Dancing Robot!

Made this little guy as a 20 frame animated gif loader that sits in front of each Nickelodeon mobile game. He was styled to fit in amongst the quirky character design work done for our most recent brand guide.

Design: Bridal Shower Invites

My friend Sara, like all brides-to-be, is about to get some showering, and, as designer-in-residence in the bridal party, I cooked up some invites for the occasion. If I had more time, I'd definitely change a few things about the execution, but I was pretty pleased with how the concept came together:

• The colors are the colors of the wedding flowers, feel to me like a spring afternoon event, and were carefully chosen so these could be printed on a personal inkjet printer.

• Sara is a master of hand-drawn type, so I had to get some of that going on.

• The white space on the inside makes a heart. 

• The white lace-like detailing around the edges was inspired by Mehndi henna designs typically worn by Pakistani brides {Sara's fiance is from Pakistan.}

• The watercolor texture is almost entirely self-indulgent, although in the end I did like how it lent itself to supporting the above goals. 

Design Work: Sanjay and Craig on Nick.com

It's been a while since I've frolicked in showpage-land; it was good to get back in the saddle with a show about a kid and his talking snake.

Design Work: Sax Savvy

This site was a series of games I designed {and programmed!} to teach kids the basics of music for saxophone. I also recorded all of the sound effects myself, so it's full of pretty adorable saxophone noises. After an intro animation that followed the red string of music down into the bell of a saxophone, the user found themselves in this happy little world in there that was, of course, wind powered. Each little house {constructed with sax parts} was a button, and had a super cute little animated rollover so you knew what part of the world each led to. There were three wind-related scenes accessible from the village: sailboats, kites, and hot air balloons.

The first was a drag and drop labeling game. Each sailboat you were given had the name of part of the saxophone on it {keys, bow, reed, etc} and you had to drag the boat to the appropriate destination on the map of the sax.

This one took the wind theme to the sky for a matching game. When you clicked a kite, it flipped over to reveal either a note on the clef, or a letter name of one of those notes, the goal being to match the two that referred to the same note. Another level of learning was added with the sound effects; each kite when clicked played the tone of the note it displayed. The clouds in the background also moved lazily across the screen as you played.

The most dynamic of the games was this last one, a shooter. It had three levels, and the objective of each was different—level 1: hit balloons that have sound marks, level 2: volume marks, and level 3: rest marks. The bow, that moves back and forth based on keyboard input, is a tenor clef, and the user hits the spacebar to shoot little quarter rest spears to pop the balloons.

Design Work: Assorted Show Sites for NIckelodeon

One of my many roles at Nickelodeon has been a visual designer. The typical task in that mode is to take the technical framework that already exists and re-paint the face of it to make it representative of a particular Nickelodeon show. Between Nick proper, Teennick, Nicktoons, and Nick at Nite, I've done tons and tons of these. Here are a very few select highlights:

Design Work: Character Image Styling

Every show site on Nickelodeon has an "About the Characters" page.  One of my favorite creative exercises is to figure out how to treat the images that live there. That particular page is templated, so all of these have to be the same image size and shape, and always sit on a white background, next to a block of text that describes the character. The interestingness comes from discovering, over and over, new ways to execute the same task.

To get an idea of what this process actually is, take a look at the before and after below. To start, I'm given an image {or series of images to pick from} of each character. Ideally they come isolated on white, but if they don't the first step is doing that. Then I can create an environment around them that's fun, reflects something about them or the show, and looks good with the rest of the show site. 

This first set was from a show about a jungle boy who had powers to summon magical spirit-like creatures:

Two more from that same show:

Fanboy & Chum Chum trading cards:

Creepy TV movie, The Boy Who Cried Werewolf:

That 70's Show:

Fred:

The Naked Brothers Band:

Bucket & Skinner's Epic Adventures:

The Mighty B—girl scout badges for a show about girl scouts:

"Good Guy" and "Bad Guy" image treatments for Iron Man Armored Adventures:

How to Rock:

Back at the Barnyard:

TeenNick Rocks Out:

The FairlyOdd Parents:

House of Anubis:

El Tigre!

Design Work: iParty with Victorious

One of Nickelodeon's highest priority events last year was the TV movie iParty with Victorious, a crossover event that merged the casts of two of its most popular live-action shows, iParty and Victorious. I was pleased to get to design the site and all of the site promotion. We also streamed content live from premiere, and I got to be on hand to manage the presentation of that event. 

Here's the show site:

 

Promotion on the nick.com homepage; skin, house ads, and a-level treatments:

Another a-level that appeared on the homepage:

I designed a fun takeover for the homage the day of show: the content dimmed, a disco ball dropped down, lights flashed, and we used green-screen footage of the stars so they could actually walk on to your screen and be excited to meet. Here's a screengrab:

Some art from the live promotion of the premiere {live-designed these as the kids were walking down the carpet and we got the pictures in, they went up in real-time}:

Background art for the twitter feed promoting the event:

Background I made for my boss's power-point for internal approvals:

Design Work: Kids' Choice Awards 2010

My first Kids' Choice Awards on the digital side of the business at Nickelodeon was 2010, or as the style guide put it, the year of the illusion and the magic trick. 

Some downloadable desktop wallpapers I designed:

Various ads and ad placeholders for nick.com:

Background skins for the nick.com homepage:

Promo for the livestream:

Printable locker posters!:

Printable stickers:

Skin for our embeddable video player: