Virgin America Safety Video

The Virgin America Safety video was used on Virgin flights from 2007 to 2013.  The premise was simple: safety videos are boring.  It was well received and a lot of fun to work on.  They gave us freedom over the look, as long as we communicated the technical details successfully. Simple as it appears, it was actually a complicated mix of Maya, After Effects, and Anime-Pro. As the art director, I was responsible for the overall look, which included all the design (except about half the characters) and colour work, layouts and key poses, and creating textures for Maya.

The character on the far left was originally a bear, but Virgin was afraid that people would think that they could travel with their pets in the cabin. So we substituted an anthropomorphic fish.

esurance

esurance - La palette

I art directed and designed a series of spots for Esurance from 2005 to 2008.  They were based on the adventures of Erin Esurance, a secret agent who sold insurance.  In this episode Erin and her assistant are looking in an art gallery for clues on where to buy auto insurance.

esurance - Earth Hour

An esurance spot promoting Earth Hour, when cities all over the world turn off their lights for an hour. I was the art director and designer.

esurance - Baseball

An esurance spot for the baseball season. We wanted a nostalgic feel, so there are several homages to great moments in baseball, but the focus is really on the bright colours and moustaches of the 1970's. I was the art director and designer.

Willie Mays' over the shoulder catch.

Babe Ruth's called shot.

Cartoon Network

Lobotomy

A piece I directed for Cartoon Network's award winning Animate Your World campaign way back in 1996.  The campaign was a series of interstitials encouraging creativity.  I did everything: design, concept, and animation.

Sound Hound

An interstitial I designed, directed, and animated for Cartoon Network in 1998.  It was part of a campaign where Cartoon Network invited outside directors to re-interpret classic Hanna Barbera characters.  This is my take on Huckleberry Hound.  They still show it today!

Chevy - Olympics

These are keyframes for a series of 5 second CG spots for the '06 winter olympics. I was the art director and designer.

MTV Stroll

One of a series of interstitials for Nordic MTV.  Co-designed and co-directed with Boris Nawratil at Filmtecknarna. The final piece is a combination of After Effects and Softimage.

Nike

Character designs that I pitched for a Nike ad; the theme was women as super heroes of exercise.

Midol

Variations on a female character that I pitched for a Midol spot.

Zen Ninja

Part of a pitch for a series of urban vinyl toys. We were asked to pitch ideas for one minute shorts featuring the toys.

Crusades

An early pass on a keyframe for a game based on the Crusades. This was for a cinematic which would tell the main character's backstory through a dream sequence.

5 Chinese Brothers

Developmental design for Delia Gosman's film, Five Chinese Brothers. In this image we were trying to create a very stylized world, where the setting was traditional, but the treatment was contemporary.

Zebra

Personal work, a sketch from a story about a zebra that escapes from the zoo, so that he can drink coffee and smoke cigarettes.

London Fields

Tivo

These are illustrations for a Tivo print campaign.  They wanted to do something in the same style as the Virgin campaign.

esurance - Policy Holder

The new direction in esurance ads, where customers are featured as animated characters. The first few spots were fairly conservative so we pushed this one in a more surreal direction. I was the art director and designer.

Some Recent Sketches

Clean It Up

Character designs for a music video for a Yo Gabba Gabba song. The song was about cleaning up and had a very 80's cheap synthesizer sound, so I went with a new wave look to reflect that.

Dragons

Dragons was a mobile game set in an isometric landscape with Maya generated dragon characters.  There were 9 different dragon body types as well as child, baby, and teen growth stages.  In pre-production my main responsibility was working with the tech art team to define the different dragon body types.

When we moved to production my role expanded to overseeing all the in-game art including:  background/ environment design, buildings and assets,   animation, additional characters, and UI design.   We ended up creating over 100 dragons and the final designs were a collaboration between myself and Ghostbot.

some final child and baby dragons

dragon growth stages

some of the first generation archetypes

later generations

early sketches of dragon archetypes

first sketches of Earth and Fire dragon

first concept sketches

Dragons gameboard

Pirate battle mini game

These are a series of concept sketches for a mobile game about an apartment building. They were done over a period of about a week and a half.

gameboard V1 close-up

gameboard v1

gameboard v2