Country Critters

Kid Stuff Marketing approached me with a line of characters called Country Critters. They had previously used the characters in a line of placemats, paper bags, and toys that were licensed to a variety of restaurants, and decided it was time for a refresh. I was told I could draw the characters in my own personal style as long as I didn’t deviate *too* much from the existing designs.

Also, the illustration had to be designed in such a way that it could be used as a placemat but also so that the top 15% or so could be chopped off and the rest printed as wrap-around art on paper bags. That meant the characters had to be strategically placed to avoid being printed on a fold line.

The creative director, Jay Thompson, sent me a rough sketch of an approximate layout, which helped a lot. It was a super fun project and I’m really happy with how it turned out.

Weegos Packaging Illustrations

Alley Oop Toys asked me to help them with the expansion and rebrand of their Weegos toy line. Weegos are small animal characters that can clip onto pencils, backpacks, etc. They also wear mix-and-match shirts with fun slogans on them that you can collect.

The only character the client had was the sloth, but they wanted to expand into a line of additional animals. They hired me to design five new characters, including finished vector art for packaging and promotion.

Here are the characters I designed and illustrated for them:

I also illustrated a “money shot” of the sloth attached to a pencil…

…and Alley Oop toys sent me the Weegos logo, asking me to illustrate the characters grouped around it:

Here’s how the final packaging turned out:

Gogurt Packaging Illustrations

Gogurt Packaging Illustrations

Earlier this year I was hired by Ultra Creative to do some wrap-around packaging illustrations for Gogurt. For those not familiar with Gogurt, it’s yogurt “on the go” that comes in long, skinny plastic tubes, and it’s a favorite in our family.

On each side of the tube is a silly scenario that kids might find scary, and the packaging asks “Which is scarier…?” It’s a clever Halloween-themed idea and it was a lot of fun to work on.

EDIT: I found some of the actual packaging at my local grocery store:

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Artwork For Monster Cereals Packaging

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Count Chocula, Frankenberry, and Booberry cereals will have two old friends re-joining them on store shelves this Halloween. I’m delighted to say I got be a part of it.

Frute Brute was a werewolf cereal character for a few years in the 1970’s-80’s, and Yummy Mummy also had a run from the late 80’s to early 90’s. For the first time ever, all five flavors will now be on store shelves at the same time. That’s big news for monster cereal fans. (Just do a google search for “monster cereals” and you’ll find they have quite a following.) The news even warranted a story in the Wall Street Journal!

Ultra Creative in Minneapolis was tasked with helping bring Frute Brute and Yummy Mummy into the 2010’s, and they selected me to do the final packaging illustrations. This was a huge honor! It was also a bit of a challenge because we had to try to match the style of the existing monsters which were created a few years ago by another illustrator (I have no idea who):

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Art director Todd Demulling worked up some rough character designs and then gave me the ball to run with. He was very helpful as we worked back-and-forth. I created the detailed artwork and then Ultra Creative made a few final tweaks in-house.

I was also asked to do some artwork for the back of all five of the monster cereal boxes, working with art director Terry Schnipkoweit based on his rough color sketches and layout.

Here’s some hi-res images of the final packaging art. (Click to enlarge):

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Target stores are also selling exclusive “retro” packaging for the monster cereals this year. I didn’t do any work on those, unless they are also using my artwork in the back panel. I haven’t had a chance yet to stop in to Target and look.

This is a very high-profile project and I’m deeply grateful that the very talented team at Ultra Creative felt they could trust me with it. The cereals are not available year-round. They are only in stores around Halloween so get them while you can!

Cocoa Puffs Cereal Box Art

It’s always been a professional goal of mine to create artwork for a cereal box. So I was delighted when Todd Demulling at Ultra Creative hired me to do a packaging illustration for Cocoa Puffs cereal. Todd gave me a rough sketch to build on. I illustrated the full-body figures and the background. Then the team at Ultra Creative made a couple of tweaks, added the big head at the bottom, and inserted the text:

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I was pretty exciting to visit my local Walmart today and see how it turned out:

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