Character Design • Graphic Design • Environment Design
I haven’t been working on as many commercials these days, as I have spent the last year and a half designing on Disney’s Star Wars series, as well as two seasons of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, but I did get a chance to design Arnold Schwarzenegger as Zeus in the BMW Zeus & Hera Super Bowl 2022 spot.
Here are a few designs of Zeus and his luscious mane.
And a few still from the ad:
I was tasked out to design a bulky mech suit that the “Stranger”, or John Henry Irons, would wear to battle Superman, in the series, Superman and Lois. I did a few passes at a more military-style armored suit, and they actually picked the first one. As per their request, I added jet propulsion and blasters that would deploy from the arms and legs.
Here are a number of images I created during the design process. The last three are preliminary designs.
These are some stills from the suit that Legacy Effects built from my 3D files:
For this year’s Super Bowl, I had a chance to design a number of characters for Verizon’s You Can’t Blame the Lag Super Bowl 2021 commercial, featuring Samuel L. Jackson.
The characters needed to be Fortnite-esque, so I tried to riff off of the look of the game. Here are some of the designs:
Here are some stills from the spot:
I had the immense privilege and tall order to do justice to the incredible work of Simon Stalenhaag in the Amazon series, Tales From the Loop. I worked with Legacy Effects to help design the Jakob robot, George Willard’s mech arm, the Vagabond droid, and a few others.
For the Jakob robot, I used Simon’s painting of a scrappy little robot for reference. I only had the back view to work with, so I did a series of designs that tried to uncover what this character’s “face” and front side looked like. He needed to be curious, shy, and non-threatening, so I studied other robots that Simon painted and came up a number of characters.
Here’s a collection of designs I did during the exploration of these beautiful, and sometimes heart wrenching stories.
Here are some stills from the series:
I had fun designing the Boatorcycle for this funny Bia spot a while back. We went quite a few rounds on this one, but it was fun to explore just how cool and wacky this thing could be. Here’s a snapshot of the design process with the final and the WIPs.
Check out the spot:
I had the opportunity to help design the gadgets in the Soda Stream Water on Mars 2020 Super Bowl commercial. I created a variety of designs for the water scanner and the water collector. I sent the final design files to Legacy Effects, who then 3D printed the pieces to be made into the props you see in the commercial.
I worked on two Energizer commercials simultaneously, “Dancing Bots” and “Penguins Holiday”. Both commercials needed miniature dancing robots, that Legacy Effects would build and puppeteer. My final designs were shipped off to the talented Legacy crew to 3D print turn into the live-action characters you see on screen.
Here are the designs:
Every once in a blue moon I get to work on a job that helps make the world a better place. A while back I had a chance to help design “Wilder” for Generation Wild – Colorado, an organization in Colorado encouraging people to re-discover the magic of the great outdoors.
“Remember how much fun you used to have playing outside? Where puddles became oceans, sticks became boats, and trees loomed over it all like enchanted castles? You might not have known it, but Wilder was with you then. And now he’s back to show a whole new generation the magic of this great big, wonderfully wild world.”
Check out the short film, and then and get outside!
Surfrider Foundation Milwaukee Chapter’s 7th annual Surf @Water was a big success. With record numbers on the beach and the bluff, fun waves, and plenty of sunshine, it was Surfrider MKE’s best fundraiser yet. Once again I had the chance to design the event poster and the t-shirts. It has been a blast helping this event evolve over the years.
Here’s the “Cooler from the Future” robot I designed for the new Dr Pepper commercial series. This guy was pretty fun to work on. It definitely couldn’t be too sleek, so I gave it a touch of steam punk to make it feel more vintage.
Here’s the final design, as well as some preliminary passes.
And here’ s the spot:
Here is the mask I designed for the Olay: Killer Skin Super Bowl LIII commercial. The direction was to create a creepy, androgynous character, so here’s where we ended up.
Here’s the commercial that aired during Super Bowl 2019:
I must admit that I am responsible for helping bring this “creepy” little fella into the world. In doing research for this guy, I came across some pretty disturbing A.I. humanoid robots. This guy couldn’t be too weird, but definitely not human- which is the pitch for the campaign: human CPA’s, not robots.
Here is “RoboChild”:
And here’s the spot that aired during Super Bowl 2019:
This is a little alien I helped Legacy Effects design for the Pepsi: The Encounter commercial featuring William H. Macy. The production on this one is pretty sweet, and the final reveal of this little dude is pretty funny.
Here are a few early designs:
Here’s the spot:
A few years back I was asked to help design Pakshi, the villain in the film 2.0 directed by S. Shankar, starring Rajinikanth. Since the film’s release it has been heralded as the sixth highest grossing Indian film worldwide, and “the most technically advanced 3D film ever made in the history of Indian Cinema”.
Here are some of the preliminary designs I came up with for Pakshi:
These are some preliminary designs I created for the PlayStation live action Borderlands 2 VR- Maya commercial. Initially the agency wanted to explore a more stylized approach, so I played with some versions that were similar to the look of the game. Although the final commercial ended up being more cinematic, it was fun to do some visual exploration on this one.
Here’s the commercial: