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.
For most of 2021 Legacy Effects was busy working on Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3. At the same time, I was also busy designing characters for Season 1 of Star Trek Strange New Worlds, so although I didn’t get to spend much time on GOTG, I did get a chance to help design and sculpt a version of teen Groot. This is my attempt to sculpt and render a great concept designed by Anthony Francisco.
I had a chance to help Legacy Effects create a practical alligator for the underwater fight scene with Will Smith in the film Emancipation. I digitally sculpted the gator that was milled out of foam and then the Legacy crew turned that into the life-like gator puppet for the film. The final fight scene featured the puppet and a cg version created from my digital file.
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:
After a few months of an industry-wide shutdown due to the pandemic, Hollywood came roaring back to life, and Legacy Effects brought me on board to help design on Paramount Plus’ new series: Star Trek Strange New Worlds. Starting in mid 2020, I spent the better part of a year designing characters for this series. I’m happy to finally be able to share some of the work I did on season one.
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.
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:
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.
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.
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!
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:
