Alumni

Jon Bero

Multimedia and Animation Storyteller

Jon Bero was born in Honolulu, Hawai’i. He is a graduate of the School of Visual arts with an MFA in Visual Narrative, and of the Kansas City Art Institute of Kansas City, Missouri with a BFA in Illustration and Asian Studies. Working across a variety of media, from sound, animation, and writing, Jon Bero pulls from personal experiences for all of his storytelling endeavors. He is deeply inspired by Japanese art, namely the contrast of whimsical visuals juxtaposed with dark or heavy subject matter, a pairing prominent within his own work. Explorations of identity, belonging, and anxiety are at the heart of Jon’s stories, with cartoon-like visuals offering universality for people of all ages to engage with.

Jon works at Apple as a Creative. He leads sessions (such as photo walks/sketch walks, etc.) where he takes people out into the community and shows them how they can utilize their devices to create content and tell their own stories.
His course on Skillshare launched in 2017  (Creating Characters + Animating Stories) where he landed a spot on the top teachers of 2017.
Jon’s mentor was Jörg Tittel.

  • Jone Bero Creating Characters

    Skillshare Course - Creating Characters + Animating Stories

    This course will focus on storytelling with animation using Adobe’s new Character Animator program. This program allows users to quickly get to animating their own characters by leveraging facial recognition and lip-syncing in a fun and intuitive way. Students will create and design their own characters (which we will develop in the early stages of the course) and learn how to quickly and easily integrate them into an animation workflow.By acting out what we want our characters to do in real-time, this course will provide the foundation and means to create animations that before would have required months learning a piece of software. The class will culminate in each student having a short animatic with their character in a small skit we develop throughout the course.

    This class will provide a solid groundwork for students to push their animation and storytelling skills further, with a solid understanding of basic character creation, the “frame”, as well as basic animation and storytelling principles. Learn more here.

  • Jon Bero

    Yuki was an Official Selection of the Cheyenne Zombiefest, 2016.

  • Beenee Abroad: Nippon

    On his first trip to Japan, Beenee, a disgusting and accident prone creature, finds himself in the adult entertainment district of Tokyo. Having become accidentally separated from his boyfriend, Kon, Beenee soon finds himself immersed and exposed to various fetishes, all at the behest of a manipulative shop keeper named Kuripu. When an explicit photoshoot leaves Beenee in a vulnerable position, Kuripu’s true infatuation with Beenee comes to light. Fearing that these photos will get out, Beenee must make them disappear at all cost, lest he’s met with everlasting embarrassment and unrelenting jealously from his boyfriend, Kon. Beenee’s relationship hangs in the balance, fearful that the only one who ever accepted him may now reject him.

    Project Video

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    Ghost

    A music video for the song “Ghost” by Mystery Skulls

    Video

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    Akihabara Addiction

    The touching story of one person’s struggle with a gachapon addiction.