Artist | internationalfilmreview

A-sweet-dream-poster-small — *A Sweet Dream* film poster

One of the most unique joys of being an artist is knowing that your work evokes raw, human emotions within those around you. Visual arts have the ability to transcend the mundane aspects of human life and to push people to explore themselves and the world around them. Over time, art has created change. It has inspired and influenced. It has created chaos and disruption, and it has birthed a community of dreamers, and creators. It has produced renowned artists like Tooba Rezaei, whose passion has allowed her to touch the lives of several different people throughout her career. For Rezaei, the true joy of her craft comes from the platform it gives her to make people feel things that they may not otherwise have the chance to feel. She gets to tell stories and to motivate her audiences to dream without limits.

When Rezaei was a child, she would immerse herself in cartoon television shows. When each show ended, she would take her pen and paper and challenge herself to draw all of her favorite characters. She was energized by the feeling of her pencils exploring the paper and loved the creating things that hadn’t otherwise existed. As she grew up, she continued to test her skills against various mediums and art forms within the field of visual arts. This led her to discover the wonderful world of animation, a world in which she feels that she belongs. She has a natural affinity for bringing her drawings to life via animation and loves the dynamics that the motion brings to her artwork. As an animator, Rezaei has created a number of well-known animations, such as her original animation, A Sweet Dream. Prior to creating A Sweet Dream, however, Rezaei experienced her first sense of impacting the lives of others through her artwork with her animations for the game SilverFit.

SilverFit was a game designed specifically for use by an older demographic. Essentially, it is a virtual therapy system to be used to train gross motor skills and ADL tasks during rehabilitation sessions. The game presents the necessary exercises for elderly individuals to follow along with and keep their muscles working accordingly. Since its inception, the game received great success and is now used by over 20,000 individuals a week. As SilverFit’s first designer, Rezaei acted as the background designer, background painter, character designer, and character animator. She designed a wide variety of different games, each based on the use of different motor skills to suit the game’s intended audience. In working for SilverFit, Rezaei got a taste of what it felt like to know that her work would directly aid in helping improve the health of its target audience. It gave Rezaei’s art a meaningful sense of purpose and she was addicted to the high of helping those around her. SilverFit’s founder and managing director, Maaike Dekkers-Duijts, was blessed to have Rezaei on board for the project. Her talents exceeded far beyond simply animating.

“Her animations really seem to come alive. They really ‘touch’ you. She is a great artist, creating extraordinarily beautiful animations. She is so artistic and has exceptional talent,” regarded Dekkers-Duijts.

After the success of Silverfit, Rezaei then extended her talents to the children’s show Parparook for Persian Gulf TV. Parparook (meaning ‘Pinwheel’ in the South of Iran) is a special program that is produced and distributed in Kahlije Fars IRIB (Islamis Repablic of Iran Broadcasting, also known as Persian Gulf). Rezaei wrote, directed, designed, painted and animated all the characters and all the objects on the background of Parparook, creating everything from scratch and differentiating her shorts from everything on the show. The producer and manager of the program were so happy with results that years later they used some of Rezaei’s work for other kid’s television programs as well.

Knowing that she had always wanted to create her own animated story, she knew that in order for it to be truly worth her while, she would need to give it an element of social influence. She wanted to do more than just entertain, and out of this determination, A Sweet Dream was born. A Sweet Dream can be described as a bittersweet, allegorical look at the desires of a little girl who wants the world to see her talents shine through her difficult life circumstances. Not only did Rezaei animate this project from start to finish, she also wrote and directed the storyline. To fit with the animated short’s premise, Rezaei felt it fitting to use a simple, two dimensional, flat design. In fact, she felt that the simplicity of the drawings was imperative to the overall mood she was attempting to portray. She wanted it to seem as if the little girl could’ve drawn the lines and shapes herself, making her world easier to relate to for her audience. Rezaei then added a second element to her design concept by showcasing the little girl’s reality through dark blue tones and contrasting it with her dream state, which Rezaei colored in golden tones.

“In her dream world, forms are curvaceous and delicate. There is dance and movement and inspiration. However, in reality, she is in an orphanage and the forms of the beds and the room are sharp and straight with harsh angles, alluding to her real-life struggles and difficulties,” said Rezaei.

Rezaei hoped that A Sweet Dream would challenge her audience to question their own harsh realities and evaluate them against their own hopes and dreams. She wanted them to think about how they would react if they were in the little girl’s shoes. Would their dreams be squandered by their reality? According to Rezaei, if we don’t push ourselves to understand the lives of others, we can never truly improve our society as a whole and make our collective world a better place. She felt as though A Sweet Dream helped to remind her why she does the work that she does. Seeing her audiences shed tears over her story solidified the reality that this is exactly what she wants to be doing and that she had succeeded in her efforts to make them stop and think about the consequences of their actions.

After screening at a number of different film festivals, A Sweet Dream even went on to win Best Animation at the Los Angeles CineFest, as well as Finalist in Animation Short at both the International Film Awards in Berlin, Germany, as well as at Constatine’s Gold Coin Festival in Serbia. If you wish to experience the magic, watch A Sweet Dream for yourself and you won’t be disappointed.

Image by Tooba Rezaei, captured from ‘A Sweet Dream’

Hanna Petersson is not like other art directors. She is constantly adapting, looking for a new challenge with each new day. Her style is influenced by her Swedish heritage. Scandinavian design is very scaled back, simplistic and focuses on form and function together rather than just putting things into a design solely as decoration. For Petersson, each part of a design must have a purpose, and if it does not, she knows exactly how to give it one. That is what makes her such an outstanding talent, and why she is known internationally for what she does.

At just 23, Petersson has put her artistic touch on some of the world’s largest brands. She has collaborated with many teams, creating imagery and customer engagement for Samsung, Swedish Match, and more. Her artwork captivates, and her individual exhibition at the House of Culture in central Stockholm garnered a lot of attention and earned her quite the fan base. She uses illustrations to tell a story, and uses her talent to help many brands increase sales.

“As an art director, it is incredibly important to research the client and the target audience and to create content based off of this that is rooted in facts and human truths. A design can look amazing, but unless that design is perfectly suited to the client and target audience the design is useless. What I need to make sure is that I always do my homework on whatever project I may work on, that I am passionate about it, and that I make sure that every detail is perfect before going into the physical production of the idea. The art director comes up with an idea and is in charge of directing it all the way from idea to finalized product. It is a great responsibility and a big challenge, but also incredibly rewarding and interesting to work on,” Petersson described.

Having worked with reputable retail agencies like WorkShop and Grey, Petersson also recently worked with AdPlant. With the company, she worked on a variety of projects to create visual development and branding for big companies, which will be released next year. Although the official projects can’t be mentioned for this reason, Petersson’s work with the company astounded all she worked with.

“Hanna is an excellent creative talent. I’ve had the pleasure of working with Hanna as both an illustrator and a communication creative for AdPlant network. She is a quick, smart person who pays attention to details in her handicraft. She is a warm and kind person who will ‘run that extra mile’ to deliver pitch perfect creative work,” said Marcus Enström, Founder of AdPlant and Lead Creative.

Petersson’s work greatly impressed AdPlant’s client. Despite not yet being released, the project she worked on has already had a lot of success, and the client is looking to have similar projects follow this one. They know it will be a hit, and they want to work with Petersson and AdPlant again after such a successful collaboration. The product category is one of the most sold in Sweden, and the designs Petersson has produced are one of a kind. They will undoubtedly increase sales and attract new customers to try the product. Petersson knew exactly how to please the company and potential customers at the same time, which is quite the challenge for many art directors.

To do this, she first had to identify exactly what was needed. In this case, it was a series of packaging designs with a unique set of illustrations that she would produce. She then needed to create a new set of color combinations to be used that would not only communicate the right feeling, but also easily convey what the product is and what it stands for. According to Petersson, designing a series of new products within the same category means that they must all be similar to each other and feel like a series, but they need to stand out from each other and be the most unique at the same time. Finding that balance takes some time and a lot of work goes into just coming up with an extraordinary amount of different variations and suggestions that then will be used to decide exactly what the finished product should look like. The process took Petersson quite a long time, because the client wanted to make sure that they were a part of the process every step of the way and got their say in the final product. As Petersson is known for her excellent communication skills, this was not a problem, and she knew exactly what they wanted before they even had to say it.

“This was a blast to work on because I really got to improve a design style I had dipped my toes in not too long before. What was also great was that I knew that these designs would be seen by hundreds of thousands of people in their everyday lives and that my work would be one of the main reasons for the success of the products,” said Petersson.

After seeing Petersson’s previous designs, Enström approached the art director knowing she would be a necessity for the success of his upcoming project. Petersson had previously done a project where she designed and sold apparel through her own shop. These designs were unique, and the founder of AdPlant later found the project in an online shop and asked her if she was interested in working on a project using a similar style of design. Despite working on other projects at the time, Petersson said yes to AdPlant. She was immediately interested in working on the project when she heard about it, and wanted to work on a packaging design project that would be a vital part in the sales of a company. She knew she would be able to influence what the design of the product category could look like and innovate the category from what it was at the time.

“It was very nice to hear that a company was interested in my designs and talents and therefore I was very happy to work on the project from the start since I knew that they wanted me specifically and therefore trusted my opinions, which let me have more freedom in my work and to really push the designs further,” said Petersson. “That I got this responsibility was a great honor and it really allowed me to trust more in myself and my skills. Not only was this a great project from an art perspective, but also from a work experience perspective as I got to communicate with a very large, international company and that they got to see my work directly,” she concluded.

Petersson’s advertising experience and her natural artistic talents make her the perfect art director. She will undoubtedly continue bringing success to anything she works on, and is definitely one to watch.

International Entertainment, and the Talents that Leave us Buzzing….