Laura Schumacher
www.apothecaria.com
apothecaria@gmail.com
206.910.1385

I am a digital artist with five years of professional experience as an illustrator, animator, and game designer in interactive entertainment. My area of expertise is casual and mobile games for a young audience.
My major accomplishments include designing a Jakks TV Game which has sold over 100,000 copies, illustrating the DVD cover and menu for ilovebees (the viral marketing campaign for Halo 2), and winning the Audience Choice Award for an original game design in the 2006 Seattle Mobile Game Conference LivePitch event.

Experience
Blitsmash LLC (Seattle, WA): Flash artist and animator for web graphics. (2007 - present)
At Blitsmash LLC I do the following:
· Create web-ready art assets and animations in Flash and Photoshop on a tight deadline.
· Designed the Logo and look of the Blitsmash Website.
· Create Banner ads to promote the site.
· Create icons and graphics which incorporate typography.

McGraw Hill Learning Group (Bothell, WA): Flash artist and animator, K-12 educational games. (2005 - 2007)
During my time at McGraw Hill I did the following:
· Created user interface design for Flash and Shockwave games.
· Designed original characters and made them animation-ready in Flash.
· Created hundreds of cut-scene animations from storyboard through completion in Flash.
· Worked both independently and as a team to create animations.
· Created backgrounds and assets in Flash, Photoshop and Illustrator.
· Created interactive science and math animations and scripted the interaction.
· Steered the way for timesaving production methods through use of ActionScript.
Published titles include:
· Real Math
· Open Court Reading
· Gear Up
· Language for Learning

Milkandcookies.com (Seattle, WA): Milkandcookies.com is an online community that attracts over 100,000 unique visitors per month. I worked as an independent contractor to revamp the look of this site and a variety of satellite sites. (2005  2007)
While working with the founder of Milkandcookie.com I did the following:
· Created a variety of illustrations for CSS layout designs in Photoshop.
· Created banner ads to promote the site.
· Created logos for print and screen.
· Designed t-shirts and stickers as promotional material.
· Created custom Flash video skins

4orty 2wo Entertainment (Emeryville, CA): I worked with the V.P. of design to produce the DVD cover and menu system for ilovebees, the viral advertising campaign for Halo 2. (2004)
During my involvement with the ilovebees project I did the following:
· Created the ilovebees logo, DVD cover graphics, and menu graphics in Photoshop.
· Prepared the DVD cover and face for print.
· Created a painterly-style illustrated puzzle which was viewed by roughly 1,000,000 people online.

Handheld Games (Mill Creek, WA): Sprite animator, then lead designer for J2ME cell phone and Jakks TV Games. (2004 - 2005)
While at Handheld Games I did the following:
· Created sprite animations of licensed characters for Nokia J2ME cell phone games
· Created original character designs.
· Designed the game-play, look, sound, and feel for mobile and Jakks TV games.
· Created blue-sky game design documents for project bids to publishers.
· Worked directly with programmers and artists to orchestrate the creation of designed games.
· Worked directly with the producer to ensure the games were completed on-time and to the publisher s specifications.
Published titles included:
· Dora the Explorer 5 in 1 TV Game (Published by Jakks Pacific, 100,000+ copies sold).

Handheld Games (Mill Creek, WA): Animation intern for Game Boy Advance games. (2001 - 2003)
During my internship I did the following:
· Created backgrounds and assets in ProMotion for use in games.
· Created sprite animations of licensed characters.
· Created original character designs.
· Converted large graphics into the proper size and color space for the Game Boy Advance.
· Re-designed the website for Handheld Games LLC in CSS and HTML.
Published Titles included:
· MLB Slugfest 2004 (Midway Home Entertainment, 2002)
· Little League Baseball 2001 (New Kid Co, 2001)
· Dr. Seuss Green Eggs and Ham (New Kid Co, 2001)

Skills
Adobe Suite: Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere
Macromedia Flash: animation and basic actionscript
Swift 3D
Sketching: concept and character design
Storyboarding
Inking, coloring, layout and design
Sprite and flash animation
Game design: design document composition, game-play flow charts, UI, dialogue and menus

Education
Henry Cogswell College (Everett, WA): B.A. in Digital Art. (2001 - 2004) G.P.A. = 3.7

Centralia College (Centralia, WA): A.A. and A.S. in Graphic Art and Computer Science. (1998 - 2000) G.P.A. = 3.8, graduated with honors.

Special Honors
Seattle Mobile Games Conference (2006): Audience Choice award for an original game design in the LivePitch event.

Education Arcade (2004): Awarded free admission to the 2004 Education Arcade for an essay I wrote in which the object was to come up with an original educational game design about weather patterns.

Banff Arts Center for the Arts (2003): Specially selected for a team photography exhibition in the Banff Center for the Arts in Canada, in association with Henry Cogswell College.