Meet Ben Ross
Posted on May 13th, 2008by Tim
Photo by Jared.
I first met the brilliant Ben Ross (of Channel Frederator, Ultra Kawaii, and more) on Channel Frederator RAW, our Ning-powered social network for animators and animation fans. He had posted the first episode of Inside Ben’s Head, his own original series, and there were so many crazy, great ideas, like “Nolte-Busey-Busey-Nolte” and “Italian Techno,” that I wrote him a fanmail right away. Here’s the episode in question:
Find more videos like this on Channel Frederator RAW
Ben wrote back and said he’d actually had a cartoon way back in the second episode of Channel Frederator (unknown to me, Fred had a similar experience, meeting Ben at an event and never making the connection that he was the same guy who sent that great cartoon in to Channel Frederator). Such was the pace of those early days at Next New Networks that about a week later, I walked over to meet a new intern who was sitting over with the Frederator team, and it turned out to be Ben. He’d already been hired before I’d gotten the chance to tell anyone about him.
Ben’s been working on projects for us ever since — making invaluable contributions like the awesome paper cutout dolls for Indy Mogul and Frederator, lots of great motion graphics and title card animations on ThreadBanger, and the popular Stunt Kitty series on Ultra Kawaii. But Ben’s breakthrough hit came last week in the form of Animal Idol, a special episode of Ultra Kawaii that made it all the way to YouTube’s front page, and is currently at over 2 million views around the web.
Pretty great stuff (big props to Josh Leo, Erin Flood, and Dave Seger who pulled it all together) and for anyone else this would have been enough. But a week later Ben Ross’ masterpiece hit: a special 8-Bit episode of Meth Minute 39 (think low-res 80’s-era video games), which Ben created in collaboration with Dan Meth over who knows how many hours of work. Enjoy below — and congratulations and thanks to Ben for bringing a creative spark to so many of our networks, and entertaining so many people across the web with his work. I’m sure he’s just getting started.
May 14th, 2008 at 9:55 pm
Ben sure is one of the special ones. We were lucky enough just to have his films on Channel Frederator, but to have him doing his special thing for us every day!. Wow. Check out his new header design for http://frederatorblogs.com.
May 16th, 2008 at 10:02 am
Ben is literally amazing. What’s really nuts if just how freaking FAST he is! Every time I’d come up with something for him to do, he’d have it done before I even had time to think of something else. Lighting fast, quality execution and just a damn nice guy. Move to the city already!!
May 23rd, 2008 at 10:22 am
[...] our blog Channel Frederator Viewer Calls - The Meth Minute 39: You may have noticed the .. http://tinyurl.com/5wff8d 22 hrs ago « Meet Ben Ross [...]
June 27th, 2008 at 5:09 pm
[...] people from NNN and Frederator who helped out as Rock Band partygoers or Gary stand-ins (especially Ben Ross). And special props to Kyle Fassenella, who DP’d and contributed all the amazing steadicam [...]