MSNBC

Producer, design, illustration, animation

MSNBC was a partner for the 2014 Global Citizen Festival in New York City and our team was approached to create editorial content around the main global poverty issues.

My coworker Meagan Choi and I produced a three-part animation series around the issues of polio, education and water/sanitation.

We were in charge of everything—from researching and writing to animating and editing. We had Joy Reid from MSNBC's The Reid Report narrate the series.

Links to videos on MSNBC:

Polio

Education

Water/Sanitation

National Geographic magazine

Malofiej 20 Bronze winner, 2012
CaGIS Best Thematic Map winner, 2011
Information is Beautiful shortlist, 2012

What are the most common last names in each state and where do they originate from? Design editor Oliver Uberti and I found the top 25 most common surnames in each state, with the size of the text representing the quantity, and the color representing the ethnic origin. Under the art direction of Oliver, I plotted each name manually over all the states—good thing tetris was one of my favorite pastimes as a kid!

Our findings were interesting, not only to see the difference in overall population across states, but also to see how historical migrations really shaped the demographics of the country.

Top 25 surnames in each state, 2000, National Geographic Magazine — Copyright © 2011 National Geographic. Reprinted with permission from National Geographic Magazine, February 2011

Personal animation work

I knew that I wanted to model and animate a carousel for my final project in 3D animation class. I'd always been fascinated with them, and I wanted to portray—with a child's imagination—of what the moonlight does to abandoned ones.

I wanted a certain look and feel to this piece: whimsical and surreal, but also eerie (why is there a carousel in the middle of nowhere anyway?). Having many lights on the carousel, lamp and moon really helped set the atmosphere. I also wanted the narrative to be ambiguous and left open for interpretation (What happened to the carousel and where does the horse go from here?).

Production-wise, modeling the carousel, the bench and lamp in Autodesk Maya was easy; everything is symmetrical and simple shapes. The horses, on the other hand, were a completely different story. Maybe it was the fact that I was only sleeping 15 hours a week at the time, and maybe that caused delusions of grandeur...Whatever the reason I decided it was a good idea for me to animate a horse in four days has escaped me.

Although most of the running horse animation is cringe-worthy, it was a great learning experience. This project really opened me up to the world of 3D animation, which is something I will continue to explore.

National Geographic magazine

Peace Corps volunteers and trainees, by year and region served, National Geographic Magazine — Copyright © 2011 National Geographic. Reprinted with permission from National Geographic Magazine, March 2011

Child labor estimates by region, National Geographic Magazine — Copyright © 2010 National Geographic. Reprinted with permission from National Geographic Magazine, November 2010

Births to U.S. women 35 and older, National Geographic Magazine — Copyright © 2011 National Geographic. Reprinted with permission from National Geographic Magazine, January 2011