DAVID J SWIFT

Working with the Nintendo Japan team, Sean Millard (Director of Character Art) and I were tasked with generating concepts and graphic ideas for CPG and marketing. Nintendo wanted to keep it simple, clean, and character-driven in the beginning. Once they felt that we hit that mark, it laid the groundwork for marketing to explore more dynamic poses and compositions.

I was asked to join the team for Project 331 (Villain Con - Minion Blast) at the beginning of the pandemic. It was a major task that kept me and the other Universal teams very busy. I had the opportunity to design the blaster for the ride, as well as the exterior and interior of the building. I created the brand look for Villain Con, including most of the accompanying signage. As the teams progressed into the queue line section of the ride, I worked closely with the EVP of Illumination Theme Parks (Claudia Melnick) and the Illumination film producer (Brett Hoffman) to capture the right look and feel for the story we wanted to tell.

Most people don’t understand how much work and thought goes into designing this world that you walk through for just a couple of minutes. Every poster, ad, sign, and prop is conceptualized multiple times. I must have designed hundreds of pieces with Easter eggs from our films for the fans to ooh and ah at. Designing the story of Villain Con was an incredible challenge but also a fun experience. With so many villains and stories to tell, I had a blast developing all this for the ride.

Working with the SVP of Illumination Theme Park Division, I was tasked with designing signage and photo opportunities for the new land being developed at Universal Studios in Hollywood, Orlando, China, and Japan. The job entailed storytelling with the Minion characters, involving interactions with typography on buildings and food kiosks.

This style guide was so much fun to work on. Myself and the Director of Character Art, Sean Millard, got to explore portraying the Minions in a different art style, and we went heavy on the ink lines. I wanted to create something a little more moody but still maintain the humor, action, and storytelling of the Minions learning Kung Fu. I really feel this came out incredibly well.

I received a creative brief from Universal asking for a girls' program, and I thought, "Let's go with a different art style," but use bold colors to really stand out from the rest of the guides done in the past. This was a total 180 compared to most guides being done at the time, and I had a ton of fun creating the art. This program was a huge hit in APAC and was used from the Tonymoly x Minions makeup collection all the way to the Universal Japan 2022 summer theme park campaign.

As a kid, I grew up watching Kung Fu Theatre on television and loved seeing the mid-credit opening. It featured limited animation with Kung Fu poster art and it just worked. This was my go-to in exploring this design direction. The '70s classic Kung Fu posters have so much energy and action, and I wanted to apply this to the Minions marketing but in a limited color way. My design direction was later picked up by the Universal marketing team for a street marketing campaign.

Working with Sean Millard (the director of character art at Illumination Entertainment), we developed a new art style for Minions style guide which was based on the animation 1930's. It was named "rubber hose" because of the fluid and elastic movement of the characters, resembling the movement of flexible rubber hoses, but we call it "squash and stretch" for the guide.

When laying out the design for the graphics I wanted to age this up and focus on the adult humor/attitude that Minion do in our films.

In the past doing marketing for the Despicable Me was mostly done with just a white background with the Minions being the 1st read, but the CCO Gail Harrison had a different vision and I was tapped to come aboard to explore and execute a hyper bright eye catching marketing campaign that showed the Mega Minions doing none heroic acts. Most of these design were used for the marketing of the movie, co-lab partnerships and retail collateral.

The question posed to me by the SVP of Marketing at Illumination Entertainment was, "How do you show Minions in history?" My answer was through classic paintings of famous artists, such as Leonardo da Vinci, Andy Warhol-inspired pop art, mind-bending Salvador Dali imagery, and more daft homages to Piet Mondrian, Vincent Van Gogh, Edvard Munch, René Magritte, Roy Lichtenstein, Jackson Pollock, and Pablo Picasso. We explored two different takes for the campaign – one was to place the Minions in the background of actual classic paintings, and the other was to have the Minions as the central focus, mimicking the styles of the classic artists. Both directions were used for the marketing and digital campaigns.

My original idea was to replace the actual famous paintings in museums with ours and start a huge buzz online. I think it would have been crazy to see people's reactions when discovering the Minions in the paintings.

The marketing team at Illumination Entertainment was working on a music video with Pharrell for the song "Yellow Light" from the Despicable Me 3 Official Soundtrack, and I was asked to come in to do a style guide... in a week. Yes, a complete style guide in ONE week. I was primarily tasked with the boys' designs, but I also created some girls' concepts. When all was said and done, I had completed about twenty designs and ten patterns.

G-Shock partners wanted to do something with the art, and I really wanted to create something special for the packaging. I know people who collect G-Shocks and pay crazy money for some of these watches, so I wanted to be in that league when doing this partnership. I was told by the Uni APAC team that the watches sold out by online pre-sale before it was even released in stores.

I started this Puma project back in September of 2016 and, together with my team, did over 100 different designs on the shoes alone. This was one of my designs that ultimately went into production with the shoe junkie/sneaker head in mind for the classic Puma Clyde and the Puma Disc Blaze models. We gave these classic shoes a makeover courtesy of the sweet and playful style of the Minions including new patterns and splashes of color that integrate the iconic goggles and bananas motif.

One of my all time favorite skateboard designs is the Jim Phillips "Neptune" deck. The board was designed for Jason Jessee (a rider for Santa Cruz) and when it first came out in had a bat on the nose of the deck and a shark on the tail. Later the bat was replaced with a moon and then again with the sand castle tower you see below. The shark on the tale was replaced with a mermaid. When brainstorming design ideas for the Simpsons/NHS Skateboards collaboration I knew this one was a must-do! I'm so happy it is one of the ones that made it to production!

As a skater kid I idolized Santa Cruz Skateboards and the arist Jim Phillips - you could say it was a lifelong dream to work with them. Earlier this year I had the opportunity to meet Jim Phillips at the NHS 40th Anniversary party and let him know to his face that he was one of the reasons I became an artist! I almost cried... I have always looked up to him. It was very crazy and surreal for me.

So back to the story of this design. It was based on the Jason Jessee “Neptune” mermaid tail. I drew out the rough for this a couple different ways, one had Blinky the fish impaled on the spear, a sea eel that looked like Burns and a pelican that looked more like Homer. We also had mermaid Marge at the bottom of the deck but had to drop it from the final design. Sean Millard finished the ink and we both did the color. I always like to give Sean a shout out for making me look good - thanks Bra'tha!

I designed this board for NHS as a spoof on the classic Salba VooDoo board and fought so hard for it to be put in production, but alas it will never come to be... Matt Groening loved it (in his exact words, "I f-ing love this!") but some other execs were not on board (pun intended).

Big thanks to Sean M. for getting a couple of sample boards screened for me!!!

The Simpsons first debuted in 1989 and for the past 22 years, fans (myself included) have been dreaming about riding the exact board that Bart rocks during the opening credits. When I was designing the style guides for Bart Sk8, I tapped into my roots in skate culture to pull inspriation. Whether it was the inconic pose of Hosoi busting his Japan Air or the classic art style of Jim Phillips, I always felt that drawing from the legendary images of skate history would give Bart true shred cred. Working with NHS was something I had dreamed of since I was a teenager and seeing the ideas that had been floating in my head finally come to life was a dream come true.

Stay tuned, you haven't seen anything yet!!!

While working at Fox, I had the incredible experience of partnering with Gracie Films and some incredible artists to design the interior and exterior of The Simpsons Ride at Universal Studios. The ride is a partial-motion, virtual reality simulation where guests sit in a carnival-themed car that shifts around to simulate movement through an animated environment projected onto an 80-foot dome. I was very proud of the outcome, as we succeeded in creating an experience that puts fans right in the middle of a Simpsons cartoon episode gone haywire.

The Simpsons Ride won the 2008 THEA AWARD FOR OUTSTANDING ACHIEVEMENT – ATTRACTION. For those not in the know, that’s the equivalent of winning an Oscar in the theme park biz.

The awards are given out by the Themed Entertainment Association, a non-profit association representing the world’s leading creators, developers, designers, and producers of compelling places and experiences.

Together with Claudia Mielnik (VP of Fox Global Creative) and Mili Smythe (Creative Lead for Gracie Films), I was part of the team responsible for the design of The Simpsons Ride expansion at Universal Studios Orlando. Sean Millard and Tanner Goldbeck did a lot of the heavy lifting on this one as well; I came in when needed and was honored when asked to help. Claudia led the team like a champ, never breaking or stopping, even when given impossible deadlines. Good job, Miss Mielnik!

WE WON THE THEA AWARD IN 2017 FOR OUTSTANDING ACHIEVEMENT - THEMED FOOD & BEVERAGE EXPERIENCE.

The awards are given out by the Themed Entertainment Association, a non-profit association representing the world’s leading creators, developers, designers, and producers of compelling places and experiences.

So Minion Monster program that I started was doing great in Asia and we got a request for additional style guide art needed for retail experience in the park. The 2D style was very limiting and flat, so what to do? I started drawing out composition and designs for the next rendision MInion Monsters. Working with Sean Millard to dial in the design language I feel tha we did a incredible job with injecting the Minions humor with the Classic Universal Monster.

Pol Espargaró, a professional MotoGP rider for Honda and Red Bull, wanted a special helmet for his 2021 season. HJC presented him with various designs, and he was particularly interested in the helmet I was designing. I was honored by this and amazed when Red Bull decided to promote the helmet in their digital marketing campaign.

The Universal team in Japan came to me with a concept for the Minion Fuji Instax camera. It was a really cool idea but needed more development on the stylization of the camera, sculpting of the camera body, and artwork for the packaging. I redesigned the whole product and packaging to make it more appealing. Most people would look at this and say it's not a big deal, but what they’re not seeing is form factor is a big deal, and not everything can be pick and play when making a product. You need to know what makes something work and not look forced. I was happy with how it finally came out and was told by the Uni Japan team that this item sold out in two days! Hearing that brought a smile to my face.

This also started a trend for FujiFilm that now has done five different Instax Mini Minion theme campaigns in APAC, all with a high sell-through.

I was one of the Simpsons artist that got to work on the Converse “Chuck Taylor All-Star” Collection that features Simpson characters. I was responsible for the family shoe design, which I think was came out pretty cool. Stay tuned for more colorways set to release later next year.

These just got released from FOX legal, so I apologize for the late entry.

When I was first told about AVATAR, the code name was "Project 880." We had to go to Light Storm Studios to work in a room called The Vault in which no phones, cameras or computers were allowed. You couldn't take ANYTHING out of The Vault, but they never said anything about bringing IN pen and paper. I had 30 minutes to take notes and draw rough sketches.

When I got back to FOX I was told to design a teaser poster, so with my skills in illustration and Photoshop, I was able to complete an initial comp in about ten minutes. The image below on the left is the comp I created and the one on the right is the finished version completed by FOX Theatrical. I was pretty proud of this achievement considering that I had no art or photo reference to pull from, just my roughs from the 30-minute tour of The Vault.

When I turned in the comp, I was called into the office of the SVP of Creative to be questioned because they thought I had taken art from The Vault. I had to show them my drawings, files and sources and then was cleared of any wrong-doing. After that, they were so impressed that I was given full access to Light Storm's image library.

The images to your left were other ideas I designed for promotions and branding. All-in-all I designed, laid-out and finished over 200 different comps.

I’ve been designing toys for Kid Robot since the mid-2000s, and I was super stoked to finally collaborate with them again. I drew this concept when I first started at Illumination but had to set it aside for later because the timing wasn’t right. One day I walked into work and was told that we had a meeting with the head of creative at Kid Robot (legend Frank Kozik) coming to meet with us. The meeting was pure energy; we discussed everything right and wrong about collector toys. We brainstormed for a couple of hours, and I showed him all the different designs I had, and to my surprise, he liked them. The only catch was that we could only do one mold for this program. So, we decided to go with the Minion skeleton. I also designed the packaging for the figure.

To my heartbreak, Frank died during the tail end of the pandemic, and we never got to hang out again. I feel blessed to have worked on one project with him, and all three figures sit in my office, facing me when I draw.

During our meeting, there was one design that I drew in front of Frank, and he kept looking back at it. I had a feeling that he wanted to pursue that design, but it didn't fit the direction of the campaign. I'm really trying to push Uni to do it. Stay tuned.

This was a crazy experience that involved me working with China for the first time along with a clothing company (StayReal) and a Taiwanese rock band (Mayday) all simultaneously. The lead singer (Ashin Shin) started StayReal back in 2007 and has done a ton of collaborations with the likes of Hello Kitty, Mickey Mouse, SpongeBob and Simpsons. Now it was my turn to step up representing Illumination and design Shin's collaboration with the Minions. I completed this entire fast fashion guide in about seven days including all the designing, recreating and making new art and patterns. StayReal was very happy with the end product.

They fight, they bite... it's Itchy and Scratchy of course! Not an obvious choice for a Simpsons collaboration, but I'm just happy they are finally using this artwork/style guide that I designed back in 2007. I did a little digging and found out that FOX's London got this going. Great work guys!

This was an interesting encounter from the beginning. I was at the Agenda Sports Marketing event walking the floor before meeting with the Santa Cruz Skateboards marketing team and I see this bike... and this bike was calling me. It had no paint, raw welded seams - it was beautiful and the name on the bars read CULT. I was in awe. Then these guys from the booth walked up to me, one wearing a bootleg/fan art Simpsons tee, and asked me what I thought of the bike. As I'm looking at him, his friend and their booth, I see more Simpsons inspired art on a poster that they are handing out and I asked, "Are you Simpsons fans?" As it turns out, the two guys are Cult Bikes owner Robbie Morales and art director Adam Roye. As the relationship grew, I worked with Adam on designs that fit best with their brand. In our first meeting he showed me his sketch book - it was raw and free flowing but something caught my eye. I asked him what his favorite Simpsons episode was and he said, "the one when Homer is tripping out." I smiled and asked, "Would you like to do some art like that for the brand?" I was happy to hear him say, "YES!"

Even though the Duff Bike went into production first, this Bart bike was the first one that we designed.

I was lead on this project and together with Sean Millard we did about 15 different layouts and illustrations for the candy bar art. Bart Simpson has been the spokescartoon for Nestlé USA Butterfinger since 1988 using his catchy slogan “Nobody better lay a finger on my Butterfinger!” and “Bite my Butterfinger!” These Bart adorned bars will only be able at select 7-Eleven stores while they last!

(Note: It's 90"ish" rather than 90"th" because even the folks at Nestle couldn't determine precisely which year that first Butterfinger bars were first sold. But all evidence points to it being on or around 1923.)

In July 2007, the convenience store chain 7-Eleven converted 11 of its stores in the United States and one in Canada into Kwik-E-Marts to celebrate the release of The Simpsons Movie. The concept was first visualized in 2006 by FOX's advertising agency and then developed by Fox Consumer Products (myself and four other Creative Directors). It was a joint effort designing all the products from the Squashy cups to all the signage. I was just stoked to spray paint the walls at a 7-Eleven.

Skinner Stinks!!!