Profile

Trevor Keen’s illustrations and animations have a fun, humorous, cartoony style that appeals to a wide variety of clients, from large companies like Disney, Hershey’s, McDonald’s or GM to publications like the Wall Street Journal, all the way down to the boutique design studio, or even someone who wants an individual caricature as a gift. He can create images in rich painterly styles or a simple bold vector style.

Trevor started drawing before I started school, cutting his teeth on Saturday morning cartoons, Disney features and Marvel comics. He drew his own comics growing up but also read books on the paintings by the Old Masters, the Group of Seven, and the Impressionists and also science books – all the better to learn all about the world around him. He is drawn particularly to people and animals for my subject matter and his sketchbooks are full of faces and figures, both cartoony and realistic.

He has worked in animation studios in Canada, the USA and the UK doing commercials, TV shows and movies. Since the rise of digital media he has also animated for websites in Animate Pro and has also created illustrations for magazines, books, comics, jigsaw puzzles, packaging, advertising and marketing. He has his own studio with setups in both digital and traditional media.

He especially enjoys jobs with a variety of artistic challenges, or educational work where he can learn new things.

RESUMÉ

PROFESSIONAL SUMMARY
Creative Professional with extensive experience in animation, an appealing visual style and a professional design for illustration and graphic design jobs. In-depth knowledge and experience with creative problem-solving, hard-working to tight timelines, small business administration.

Areas of expertise:
Expert in drawing, painting, and animation in both traditional and digital media
Strong Writing Skills
Good communicator
Blends well into any team
Pays close attention to instructions
Tremendous imagination and humour
Can inform, inspire, teach, entertain and tell stories through
drawings, designs and writing
Managing people, workflows and projects for exceptional results

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE
Trevor Keen and Associates, Toronto – owner of private art studio since 1986. Career highlights include:

– Represented as illustrator and animator by Three In a Box (artist’s representatives) 2005 – 2019

– Contracted with Sun Life Global Investments for animations in the style of RSA videos. Delivered sample animated pieces, demonstrating ability to draw in that style. Completed the work on time and got a notice of praise from the client.

– Created artwork and animations to illustrate basic money management given to high school and college students for funnymoney.com. Storyboarded and animated five films. Sponsored by the Investor Education Fund, animations were put on YouTube, as well as the Investor Education Fund website and financial education websites in Canada, USA and Dubai.

– Designed avatar characters for Rogers Communications’ e-learning department. The characters were several dozen Flash symbol libraries of various cartoon people. Stills of the animations were used by the clients and posted on their web pages, and were written up in the Toronto Star, and can still be seen online today.

– Other clients:
CBC, Canadian Tire, Investor Education Fund, Esprit International Communications, Wall Street Journal, Insurance Bureau of Canada, Superior Propane, York Region Transit, MediResource, Sunnybrook Hospital, Mattel Canada, Hasbro (U.K.), Toys’R’Us, Hershey Canada, Scott Towels, Crayola, Wal-Mart, Honda, Costco, Nabisco, National Association of Realtors (U.S.) Sun Life Global Investments, (samples available upon request).

Esprit International Communications Ltd., Toronto – Production Director,
Feb. 1/2008 2008-Nov. 30, 2010

– Managed multilingual production to camera-ready stage, coordinating large, ongoing projects, supervising staff and liaising with clients.
DTP of magazines, catalogues, advertising brochures, news bulletins & book design in many languages including French, Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, Italian, Russian.

Subtitling in PhotoShop.

Esprit website design and marketing campaigns.

Employee training in basic DTP software and concepts, for work in various languages.

– Nitromedia Communications Inc., Toronto, 1999-2000 – Animation Director

– Flash, website and video design, CD-ROM AND DVD production. Supervised new staff, organized artwork, instrumental in deciding deadlines and workflows.

– StarToons International, LLC, Chicago, 2000 – Animator
Animation, layout, storyboarding, cartoon videos. 2000-2001
Animation Partnership/Hibbert-Ralph, London, England, 1983-1986

– Art director and lead animator producing TV commercials.

COMMUNICATIONS AND ADMINISTRATIVE EXPERIENCE
Management of multilingual production to camera-ready stage, coordinating large, ongoing projects, costing and budgeting, supervising staff and liaising with clients. Esprit International Communications Ltd., 2008-2010
Supervised new staff, organized artwork, instrumental in establishing
deadlines and workflows. Nitromedia,1999-2000
Storyboarded and supervised staff artists for YTV children’s show, “Groundling Marsh” which went into syndication and was picked up by Disney. Creative Post, 1994-1996

ART AND GRAPHICS EXPERIENCE
Interactive, animation, TV, advertising, video and full graphic experience
Mastery of graphics software, website building software
Creation of several professional websites using Dreamweaver and Flash
Mastery of the highly-specialized arts of animation and cartooning

EDUCATION
Toronto Image Works, Web Design Course 2011
Sheridan College, Oakville, Animation Diploma 1979 – 1982
OCAD, Toronto, Diploma in Fine Arts, Cartooning and Advertising 1986 – 1988