Intern Show Presentation

Today was the annual creative intern show at Hallmark HQ in Kansas City, MO. Every year at Hallmark, the creative interns show off the work they have done over the Summer. It is mainly for the interns who are leaving in about a week (I and a few of other interns will be there until September), and it is a treat to see what everyone else has done during their time at Hallmark.

I spent 3 days on my presentation including an all-nighter that rendered me pretty useless today (having been out of SCAD for a few weeks now, I've grown much less tolerant of them). I'm pretty proud of the concept though. I used my usual cat-screaming branding to help save some time with looking for fonts, theme, and color choices. Essentially since I am primarily digital, the centerpiece of my presentation is a 21" mac that just displays a close-up the cat's face looking around. Physical word bubbles floating out from the computer direct the user to do 3 things: click the cat's face (to see my digital work), take a business card, or look through a process book/sketchbook I made from my work this Summer.



Click His Face! - the interactive portion of my presentation, his face fills the whole screen of the computer and when idling he just looks around in a loop until clicked.

(You need Flash Player to see this)

I think you can see the inspiration from some of my past works both in illustration and animation for this one (most notably my recent Taffetas animations), and it is kind of exciting for me to see how I was able to re-use old ideas with a new concept to make something unique.

I'm not sure what all I can show right now on my blog as far as the work I've been doing there at Hallmark since nothing has gone live yet, so I'll play it on the safe side and only post the stuff I know won't get me in trouble, a few simple things from the sketchbook in my presentation :).

Lastly, this presentation would not have come together if it weren't for my amazing friend, Yesenia Carrero, who stayed up until the early hours of the morning to help me out a great deal with the Actionscript for the presentation as well as had my back with printing the physical material.

More than anything though her encouragement of me and my abilities really takes the cake. As an artist I have a fairly fragile ego, and while I think I take critiques well and have a fair bit of self-motivation, I can be really down about myself and my work sometimes. I had a particularly rough time this week with that and Jess was a good enough friend to patiently remind me of my strengths and give me the encouragement I needed.

Taffetas & Hallmark : I'm so excited I can't sleep

Here's the turnaround for Gemini Taffeta I did last weekend!

The absolutely amazing Yesenia Carrero is vectoring the turnaround now which will double as our base puppets for Gemini. Might I say: goodness, that girl is A-mazing! The vectored version makes my sketch version cry in shame - Jess is able to add just little small nuances to the final vectors, little fixes and nudges here and there, that really bring the character to life. I can't wait to start animation!

Might I add, Jess is a brilliant designer, illustrator, friend, and co-worker. She and I are co-directors/creators/producers of Taffetas and I wouldn't want to have it any other way! You should totally check out her newly updated website.

Likewise, I would really like to stop and say thank you to everyone who has been supportive of me and my artistic endeavors. It means a lot because I live, eat, and breathe this stuff.

And on a super-exciting note, I am 1 of 17 interns that will be going to Hallmark's annual Summer internship this year (we were selected out of almost 1,000 applicants from around the country!) ! I think I was told I am also the only animator this year, so that's pretty exciting (though a tad nerve-racking).

I'm so excited because I know I'm going to learn a lot and meet a lot of awesome creative-types. I'm extremely grateful for the opportunity.

So, yes, in short: thanks everyone!