HC & Halloween.com Emails
When I left Mankato to move back to Iowa, FUN let me help with Halloween.com and Halloweencostumes.com emails. I was the main lead on Halloween emails and focused more on spooky vibes with these emails. HC emails are more for the general family. I experimented with a wide of email styles, still designs, and gifs.
Costume Design Process
This is the sublimation process for a complicated A-Train costume I made. The process starts with a concept sketch given to us and the blank samples and template are made. I am then given assets and reference images to try and follow as closely as possible. This project was unique and has molded glasses and I had to provide the shapes and basis of the glasses.
I started the costume by laying out the base shapes, colors, and placement of elements. Then I add details like the patterns and more detailed shapes. The project then goes to Photoshop where I add textures, highlights, shadows, and other elements to make it more realistic. That artwork then has to get approved by our team and licensor and eventually sent off to the factories in China. We receive the samples and typically there are multiple rounds of edits to the design based on team meeting or samples. But once the final samples are approved and everything looks good, my job is done most of the time!
The Boys Costume Series
The Boys was one of my last major projects while I was in person at Fun.com. Most of the costumes were very detailed and this was my most challenging series of costumes overall. I was proud of how much I'd learned and how far I'd come in a couple of years.
Disney Costume Designs
I covered most of the Winnie the Pooh and Lion King costume designs at the time. A lot of my designs were simply faces or small details. However some were more detailed like Bing Bong, the Oogies, Stinky Pete, and Wreck-It Ralph.
Other Licensed Costumes
I worked with a lot of different licenses and Fun keeps expanding its reach. Some of my more detailed costumes were the Barbie Skater, Beholder, and D&D Dragon wing updates. I also handled some pretty rare projects including Hogan Boots, Mimic Shoes, the Bag of Holding, and Top Gun helmet.
Sublimated Costumes
Sublimated designs are typically more detailed and done in Photoshop. They are printed on a white material and a lot of these designs use templates.
Vector Based Costumes
You can do a lot with vector designs made in Illustrator. Projects varied from simple embroidered faces, screen printed skeletons, and fully sublimated spaceships. Vector designs were probably my favorite and most natural.