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.

10 comments:

Kendra Melton said...

Awesome stuff!

Thomas Taylor said...

Cute video. I like the style.

MrSeanLane said...

I love how the early concept looks, great style, but I guess I can see why the SFX people would shy away from it.

Elizabeth said...

That sounds like so much work - really makes me appreciate animation. Congrats to all!

Fran Johnston said...

Lovely stuff. Its great to finally see a finished product when you've put so much work into it.

niki@heynikiniki.com said...

you know how I get when anything has that paper cut-out feel...my heart just turns into a puddle of love, haha. gorgeous work, erin!! :)

Christina Ellis said...

Cute stuff! I love that you and your friends are hiding in this~

Sandra Lucia said...

Very impressive!! great work Erin!

Erin McGuire said...

Thank you everyone :)

fvpaonessa said...

Ha! Very cute commercial. I really like the concept art drawings. Thanks for including those.