Designer, Illustrator, and Mexican ambassador, Ivan Cruz has a fascination with design that started in elementary school, when he used to run an underground illustration-peddling business - rather like those guys on Robson street, only seven years old and living on the central west coast of Mexico.

Despite his significant experience with Legos and Playmobil as a child, it wasn’t until high school that Ivan became fully immersed in design. At first he went trigger-happy with Photoshop and Flash, then he realized there was something missing from his efforts: a message. It was at this point that Ivan started to understand what design was all about. It wasn’t just about graphics: graphics were merely the medium. Rather, design was about solving problems and communicating ideas. This was the reason the label “graphic design” had never grabbed onto him before. It was a revelation. From that moment on, whenever somebody asked him what he wanted to do with his life, Ivan would say, without hesitation: Design. Period.

After high school, Ivan started to look for a place to fulfill his passion for design. He surveyed dozens of curriculums offered by different schools across Mexico, but none of them really grabbed him. And then he stumbled across Vancouver Film School, and the match was made. Ivan is currently enrolled in VFS’s Digital Design program, having already successfully graduated from Foundation in Arts & Design.

Director, Designer, Writer, Artist, Animator, Actor, Musician, whatever. Let’s see, Jimbo does a lot of weird stuff. He was the voice of Sega video games in the 90’s. Yeah, the screaming guy “SEGA!” at the end of all them nutty commercials. He made his directorial debut on MTV’s Liquid Television with his stop motion animated “Crazy Daisy Ed”. From there he went on to direct fun things for Nickelodeon, Fox, CBS, Colossal Pictures, Goodby Silverstein, Sony, and lots of others. He won Promax awards for the fun he had. Then he sold out and did commercials for jerks like Coke, Starbucks, and Burger King , winning more awards but hating the whole gig. After running from the commercial world he did two seasons of the insane webtoon show, “Space Is Dum” for Wildbrain.com. It got picked up by SciFi Channel and was nominated for an awesome Annie Award. He is also the author of So Crazy Japanese Toys! A photo coffee table book published by Chronicle Books. Go get it on Amazon, it’s a keeper. He now resides in NYC where he is VP, Senior Producer of Original Programming at iaTV. He has his own show called Uncle Morty’s Dub Shack that will make you question things. Really, it’s wrong. He is currently about to start the third season of the show. Everything in this bio has been pirated on youtube so just go search for the titles there and tell us what you think.

Todd Smith is our guest contributor for July, 2006. Todd is a film maker, photographer, designer and avid blogger. Struggling artist is a difficult position regardless of demographic, but in a saturated area such as Vancouver Canada an up-and-comer must have an overly developed understanding of the avenues concerning his existence, in an effort to conquer the obstacles set in his way. Enter Todd Smith, an individual who came straight from the oilfields of northern Alberta with an understanding that life is about passion and satisfaction, rather than superficiality or monetary gain. The mantra he encompasses is one of the simplest nature; where application is defined as a bar that must always be pushed to accommodate a concise, well developed idea. A graduate of VFS’ Foundation Arts & Design Program, Todd’s value of intelligent, thought-provoking work and strong belief in ethics have taken him everywhere from Nike, to the Champ Car Series of North America, while maintaining an insatiable appetite for creating quality work. He also whores himself out as a design freelancer to various design agencies such as IBC.

C.T. Kohler was concieved on a balcony overlooking Burbon St. during Mardi Gras in the early eighties. During his upbringing in subdued Bellingham Washington, he was forced to live by his imagination and create motion pictures or go mad. He is a graduate of the Vancouver Film School´s Foundation Art and Design program, as well as its Film Production Program. Currently, he devides his time between filmmaking, design, and composing synthesized electronic versions of french operas.

Mike graduated from Vancouver Film School in 2005, where he focused on design, illustration, filmmaking, animation and creative writing. It wasn’t really a ‘focus-on-one-thing’ kind of deal. He then had the pleasure of working as an junior/intern at IBC, where he was ‘affectionately’ known as ‘boy’. Note the lower-case B. Countless burned pots of coffee and one extraordinary lemon meringue pie later, Mike had learned a TON. He is now studying Design and Studio Arts at Concordia University, in Montreal.