Had a blast working on this poster for the Wallflowers Project — a bud-themed gallery show benefiting the National Alliance for Mental Illness and the Last Prisoner Project. High-res 👀

Before I decided on the final direction, I had a few dead-end concepts to noodle on; a colorful mandala mosaic made out of Runts — too boring; a vape cloud shaped like a big strawberry or something — too cheesy; Willy Wonka, but he‘s melting into a rainbow oil-slick — actually kind of cool, but I dunno how to pull it off. After the sugar rush faded, I was left scratching my head. I tried getting some inspiration from the packaging.

Garbage. This looks like the kind of generic product you see in the background of a movie, designed to blend in. I guess Charlie finally did take over the Wonka factory, and he gutted the art department. A quick Google search later I was looking at an old friend. The Runts box of my childhood. Beautiful, weird, perfect. Look at those little guys. They‘re having a blast.

From here, it was almost too easy. The characters, the shapes, the color palette, were too good to be tossed. All I needed to do was shake it all up and put it in a vertical format.

Big thanks to David Rygiol and Friends for Good for including me. If you missed the show, you can still shop or donate here.