The Rings of Power.
Not sure if you heard, but Amazon spent a billion dollars on a Lord of the Rings TV show, and some of that billion went to a marketing budget. And some of that marketing budget went to me, when I designed art for The Rings of Power promotional shipper boxes. Imagine: the biggest company on earth asks you to design art for the biggest TV show on earth. How much time would you have asked for? Two weeks? A month? Anyway, I did this all in four days.
For Amazon Prime Video
Illustration.
The Rings of Power was in development for years before I hopped in to make this contribution. To get up to speed, I had a short series of chats with the show’s creative directors to get a feeling for their shared vision. According to the CDs, a large emphasis of design direction was placed on graphic motifs and material texture. They requested my first jab should be to develop a series of illustrations based on the patterns, colors, and textures of each of the five races from Middle Earth.
Numenorians: A sea-faring, sun-worshipping people that live on the coast.
Galadriel: A high elf, with sleek, contoured armor.
Dwarves: Solid and unwavering, yet mystical in their own way.
Brundorians: Humans who live in the forest in log cabins. A bit of European influence.
Hobbits: First attempt using some iconography borrows from show props.
Hobbits: Second attempt using material textures and leafy moods. Think cottagecore.
Hobbits: Third attempt. Hobbits like plants. Why not?
Realism.
Now, personally I think the illustrative options were a slam dunk, but perhaps I’m biased. Despite very warm reception from the creative directors, someone much higher up the chain at Prime Video wanted to see some boxes with a more realistic art style. While I am pretty good at Photoshop, I’m no master finisher, so I worked with a few incredible finishing artists to design and direct the creation of the art for these realism designs.
Hobbits again. An agrarian bunch.
Galadriel's armor from the show, but more literally interpreted this time.
Literally a box I saw in the enormous props manual. Pretty sure I saw a few of these finished boxes on doorsteps in my neighborhood once the show premiered...
Honestly, not sure what's going on here. I saw a page in the concept art manual that looked like this and got carried away. Fun though.