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- Ben

IDAE Ep. 3 Yo!

The Whimsical Wesley makes me laugh so hard. Enjoy a new Episode of I Dream About the Earth and see my wonderful guest star appearance... oh boy.

- Ben

Tyk

I finally got my second main character design done. Took so long because I just couldn't settle on a design that I liked. Finally it is here. Maybe some minor changes and touchups later.

Enjoy!

- Ben

P.S. I'm getting some storyboarding done too. BOOM!

Also, Tyk will be joining my Old Man I designed a few weeks back.

One last thing, my friend Kelly drew her OC along with Tyk. I loved it hahah. Give it a looksy: http://kelleh.com/image/36123267255

The Cosmos

I've always been a fan about astronomy and space and wondering what crazy thing could possibly be out there. So for my post production class we had to do a compositing project and at first I had no clue what I was going to do. People in my class were doing futuristic skylines in After Effects and playing with the green screen or just making some super surreal things. I kept changing my idea and it began to form into its own and becoming something. I chose to make some intersteller scenes all in after effects.

After looking up some tutorials to help me try and get things how I wanted them to look, I finally ended up with this:

Now, for being the very first thing I have ever made in After Effects, I think it is great but it still has a few hiccups here and there and is it just me or does it seem a little blurry on Vimeo? Could just be a resolution problem. For instance, I should've worked completely in a 3D environment. I chose to work in a 2D one and work with the layers and try to manipulate the objects to animate how they should look. Example of this is the moon. Since I worked in a 2D environment I had to have two different layers, one behind the planet and one infront of the planet, and you can see where the two meet during its ark around the planet with a little hiccup. Now, what I should've done was make it a 3D environment and just parent the two objects since I was using spheres anyway. That way the orbit of the moon would be extremely smooth and I could work with camera and light layers as well. That would really spice things up and THAT is what I've learned from this first attempt.

We have to take our ideas for this project and push it forward for our next project. So, I've decided to stay in the cosmos and create my own intersteller scenes. I've been checking out videos and pictures that portray the style that I've been trying to capture. Examples follow:

And that last video got me thinking I wanted to push my idea into a different direction. I wanted to animate a star, all composed in After Effects. The thing I regretted in my video Stellar was how beautiful and time consuming the nebulas were in the background but they didn't move. It was dead space if you will (no pun intended) and that needed to change. I know that nebulas do not move as far away as the planet would be but still the fact that it doesn't move just kills the scene for me. Maybe it is because I stared at it for hours and just grew to disliking it not moving but not quit sure how to get it to move. So, I used similar techniques that I learned from my previous effort and created this test, it is still incomplete, but man, I am on to something here.

Let's see where this goes. It may take a turn to Sci-Fi with spaceships, holograms and what not if I have the time. MAYBE. Time will only tell. Enjoy!

- Ben

**EDIT**-----------------
Here is what I ended up with. Added a few "Solar flare"-like effects and softened the edges and here we are:

IDAE Ep. 2

Wes is at it again with this great new entry in his series I Dream About Earth. Look out for more to come! Enjoy!!

- Ben

R.I.P. Grandpa

TO DO

THESIS TO DO LIST

- Idea
- Script
- Character Designs
•Old Man
•Tyk
- Character Turn Arounds
•Old Man
•Tyk
- Emotion Sheets
•Old Man
•Tyk
- Temple Layout
- Statues Layout
- Mountain Layout
- Deer Creature Layout
- Music
- Sound
- Story Board
- Animatic
• Timing Out
- Polish Everything up
- Finalize
- Animate
- Figure out Installation
• Framing pictures
• Set up
• Items needed
• Install
- Suit up
- Present

Epic Ferris

A few weeks ago at MIAD, we were assigned a found footage project in my Post Production elective which turned out to be this at first. We all brought in 2-3 movies each and Ferris Bueller was voted to edit. My teacher then made digital copies of the movie and gave them to us all. We were told to make pseudo trailer for the movie that makes it seem like something else or and experimental film with the shots. Idea's were tossed around such as making Ferris and Cameron seem more than friends, Cameron's Day Off and if Ferris and Sloan were figments of Cameron's imagination. This is what I came up with the first time around:



As you can see I tried to be a bit more experimental with this version, trying to make seem as though Ferris is on the run and the genre would be action/suspense. I accidentally did the first skip on the audio when I was editing. I thought, "Whoa! That was kind of cool!" So, I decided to play around with this thinking it was pretty neat. During critique people thought it was a bit jarring at first because it didn't have a visual to accompany the skip and my teacher hated how it ended with the shot of Grace. So I decided to tackle it again. Coming up with this more serious version:

Epic Ferris from Benjamin McNulty on Vimeo.

Obviously, the later is the stronger of the two. I do see this and glad I decided to take another swing at it. I'm fairly happy with the result and just thought the first video was worth a mention because of how abstract I was thinking. It's kind of neat how the idea shifted as time went on and show's a good progression of this project.
Have a nice day!

-Ben

I Dream About The Earth Ep. 1

I helped a friend make this video, I find it hilarious and he did a great job editing it all together. Enjoy.

-Ben

Some Indians and Pilgrams Eat a Turkey

Jeez... These last few weeks have definitely made me neglect my blog. I was wrapping up my finals and couldn't really doodle in my spare time.

Anyway!

Enjoy this awesome product that me and my classmates worked on for this semester in Sam Drakes Production Studio Class of 2012. We went through it all. Thought of ideas, chose an idea, wrote the script, did character and background designs, got some sound, did story boards, timed everything out within an animatic and then animated what we could. I'm not sure if we will come back to this but I wouldn't mind. It was fun!

-Ben

Summer Fun

Now that the hectic finals are over, I can finally get back to updating this thing of a regular basis. I have a few ideas/projects for myself over the summer. Let's see where these ideas take me.

-Ben

Logo 1

Read the Vimeo description.

Gentry Color Palette

 
This is the color palette for my story I've been working on for the past year. I developed this story when I was studying abroad in Ireland last summer. I am currently on my second rendition of this script trying to give everything a little more purpose. This story might end up being my senior thesis next year.

**EDIT**------------------
I chose to do a different story for senior thesis.
-Ben

Custom Page Soon

I'm working on a few layout designs so I can make this blog a little more personal. I currently have a banner (header) idea going. I'm not sure how long this will take but I will be teaching myself some HTML. Just enough to get around.

- Ben

Self Portrait

I designed myself as a cartoon recently and I kind of like how it turned out. Expect to see him more. This was a simple test for expression. All my "tests" and incomplete work go on my YouTube account at http://www.youtube.com/user/thebenjaminmcnulty.
All my good stuff goes on my Vimeo addressed in my post below.

- Ben

Something Old

Just looking at some old work. I forgot how awesome this was and espiecially how fun it was. The class was my Kinetic drawing 2 final. We took a fight scene from the movie Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, directed by Ang Lee. Every Student in the class got a different segment of the fight scene and rotoscoped it. For my rotoscope I use Adobe Illustrator. This is probably the most abstract I've ever animated. It's kind of nice to see such a change from myself. I also will be uploading some of my older work on here just to direct you guys towards my other websites. If you're interested in anymore of my complete work I believe is worthy of your time, check out my Vimeo at https://vimeo.com/benjaminmcnulty

- Ben

Self Portrait Boredom

This is a self portrait I doodled the other day. I am playing around with the image uploader and seeing how things look in my template. More of this cartoon-me to come.

-Ben

And so it begins...

I am trying to get my online identity out there. This will be my blog for my work and everything related to my creative side. Expect YouTube videos, Vimeo videos, Illustrations as well as entries coming soon.

-Ben