MindShare: Stories to Learn and Draw From

What is Your Superpower?! ,   our animation studio’s most complex project to date  was commissioned by the Mitsubishi Electric America Foundation (MEAF) for their 30th-anniversary celebration. This video is both a powerful message of inclusion and a shining example of a true philanthropic partnership. Artists are employed on films such as Marvel's The Avengers series and Oscar winners Green Book and Black Panther . Graduates also go on to careers at media companies such as Disney, WarnerMedia, and ViacomCBS. Exceptional Minds Studio's What Is Your Superpower?! was also released during the foundation's September 25th Annual Volunteer Leadership Workshop, which gave Mitsubishi Electric employees a chance to meet our second-year students Becca David (shown upper left) and Leona Tates (lower right) and 2019 graduate Jake Riess (upper right). The event also kicked off MEAF’s 5K run/walk/roll employee fundraiser benefiting Exceptional Minds. “The original concept was to foll

Created for Mitsubishi Electric America Foundation (MEAF) by our graduate animators,  What is Your Superpower?!  involved the usual deadline pressures  (“Is it July already? What happened to June?”)  punctuated by moments of pure creative genius  (“Are you thinking what I’m thinking? How hard would it be to morph Craig’s head into a goldfish bowl?”) The making of What is Your Superpower?! also involved several unusual challenges. Mid-project, Exceptional Minds moved its whole animation team home due to the pandemic to continue collaborating over Zoom, which presented its own set of challenges.  (“Zoom “lag" can make an animation render like a 2D drawing and appear as incomplete work. Oh Zoom!”) Still, the pandemic didn’t stop the crew from filming fellow artist Kate Jorgensen at Nickelodeon near a “secret” door that only a few in the industry know about  (Howie Hoffman, an industry veteran who knows the back doors to more studios than he cares to admit, was the Exceptional Minds