Emily Marzonie
Franchise
Development
Creative
Executive
Producer
Portfolio
Meet Emily
Emily is a true-blue cancer sign: tenacious, highly imaginative, patient and persuasive. Unapologetically geeky and always up for learning something new.
Seeking to revamp your storytelling with fresh new ideas? Want to build innovative creative strategy through research, data analytics and insight? Does the idea of a franchise naturally building through IP expansion, creating a multi-channel consumer narrative experience make you starry-eyed? Want to seamlessly integrate your worldbuilding with marketing and fandom? Curious how a passion for business, entertainment creative and advertising can naturally combine into an enthusiastic brunette?
Em’s your gal!
EXPERIENCE
Wonderstorm Creative Executive & Franchise Manager |
Madison Wells Media Creative Development |
FCB Global Art Director |
Ogilvy & Mather / Geometry Global Jr. Art Director & Production Artist |
Master of Science in Leadership for Creative Enterprises Northwestern University |
education
Bachelor of Fine Arts in Illustration Rhode Island School of Design Brown University |
Body of work
Fandom & Dire Wolf & Cortex
Tales of Xadia: The Dragon Prince TTRPG
Supervising Producer for 2021 ENNIE Award Winning TTRPG in partnership with Fandom, Dire Wolf Digital, Cortex, and Genuine Entertainment.
Directed development, creative resourcing, production and retail launch. Contributed additional writing, illustration, and design support. Identified opportunities for worldbuilding in the narrative and aligned high level stakeholders on our approach.
Significantly streamlined massive, multi-level review process while coordinating an international team.
Brotherwise
Battlecharged
Supervising Producer for tactical miniatures game based on the word of The Dragon Prince. Championed immersive art direction and lore-based gameplay. #2 National Best Seller at Barnes & Noble.
Dark Horse
Premium Figures
Art Director and manager for series of limited-edition Premium Figures created in partnership with Dark Horse. Guided stakeholder buy-in, executed paintovers for character design accuracy and led approvals.
Scholastic
Bloodmoon Huntress
Scholastic
Puzzle House
Scholastic
Dreamer’s Nightmare
Supervising Producer on our series of graphic novels in partnership with Scholastic. Led author, illustrator and colorist screening and selection. Organized and led all brainstorming meetings between author, internal writing team leaders and the Scholastic team to align on plot and goals. Reviewed scripts and guided internal buy-in, maintaining consistency with our IP worldbuilding. Main point of contact and relationship builder with Scholastic. Led cover reviews from concept to final. Personally reviewed each page of graphic novel for illustrations and layout, included paintovers as needed. Guided to-market advertising campaigns and advised on fandom engagement. Personally announced new graphic novels at two key events.
Promotional Art
Season 4 Poster Campaign
Managed artist Hanna Hofer for a series of large scale character posters in promotion of Season 4. Many characters had a brand new design after the series timeskip so this was our audience’s very first look. Provided art direction, layout design, and illustrative review paintovers while maintaining timelines and budget. Each character art is fully body for additional cross-franchise use.
Internal Project
Reflections Series
Directed series of short stories written by members of the show team and external collaborators. Chapters were published online between seasons and explored off-screen events. Managed freelancers, writing schedules, approvals, editing and all art direction. Contributed supplemental illustrations.
Internal Project
Everyday Xadia
Art director and supervising Producer for series of chibi comics illustrated by Cara McGee. Led script approvals and managed all scheduling and communications with both internal and external parties. Provided direct editing and paintover reviews as needed.
Internal Project
Community Engagement & Social Media
Built a 400% channel growth between Seasons 3 & 4. Utilized knowledge of the community, high level community best practices, plus familiarity with our unique fandom genuine brand voice and humor to increase engagement during the 2 year series content gap. Effectively responded to time-sensitive memes. Identified a list of go-to fans to engage as influencers within out community for internal and partner use. Creation, production and distribution of influencer swag, including hand-painted chocolates, a pure silver coin and a customized blanket. Organized and managed Voice Actor engagement and promotion.
129K Followers
121.6K Followers
73.7K Followers
FCB Global + Ogilvy & Mather
Art Direction & Marketing Projects
Please use the following link to explore work from my time at FCB Global and Ogilvy & Mather. Production pipelines and skills showcased include: Art direction, graphic design, logo design, package design, animation planning, animation creation, video creation & editing, digital ads, deck building, social media design, experiential, pop-up events, UX design, retail signage, event strategy, booth design, entertainment franchise pitches and more.
Password: secret
Skillsets
○ Creative Strategy ○ Content Production ○ Team Building & Coordination ○
○ PRODUCING ○ Project Management ○ Fandom Expertise ○
○ Branding & Identity ○ Social Media ○ 360 Marketing Campaigns ○
○ Creative Resourcing ○ Influencer engagement ○ Transmedia IP Development ○
○ Adobe Creative Suite ○ Google Suite ○
○ Data Analytics ○ Copy Editing ○ Deck Creation & Pitching ○ PRODUCT DESIGN ○
○ ART DIRECTION ○ ILLUSTRATION ○ Graphic Design ○ Video Editing ○ aNIMATION ○
Interests
○ new storytelling mediums ○ TEACHING MYSELF Longboarding ○
○ ANIMATed series ○ ANIME & MANGA ○ “The Legion of Superheroes” COMICS ○
○ running ON CHICAGO’S LAKEFRONT ○ kickboxing ○ staying up all night reading ○
○ DRAWING IN COFFEE SHOPS ○ saying hello to every puppy ○ ve sChwab ○
○ video game streams ○ NARRATIVE based podcasts ○ WRITING ○ new york city ○
○ POP CULTURE conventions ○ rESEARCH DEEP DIVES ○ cinnamon rolls ○
○ Costume sewing ○ fall out boy ○ spending too much time on TIKTOK ○
○ Relearning japanese ○ LORD OF THE RINGS ○ WATERCOLOR PAINTING ○
Testimonials
Justin Santistevan
President & Co-Founder of Wonderstorm
“The Dragon Prince would not be what it is today without Emily.
Emily's wide and diverse skillset was invaluable given our small team and limited resources as a startup, and she wore many hats well. She is a brilliant creative strategist, talented art director and artist herself, savvy marketer, strong community builder, social media guru, and above all a diligent brand steward... Emily infused authenticity and quality into everything she touched, ensuring that everything associated with the brand was core to the IP and worthy of the community's time and attention.
As a leader at Wonderstorm, Emily was also an exemplary ambassador of our company and values, as evidenced by the strong relationships and trust she built with each of our partners/licensees.”
Devon Giehl
Head Writer & Producer at Wonderstorm
“Emily is an absolute unicorn. [Her] strong empathy and communication skills made [developing other projects within the IP] nearly effortless. She carefully sought out alignment on creative for all products and fostered relationships with outside vendors that allowed us to develop the world of Xadia far beyond The Dragon Prince TV series. She brought her magic touch to our TTRPG series, graphic novels, social media, merchandise and more.
She's also a complete joy to work with! She has a genuine love for art and storytelling that can be rare... and that translates to an authenticity to her work that shines through. Her eye for art and story made Emily a perfect extension of the art and writing teams on The Dragon Prince. Our work, voice, and creative intent were always in excellent hands.”
Testimonials
Criss Fowler
Former Digital Marketing Lead at Wonderstorm
“[Emily] is nothing short of a gem -- a rare human, who weaves cleverness with conscious empathy and positive energy.
Her passion and influence was felt throughout every facet of The Dragon Prince, from social media and merchandise, to extending the enchanting narrative and world of Xadia into tabletop games and graphic novels for additional audiences to enjoy.
Besides the fact that she's basically a creative wizard, what sets Emily apart and made working with her so memorable was the genuine warmth and approachability she brought with every interaction.”
Chantelle Tatum
Lead Systems Designer at Wonderstorm
“Emily is truly amazing to work with! Not only is she extremely talented in maintaining and organizing a multi-media franchise, but her passion and excitement for the franchise is contagious to anyone that works with her. Her commitment and sheer joy when working on a project is awe-inspiring.”
Tim Kaminski
Former Art Director for Wonderstorm
“Not only is she incredibly organized, dedicated, and knowledgeable, she is also really creative. While working together she helped push the integration of the franchise across multiple medias. She has a keen eye for franchise details that could be easily missed as well as the big picture of the franchise.”
Press & Convention Appearances
The Dragon Prince Co-Creator Teases What's Next for Season 4 & the Franchise
CBR
The Dragon Prince: Inside the Creative Process | Comic-Con@Home 2021
SAN DIEGO COMIC-CON 2021 PANEL
The Dragon Prince: Secrets in the Stars | New York Comic Con 2023
NEW YORK COMIC CON 2023 PANEL
“I need to call out Emily Marzonie who is our fantastic franchise manager and creative executive at Wonderstorm who makes sure all those things have the right creative alignment... She was already the perfect person to help us make sure there's creative continuity between the different partnerships and things we're doing... She plays a critical role in what has always been the vision.
In 2021, most conventions were still digital only. I was tasked to develop, organize and execute a virtual panel based on our resources at the time. I effectively built and managed every section of the panel, and then edited the entire video for publishing. I interviewed two of Wonderstorm’s founders for a portion of the panel, seen above.
I organized, executed and participated in our 2023 New York Comic Con panel. This included managing our deck, promotion, and the team on-the-ground at the event. I attend every panel we’ve executed for on-site support, but this event I was asked to be on stage and discuss some of our IP expansions including announcing our newest graphic novel in partnership with Scholastic, titled “Dreamer’s Nightmare.”
