Dan McCool describes his first assignment from Out & About – one that is unique in the magazine’s history – as “buckets of fun.”
That assignment: do an animation for our website: www.out-and-about.com.
Despite his tender years, the 23-year-old McCool is gaining valuable experience in the animator’s art. Born and raised in Delaware (Smyrna, New Castle), he received an associate degree in fine arts from the Delaware College of Art and Design, then moved on to Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, where he majored in animation, earning a Bachelor’s of Fine Arts last year.
After Pratt, he stayed in Brooklyn. He gets plenty of freelance work, which he pursues at night, fueled by copious amounts of Mountain Dew (“It’s almost like school never ended,” he says). Currently, he’s working as a layout artist for the Nick Jr. cartoon “Wonder Pets,” produced by Little Airplane Productions. Previous projects include extensive graphics and story boarding for promos for the A&E Television Network, where he also served as a production assistant.
The O&A assignment came by way of Joy Smoker, senior graphic designer for TSN Publishing and a former classmate of McCool’s at both DCAD and Pratt. She recommended McCool to Jim Miller, director of publications and sales and marketing. Miller liked the animation reel on McCool’s website -- www.oxink.com – and asked him to create what amounts to an animated commercial for Out & About.
The animation, which Miller approved after the first story board, is a mixture of cut-out and hand drawn (traditional) animation. It depicts a man sneezing, with the sneeze leaving the man’s house and leading the viewer on a trip through various Wilmington venues.
“Many of the people in it are friends of mine,” says McCool. “My girlfriend is the girl on the bus, and my roommates are drinking beers with the sneeze in the bar scene.”
He says he wanted to “come up with something that felt fresh, a humor and look that you wouldn't normally see in a local commercial.”
Check it out on our website. We think you’ll agree that he achieved his goal.
-- Bob Yearick |