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:

Screw Ballz Packaging Art

Recently I was hired by Alex Brands to illustrate the packaging of a new line of toys called Screw Ballz. Basically they are springy foam rubber creatures that can be wound up and combined together into interlocking balls. They asked me to illustrate each animal in an active “springing out” pose. The product hasn’t hit stores yet so I can’t post photos but the client did give me permission to share the artwork I submitted:

Big Wheels

Recently I was hired by Alex Brands to help with the launch of a new line of Big Wheels bikes. They were considering using illustrations for the packaging and asked me to whip up a couple of preliminary concepts of what that might look like (one boy, one girl). Here’s what I submitted (posted with client permission):

 

Trifecta BBQ Sauce

A few months ago I was hired by the Trifecta BBQ sauce company to create an illustration for their new brand of BBQ sauce. It was a fun project which I blogged about showing the steps from intial concept to final artwork.

I’m an illustrator, not a graphic designer, so I did not do the full label design. I just created the artwork and then the Trifecta people hired someone else to design a label around it.

Here’s the final artwork I submitted:

Trifecta-Final6v2a

The preliminary bottling has now begun, and earlier this week I received six bottles showcasing the new label design, hot off the assembly line. I’m told this is not the final design—they are going to make some minor changes—but I thought I’d post a quick photo anyway:

I can’t wait to slap some steaks on the grill and give this sauce a try! This is the perfect time of year for it too. Here in Minnesota the snow has only been gone for about a month, the leaves are sprouting on the trees, and there are no bugs….yet.

There’s also a Trifecta website in the works at trifectasauces.com. As of this writing its not live yet but it should be going live soon. If you enjoy a good BBQ it would be worth giving Trifecta a try.

Packaging Art: Bags On Board

Recently I was hired by Launch, an ad agency in the Dallas area, to create some artwork for a new packaging project. They were developing a new logo and packaging for “Bags On Board”, line of pet waste disposal products. They came to me with some concepts already fleshed out and hired me to do the final packaging illustration across the top. I wound up doing I think six different variations on this illustration, one for each product that was being showcased.