James Sherman

Frequently Asked Questions

James, sum up your career in one sentence.: I do the 'impossible' after-hour deadlines of various businesses that need a job done yesterday and absolutely have to have it by daybreak.

What is it you do?: Imagineering-design and illustration for print, motion, digital, and multimedia.

What does that mean?: Go where a camera cannot—into a person's mind—come back with their concept intact in a presentation format that shows others that vision. This aligns everyone on the same page with a director and/or producer 's mission.

Most artists specialize, why not you?: I specialize in design problems and storytelling solutions. Finding visual triggers that maintain constant curiosity during a story. It may look like different things because I enjoy all the different ways a concept can be presented. Same process, different formats.

But I'm seeing a wide range in your portfolio. Why do you do so many different things?: What difference? Difference is only surface. It's always the same—whether single frame or a sequence—a poster or feature film—I have 10 seconds to hook audience curiosity into a story and keep their attention focused on every frame until—when the message is done—they want to come back for more. Same mission, different day.

You work in a lot of different styles. How would I know what I'd get?: One style per story. I custom-tailor style to evoke the client's desired story ambiance. Art style is to visual storytelling what genre is to writing style. To oversimplify: I build from the message. Intent sets the tone: serious means more of the realism of fine-art, humor means more fine 'Tooning'.

To accomplish all that you must hate deadlines?: No! Deadlines build Concentration Stamina and hone Imagination Skills. I have 24 years of juggling month-long deadlines with months of multiple deadlines daily. That's a whole lot of fun packed into interactive marathons of one-on-one concentration. Participating clients are amazed to find the process causes patrationes diuturnae crebraeque in corio cerebri* - an intense high without pharmaceuticals. * [Sustained multiple orgasms in the cerebral cortex.]

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