Westminster native Tommy Perez is a self-described “maker of fun stuff,” designing and building scenes and objects completely out of paper for brands such as Target, Nick Jr., Facebook, and Marvel.
➜ “I’ve been called a paper engineer. I like to break down things I illustrate and think of how I can bring them out into the real world.”
➜ “I worked at Behr in Santa for four years. Pretty much a majority of the paint cans you see now are redesigned by me. It was pretty cool to see my designs throughout the country right out of school. From then on, I knew color was a huge part of what I was going to do.”
➜ “When I started freelancing and working from home, I started a food lettering project for me and my daughter, who was two at that time, to work on together. It was the ‘A to Zoë’ project. We used (real) bacon for B, kale for K, and udon noodles for U. One of my favorites was rice crispies for R.”
➜ “The work you want to get should be the work that you’re putting out. Everyone is focused on getting a ton of likes, and it does feel good and it feeds your ego, but ultimately, your work only needs to be seen by one person, and that person can hire you for work.”
➜ “To me, concept is king. I want to get a good concept out before I make anything. I can make something look really beautiful, but if it doesn’t have a good concept, no one’s going to really respond or resonate with it.”
➜ “I had the amazing opportunity to collaborate with Target for their in-store campaign this summer. The overall idea was to celebrate the ‘Yays of Summer’ by creating large three-dimensional icons that embodied those feelings. The pieces were sprinkled throughout the store, and it was definitely a dream project for me. Being able to translate my small paper pieces to huge environmental ones has been a goal of mine.”
See more of his work, including his stop-motion animations, below and at instagram.com/t_rez/
https://www.instagram.com/p/Bl5yb2SDKr4/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link
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