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. :)

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.