I had the honor of helping to create Wendy’s Frosty Frights characters, together with Creative Directors Jon Nicolson and Nathen Orensten. Working closely with the team at toy company Strottman, I helped to concept and illustrate the characters and typography, Kids’ Meal toy packaging and trading cards, Wendy’s annual Boo! Book fundraising coupon, and accompanying print and digital collateral.
Every year Wendy’s creates a halloween themed Boo! Books coupon book, which benefits The Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption. Our theme for 2024 centered around Junior, an adopted Frosty who loves all things spooky and halloween.
For character and illustration inspiration, we looked to classic horror and monster movies/TV shows like Monster Squad, Teen Wolf, Bewitched, Sabrina, Casper and Nosferatu. We wanted to bring the hand-painted movie poster look from the 50s and 60s into our more kid-friendly, Frosty character world. We had lots of fun adding in Frosty themed elements, like the french fry dipped in Frosty broom, french fry wind mill, Frosty bats, and curved nurdle shaped houses, mountains and branches.
The illustrations used on the trading cards and toy packaging were also used for the Boo! Book coupon book and merchandising tactics- such as the donation canister toppers, grounds signs, door decals and digital menu board ordering screens.
All imagery was first sketched on paper or in photoshop, with multiple rounds of edits and color studies, then painted in Adobe Photoshop. All typography was also sketched out and workshopped, then created in vector format in Adobe Illustrator.
