Shortly after I binged watched the first season of Stranger Things, I found myself working for myself, freelancing full-time. I decided to have some fun and create a fun series of illustrations inspired by my new favorite show.
This project was a lot of fun for me to not only create but also to share with everyone. It has led to countless partnerships and collaborations and I'm excited to add more to this series in the future.
Slaptastick
In 2017, I was really happy to have my Stranger Things illustration turned into stickers for Slaptastick's November Sticker Pack.
Able Lending has been one of my favorite clients I've partnered with. We began working together shortly after my jump to working full-time for myself and we've been able to really expand and grow the Able brand, specifically in the area of their illustrative stories. Since we started working together in November of 2016, we've completely revitalized the Able Lending illustration style, revamping every illustration that currently lives on their website today.
In the Fall of 2016, InVisionApp came to me with a fun and noteworthy project that they had been cooking up. This was the first project that we worked together on and talk about a great start to a partnership.
The idea behind everything was pretty simple. They wanted to create a series of illustrations that designers (their audience) would instantly recognize, but in costume form for Halloween.
After watching "Kong: Skull Island" in theaters I was so inspired that I literally woke up in the middle of the night and drew a sketch in pitch black darkness. Later I would go on and share the process of this illustration on my Youtube channel.
After my original night time sketch, I went into photoshop and began working on a more detailed and refined sketch. I wanted Kong to be the main focus point but also a person who is standing there staring at him in disbelief.
In the end, I decided to create 3 separate colored versions of the overall composition. In my WeWork office I have the purple colored print and in my home studio I have the green one. Its truly hard for me to decide which is my favorite.
Watch the speed drawing videos here:
Back in the summer of 2017, I had the pleasure to work with the amazing folks at Mossio on both branding and illustration work pertaining to their first in-house product "Moodily" an awesome web app that allows designers to create efficient mood boards to share with their clients.
The folks at Mossio came to me to help them create a mascot for their new product, a fun charismatic Yeti they call "Kevin".
Originally when we started this project we started down one path but after tinkering around Mossio came back with a new vision and asked for my help cleaning it up and making it better then what they could mock up. In the end, the project was a success and Kevin turned out amazing.
Portfolium is a social networking platform company that allows college students and recent graduates to connect with businesses and present their previous academic work, projects and more to supplement a traditional resume.
In the fall of 2016, Portfolium came to me looking for help in crafting their brand's story through illustrative means. Since then, we've worked together to evolve their visual style to a more colorful and playful space direction.
After working with InVision in 2016 to create the first installment of their Halloween blog post, they came back again looking to create a second version of the blog post for 2017. This time we changed up the topic, instead of just focusing on designers, we instead focused on a broader target audience, people in the tech industry.
I had the pleasure of working with Marlowe Stone, of 336 Productions on a personal project of hers. She found a common problem that she had as well some of her friends with children. They wanted to create a system of organizing the children's toys in a more well designed way, better than what was currently available.
In doing so we created this system of organzational stickers to help aid in this problem.
During the summer of 2017, Mossio came to me looking for some help with a few illustrations for a new product they were working on called Moodily. A new platform for creatives to create moodboards to share with their clients.
This single partnership has led to a continuing one both with their product Moodily and their clients as well.
In the Summer of 2017, David Silva came to me looking for my help with to create the branding for AppRabbit, a new side project of his geared towards teaching people more about App Design.
I wanted to try something different with these illustrations, a new style that has become popular, I like to refer to it as a "flowing" style due to the liquid effect of the character's hair. It was a lot of fun working in this style and its something that I want to try more of in the future.
Facebook is probably one of my favorite clients to work with, especially when it comes to creating illustrated storyboards for animation. This project was my first time collaborating with the fine folks at JAM3 and my third time with The Furrow.
Our goal was to develop and tell the story of some cool key features with Facebook's Newsfeed. In particular we were looking at settings that would block specific posts like those more political ones that drive you crazy when they keep popping up in your timeline. The folks at JAM3 worked hard directly with Facebook to develop the overall story behind what Facebook wanted to convey to its audience. It was mine and The Furrow's job to create the illustrations and animations that would help convey Facebook's story.
CREDITS
Created for Facebook
Produced by Jam3
Directed by The Furrow
Animations by Seth Eckert
Illustrations by Rocky Roark
The awesome Megan Fox (of Notch Interactive, not the actress) came to me in 2015 with a fun little illustration project for one of Notch’s clients. The project was to create a fun little character and a couple of supporting illustrations for a new photo app they were working with.
The first thing I did was start with the trusty ol’ sketchbook and pencil to create a few rough sketches. I then shared them with Notch and their client and we were able to narrow in on a specific character pretty quick.
The next step in the process was bringing the sketches to life. Once the base of the character was created, I spent time exploring the facial expressions and style of the little polaroid character. This little exercise helped me narrow in more on a style beyond just this project but future ones that I would work on with similar character traits(especially in my doodling).
I went back and rethought the color scheme a little and add a little more life to the illustrations removing the gray colors completely. I even went so far as to give the character a little bit more pep in his step, so to speak. When it came to the actual photos in the illustrationsI added simplified portraits to them to add a little extra to the mix.
Breakout Box is a fun idea that I had early on in 2017. The bases for the project is to help creatives both in school and out of school build a solid skillset and portfolio that breaks out of the standard box of a traditional education.
The idea came to me as I had a few friends from college reach out to me for help in building a solid portfolio to land a better job. A lot of my old college classmates to this day haven't gotten their dream jobs or even any type of job in design because they stayed within the confines of the "box" that the professors built for us.
Below you'll see the brand guidelines that I created for "Breakout Box" at this time the project is on hold but I hope to get it up and running in 2018.
I've been on dribbble since 2013 and have been posting a lot over the years. These are just some of my many dribbble shots that I've posted.
If you'd like to see more, definitely check it out here.
In the Summer of 2017, David Silva came to me looking for my help with to create the branding for AppRabbit, a new side project of his geared towards teaching people more about App Design.
We wanted to craft the visual brand to be both simple and have a little bit of playfulness to it. David had a great idea of trying to infuse a little bit of Disney magic into the brand in the form of Thumper from the movie "Bambi".
When I started working on the sketches, I tried to infuse that idea of "Thumper" into or at least his playful nature. The one element we knew we definitely wanted to infuse was the "floppy" ear.
Once we knew we were on the right track, I moved everything into Adobe Illustrator to vectorize and iterate on the ideas. The biggest thing that I've learned is that, the first ideas are never the final ideas.
Once we had the main mark nailed down, we began playing along with the color. David had actually already created the color palette for AppRabbit while he was creating the brand's website. We ended up both agreeing that the third option [Below] was the best fit for the brand.
