Long Live the King

Being creatively inspired and motivated each day is one of the greatest things about working in the same environment with other artists . I'm lucky enough to work with people who love collaborating and energizing the rest of the group by initiating fun personal projects that are a nice break from our daily duties.

Eric Hutchison, a fellow artist at Disney came up with a cool idea to create our own stylized piece based on one of Disney's famous villains. These interpretive pieces would eventually go into a hallway gallery on campus which showcased each artists' take on a familiar foe. I chose Scar from The Lion King.

Since I LOVE combining imagery and typography, you can probably guess what I chose to do. That's right, another movie poster (yawn!). My take on The Lion King is from Scar's standpoint, as the one who will do anything to be king. Therefore the tone is a lot darker as Scar's presence looms over the kingdom.

A project like this, which really has no limitations and reflects our own personal style is always exciting. Seeing where the other artists took their chosen villain was really inspirational. Although we all work in the same office on a lot of the same projects, we definitely keep our own individual aesthetic and personalities going. Hopefully we get to do more of these in the future.

Happy Holidays Everybody!!

Every December for the last 10 years or so, I've created a holiday card for everyone at the office. What started out as a silly joke, featuring a gingerbread man eating parts of other ones, has gotten progressively worse over time. The reaction I get from coworkers is usually an 'Oh no..' as I hand it to them, an uncomfortable look at the card, then a 'What's wrong with you???' reply. Some may say that I've been this twisted all along, but I'd like to believe that they've gotten worse as I've gotten older and my dementia kicks in.

I find creating the cards to be my favorite project all year. I enjoy the challenge of squeezing even more sickness outta this brain and it's one of the only things I get to do that doesn't involve clients, art directors, buyers, and movie studios...wait, I enjoy those challenges too. Okay, I'll admit, I think I love working on these things so much because of that precious moment when I show my grandma the card, she takes a look and realizes that her grandson is an idiot, then she smiles uncomfortably and hands it back to me. I'll say "But grandma, I made it for you!", then she'll just pat me on the head and roll away. I live for those moments!

Have a happy holidays everybody!