Digital Illustration

Character and product illustration, drawn by hand and built to ship.

I don't draw just to make something pretty. My illustration always has a job to do: a mascot that gets people to click, a character that sells a blind box, game art that ships in the box. From tee graphics on Threadless to every project since, it's all hand-drawn and built to hold up in production.

MY ROLE: Character Illustration

The two sides of Sandy

Sandy is the whole movie in one character, sweet in white at the start, all leather and attitude by the end. So I painted both.

I created these digital illustrations in Photoshop before Procreate started to become popular. These were headed for the merch that split the same way she does, red-and-white leather bags for good Sandy, black leather backpacks for bad.

I worked from movie stills as reference but drew every line myself, nothing traced.

MY ROLE: Digital Illustration, Typography

Embracing the greaser energy

If Sandy is the center of gravity, the T-Birds are the are the chaos in orbit around her. This is the rough end of the spectrum, all worn edges, oil stains, scribbled cartoons, and broken rules.

The graphics I produced all leaned into the rugged, tough-guy image of Danny Zuko and his gang, the T-Birds. I wanted everything to feel worn out and well used, like the mismatched parts these guys scrounged up to soup up their car, Greased Lightning. This was a group of guys who broke the rules, so I took that rebellion to heart.

MY ROLE: Digital Illustration, Typography

Systematically designed tees

The car is where both sides of Grease meet, revving up the story and the tension. Sandy feels like an outsider in the greaser world, and Danny betrays his heart to stay the leader of his gang.

The biggest design challenge of this project was the text we could use. All of the lyrics from the songs were off limits, but luckily the movie is full of great spoken lines. This one, delivered by Danny Zuko (played by John Travolta), was said just moments before the song Greased Lightning began.

MY ROLE: Digital Illustration, Typography

Goody, goody two shoes

More than anything, Grease is a coming-of-age story, their last year of high school, staring down adulthood.

This was by far my favorite graphic of the campaign, and the hardest to rein in. The temptation was to push it too far, so instead I went for a classic yearbook feel with an edge, like someone ripped words out of a teen magazine and stuck them on Sandy's locker when no one was looking. That hand-done student-poster aesthetic was exactly the feeling I was after. It's that final yearbook you flip back through and cover your own photo, because you can't believe you ever looked like barf on a paper bag.

Yeah, go try and find my high school yearbook. I dare you.

Paramount Pictures

Grease 30th Anniversary

Grease is the word! To mark Grease's 30th anniversary, my team built a set of celebration graphics. These are the ones I created for my part.

MY ROLE: Digital Illustration

Series Travel Posters

Warner Bros. was always producing new art to support events and promotions across their popular TV series, and I got to help on a number of them.

One was a set of vintage-style travel posters displayed around the WB campus in Burbank, each one selling a fan-favorite show as a destination. I took Gilligan's Island and Friends, two very different worlds, a tropical castaway romp and downtown New York, which let me match the illustration style to each.

MY ROLE: Digital Illustration

Adult Coloring Book

During Emmy season, studios court the voters with For-Your-Consideration extras tied to their award-hopeful shows. For Blindspot, I was handed three pages of its promotional adult coloring book and a rare open brief: have fun and create. I leaned into the show's own hook, the intricate tattoos covering the lead character, each one hinting at a deeper mystery, which gave me exactly the kind of dense, story-loaded line work I love.

Warner Bros.

Series Tie-In Illustration

As seen in the film 17 Again with Zac Efron and Matthew Perry

MY ROLE: Digital Illustration, Concept Development

Finding my style

There was a time when a graphic tee meant you were wearing an ad, for a sports team, a movie, a band, or a brand. So I loved it when tee graphics started becoming about the art itself, not selling anything. That was exactly what I wanted to wear: something that showed what I loved, not what I bought.

When I first got into designing tees, I had no idea what my style would be. I started in pen and ink, then moved to vector, using Adobe Illustrator and a Wacom tablet to mimic that same hand-inked look. It's been a staple of my style ever since.

In the end, my designs were printed at Threadless.com about a dozen times, and I have around that same number printed on other sites.

Vist my Threadless store!

Threadless

Graphic Tee Designs

MY ROLE: Digital Illustration

Going on vacation, twice!

Working directly with the sketch artist and the art director at Warner Bros. Games, I created vector illustrations of the main characters for the game Vacation Isle, and then again for its sequel, Vacation Isle: Beach Party. Slotting into an established art pipeline like that, under a name like Warner Bros., meant hitting their style and their standard, not just following my own instincts.

What made it a great experience is also what makes it worth showing here: it was real collaboration. I helped shape the concept and composition of each character, and just as importantly, I gave and took feedback as part of a team, refining the work together instead of getting precious about it. The best sign it worked? They brought me back to do it all again for the sequel.

MY ROLE: Digital Illustration

Getting to know good friends

The second time I got to work directly with the team at Warner Bros. Games was Lego Friends, an offshoot of the wildly popular Lego minifigure line aimed at tween girls. I was handed a background and worked with the sketch artist and art director to develop vector illustrations of very specific characters from the Lego Friends world.

That "very specific" is the whole point: this wasn't just my eye, it was Lego's. Every illustration had to clear two separate approval gauntlets, first the Warner Bros. licensing team, then Lego itself, both fiercely protective of an instantly recognizable style. Clearing that bar means staying dead-on model under strict review, which is exactly the discipline licensed brands hire for. They all gave the thumbs up, and the game shipped across a variety of platforms.