Intro to After Effects

Intro to the image: Photoshop

Intro to 344M

ProRes codecs

Introduction

Space Station Watercolor

Syllabus

INSTRUCTOR : Ben Bays

Sketches

Mars Layouts

Sketchbook Scans

Aquatic Theme

Holiday Space Station Drawings

Asteroids

Anatomy of a 3D Model

Book Camera Mapping in Maya

Camera Mapping in 3D

Garden of Unearthly Delights

The Broken Star

Introduction: Ben Bays

Environment Reel

UT Summer Camp!

Bridge Concept

After Effects Introduction

Blogroll Spring 2009

Motion Graphic and Visual Effects Introduction

Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects: Essential and Advanced Techniques by Chris & Trish Meyer

The Art and Science of Digital Compositing By Ron Brinkman

Additionally, I have found a lot of great tutorials on this website:

Resume

The Tale of Despereaux