Vlad Kozlov | Designer

Credit:
Rasa Smith and Jeremy N. Smith
Ginelle Hustrulid
Makenzie Ley
Makaela Kindel
EWU DESN Class 2021

In 2020 Rasa Smith and Jeremy N. Smith started a podcast during the quarantine. They reached out to the EWU design department to create short animated shorts to ran on YouTube and PBS. Ginelle Hustrulid (Associate Professor at EWU) gave the project to her students and asked me (I was a student working an independent study with her that quarter) to be the supervising producer and work on the animations as well.

We took the illustrations that Makenzie Ley created and turned them into seven 30 second episodes. As the supervising producer my tasks included ensuring the episodes were consistent and keeping track of the where the different aspects of the project were at – such as the episodes themselves, the trailer and the numerous other little pieces of the puzzle. In addition to that I also I animated the episode where Rasa asks “Are there animals without muscles?”

Once the student team animations were complete, I created the credits and the end and cut all the episodes together into a promo reel so that it could be pitched to PBS and other networks.