American Greetings

Finally! After months of work and waiting, the commercial I art directed for American Greetings is on the air. AG is a sponsor of PBS's The Electric Company, and we were hired to complete their sponsorship ad. This was a really awesome experience for me to learn more about the technical side of the process, and work closely with clients to get the look right. Here's some more of the concept art, we went through a lot of revisions.

Early development work. This was vetoed quickly by our effects artists, I think the billowing hair and sparkly magic stuff made them nervous about the time we had to finish the spot.
Early street scene development
The bottom round was the first set of character designs, and then we decided the characters should be younger, and more like paper dolls, hence the top row.

For the actual animation, I vectored every scene and every key frame poses of the girls, and our very talented animators rigged them to move like paper dolls in our shadowbox world. If you look closely, I make a cameo as the girl at the ticket booth. My creative director, Barrett Lewis, is playing the guitar on the left. Also Drew makes a cameo in the first shot :]

This was a really great experience, hopefully I'll get more projects like this soon.

In further good news, along with friends Adam Volker and McLean Kendree, I'm happy to have gotten into this year's Spectrum! Congrats to everyone!

Spring in Texas means mighty fierce allergies, pepper plants, and savoring the last of my girl scout cookies. I hope this weather holds, and I appreciate the few remaining brisk days (even the occasional weekend snow), for when the 100 degree days of summer roll around. Happy to be busy, working hard, and feeling alive.

Keep it like a secret



Done for a project that went away.

I just finished moving, and even though the new place was only 500 feet away, it's made all the difference. It's wonderful having a dedicated work area, and I am excited to make it an inspiring space. Organization has been an uphill battle for me when it comes to physical spaces (my computer and brain are fairly organized), but I'm going to do my best. There's work to be done.