2012-2017 Art Director, Skylanders Franchise

There are hundreds of Skylander characters, and any partner or vendor is likely to quickly become overwhelmed with the details and style benchmarks that are necessary to maintain visual cohesiveness across the brand.

My role with both our Marketing and Licensing departments was to establish those benchmarks, and to guide each image or product to a successful representation for multi-billion dollar brand.

For Marketing, packaging and promotional materials, I would work with our internal team and external agencies to create the ideal pose for each character, or theme for each background, that met the overall goals for the line. From the sketch phase to four color finals, if something was off -anatomy, perspective, color, parity, lighting etc. I would provide immediate correction, never missing a deadline. In addition directing hundreds of packaging illustrations, I led the production of our promotional materials for the Netflix series, Skylanders Academy.

Licensing projects entailed much of the same working process, but with a much more varied and global range of product, from our comic book line to phone cases, stuffed animals, and very region-specific items with firms such as Mega Bloks, IDW Comics, Penguin Books and Power A. I used paint-overs to communicate most of my feedback which helped the vendors make accurate corrections, greatly reduce iteration, and we were able to create some fantastic products. 

This was a particularly fun part of my position at Activision, and was lucky enough to work on some amazing projects, including all the Skylanders McDonald's Happy Meal toys, Live action PR costumes, and our Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade balloon.