Digit the Dog is the lovable mascot of ALEKS Adventure a new adaptive math program for grades 1 and 2. I created the the character design Digit, a canine with a penchant for numbers. He travels along with students through their math adventure, helping and providing boosts of positivity.
Included here are early designs as well as model sheet and various coloring and drawing worksheets that teachers can print out for their students.
Read more about Digit the Dog and ALEKS Adventure in this press release.
Copyright McGraw Hill
Digit the Dog plushie, created for the release of ALEKS Adventure. Soft, plushie, and right there by your side when you need help with math! This toy is based on my character design and was created as a special marketing promotion for the ALEKS Adventure math product.
Copyright McGraw Hill
Trance State Disasters is the debut album from my latest music project, Neon Bubblegum. It’s Kosmische musik with an 80’s twist. As always, I created the illustration and design for the album covers and promotional materials as well as producing the music.
Tracklist:
1. BETArituals
2. Video Yeah!
3. At the Situationist Convention
4. Open University Redux
5. Plastic Memory Continuum
6. Saturday Mournings
7. Sister Stellar (Arcade Blues)
8. Infinite Eye
9. Conrad's Electric Melody
Personal work
A selection of logos, banners and graphic marks for various clients and personal projects.
Copyright McGraw Hill, Brian Vogan, various freelance and personal work
The Haunted Pillarbox is novel for young people, ages 10-12. The book is a currently a work in progress with the second draft underway. The concept art presented here is a “behind-the-scenes” look at its overall development. The final book will include text and illustrations.
Personal work
Another illustrated story for Dada ABC. These illustrations accompany a story called “Family Camping”. I’ve included a model sheet for the family, one of the first concepts I’ll start out with when creating a story like this.
Client: Dada ABC
A sort of animated Halloween greeting card I created one year. It’s true, even vampires get the blahs.
Personal work
Collage work 2020-2023.
Personal work
Strange Sounds, Other Worlds: Fading Machine Library Music Catalogue Vol 1 is the latest release in my ongoing music series. This time around I’ve assembled incidental music and themes inspired by horror and sci-fi genres. The EP also includes the track, “Dwellings Theme”, music inspired by cartoonist Jay Stephens’ Dwellings comic book series.
Presented here are the process illustrations for the album cover. From the initial sketch, to black and white layout, to color, to the final album art.
Listen to Strange Sounds, Other Worlds: Fading Machine Library Music Catalogue Vol 1 on Souncloud.
Personal work
Poster for Northwest Food Drive 2018, sponsored by McGraw-Hill Education. Northwest Harvest is Washington state’s largest hunger relief non-profit.
Client: Northwest Food Drive
Over the years I’ve created promotional items for Back To School Drives, including posters and stickers. I’ve used the same orange monster across all of the projects to bring a bit of humor and internal branding to the projects.
Copyright McGraw-Hill
Board game company, Thing 12 Games, hired me to designed the characters for a potential card game. Although the main art for this project is complete, some of rules and design around the gameplay, as well as the final card design still need further iterations and testing. I am hopeful this product will be released to the public. It was a challenging and immersive project to undertake.
Taking the initial gameplay pitch, I created a “story” for myself around these characters: why they wear the uniforms they do, the various locations and mech that they interact with, even names for each of the creatures. Although none of these narrative elements will make it into the final product, these bits of background help me to “world build” and create characters with appeal.
Presented here are some early concept pieces as well as the final illustrations with prototype card UI.
Client: Thing 12 Games
Today’s Future Tomorrow is the debut album from my latest music project, Plastik Pop Cinema. The album moves from free jazz improvisation, to No Wave noise blasts, and deranged 80’s synth pop. Heavily influenced by German experimental music, via bands like Neu! and Harmonia as well as Ennio Morricone’s ground breaking collective Gruppo di Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza, Plastik Pop Cinema creates a schizophrenic musical experience.
Also included here are a few promotional pieces I created for the album.
Track Listing:
Future-Proof Thrill Zones.
Amorphous Interlude
Condor Juice
Vertical Horizons
Anti-Matter Supernauts
Loosen Up, Automaton!
Encounter with the Orb
Dave in Reverse
Metaphysical Musik Corporation
Motorik Maude
Listen to Today’s Future Tomorrow
Personal work
Redi was an online platform that provided study guides, flashcards, or adaptive practice. These are unused initial concepts for spot illustrations that would provide causal engagement throughout the experience.
Copyright McGraw-Hill
A book cover design for Herman Melville’s classic story of obsession, Moby Dick. This was one of the rare occasions where the initial idea that popped into my head actually made it into the final illustration.
Giclée print.
Personal work
In the grand tradition of Dogs Playing Poker, Monsters Playing Pool, gives we humans a window into the lives of monsters on the weekend.
Personal work
A short, illustrated story for Reading Wonders China, a program that teaches English to native speakers in China.
Copyright McGraw-Hill
Another short, illustrated story for Reading Wonders China, a program that teaches English to native speakers in China.
Copyright McGraw-Hill
Three illustrations done as a gift set for show dog siblings.
Client: Gift
My musical side project, Jacques in Analogue, released its first full-length album on September 1, 2020. I viewed this as an opportunity to not only create the music for the album, but to tackle the album art, promo film and other press release materials. This was an interesting and fruitful experiment; a multi-media approach to a single idea.
The album art, and indeed the name of the album itself, was inspired by Keith Emerson’s giant moog modular system. The three characters depicted on the front and back covers are inspired by the name’s of the tracks themselves. Check out a promo film for the album.
Download promotional poster for the album.
Personal work
A series of illustrations created for Dada ABC an online education program that teaches fundamentals of the English language to students in China.
Client: Dada ABC
This series of 5x7 cards depicts amazing super hero friendships in the world of DC and Marvel comics. These are dynamic duos that have indeed stood the test of time. Included in the series are such powerful pairs as Power Man and Iron Fist and Green Lantern and Green Arrow.
This series made its debut at the 2017 Emerald City Comic Con.
Series of 5x7 giclée prints.
Personal work
Commissioned as part of the coffee table book, Cereal Killers Vol. 2, Gothic Nuggets is my ode to gothic novels and cinema. The character on the front of the box was inspired by British actress, Barbara Steele, who starred in many Italian horror films.
Below are various thumbnails, digital comps, color comps and a box mock-up that illuminate the process of creating this fake cereal box cover.
8 x 10.5
* 42 Pages
* UV Coated Glossy Covers printed on 80# * Cardstock
* Full color Interiors printed on high bright 60# Paper
Available at: Cereal Killers Vol. 2
Client: Cereal Killers Vol. 2
Creating these one panel comics is often way for me to think through story ideas in a very quick, compact way. Sometimes I simply poke fun at my favorite existing brand characters, like Batman and Spiderman.
Personal work
Sometimes dogs do the strangest things. Of course, so do humans. So here’s to our canine friends! A series of short animations that detail our lives with those crazy mutts.
Personal work
Who doesn’t love spicy pepitas, and who doesn’t love Patty Hogg, the pant-suit wearing neighbor on Amy Sedaris’ surreally hilarious At Home with Amy Sedaris. Patty is ready made for some screwball cartoon comedy!
Personal work
Over the years I’ve created various editorial illustrations that accompany internal onboarding resources. I work with instructional design teams to identify the learning content needed and move through a design process that includes brainstorming, sketching, and iteration on ideas, which leads to final illustrations.
Copyright McGraw-Hill
These fun and lively icons were created for an image-based login system used by Kindergarten through fifth grade students. Once logged onto the system, kids would be assigned one of these cute creatures for their profile.
Included below are initial designs for the icons.
Copyright McGraw-Hill
Graphic organizers for teachers don’t have to be boring! These eye-catching organizers cover Cause and Effect, Concept Web, and Venn Diagram.
Copyright McGraw-Hill
This was a test animation for a project that unfortunately never got off the ground. This test straddled an array of apps including Animate (formally Flash) Premiere Pro, After Effects and Garageband. A mix of 2D animation and 3D particle effects, I created all the animation and backgrounds as well as the music.
Copyright McGraw-Hill
Infinite Robots was a web-based game created for ELLevate, an international English Language Learning program for grades 7-12. Infinite Robots aids students in learning sentence construction through fun, arcade style action!
Working with instructional designers as well as academic designers from the ELLevate team, the proposal was to create a game that would engage students and teach them sentence construction. The timeline was only a few months, so we needed to work fast. The team and I brainstormed ideas, game mechanics and how the students would interact the provided content.
As the team defined the game mechanics, I began concepting ideas, sending storyboards and character studies to the AD team for approvals. When the final game mechanic and the look and feel of the game was approved, I set about the task of creating all of the in game assets. These included: character models animation, backgrounds, the UI and menu system. I worked closely with the two programmers on the game to deliver assets and make sure all of the elements of the game were working within the defined game mechanic as well as the ELLevate content.
The end result was a lively, engaging way for students to interact with specific learning content.
Below are concepts as well as final art and animation created for Infinite Robots.
Copyright McGraw-Hill
Ultimate Face-Off takes ELL education to the next level with a classroom game that is exciting to play. We took a page from arcade fighting games of the 80s, creating characters and an overall aesthetic that looks as if it could have existed on a Saturday morning in 1985.
I tackled the character design as well as the UI and menu system.
Copyright McGraw-Hill
This unique version of the comic book story, “The Flash of Two Worlds” will have you turning the image endlessly, trying to figure out which end is the right way up (don’t do this with your laptop!).
Sold as a one of a kind giclée print through an auction for Children’s Hospital of Seattle in conjunction with the Emerald City Comic Con.
8x12 giclée print on archival paper.
Donation for auction
Brian Vogan and His Good Buddies are back with their latest album, Lucky 7. Chock-full of musical ear wigs like, “Wooly Mammoth” and “Pick It Up”, Brian Vogan creates tunes even the most music-savvy parent will dig.
6 Panel Digipack. Album art work and design.
Client: Brian Vogan
Whether I’m developing pitches, or creating characters, or even fleshing out storylines, the concept phase of a project is an exciting time in the evolution of a particular idea. These concepts are all visual development for a variety of projects and platforms.
This July marks the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11’s historic landing on the moon. This giclée print on archival paper was created with that amazing journey in mind. The optimism of that era of space flight and humanity’s endless curiosity is encapsulated in the imagination of the child watching that historic flight.
11x5 giclée print on German etching paper.
Personal work
How many times have Batman and Superman been in some over-rought misunderstanding with each other? Too many times to count. This illustration was the answer to the latest cinematic version of their on going feud: a ping pong match in the basement!
4x6 giclée print.
Personal work
A gig poster that never was. Several years ago I worked with promoters at the Showbox in Seattle, WA to create a poster design for the punk band, L7 who were touring at the time. Iterating on various ideas, many of which are not even included here, I developed various poster ideas based upon pulp comics, super heroes and old punk zines. We came close to a final design, but ultimately—and unfortunately—the entire project fell through. The version shown here was my favorite of the various iterations I worked through. I’ve included the original sketch as well as color comps. I created a final 3D variant as well as a non-3D poster, with slightly different colors.
Client: Showbox Seattle
The most fun you'll ever have learning about the rock cycle! Developed as part of a pitch, this animated short tells the exciting story of how a rock is formed.
I scripted, animated and edited the short (even providing some of the voices). The video has been viewed thousands of times on Vimeo. I’ve received positive feedback from teachers, highlighting how they use the short in their classrooms when discussing the rock cycle.
Personal work
Brian Vogan makes kids music cool again. BVGB is bursting with genre-bending tunes and clever, knowing lyrics. There are songs about big bad dump trucks and proper ways of recycling. There’s even a wonderful cover of “You Are My Sunshine” that will warm the heart of even the most jaded music fan. Working closely with the band, I created a vintage album feel to the CD packaging, inspired by 60s jazz records. The disk even looks like a 45 record!
Brian Vogan and His Good Buddies: BVGB
6 Panel Digipack. Album art work and design.
Available on ITunes and CDBaby now!
Client: Brian Vogan
Egads! It’s everybody’s favorite unbeatable superhero, Squirrel Girl making a stop in Jellystone park. In this bizarre mash up of two comic cannons anything can happen!
11x5 giclée print.
Personal work
Multi-talented musician, Olivia Jean creates hypnotic garage rock. This illustration is a visual rendition of the song, “Haunt Me” from her debut album, Bathtub Love Killings.
8x10 giclée print.
Personal work
This illustration was Created for Planet Pulp’s Stabs Gags and Drags Show. Partly inspired by the opening of the Incredible Hulk live action series (where the screen splits between an image of Bruce Banner and the Hulk), this illustration lays bare the parallel lives of our favorite odd couple!
Personal work
A series of phonics games created for the reading program, Open Court Reading. These games span Kindergarten through 3rd grade, and offer a range of fun phonics content through old-school arcade games. I was the art director on this series of games, and provided production art as well, including: character design, model sheets, animation, UI and backgrounds.
Copyright McGraw-Hill
Nothing is cooler than an Italian Ghost Rider, complete with a cup of cappuccino, Vespa and, of course, a cigarette.
Personal work
Who doesn’t like a whimsical bit of visual and writerly confection in card form? These are greeting cards I’ve done for various holidays and special occasions.
Personal work
Part of the RED show at Hero Complex Gallery in L.A., The Devil’s Lost Weekend is a peak into the King of Crimson and his wild weekends in Las Vegas.
8x14 giclée print.
Now that video games from the 90s are considered “retro”, there is renewed interest in the games from Humongous Entertainment. Many games from the catalog are now available for mobile devices as well as the Nintendo Switch. My production credits on many of these games included: storyboarding, character design and animation.
You can get your retro game fix at the Humongous Entertainment website.
Copyright Humongous Games