Jen Van Horn - Senior Motion Designer + Art Direction

2023 Solitaire Anniversary video I designed and animated when I was Creative Lead for Microsoft Games at CM+.

Microsoft Casual Games produces an annual Anniversary video, and for the 33rd Anniversary I wanted to do a walk thru history as a red carpet event -seeing each milestone on a pedestal with banners as the audience is led down the red carpet. "Met Gala meets Smithsonian meets Great Gatsby" I challenged myself by working in the Z axis in After Effects, and trouble shooting the depth of field, and using the page turn effects for the banner drops. I also created some glitter effects for added sparkle!

2023 Solitaire Weekly Rewards video I designed and animated when I was Creative Lead for Microsoft Games at CM+.

Microsoft Casual Games pairs their annual Anniversary video with a Weekly Rewards video, which turns up the volume on the excitement! As an avid fan of Solitaire (I've been playing all 5 daily challenges since 2018), I knew exactly how to enhance the gameplay screens (all of the gameplay used in the videos is my own gameplay footage) with added sparkle and a bokeh playing card suit particle animation that I created. I had a lot of fun on this upbeat piece, and I loved getting to geek out with the Solitaire team.

2023 - These are some of my favorite ads for the Solitaire Collection app that I designed and animated for the Solitaire Collection app, when I was Creative Lead for Microsoft Games at CM+.

I came up with at least 24 different UA concepts for Microsoft Solitaire in 2023, which I'm very proud of, because there's only so many directions you can take an ad for the popular mobile/cherished desktop card game! These were some of my favorites because of the work that went into the design and animation. From creating glittering card suit bokeh particles, bringing the card faces to life, morphing bubbles into card suits, recreating the entire app interface to get the animation timing right, masking the background from behind the gameplay, to sourcing and roto brushing the perfect stock video! I loved every minute of it!

2018 - These are the ads for the Solitaire Collection app that I edited/animated for Microsoft. There are 5 themes, one for each "player" type. The Competitor (Ace), the Escapist (Jack), the Nostalgia Chaser (King), the Brain Trainer (Queen), and the Completionist (Joker)! What type of player are you, and what's YOUR game?