About

Welcome to my website. I’m an Art director, Concept Artist and Storyteller working in animation, theme parks and game industries.
The focus of my work is to help to build an emotional connection with the audience –  to make experiences memorable and unique. The combination of design, illustration and storytelling skills allows me to produce visually rich, story-driven concepts and designs.

I’m specializing in IP development, character design, visual development, story development and world building.
Recently I was working on several big theme-park projects and animation IPs (still under NDA). Before I’ve worked as an Art director and Concept Artist on Snowpark IP (“Miko’s World”), Corpus Museum, Evergrande Snowpark, Aquakef Water park, Kuwait Water Park, Adventure island in China (Xiamen), video and educational games (at Oligame and &Ranj) and large theaterical light shows (~100.000 people) being live broadcasted on TV.

As a child I’ve entered an Art school and later got a master degree in Graphic design and Illustration. Besides multiples additional art classes, I’ve also spent several years in ScriptPlus in Amsterdam mastering the Craft of Writing.

My works have been published and featured in multiple professional magazines and exhibitions, such as Illustration Magazine, Printbuyer, Publish, Infographics Magazine, etc.
In 2023 and 2024 I was giving the talks on character design and storytelling at IAAPA in Orlando.
In my free time I enjoy writing children’s books, travelling and spending time with my family.

Some references

“As a game designer, it was my pleasure to work with Irina at Oligame, a company creating single player games for PC.
She helped not only to lead the company’s artistic direction, but also to build procedures and learn new and complicated tools that were specific for our needs.
Irina is professional and efficient in every way, very talented and has strong work ethics.
She used her rich imagination and strong conceptual skills to come up with interesting and unique designs. She worked on fantastic locations, temple areas, the main character, animals and the vegetation set.
Working with Irina was a delight.” Alon Katzenell, Game Designer at OligameLtd.

“We have been working with Irina Grabarnik since summer 2018 for a range of indoor snow projects. She has especially been and remains to be of considerable value to the development of our branded IP featuring Miko and the Snow Park marmots. She has enhanced the lead characters and designed many of their animal friends and has been in charge of producing visual identity, merchandising products and a catalogue, dedicated attraction signage, editing the story of the 3D animation movie “Miko and the Spell of the Stone” as an Art and Story director as well as work on new related stories and attractions. Besides she has been writing storylines and creating conceptual drawings for other theme park projects. We very much appreciate her diverse talents including storytelling, art-direction, illustrations, concept design and brand building. Not only is she exceptionally creative but also dedicated, reliable, efficient and has the ability to clearly communicate the vision to the stakeholders and other parties (third parties/vendors) in order to assure that the end result reflects the initial vision. She will be a great asset to a wide range of companies and we are looking forward to continuing our cooperation.”
Kees Albers, CEO Unlimited Leisure Holding bv.

“Irina worked with us on the Adventure Island, a children’s activity park in Xiamen, China. She has created illustrated navigation maps, activity passports, stickers/stamps, activities icons and more. She designed the main logo for Adventure Island, and the general visual style: all in Chinese lettering, which impressed us and the client. We are very happy with the results, as was the client. Irina could work effectively with multiple reference materials. She is very reliable, efficient and proved very flexible towards the client’s sometimes changeable demands.”
Pieter van der Heijden, Owner at XPEX Experience Experts.

“Irina lead the design part during the pitch for PON de Wasstraat, the pitch we’ve finally won. She was responsible for the concept, visuals presentation and, later, for the UX and the design for different platforms. This was really exciting and challenging project, combining Web, App, local recognition camera and interactive screens. The whole system has been implemented via Sitecore. The concept and the designs were nominated for Sitecore Award and showcased within the company and to our clients as one of our great achievements. I had a pleasure to work with Irina. She is a professional, very collaborative and a has a very nice personality to deal with.”
Simon Schuur, Project manager and shareholder at Hinttech Creatives.

“In our company “Priz-MA production / MediaArts” Irina was one of the best and most valuable employees. Working as a head designer she was dealing with wide-ranging projects, acting as a Senior Designer and curator of the whole art process. And she succeeded in doing this, as the result was always perfect. She is a responsible and reliable person. She is very talented and unique as a designer and illustrator, and, what is very important, she adores her profession. That’s why everything that she did, she did it with heart. The biggest projects she has made are light projection during the celebration of the Anniversary of Moscow, MTS concert, International Advertising Festival in Moscow, Cul-Sharif mosque festivities, etc. She was also responsible for brand development, animation, promotional materials and many other things. It’s hard to find anything she doesn’t know or can’t to do in her profession. Also she speaks fluently English, French, what allowed her to cooperate with our foreign partners and to learn new modern technologies. As a person, she is very kind, polite, team-player and with good sense of humor. I would recommend her to any ambitious employer, who wants to reach marvelous results.”
Andrey Anisenko, Managing director at Priz-MA production/MediaArts.

Contact

If you have any question or would like to discuss possible collaboration, please email me at turrica@yahoo.com