Recently I was hired by the Minneapolis Star-Tribune to help them pitch an idea for an interactive ad that included a simple animated Renaissance game. Here’s the concept art I worked up. The game needed to fit two different aspect ratios, so which is why there is so much empty space along the top and bottom:
The latest VeggieTales DVD “Noah’s Ark” (Amazon link) recently hit store shelves. It’s the first DVD to feature the updated character designs which coincide with the brand new Netflix series “VeggieTales In The House“. It’s a fresh, energetic new take on the characters. (EDIT: Credit for the new designs goes mostly to the amazing Elena and Olivia Ceballos).
I was asked to help with designing some costumes (sometimes from scratch, other times polishing existing designs). I also did a lot of concepts for a new character, Shem, who was ultimately voiced by Wayne Brady. At the beginning of the “Noah” project we were still using the old, classic VeggieTales style but eventually the decision was made to try and match the updated look of the “refresh”. The final Shem design is pretty close to one of my concepts.
The evolution of this story also took some twists and turns. At first they wanted to go with a traditional biblical setting, then a few other things were tried before eventually settling on something more modern. Hence, the variety of costume designs below:
Here’s a trailer for Noah’s Ark:
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One of my clients is DecoPac, Inc., a novelty toy company that makes many of the cake toppers you see in bakeries and grocery stores. Most of their products are tied to licensed merchandise, and sometimes I get the fun of helping them develop a toy idea for a popular character. The challenge is to come up with something creative and fun for kids to play with, but that can also be produced inexpensively (often with no moving parts) and fit within the 3″ clearance space of a plastic birthday cake box.
Last year they asked me to help out with a toy for a new animated series from Disney/Marvel called “Hulk and the Agents of S.M.A.S.H.” We worked up a couple of ideas. Now that the toy is in stores I can publish the final design, but the client has requested that I keep the other sketches under wraps.
Here’s how the final toy turned out:
Last year I was hired by Big Idea to help develop some character designs, costumes, and misc. artwork for their new DVD Veggies In Space. Now that the DVD is available for purchase I’m allowed to show a bit of the artwork I did. I haven’t had a chance to watch it yet but it was a lot of fun to work on.
Here’s a few of the characters I worked on. The costume designs for the main characters were inspired by Star Trek. For the villains I thought it would be fun to do something reminiscent of the cheesy Flash Gordon serials of yesteryear.
I also got to illustrate some misc. background signage. Here’s a billboard and the cover of a brochure:
Veggies In Space is now available from Amazon, iTunes, etc. Here’s the trailer:
[youtube_sc url=34RxF1nu_KQ width=450]
I was hired by Big Idea to do some character concept art for their latest VeggieTales DVD, Merry Larry and the True Light of Christmas (Amazon link). This episode features a guest narrator, Uncle Si from the runaway hit cable series Duck Dynasty.
Here’s a few rough concepts and final turnarounds, followed by some screen captures from the episode. Bob’s glasses were removed for the final show (I suspect because having unobstructed eyes makes the acting a bit clearer), but overall the end result stayed pretty close to what I submitted.
(Click to enlarge)
One of my clients is DecoPac, Inc., a company that specializes in novelty birthday cakes. Most of my work for them involves licensed characters from Disney, DreamWorks, Cartoon Network, etc. but every once in a while they hire me to work up an original cake concept. In this case they wanted to create a jumbo “Happy Birthday” cake design. This would be a “signature” cake, meaning it would be much larger and taller than a typical birthday cake.
The challenge was to create something fun and festive that hadn’t been done a hundred times before. I started by brainstorming a few possible novelty toys or doo-dad’s that could go on top of the cake. Something small and fun, but hopefully not too cliche. These were my first rough ideas:
I also played around with a few ideas for a theme on the actual cake itself.:
The liked the 4th and 6th cake ideas, so I combined them into this concept:
From their DecoPac took this rough idea and worked with their manufacturers to develop the final product. As often happens, more changes were made as the idea continued to evolve in-house. Here’s how the final cakes turned out:
You can also view the final product on the DecoPac website.
