STEPHEN COLBERT’S “TOONING OUT THE NEWS”
An animated series parodying cable news, and covering stories in real time; interviews with large roster of notable real-world guests.
Character Designer + Graphic Illustrator, 2019-2020
Designed and built out a selection of the show’s main, tertiary, and one-off characters. Designed and illustrated title cards, inserts, and over-the-shoulder graphics. Coordinated with multiple stakeholders ( the art director, executive producers, show runner, and the writing staff ) to visually capture and punch up humor. Maintained rapid-fire yet polished daily turnaround to keep up with the emerging and ongoing daily news cycle ( in an election year, no less ).
CHARACTER DESIGN
In order to respond to the news cycle day-of, the show used Adobe Character Animator, a technology that motion tracks a video of an actor running lines, and that tracking would be applied to a corresponding character in real time. Recurring characters had to be meticulously built out, particularly in the face: every possible viseme (the position of the face and mouth when saying a word) was drawn out, from multiple angles.
GRAPHIC DESIGN + ILLUSTRATION
The best part of the job was coordinating with the art director, the show runner and the writers room to turn around one to two ridiculous graphics at a VERY fast pace. Every day was a new, weird project, and it strengthened my ability to prioritize and keep a clear head while multitasking under tight deadlines.