Character Design • Graphic Design • Environment Design
It’s always great to be a part of Surfrider Foundation-Milwaukee’s Surf @Water. In addition to helping organize the event, I get a chance to create the visuals. Here are the designs for this year’s 6th annual Surf @Water:
Last year, I had the great privilege to work on the Marvel series, Runaways. Legacy Effects was tasked out to build the raptor, Old Lace, so they contacted me to help out on the design and sculpt of the creature. The Marvel team came up with a great 2D design, so I digitally sculpted the dino, and created 3D renderings for the production team to visualize Old Lace in 3D space.
Legacy Effects took my 3D sculpt and had it milled out of foam. They then built a full scale raptor puppet that you see in the show.
It was a blast to work with the same crew that created the animatronic dinos for the original Jurassic Park films.
Here are the designs:
Check out some clips of Old Lace in show:
Here are a few preliminary, unused alien/ suit concepts I helped Legacy Effects develop a while back.
Here are number of designs I created for the most recent TurboTax campaign. Some of the Spots include: The Thing Under the Bed, Chupacabra, That Thing in the Woods & Werewolf.
The digital sculpt for Thing Under the Bed was milled out of foam, and Legacy Effects turned it into a giant puppet under the bed. The rest of the designs were sculpted and fabricated as actor suits and makeups.
Here are the spots:
I had the opportunity to help design Evelyn and a few other robots for the Sprint Super Bowl 2018 commercial: Evelyn. We went through a few rounds of Evelyn’s features. She needed to have an indifferent expression, with a subtle air of superiority, yet she couldn’t look mean.
I actually had the most fun designing the little robot who says, “You got a dumb face!”
Here are some of the designs:
Here’s the commercial:
The Gorton’s Seafood spots have been pretty funny recently. I had the opportunity to help design Poseidon and the Mer-Bros. Here are some of the concepts.
Check out the commercials:
Here’s a funny Farmers Ins. commercial I worked on a while ago. I designed the flaming mascot. I found this ad concept so flippin’ hilarious. The cocky mascot doing his mascot-thing in the car with his silly-ass fireball head, meanwhile the car is on fire… Hahahaha. Anyways, I had fun with this one.
Here’s the spot:
XFINITY Home came out with a horror short, The Neighborhood, this past Halloween. Its a fun, spooky concept, and I had a chance to help design the mysterious hood, as well as the “ghouls” that flash in some of the scenes.
Timed with Halloween, “THE NEIGHBORHOOD,” is set in an ordinary neighborhood where extraordinary things are happening. The XFINITY Home system and cameras play a pivotal role in linking the story together, creating an edge-of-your-seat product demo like nothing seen before.
Here are some of the designs:
Check out the short film… if you dare!
Here’s a sad little dragon I designed for the Buffalo Wild Wings Medieval Days commercial. The director wanted the dragon to look completely dejected and overworked, so I went through a number of iterations to make him appear more and more sickly and downtrodden. I sculpted this guy in Zbrush and sent the file off to Legacy Effects where he was he was 3D printed and turned into a puppet! Here is where the final design ended up.
Here are a few more early designs:
And here’s the commercial:
Here are a couple of unused, pitch-work Taheen designs I did for the film, The Dark Tower. These rodent-like creatures wear ill fitting human masks to try to blend in. Although it was a quick initial pass, I had fun working on this project!
I had a chance to help design the little plush panda, Ernie in the Tile commercial, Lost Panda | Together We Find. During the design process, we explored a number of variations of this little guy, but we finally dialed it into a cute, innocent, wide-eyed little fellow that wanders the world in search of its owner.
Here’s the final design:
Here are a number of the initial designs. The director felt many of these were too obvious and expected- possibly too Pixar-like. He wanted me to try moving the features around i.e. adjusting the eyes wider and lower on the face.
And here’s the commercial. (You may want to grab a box of tissues) 😉
Here’s a monster I designed for the Progressive commercial, The Closet. It was fun to explore some scarier options, but the client was concerned that it was too frightening, so I made him a bit friendlier in the final design.
Here are some earlier versions:
Here’s the spot:
Here’s an “egg” I created for the funny and bizarre Old Spice commercial, Cinema, starring Von Miller. I was asked to design a dry, cracked egg/ pod shape that Von would punch his way out of. Here is the final design that Legacy Effects referenced when they built the full size egg.
Here are a few more early versions of the egg-pod:
And the commercial:
Surfrider Foundation-Milwaukee‘s 5th annual Surf @Water, held on August 5th 2017, was a huge success. I am happy to be a part of the small, but dedicated team that pulls off these events.
Here are some beautiful shots of this year’s event by Kristopher Mark Photography.
Here are the print and press materials I created for the events:
I had a chance to design the cheesy flea costumes for the Geico- Fleas Playing Badminton commercial. They were intentionally low-tech for comedic effect.
Here’s the final design:
Initially I was asked to explore a more realistic flea costume design, but then they were determined to be too scary. I don’t disagree, and this just isn’t as funny:
Here’s the spot: