Summer 2024 Newsletter

We are sad that summer is coming to an end and the days are getting shorter, but we are ready for Q4. In this issue of our quarterly newsletter, we are excited to recap all the creative content we made and shared throughout the summer. Our team members have been hard at work creating digital experiences for brands. As always, we would like to thank our business partners for their endless support and flexibility.

New Partnerships

This summer we announced an expanded partnership with Wimpy Kid, Inc. & Jeff Kinney, author of the international best selling children’s book series “Diary of a Wimpy Kid.” This collaboration marks Wimpy Kid’s first venture into digital licensing. In addition to emojis and AR effects, we will create mobile messaging stickers and phone themes. We’re excited to continue our 5+ year partnership with Wimpy Kid, Inc. and cannot wait to help promote the launch of “Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Hot Mess.” Head to our blog page to learn more about the expanded partnership. 


We also announced a licensing and global distribution partnership with Paul Frank. Fans—keep an eye out for new mobile themes, messaging stickers, and non-NFT digital collectibles that feature Julius the Monkey and friends. We are excited to help Paul Frank and Futurity Brands expand their brand beyond its existing physical apparel and accessories lines. For more information, check out our blog page.

Licensing Expo 2024

Bob Ferrari (CEO), Sonya Priest (Licensing Manager), and Jackie Karnoff (Creative Manager) hopped on a plane and flew to Las Vegas for the annual Licensing Expo, hosted by the Global Licensing Group. We loved meeting up with brand partners, attending keynote presentations, and securing some new licenses. Follow us on Instagram, X, Facebook, and LinkedIn to stay up to date.

Team Spotlight

Meet our Animation & Illustration Sprout, Charlie! Charlie is a co-op student from Northeastern University. For the last couple of months, Charlie worked closely with our design, licensing, and animation teams to create a variety of digital experiences for our clients. Whether it was Samsung Themes, messaging sticker packs, or internal social posts, Charlie always brought his A(rtist)-game.


“My favorite part about working at Bare Tree Media is the wonderful people who I get to work with! Throughout my time here, I’ve felt so supported and encouraged to pursue new and innovative ideas. My co-workers’ personalities and work ethics are so inspiring, and I’ve learned so much from them about communication, flexibility, and creativity.” — Charlie Allan

Our co-op program gives students looking to pursue a career in the Arts & Digital Media an opportunity to develop their technical skills, push creative boundaries, and produce marketable work. While at Bare Tree, Charlie worked on a number of projects including a “Sustainability” social post, Blink Twice rotoscope stickers, and his own personal sticker pack, “Drunkey Monkey:”

“My favorite project I worked on was the “Sustainability” social post. I was given a lot of room to experiment and learn while working in After Effects, and I tried out character animation for the first time. I loved ideating, illustrating, and creating type treatments for my personal sticker pack too because I could see my sketches come to life and my graphic-eye improve throughout the process.” — Charlie Allan

“Drunkey Monkey” is available for Samsung and Apple devices and can also be found on GIPHY.

We would like to thank Charlie for all his hard work. We will miss his curiosity, positive energy, and creative spirit. The sky’s the limit—we cannot wait to see what the future holds for him!

Movie Magic

Blink and you’ll miss it…our design team created rotoscope stickers for summer’s newest psychological thriller Blink Twice. Find them on GIPHY and Instagram and share your excitement for the movie’s August 23rd premiere.

Congratulations to everyone on our team who worked on this project. The final product is fantastic!

Paris Games 2024

Our team and licensing partners were going for gold this summer! To celebrate the 2024 Paris Olympic Games, we decided to bring some Olympic spirit into the mobile messaging world.

Paul Frank: Paris 2024

SamsungApple

Care Bears: Sports

SamsungApple

The Smurfs: Paris Games

SamsungApple

Garfield: Sports

SamsungApple

Samsung Electronics selected our team to create the official Team France mobile theme, available exclusively on the Samsung Galaxy store. This was an incredible opportunity for us to showcase our design and digital publishing expertise with the world. We are thrilled to be associated with an event that inspires community, connection, and collaboration. Click the image below to download.

Quidd Drops

This summer, Quidd, a leader in digital collectibles, released non-NFT digital card collections, stickers, and special edition items for 5+ of our licensed brands (not all listed):

We’re excited to announce that our team will be working with Quidd on the ideation, production, and promotion of future card collections. Our Creative Manager, Jackie, designed 50+ cards for Betty Boop, and the final product was Boopin’ fantastic. Jackie was able to capture all of Betty’s different personas into a collection perfect for fans of the iconic character. The collection is still live on Quidd—you won’t want to miss it!


Spring 2024 Newsletter

The weather is getting warmer and our projects are heating up! In this issue of our newsletter, we would like to share what our incredible team has been up to this late-Winter & Spring. We had the opportunity to work with some amazing clients this quarter and have a lot of great work to showcase. As always, we would like to thank our business partners for their endless support and flexibility.

Movie Magic

We love providing clients with creative ways to share sneak peeks of their films and boost engagement beyond the typical trailer. Our design and animation teams had the wonderful opportunity to work on creating rotoscope stickers for two upcoming movie releases: Challengers and Mad Max: Furiosa. Thank you to our Art Director, Jackie Karnoff, for taking the lead on these projects. We’d also like to shout out Charlie and Chihiro for all their hard work on the Challengers stickers. These stickers are available for free on GIPHY.

Warner Bros Pictures released the latest installment of the Dune franchise, “Dune: Part 2,” this past March. In celebration of its release, we’re throwing it back to the animated stickers our design team created for “Dune: Part One.” We loved collaborating with Warner Bros on these stickers and were very excited to see the evolution of these characters on screen in the latest installment. Click here to check them out!

Creations & Causes

At Bare Tree Media, we love to create work for causes near and dear to our hearts. The last few months, our design and social media teams have been working together to create social justice posts inspired by Black History Month, female empowerment, blood donations, and sustainability. Visit our GIPHY page to follow along with this series.


Winter 2024 Newsletter

Happy New Year! We hope everyone had a safe and relaxing holiday season. Our team members have been hard at work this year creating digital experiences for brands and clients across the world. As always, we would like to thank our business partners for their endless support and flexibility. We look forward to creating more for you in 2024.

Team Spotlight - Phoebe (Feeb) Om

Meet our Animation & Illustration Sprout, Phoebe (Feeb)! Feeb is a co-op student from Northeastern University. Starting this Summer, Feeb worked with our licensing, illustration, and animation teams to design messaging stickers, illustrated videos, GIFs, and Samsung themes.

“The team was definitely my favorite part of working at Bare Tree Media! I’ve mostly worked on animation and design projects by myself. It was awesome to bounce ideas off other people, get feedback from them, and see a large project come together through the efforts of multiple people. For example, for the Healthy Ocean Coalition animated video, it was so much fun creating assets of sea creatures and bringing them to life. My teammates taught me a lot about animating in After Effects from my team members, so it was a really valuable experience.”

We love watching our interns and co-ops grow, get creative, and produce work they are proud of. Over the last few months, Feeb has been working on her “personal project,” entitled “Bunny and Cat are Girlfriends.” This sticker pack is available for Samsung and Apple devices and can also be found on GIPHY & Tenor.

“I loved creating really goofy, meme-like stickers. I thought about what kinds of stickers my friends and I would like to send to each other, and I got to make it real! They ended up being very silly as a result… I hope lots of people will have fun using them!”

Licensing Announcement

Bare Tree Media is now the official digital licensing partner for Paramount and its global franchises. Our team is so excited to create and publish everything from Samsung themes to messaging stickers for iconic brands such as Avatar: The Last Airbender, Garfield, Spongebob Squarepants, Rugrats, and many more. Thank you to the teams at Paramount, Apple, Samsung, and Quidd for their support. We look forward to continuing our work with you all in 2024. For more information about this partnership, click here.

Movie Magic

Step into a world of pure imagination! Our illustration and design teams had the opportunity to design and animate illustrated and rotoscope stickers for the Wonka movie, featuring Timothée Chalamet. Thank you to our Art Director, Jackie Karnoff, for taking the lead on this project. We’d also like to shout out Katie Rose, Chihiro, and Julia for all their hard work and talent. This project had us all reliving our childhoods! These stickers are available for free on What’s App and GIPHY.

Our illustration and design teams designed animated GIFs for Hollywood’s latest fantasy/sci-fi movie, Poor Things. Thank you to Searchlight Pictures for trusting us with this project. Check them out on GIPHY


We love rotoscope stickers. Our team created stickers for two of Warner Bros latest films: The Color Purple & Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom. Thank you to our Art Director, Jackie Karnoff, for spearheading these projects. The Color Purple and Aquaman GIFs can be found on GIPHY! 


Eye on AR

Our AR and social media teams have been working together to showcase our company’s AR skills. Check out our Instagram and TikTok to see all the different effects we’ve created internally and for brands. We’ve made effects for a variety of industries including, but not limited to, entertainment, sports, and beauty. In need of something unique for your brand? Check out our website baretreemedia.com to learn more about us and our AR team’s capabilities.

Our team loves being a part of the MetaSpark community. During MetaConnect 2023, our AR manager, Vedika Bhasin, had the wonderful opportunity to join other AR creators  in sharing what they love about MetaSpark and what new features they look forward to exploring in the future. Click here to watch the full clip.

Creations & Causes

At Bare Tree Media, we love to work with companies who want to use art to make our world a better place. This past 2023, our team had the pleasure of working with the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) and the Healthy Ocean Coalition (HOC) to produce animated informational videos that raised awareness for important environmental causes. These projects were a full team effort—we loved the challenge of storyboarding, designing, and animating these videos. We look forward to working on similar projects in the future. 


Watch Our Work

Summer 2023 Newsletter

Happy end of Summer and Hello Fall! In this issue of our quarterly newsletter, we are excited to recap all the creative content we made and shared throughout the Summer. Our team members have been hard at work creating digital experiences for brands and clients across the world. As always, we would like to thank our business partners for their endless support and flexibility. We look forward to creating more work for you all this Fall.

Company Reel 2023

Our 2023 Company Reel is here! See all the exciting projects we’ve been working on and clients we’ve been working with over the last few months. In need of something unique for your brand? Check out our website baretreemedia.com to learn more about us and our team’s capabilities. We create everything from AR effects to animated messaging stickers to illustrated videographics. A big thank you to our Creative Manager, Jackie, for putting together this Company Reel.


Watch Our Work

Team Spotlight - Julia Feldman

Meet our Animation & Illustration Sprout, Julia! Julia is a co-op student from Northeastern University. Over the last 8 months, Julia worked closely with our illustration, licensing, and animation teams to execute messaging stickers, GIFs, illustrated videos, and Samsung themes. She has worked on a number of projects including Wonka and IFAW and has created GIFs for our social media pages. We love to challenge our interns and co-ops to push themselves outside their creative comfort zones. Over the last few months, Julia has been working on designing her own animated sticker pack “The Goose,” which is available for Samsung and Apple devices and can also be found on GIPHY & Tenor.

“I loved going through the whole process of designing a character, coming up with expressions, illustrating, animating, and creating metadata and promotional materials. I learned so much about design and animation through this process and really appreciated all the support and critique given by my team members along the way.”

As Julia’s co-op comes to an end, we would like to thank her for all her hard work—she has been a fabulous addition to our team. We have loved watching her grow and develop her own artistic POV. We will miss her positive energy and cannot wait to see what the future has in store for her.

Licensing Expo 2023

Our CEO, Bob Ferrari, and Licensing Manager, Sonya Priest, took a trip out to Sin City for the annual Licensing Expo. We loved catching up with our existing brand partners, learning from industry leaders, and securing some new licenses. We will be announcing some new and exciting partnerships soon! Follow us on Instagram, X, Facebook, and LinkedIn to stay up to date.

 

Branded Likes

Branded likes….we’ve missed you! There’s nothing we love more than these interactive animations. If you are a fan of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle franchise, our senior animator, Alexa, designed this X branded like for the new TMNT Movie. With the trigger hashtag #TMNTMovie, X users could activate this slimy surprise for 24hrs. Great work, Alexa!

Eye on AR

Our AR team has been using their knowledge of all things emerging tech to help brands give their followers immersive digital experiences. For the 2023 Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, we partnered with Whalar to design a TikTok effect to be featured on the festival floor. It was so fun seeing how many creatives and attendees interacted with our effect. This project was a team effort and lots of fun to demo in the office.

“Rainbow Beach Disco” was also part of a larger Pride Month initiative. Pride celebrates unity, community, and self-expression. We love designing effects that create togetherness and encourage people to be themselves. Click here to try “Rainbow Beach Disco” and check out our TikTok to see our Cannes recap.


Spring 2023 Newsletter

In this issue of our quarterly newsletter, we are excited to recap all the creative content we made and shared throughout the Spring. As always, we would like to thank our clients and business partners for their endless support and flexibility.

Team Spotlight - Naomi Eberle

Our AR Technical Consultant & Snap Lens Ambassador, Naomi Eberle, spoke at Snap Inc.’s Partner Summit alongside Ambassadors, Sallia Goldstein & Mohamed Sorkatti. The three of them delivered an informative lecture on navigating SnapAR’s ecosystem and how brands can leverage its technologies to develop immersive, creative AR experiences. We are so proud of Naomi and cannot wait to hear her share her expertise at future guest lectures!

Lens Fest Extended

BTM x SnapAR in NYC! We held our 3rd Augmented Reality Meetup, “Lens Fest Extended,” at the Snap Inc. offices in New York City. We had such a great turnout and enjoyed connecting with many members of the AR community. Our guest speaker, Maya Pruitt, gave a great presentation on machine learning (ML) models! In the coming months, we are looking forward to hosting more AR events both in Boston and New York City. Follow us on social media to stay updated on the
latest news regarding these meetups.

PAX East & TikTok Creative Partner Day

Our team members have been busy the past 2 months attending different networking events around the country. We’ve enjoyed flexing our creative muscles, learning more about up-and-coming technology in the gaming and AR spaces, and of course, networking with other creative marketing partners.

We checked out the latest in all things gaming at the PAX East and GDC gaming conferences. It was great to discuss with other avid gamers and brands ways to build immersive experiences within gaming platforms, social AR, and the metaverse.

As one of the creative partners for TikTok, our AR team had the honor of designing the Effect House AR experience for TikTok Creative Partner Day in LA. This Effect House experience had a catch…the special effects are activated by a series of mystery gestures. We love creating interactive experiences that keep our audiences engaged!

Adopt a Shelter Pet

Last year for #NationalAdoptaShelterPetDay, our AR team designed a Snapchat lens pet owners could use on their own pets. This year, our AR team made this effect available for TikTok. Check out our Snapchat and our TikTok to try it out on your own furry friend today! Remember: Adopt Don’t Shop!


Fall 2022 Newsletter

The weather is getting warmer and our projects are heating up! In this issue of our newsletter, we would like to share what our incredible team has been up to this past fall. We had the opportunity to work with some amazing clients this quarter and have a lot of great work to showcase. As always, we would like to thank our business partners for their endless support and flexibility.

Team Spotlight - Wendy Jia

Meet Wendy, our summer illustration and animation sprout! Wendy worked closely with our senior illustrator and AR/animation teams to create her own personal sticker pack for GIPHY, Tenor, and iMessage. We will miss Wendy and look forward to seeing all her future creations! Please scroll down to learn more about the personal project she worked on while interning at the studio.

“Through Tea for Teaspoon, I got to explore so many of my interests, like character design, complex rigging, and 3D animation. With the help of my coworkers, I was finally able to accomplish my dream of designing my own personal sticker pack, while also challenging myself to learn new skills.”

Nothing is more rewarding than seeing our summer interns’ projects come to life. O.M.Tea! Meet Teaspoon—a mighty, fearsome matcha-thief brewing with mischief. Keep an eye out on your own cup, for you never know where he’ll pop up next…maybe even in your messages?! For Wendy’s personal project, she used Maya to create animated 3D stickers inspired by some of her favorite things!

“I thought about the things I love and wouldn’t mind working on for 6 months. I settled on matcha, hamsters, and deer. I also drew inspiration from the sticker packs I personally use. Taking all of this into account, I designed 21 silhouettes, narrowed it down to 8 thumbnails, and finally iterated on 1 design. That’s how I ended up with Teaspoon!”

As an animation student at Northeastern University, Wendy was able to explore the entire pipeline—character concept, color, modeling, rigging, texturing, lighting, and animating. She was able to develop marketable skills across multiple disciplines. Her favorite part was getting to design all of Teaspoon’s expressions! These 3D animated stickers are sure to last you an oolong time.

Disenchanted Animated Stickers

Raise your hand if you are an OG Enchanted fan  (all of our hands are raised *very* high)! Our team had the wonderful opportunity to collaborate with Disney to design eight animated stickers for the release of Enchanted’s sequel, Disenchanted. We loved seeing our favorite characters—Giselle, Robert, and Prince Edward—come to life. Click the link to see them all on Walt Disney Studios’ official GIPHY page and be sure to catch Disenchanted on Disney+.

Samsung Themes & Season's Greetings

What better way to celebrate the holiday season than with some Samsung Themes? We collaborated with a number of brands to bring some holiday cheer to Samsung Galaxy users’ devices. See them below.

The Smurfs Christmas Cheer

Papa Smurf, Smurfette, and crew are bringing the Christmas spirit to your Samsung devices. This theme is perfect Christmas customization. Click here to download the latest Smurf theme from Galaxy Store.

Betty Boop Loves Christmas

We love the holidays almost as much as Betty does! Betty invites Galaxy users to get into the holiday spirit with her latest Samsung Theme. Click here to download “Betty Boop: Loves Christmas” from the Galaxy Store.

Garfield Christmas With Friends

Gather by the fireside and around the tree with Garfield and friends this holiday season. Make messaging the ones you love this holiday season even more festive with the “Garfield: Christmas With Friends” Samsung Theme, available now in the Galaxy Store.