Freelance Creative Director

Hello, I’m Ryan. I am a Creative Director based in Los Angeles with a focus on Experience Design and Transmedia Storytelling.


Creative Direction
I have spend more than 15 years jumping in and out of various design disciplines, often times wearing multiple hats simultaneously. Throughout my creative journey, I have learned to build on the foundations of tested design principals: original thoughts, executions, and practices. I have also learned that work is often better executed with teams of specialists who can communicates well and are willing to work hard to push the limits of creativity within the scope of budget. Original ideas don’t come easy; often they tried by fire. In my own experience, I have learned that fire can shape things rather than burn them.
Art Direction
When I am free to step aside from budgets, client meetings, group direction, and fighting fires, I enjoy Art Direction. I have led projects from inception to completion though every stage of pre-production, production, and post. I know how the pieces intimately weave together. I understand trends, historical patterns, philosophies, symbolism, metaphor and a host of other philosophical and technical ideas that can be used to shape ideas, communicate best practices, draw out meaning, and synthesize memorable and meaningful stories, visuals, and experiences.
Motion Design
I am passionate about motion design and its ability to capture attention, tell stories, and spark interest. I was first introduced to motion design 10 years ago while working on small commercial projects and simultaneously finishing 72 visual effects shots for a feature film. I was baptized by Houdini, ordained by Cinema 4D and received my calling from Nuke and After Effects. I constantly strive to perfect this holy art and often times I use unorthodox approaches and personal techniques I have cultivated over countless hours of meditation and visualization. I pay close attention to weight, timing, intent, camera movement, lighting, rendering, and compositing to achieve not only the right look but the right feeling.
Visual Effects
I have had the opportunity to not only create the visual effects for several feature films, short films, social videos, branded network identities and title sequences, but also to supervise on set, manage entire post-production teams and work as a visual effects producer to ensure that not only would our efforts create believable visual experiences but they would also contribute to the profitability of the studio.
Graphic Design
I started designing when I was 9. My mom bought me my first pair of Jordans and the first thing I did was draw them. So in a sense Nike was my first project. Since that time I have practiced daily learning to craft original typefaces, learning the fundamentals of grid based design, wabi sabi, bauhaus, post-modernism, and countless more aspects of design thinking. I am an expert in UI/UX, calligraphy, digital matte painting, layout and printing techniques, and I successfully taught on a variety of design related subjects and applications at the University of Hawaii for four years.
Web Design
“Fix this website or you’re fired”. That sentence catapulted me into the world of web and application development and since then I have won upwards of 50 awards for my designs and programmed interactions across various mobile and web based experiences. I had no idea what HTML was (other than what small changes I would make to my myspace page back in the day) when I first heard that yelled at me. The site I had to fix was a PHP forum. It was weeks of reverse engineering, but… mission success! That was 13 years ago. Seeing my designs become interactive changed my world and since then I have become proficient in HTML5, PHP, Angular, Ionic, Mustache, Jquery, Vanilla JS, NODE and some exotic libraries found on the outskirts of Github. Lately I have been learning Python and I have developed my first digital product built with AI on TensorFlow 2.

Where you can find my work.

Whatever your needs, I’m looking forward to hearing from you