Line

Dan was approached by social messaging app, LINE to create 1000 new emoji designs. Dan had 10 weeks to meet the deadline, which meant he had to supply 100 illustrations a week.

LINE is a messaging platform that specialises in emoji and stickers. To expand their emoji library, they worked with a bunch of different artists to include almost every expression and icon you could ever need!

Jenny Yoo, one of the Art Directors at LINE’s LA office approached Dan asking if he’d be interested in working with them. Jenny had first seen Dan’s work on It’s Nice That, and kept him bookmarked until the right project came along.

The project was to create an “emoji encylopedia” of over 10,000 new emojis. Dan’s were the first to be released as part of the default emojis on LINE, and helped launch the project globally.

Dan and Jenny system where he’d deliver a set of 100 illustrations each week. She’d send him a list of 60 things to draw based on a particular theme then Dan was free to come up with 40 of his own.

Dan came up with an efficient system for creating each emoji:

“First of all I’d print out a 3×5 grid onto an A3 sheet of paper then in each box I’d sketch out the designs. Then it was just the same routine as my normal work; scan the sketches in and retrace with Wacom tablet in Photoshop, then fill colour to finish. The only difference being that I had to work in a more simplified manner with thicker lines due to the small size of the final product.”