I’ve made a number of short Post Cereals social media animations for my friends at Public Works (in collaboration with Brian Hurley, Chris Henderson, Derek Bitter and others). These are intended as ephemeral content for various brands’ social media presences to keep them current. They are generally accompanied by copy-writing to give them some context, they usually are very short, and they often loop. Besides the long series of them that I did for Pebbles cereal featuring some anthropomorphic animated cereal flakes, I have done a lot of other ones for Pebbles and a number of other Post brands. Here is a sampling of some of them.
Here are some animations showing how some interesting products work for putting medicine into or sucking the snot out of children. I animated these for my pals at Public Works in collaboration with designer Paige Gregory.
Back in 2014, my oldest daughter became obsessed with Pokemon cards. I enjoyed the creativity of the cards, but when we sat down and figured out how to play the game, I found it pretty disappointing… but inspiring! The things that I did not enjoy about that game got me thinking about how a better card-battling game could be designed… and thus SQUIRMISH was born.
After spending a year or so developing, illustrating and testing the game, I initially self-published it using the print-on-demand service The Gamecrafter. I’m more of a maker-of-things than a seller-of-things, though, so I decided I wanted to find a publisher for it. My favorite game publisher, Gamewright, had an open submission policy, so I decided to send a copy of it their way. They were enthusiastic about it, and picked it up to publish in 2018.
Here is the promotional video I made for the game:
https://youtu.be/VnJEdfev7As
As the audience for the game has grown, it has received a number of reviews. Here are a few of them:
“There is a ton of replay ability here… All of the boys, including Dad, are fans of Pokémon and Squirmish has provided a fresh and simple take on card battling games. The variety that is found within the game is really amazing.” – 8 0f 10 Stars at The Dice Have It.
“It’s really fun to play, really funny cards, and really fun to see all the different types of abilities and how you can try to utilize those during each game.” – Landon Squire at How Lou Sees It
“Squirmish is a fun, family-friendly game which surprised me a bit with the depth of play. When I read the rules, I thought that it would be too kiddy-like. While the artistic style and the humorous text on the cards makes it appropriate for kids, the actions on the cards does give the gamer something to work with! … If you’re looking for a game to introduce the concepts of individual card actions and combat, this would be a good choice. It also will be a good filler for gamers looking for a few laughs mixed in with their gaming.” – Dale Yu at opinionatedgamers.com
Although my personal idea of fashion veers towards Hawaiian shirts, I worked on a number of banner, rich media and other campaigns selling the work of the many designers that Target collaborates with. Below are a handful of examples of the many Target fashion and design-related Flash banners I built (now converted to .mp4… RIP Flash). These were all built in my time at Olson, and were made in collaboration with a number of talented designers there (such as Tate Leyba, Montana Scheff, and Kristen Hasler).
