My career began as an art director in the music industry, so I was really excited for the opportunity to direct the music video for ’Hands/Heart’ by The Raven And The Writing Desk. I was given freedom to create a piece in a style that represents my personal point of view, so I pushed the limits of what I had done in the past with a semi-realistic yet surreal illustration style and animated it frame-by-frame. The end result is a strange journey portrayed through stark compositions and lyrical metaphors.

The design of the video takes a graphical, hand drawn approach - representing the song concepts in symbolic and abstract ways. The music feels organic, so I wanted the style to represent that. I thought of it like someone’s notebook of memories or dreams drawn out page by page. The compositional direction was inspired by high-contrast imagery and strong cinematic layouts as seen in the moodboard below. Role: Director, illustrator, animator. Additional animation: Zack Citro

Animation for Nike Toronto’s Air Max Day to celebrate 30 Years of Air Max and the launch of the new Vapormax. Used as content on multiple screen walls in the Airmax Bus and Sneakeasy Toronto, we used a combination of cel animation and After Effects to slam through the visual history of the iconic shoe. My role was direction, design, illustration and animation. Animators: Zack Citro, Stuart Inamura.

Smokepurpp was interviewed in a secret location at SXSW in 2018. In preparation for his new album release, Smokepurpp discusses his dream studio set-up… in space. We partnered with Pandora to direct this animated visualization of the interview.
Inspired by Trap-Rap fashion and design trends combined with the visual style of 80’s and 90’s animated TV series, we used frame-by-frame animation to bring the story to life while our partners at Pandora created the original sound design and music.

The timeline was tight, and we had a small but mighty team on this one. I acted as creative/animation director and animator, the über-talented Jamie Givens did the design and illustration as well as storyboards. Animation was handled by Harry Schaeffer, Stuart Inamura and Mary Vertulfo. The project was recognized on Motionographer, VOTD, Adforum, the Drum, All Hip Hop and more.

This spot directed for Oreck turns the standard vacuum ad into a high-concept product film to tease the release of the new POD containment system. The idea is simple - don’t show the product, show what it does. To achieve this we immerse the viewer in a violent storm in an unrecognizable environment. We travel through massive tornados and dust storms, slowly building the intensity to its breaking point until it’s revealed the storm is fully contained within the Oreck Pod.

Three concepts for the spot were pitched, and the Storm was chosen. The original style frames are below, created fully in photoshop. Luckily I had a solid team of 3D artists to help bring the idea to fruition. Role: Creative/animation director and design. Storyboards: Jamie Givens. 3D animation: Zack Citro, Shawn Astrom, Ben Chwirka.

A frustrated self-coding computer beats its head against the wall trying to solve a problem until finally realizing the best course of action is to take a break.
I worked with the folks at Develop Denver, a digital design and development conference, to direct and produce the graphics and show opener. The theme of the year, balance. Role: Direction, illustration, animation.

“If This Then Domino’s” is a website that uses IFTTT technology that allows customers to automatically order Domino’s pizza every time a particular situation occurs. What’s the first thing you would do if the zombie apocalypse were to hit? If you answered “Order pizza” then this is the website for you. The concept required 45 illustrations for an infinite grid of triggers, in addition to an animated tutorial video. My role was illustrator and creative director of illustration and animation elements.

The project was an FWA award winner, featured in Communication Arts interactive annual, Adweek, Awwwards SOTD and more. This was a big team effort at Legwork, credits are as follows. Interactive Art Director: Hannah Purmort. Development: Matt Wiggins, Jack Rugile, Keith Driessen, Drew Dahlman. Illustration: Mary Vertulfo, Mike Scarano. Animation: Stuart Inamura, Harry Schaeffer.

This is an on-going archive of character design, illustrations and style frames. A mixed collection of concept and pitch work for motion design projects, personal works, and overall a good representation of the various design styles and illustration I enjoy doing.

For the release of the “Hemperor HPA”, New Belgium approached Legwork to create a graphics package for “Great Moments in Hemp History”, a branded mini-doc to celebrate the launch. My role consisted of direction, design and animation of all graphic segments. When researching the history of hemp (dating back to the 1800’s) you tend to see a lot of imagery with a certain look (weathered paper, encyclopedia illustrations etc). Ultimately, that lead to the art direction. I balanced those ideas with what was already defined with the packaging and found that it all fit nicely together.

I had open creative freedom on this project and from a visual style point of view was really able to lead the charge creatively and come up with something we were all excited about. I worked in close collaboration with Benjamin Jones at Image Brew who handled the script, production, and live action direction for the documentary.

This spot for Puma’s Cobra Golf takes us on a journey through the King F8’s ‘one of a kind technology’. My goal was to develop a piece that would stand out in the market, something more punk-rock than country club, an idea that’s visualized through the dark and desaturated art direction. To draw a parallel to Cobra’s process of creation and history of innovation, the spot uses an infinite zoom to seamlessly transition through the timeline and create a sense of constant forward progression.

Role: Creative/animation director and design. Storyboards: Jamie Givens. 3D Modeling: Shawn Astrom, Nate Storm. 3D Animation: Zack Citro, Andy Hahn, Jason Schwarz. Live Action Production: Jasper Gray. Agency Creative Director: Blake Ebel / Fear Not.

The treatment for the co-branded Hanes/Disney film “Follow That Sock” is one of my favorite projects to date. It revolves around a family of socks that take a vacation to Disney World, and when their young cousin wanders off they start a journey across the park to find him. I started by creating storybook-like concept art to help visualize the world of a sock and the backstory of the characters. Then a series of character studies and walk cycle concepts were made. From there, our team prototyped the main character in 3D, creating static comps and a casting call video.

The New York Times approached us to create an animation about how the 2011 debt deal fell apart. The video would be used as a companion piece to the story that the NYT was about to run, so my concept was to make it feel like a newspaper coming to life. Armed with an archive of photo source, I got to work. My role was direction, design and animation. Additional animation from Zack Citro. Recognized as a Vimeo Staff Pick, Art Directors Club winner, featured on NYT magazine, and more.

The creative brief for Einstein Bros Twist n’ Dip bagel called for fun-loving bagel pieces skydiving, high-dive diving, and human cannonball-ing. I immediately starting painting small bagel people with eyes and clothes and sketching concepts of airplanes made out of bagel to-go boxes. The client had a great selection of style reference, but mostly flat illustration. I saw an opportunity to push the look further by giving the characters a slight 3D feeling but keeping everything rooted in a 2D world through the use of textures and a low frame rate style of animation.

Since I sold the art direction through a series of 2D illustrations, we had to make sure we stayed as true to that original idea as possible even once we had moved into the 3D pipeline. For me, this meant creating as much reference for the team as possible, from storyboards, to character sheets, props, and overall animation direction. Zack Citro and Ben Chwirka handled all of the 3D modeling, texturing, lighting, and animation.

An animated music video for Alameda’s song New Leaf. The idea started as a blurry image in my head. There were long shadows, weird sketchy trees, snow on everything, and some kind of animal. I listened to the song over and over, then I wrote a story around it. Above is the first sketch I made, the other initial frames are below. These were the blueprint for the final look. With animation the challenge was to give the world a lot of depth, but with a handmade 2D quality. The solution was to make the whole thing in 3D and digitally paint every frame by hand.

My role consisted of direction, concept, design, and painting. Zack Citro, Ben Chwirka, and Sarah Jones handled 3D modeling, animation, texturing, and rotoscoping. The project gained recognition including a Vimeo Staff Pick, SXSW Vimeo showcase, VOTD winner, ADCD award, and featured in numerous industry publications.