Meet Corinne Tan

"Meet Corinne Tan" is a stop motion animated series created for American Girl to introduce their 2022 Girl of the Year doll, Corinne Tan. The series is about one hour long, and has six, 10-minute episodes.

This was my third time directing a Girl of the Year series, and it was obvious how much I had grown as a director by then. This project not only pushed the boundaries of what we could achieve within the series itself (incorporating fully rendered 2D sequences, elaborate and stylized sets, and intensely physical ski and ice skating animation), but the actual production was perhaps the smoothest production we had ever run at that point. With an in-house crew of nearly 30 people, and a remote crew of 10 people, this project came in exactly on time, and exactly on budget, with no emergency crunch time. The vibes were good - the crew was cohesive, fun and supportive, and we had excellent communication and cooperation throughout the multi-month shoot.

The story of this project was perhaps the closest any project has ever been to my personal life and experience. Corinne, like me, is Chinese-American (the first ever Asian-American Girl of the Year). During the series, Corinne and her little sister Gwynn are the targets of anti-Asian hate speech. Corinne has to learn to speak up for herself and how to stand up to bullying and hateful actions, even when she is scared. This hit extremely close to home, as I also have a little sister and was also dealing with a lot of fear and emotions surrounding the highly public anti-Asian attacks that were happening at that time. The opportunity to help young audiences learn to deal with racism, as well as to tell the story of a young Chinese-American girl as a main character, meant the absolute world to me. Making projects like this come to life is one of my main goals as a director and an artist, so this was perhaps the most fulfilling project I've directed to-date.