Craft Crumbs
Client
Craft Crumbs (personal)
Type
Branding, illustration, animation
Tools
Photoshop, Chat GPT, Gemini, Procreate, After Effects
Website
At the risk of sounding like a grumpy old sod, I honestly don't get why scrolling through social media only ever turns up millionaire gurus or doom-mongers swearing blind that machines are going to steal our jobs. My experience as a designer has been rather different: I've had fantastic clients, awful clients, sometimes my projects have totally flopped, but the truth is I've never stopped having fun. And since plenty of colleagues, friends, and fellow creatives share that exact same reality, I created Craft Crumbs to offer a different, more ironic perspective on our trade.
A spicy slice of pizza.
Craft Crumbs has two main characters: Crumb, who's basically me, and Pizza, who is… well, a slice of pizza. These two represent my dual creative personalities. Crumb is the insecure designer, the one who overthinks things a hundred times and takes everything to heart. Pizza, on the other hand, is the laid-back designer, the one who tackles work with nonchalance and tries to keep team morale high. The pair bicker, debate, and wind each other up, exactly like real office life. But they do it light-heartedly, without taking themselves too seriously.
This light, almost childlike tone (albeit seasoned with some colourful language) isn't accidental. The videos cater to two distinct audiences: on one hand, students and junior designers who are full of ideas but riddled with insecurities. The puppets introduce them to agency life cheerfully, without judgment or pressure. On the other hand, you have the "seasoned" designers: portraying the absolute absurdity of our jobs in a jokey tone helps put stress into perspective and lightens the daily grind.
Two is better than one.
This project started out as a series of comic strips, but I felt their true home belonged in the real world, brought to life by puppets. I was dreaming of a more immediate language capable of spinning absurd, memorable stories beyond the confines of a panel.
To translate this vision into felt and yarn, I teamed up with a knitting wizard. Collaborating with the artist who crafted the puppets was fundamental in turning my raw ideas into physical characters brilliantly faithful to the original sketches.
And that spirit of collaboration continues throughout the video-making process: I define the vision, but production is a team sport—both real and virtual:
The human side: Simona, my partner, is my go-to sounding board for developing concepts and scripts—the compass that helps me calibrate every story.
The tech side: I use ChatGPT and Gemini to polish scripts and songs, ElevenLabs to generate natural-sounding voices, and Gemini for backgrounds inspired by my drawing style.
Within this ecosystem, my role is to maintain total artistic control over the machine. I hand-draw the storyboards, as well as the props which I assemble using paper and glue. I do all this to ensure the final output retains a human touch capable of truly resonating with people.
Then it's onto the set: a green screen hung up in the living room. Simona operates the puppets, and I have to admit she has a unique mastery for giving them life and realism. I stand behind the phone: directing the scenes, following the storyboard, and making sure the framing is spot on. The relaxation, alas, lasts about five minutes: once filming wraps, I jump straight into After Effects to edit audio, video, backgrounds, and final animations.
No clients allowed.
What started out as a side experiment turned into a cosy little oasis of pure creativity. Here I can cultivate my passions, test new AIs, and—why not—vent about the minor annoyances that come with our career path. All of this without clients, endless rounds of revisions, or compromises. Just pure fun and a great workout for my Art Director muscles.
The next hurdle? Figuring out and mastering distribution to engage audiences across Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube. And for a grumpy old bloke like me, decoding algorithms and Gen Z tastes is quite a challenge!
