August 25, 2026
What do 220 handmade paper cutouts, a new airport concourse, and a little creative magic have in common? They’re all part of Rudy Willingham’s video highlighting the new C Concourse Expansion at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport (SEA).
Willingham is a Seattle-based creative animator and visual artist whose playful, quirky videos attract millions of views on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube. Recently he used these cutouts to highlight what is special about SEA’s new C Concourse Expansion.
The idea that launched a new career
Willingham spent more than a decade working as an advertising copywriter. It wasn’t unusual for ideas to end up on the cutting room floor, (no pun intended), but one idea stuck with him. So he tried it out on his own social channels for fun, creating whimsical videos with handmade paper cutouts, often featuring pop culture characters and familiar backdrops.
His first viral video featured a cut out of football star Russell Wilson on one side of an elevator and a football on the other. When the elevator closed, it looked like Wilson was throwing a football across the scene. After posting a video featuring Kobe Bryant that marked one year of his passing, Willingham started getting contacted by brands and for the first time thought that his fun hobby could become a career.
Willingham attributes the success of his style to people’s connection to things that are handmade, analog, and tactile. “I think everything is getting very digital nowadays and people like to see handmade art. They like to see there's an aspect of suffering that goes into making all those cutouts that people can see. It's a labor of love and people can see it like that.”
Bringing SEA’s C Concourse to life
When planning for the C Concourse Expansion video, Willingham wanted to highlight the amenities, unique features, and “cool things happening” throughout the space.
“The cutouts are a good way to showcase all of it — the beautiful art, the interesting structures, the food, the people, the plane spotting. It's a way to encapsulate all that into one short piece and bring the beauty of this new concourse out in an interesting way.”
Rather than simply documenting what he sees in the terminal, Willingham looks for bright colors and interesting patterns to feature as backgrounds to help his audience see the space in a new way. Backgrounds could include an interesting wallpaper or a piece of wood, and he uses a mix of long shots and close ups. “I want it to feel very varied, and I want to kind of feel electric.”
A Willingham video may look effortless on screen, but there’s a lot of work behind each few seconds of animation. Depending on the project, he prepares 100 to 200 paper cutouts. For the C Concourse video, that meant 220. His father-in-law helps print and cut the pieces, while his wife helps edit the videos.
Seeing SEA in a new way
Willingham often mixes beloved subjects, like an athlete, with a familiar setting. This style has allowed him to film videos in Seattle and other places in a completely different way while still giving viewers something familiar to connect with.
“People might walk past something every day and not think anything of it, but if you put a cut out in front of it and frame it in someone's shirt, all of a sudden it turns it into a design or a piece of art,” he said. “This allows you to frame these everyday things in a new way and helps you see their beauty.”
He keeps his mind open to seeing something new in the familiar, the way a child might see a sheep or dinosaur in a cloud. Willingham usually walks into a photo shoot with a general idea of what he wants to do, but once he arrives, he responds to what is in front of him.
“It depends on what works with the shape of the cutout. You get in there and you say, ‘oh, that looks cool,’ and you're just trying stuff out until you find the right framing,” he said. “Every project is different, and so you just need to be able to think on your feet. But I think that's what people like. There's a lot of imperfection involved but people can feel the heart of it.”
