Visual Development Artist and Background Designer - Titmouse

Frog & Toad TV Series for Apple+ (Premiering April 28th, 2023). Based on the award winning books of Arnold Lobel.
Art Director: Keika Yamaguchi

Exterior of Frogs House

I had the honor joining the project early as a visual development artist and tasked with creating concepts of exterior buildings and landscapes.

Here for the exterior of Frogs House and surrounding yard we needed to make sure there were paths for characters to take and incorporate items such as fences, tables, garden that were called out for episodes. Early sketches were quick and more loose. Later when I switched from concept to the final background design, digital pen outlines were used to mimic Arnold Lobels art style and used shading to give a sense of depth to the enviornment.

Early concept sketch for Frogs house. We wanted the house to feel like it was nestled in a lush landscape and used flowers to help establish scale of the chacters.

Several episodes called out for views and actions taking place in Frogs garden. We wanted to include an arched gate and fence that was referenced in Arnold Lobels original artwork, and then expand the scene to include garden boxes and depth for planted flowers and vegetables.

Exterior of Toads House

For the exterior of Toads House we wanted to reference several aspects from Arnold Lobels books such as porch, window type, and rough house layout.
For the yard - daisies, bell flowers, ferns, and other plants to help establish scale of the world.

Environmental Design of Frog & Toad

Early visual development sketches for paths connecting the world of frog. Bicycles, jumping stones, logs and dirt paths were explored at this stage and gave an idea of space for storyborders to use.

Final Background Design - Long pan of generic path, I designed it to be able to turn off certain flowers and trees to be able to reuse it for different episodes.

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse 2023

Titmouse - BG Painter April 2023
I had the pleasure of joining a small team of background painters at Titmouse who painted the clothing and hair of this scene in the recent Spider-Verse film. Tasks were to match existing background lighting and mood that changes every 2 frames. For the viewer it is a very quick timelapse scene, but a delight to paint as the camera trucks out and shares more of Gwens world and family.

Painted Hair

I painted different versions of Gwens hair (from provided roughs) for the family scene. Our team would then take these options and choose one for each outfit. File layering ordered provide simple highlights/shadow adjustments for our team to alter to suit the color and lighting in the scene.

I worked on line cleanup pass as well as color, texture used in Miguels story frames. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse 2023.

Personal Work - Vis Dev and Background Design

One of my favorite themes to return to again and again is fruit shaped houses. Here are interior and exterior concepts for a Berry Pie Shoppe personal project.
Original mouse character design and location exploration. Balance of whimsical feature in architecture, but also keeping function and scale in mind.

Background design in the same world as the fruit shaped houses, but exploring paths connecting areas of the country. Attention to scale as well as layering of foreground, middleground, background for interest and depth. Ongoing personal project 2022 - present.