MARIA RAPETSKAYA was born in the former city of Leningrad, in the former country of USSR. For the last 20 years, she has lived in and around New York, with a 4-year layover in Philadelphia, where she attended the University of the Arts. She majored in animation, but along the way discovered a love and talent for digital design. She worked her way into the motion graphics and design industry, where she remains professionally to this day. In 2005, she co-founded balance gfx, a boutique firm dedicated to all things creative.
Outside of business hours, she dedicates a lot of her time to artistic endeavors. That means many things – from focusing on developing her portfolio as a fine art photographer, to rekindling her love for figure drawing, to sharing her skills and talent as a volunteer, painting murals at public schools around NYC. Recently, she spent three weeks in Baños, Ecuador, volunteering with a non-profit arts and education program, Fundacion Arte Del Mundo.
Maria is currently teaching Motion Graphics Studio II for the Multimedia dept. and multiple Continuing Education design and animation courses at New York University. She currently lives and works in New York City.
Her professional work can be seen at www.balancegfx.com
More personal work lives at www.riaskaya.com
Project Profile:
Visual Development for Discovery Investigation’s “On the Case with Paula Zahn”
In collaboration with Discovery Investigation, Scott Sternberg Productions (LA) and Weinberger Media (NYC) balance gfx developed the graphic look for the first season of this dramatic new series. The project presented numerous creative and technical challenges. Creatively, a range of producers, both for the network and for the show, were involved, and everyone’s input had to be taken into consideration and reconciled to create a final product that remained true to the vision of everyone involved. On the technical side, the series producers wanted to shoot on-cams with Paula to get in and out of each episode. To achieve this, the background animation was projected on a 30ft screen. It had to hold up in a real environment, creating the illusion of a curved live-action screen, to mimic the on-air graphics. Each episode required a custom made “wallpaper” of show specific imagery. An opening sequence and various in-show elements were also completed, all under the creative direction of Maria Rapetskaya. Additional motion and still files were then delivered to Discovery to be used for marketing purposes.