Designing the troll for Amazon’s Prime Video commercial, Don’t Let Streaming Make You a Grumpy Troll, was one of my favorite characters yet to date. Any time I get to design a big, hairy beast that looks like something that could have lumbered out of the Jim Henson Creature shop in the 80’s is always a blast. This troll went through a number of iterations, but the creatives finally settled on this guy. Legacy Effects knocked it out of the park on the build and puppeteering for the spot.
I worked with Legacy Effects to design the aliens for the “Elites” commercial. This was a fun one. We initially did a little exploration before the creatives decided to go with more of a beluga-inspired alien in illuminati type garb. I designed and digitally sculpted the heads, and Legacy did the rest.
Toys R Us Canada came up with a sweet campaign with their Imagination Included commercial. It features Mr. Ferguson, (previously Mr. Bobo), a kid’s imaginary friend lying on the floor and barely conscious. We see a bored kid sitting despondent on the couch, apparently oblivious to Mr. Ferguson’s condition. Seeing this, the parents call in the cracker jack team from Toys R Us who revive Mr. Ferguson and then in the end, the boy and Mr. Ferguson scamper off to play.
From the campaign: A recent UK study revealed that 72% fewer kids have imaginary friends than 5 years ago. Maybe it’s the increase in screen time. Or the rise in overly scheduled, rigidly structured play. Whatever it is, their disappearance has us worried. You see, at Toys ‘R’ Us, our job is to nourish kids’ imaginations. So let’s bring back Imaginary Friends. Heck, let’s even bring back Imaginary Enemies. As long as kids are using their powers of make-believe, we’re all for it.
Anyhoo, it’s a campaign that I can get behind, since I was a kid who always played outside with my imagination, with my real and imaginary friends.
Legacy Effects tasked me out to help design Mr. Ferguson. At first the direction was to make him more of a dog character, but then the creatives wanted to push him towards a mashup of animals.
Here is where the designs led us, starting with the final 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.
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:
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.
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 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.
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.
I had a chance to design the plush tortoise and hare for the FedEx: Tortoise & the Hare spot. I had fun with this one, and being a life-long Looney Tunes fan, I definitely drew some inspiration from Bugs Bunny for the Hare.
This is a robot I helped design for the Samsung Galaxy: Our Galaxy commercial. Although, the robot was to be pretty simple and boxy, it had to be able to emote and utilize robotic appendages. Legacy Effects 3D printed my designs and brought this guy to life. The commercial is pretty sweet.
