Art of the Story

I built this to play on the side screens of a show in the Walt Disney Theatre before the show began. Its 4:3 because the screens in the theatre at 4:3.

Morning Show

Whenever we do a long repositioning cruise like the Atlantic crossing we do a Cruise Director morning show. This is from the logo loop, but I did everything from keying to lower thirds and scrolls and bugs.

Escort Carrier 3D Model

This is a 3D model of a World War II escort carrier that I build from scratch in Cinema 4D. It will be used in the visual effects of my short film on Taffy 3. Whenever I get around to it that is.

Disney Channel All Stars

Here is another.

Superstar Karaoke

Some of our venues are covered in screens but not all events in those venues have content. Here is one event I built a screen for to have something more themed.

Tea With the Mad Hatter

This is a still from a graphic I built for an event called Tea With Alice on the Disney Magic. Sometimes Alice couldn't be there and the event was changed to Tea With the Mad Hatter and I built the screens for the venue.

Disney Dream

This is one of the first screens I did for the Disney Dream when it was opened in January. Quick, clean, simple.

Business Cards

I finally got around to creating some business cards. Created the logo and in Cinema 4D and After Effects.

Music Video

In the spirit of full disclosure this is not the official version. I was the second person to edit this music video and when I left the area a third editor was brought in to recut the entire thing. To the best of my knowledge that is the official version. This is just a small sample of my post production work.

Foreign Language Guide

When we implemented a Foreign Language movie channel I was asked to create guide to let our guests know in their own language what times the movies would be playing. I was happy to have the opportunity to create a TV Guide in my own design, even if the information involved was much less complicated.

Infocaster Templates

These are templates I designed to a test a new system that allowed us to display content from multiple sources on a single screen. There is a large window for the primary content. Variations include a window for a clock face, smaller windows for additional signage and an area to overlay a text crawl. The templates are named Mickey Classic, Donald Duck and Pluto Night.

Unoriginal Work

These are projects I built from start to finish, but I did not do the original design. For example, the TV Guide was built by another motion graphics designer on another ship. The company wanted to implement the TV Guide design on all ships but there was no project file. I rebuilt the project by eye. This was an enjoyable challenge, but the heart of the work was organizing the project files so they were easy to update, fast to render and discernable to anyone with the least bit of knowledge in the software. The TV Guide originally took 90 minutes to render. By pre-rendering the elements inside the project, render time was reduced to 45 minutes.

I created a new look for the channel that displays information from the bridge such as weather, speed, direction and our location on the globe at various zoom levels. Unfortunately I can’t show you the screen because the design was assembled in the HTML style coding within the software. I was not able to grab a screen shot. But I was asked to come up with a background over which the weather information could be displayed. The first screens I made were said to be “too advanced”. A very complimentary way of telling me to try again, so I came up with more cartoony looking screens and they were pleased with that look.

Sidebars

I’ve created many versions of sidebars. I am quite happy with these sidebars created for a theatre show. I am much more pleased with the content I built for the show than the show itself. In particular I like the texture and depth in this entirely unsung graphic element.

No Satellite

When my ship did the Atlantic Crossing from Florida to the Mediterranean I was asked to build something we could display in the 2 days of dead space between the North American and European satellite footprints.

WDT Logo

This is a default logo played on the channel dedicated to the Theatre Channel when there were no shows to display.

Crew Awards Show 2009

Crew Awards 2009 Logo Loop from Rick Ellis on Vimeo.

These are video elements for a big awards program we run annually on the Disney Magic. I got to design the look and feel of this live show along side my friend and lighting designer David. There were over 200 video elements and 250 lighting cues. On top of designing the show, I operated show control and directed a 3 camera shoot. David and I are quite proud of the contributions we made to reward and celebrate our coworkers and friends.

Crew Awards Nominee Example from Rick Ellis on Vimeo.

Music Video: Breaking Free

Breaking Free from Rick Ellis on Vimeo.

This is a music video for Christian Artist Meagan Lee that I did with my production company, Bobaloo Films.

Studio Sea

Untitled from Rick Ellis on Vimeo.

A new logo for a venue built in Cinema 4D and After Effects

Shopping Ashore

Shopping Ashore from Rick Ellis on Vimeo.

This is a default slide for the shopping channel on the Disney Magic.

Rockin Bar D

Rockin Bar D Logo from Rick Ellis on Vimeo.

This is a 3D logo built in Cinema 4D for one of the venues on my ship

Music Video: I May Be Down

I May Be Down from Rick Ellis on Vimeo.

This is a music video I did with my production company, Bobaloo Films.

Walt Disney Theatre photomerge

I shot these images on a tripod and stitched them together in Photoshop. The original idea didn't work, but the raw photomerge looked great!

Side Bars

Nearly all the screens on our ship are 16:9 but we still receive some content that is 4:3. I built these sidebars for that situation.

Preshow Slide

This is a still from a series of motion graphics slides I created to run before movies in our theaters

Just practicing a new look in my free time.

Cruise Map

I made this map for the big screen TV on my ship and we used it during our Sailaway Party. In the past Disney hired an outside firm, but they've increasingly relied on me for this kind of work.

3D Projector Logo

I made this for the Disney Magic when we installed 3D projectors. This is a logo placeholder that replaces the generic Dolby logo when the machine is waiting to run a film, for example while the theatre is filling up. The goal here was to create a flat image that looked like it popped out, that looked 3D. I built the text in Zaxwerks using a Disney font and a wide angle lens to give a distorted bend to the text. I dropped it over a fractal noise layer with a vingette and tinted color. When we viewed it for the first time from the projector the effect worked better than I could have imagined. Not only did the text look as if it popped out, it gave the illusion of being projected onto a curved screen. I had to physically touch the screen myself to be sure. My boss asked if I made this a 3D image and I asked if he was wearing 3D glasses. "Oh, no I'm not... looks great."

Crew Assembly Logo

This logo was created for the Disney Cruise Line Crew Assembly. This is our State of the Union. They asked me to put the finishing touches on a PowerPoint including a new logo. The background is from an image collection I own and I used the CC Glass effect in After Effects to give it more texture, dimension and really get the light to play with it. I scratched up the text with another texture and the goal was to get the text to look like it was stamped into or raised from the metal and painted. I didn’t know how Disney corporate would react to such an image, but this was for the crew. I wanted it to be worn and used like you might find on a cargo ship. I wanted it to look worked. There’s so much that’s shiny and fake about Disney and we know, its our job. But as employees we’re tired of things that aren’t real. Those are for the customer. We want facts. We want to know what the company is up to. Its about getting under the hood of the machine and that’s what I was trying to convey.

To my surprise Disney corporate went nuts for it. It got approved for the assembly, but it also got printed up as a flyer and sent out as a series of email reminders. I received many positive comments.

AVTV examples

These stills are from loops I created for the big screen TV.

Hold Screen

Rock Star Party

Rock Star logo loop from Rick Ellis on Vimeo.

On Disney Cruise Line we have several themed parties. One of them is the Rock Star party. Its high energy with a fast paced dance number, intense grungy graphics and a great light show. The problem is the logo loop for the Rock Star party is cartoony. I was asked to create a new logo loop for the show. When I asked what they were looking for, the only word everyone agreed on was graffiti. I built this in After Effects with the paint effect, a texture image, CC glass filter, an ink bleed transition and a color adjustment layer. It loops seamlessly, but I also built it to be paused on the blue and white screen before the transition in case the repetition became annoying or distracting during the show. So it’s a logo loop and a still logo.

Special Effects News Intro

Special Effects News Intro from Rick Ellis on Vimeo.


The Making of from Rick Ellis on Vimeo.

This was one of my favorite projects as a teacher. It was an intro for the morning announcements at school. The idea started when the class was brainstorming a new intro and one student adamantly wanted to get run over by a truck. Pretty soon everyone wanted to fall from a helicopter or control the weather. One student couldn’t think of anything and I had just seen the movie Jumper so we got permission to get on the roof of a building for a few minutes to get his footage. I did the final composite but I insisted that each student learn how to build their segment. Before shooting we storyboarded out each shot including how to get the plate, the green screen footage and what elements would need to be created in After Effects. The music I believe is from the Bourne movies. The opening earth zoom was straight from Video Copilot, but everything else was done from scratch. After this ran on the morning announcements everyone wanted to take Media.

If I were to do this again I would add some sort of color grading to make it look better and hide the composites. I would mask out the dirty green screen footage or reshoot, and I would create an original earth zoom.

Creepy Nixon/Morning News

Creepy Nixon from Rick Ellis on Vimeo.
Creepy Nixon was a title screen I created for short horror movie my students made where Richard Nixon hunts them down one by one at school. The name of the short was eventually changed to Night of the Living Nixon, but I like this title. The idea came from a Creative Cow tutorial on making text look like it was projected through smoke.

Morning News Intro from Rick Ellis on Vimeo.
One of the last things I did when I resigned from my teaching position to work for Disney was to create a back to school morning news intro. I made it all motion graphics because I didn’t know which students would be in that class, but I didn’t want to leave the new instructor hanging without an interesting news intro.

HD Intro Web Video

HD web intro from Rick Ellis on Vimeo.

I built this video for a church web page. The music is a royalty free track from an Adobe product, but it fit well. I had fun playing with the glow effect for the text, using smoke and texture elements, masking the video clips into interesting groups and exploring the 2 ½ D space in After Effects. I think it successfully shows people what to expect and wets their appetite in under 30 seconds. If it were any longer it would be distracting.

If I were to redo this I would deinterlace the video footage.

Water Map

Water Map from Rick Ellis on Vimeo.

I discovered the caustics plug-ins in After Effects and created a water map on a lunch break. I tried several textures, but I like most this red paint effect. I got the idea from a Total Training DVD, but I really made it my own.

Gunfire Sequence

Gunfire Sequence from Rick Ellis on Vimeo.

This is one of my first composites. In The Ruse the only gun we had was a CO2 powered BB gun. This was a screen test for the gunfire animation composite. We never used this shot in the film, but I made the mistake of showing my high school students what I was working on. Then they wanted to learn and eventually I gave in.

If I were to redo this, I would also animate the reflection in the window.

The Ruse Trailers

In 2007 I made some friends on Craigslist and we decided to make a short action film called The Ruse. It was never completed to anyone’s satisfaction, but the concept was great and we went at it with reckless abandon. I wrote a couple scenes, but mostly I shot and edited. This is the trailer. It was shot with a Canon XL2 and I used After Effects for color and compositing. It was my first attempt at color grading and putting together an original soundtrack. The titles were a step by step follow of a Video Copilot tutorial and if I were to do this over I would create original titles.

The Ruse from Rick Ellis on Vimeo.
This second trailer I created much later after viewing another trailer for a short film called White Red Panic. I was impressed by its use of image and sublime music and I wanted to try it out. I also tried a different treatment of color.

The Ruse from Rick Ellis on Vimeo.

2007 Demo Reel

2007 Demo Reel from Rick Ellis on Vimeo.

This is a short reel I made while teaching a high school media class in 2007/2008. I was in charge of the morning announcements which my first period class ran daily as a live news program. Throughout the year we developed several news intros to keep our content from becoming stale. It was a private school and I was constantly creating pieces to highlight school programs for fundraisers. These pieces were always a hit and I enjoyed the freedom to try new things. I had no teaching experience when I began so I focused the classes on the aspects of media that most excited me: motion graphics and visual effects. In one project I borrowed from Andrew Kramer, students got to blow themselves up. This taught them keying and, more importantly, how to match keyed footage to a background plate. During that year I worked with some friends on a short action film. I shot, edited and color graded the footage.