Joel Plosz’s well-observed, blocky animations and illustrations

New York-based animator and illustrator Joel Plosz describes his style as if “Pokémon and Sesame Street had a crossover and then Lego started making sets of it”. Joel also cites Sailor Moon, video games, comics, “cute lil critters” and architecture as an influence and all these elements come together to create work that’s funny, colourful and considered.

Joel originally studied film but felt he couldn’t make what he really wanted without money. “With illustration and animation, I love that there are almost zero roadblocks to what kind of characters and worlds you can make – all just in a room with a computer,” he explains.

Since focusing his efforts on 2D animation in 2014, Joel has created work for some major brands including Snapchat, in which he created a series of amusing shorts and most recently an ident for MTV, which plays on the idea of virtual reality. Creating work for such big clients was intimidating at first but now Joel says he’s got into the swing of it. “So far the people I’ve worked with are all so neat. I’ve been lucky to have been given a lot of freedom to use my voice,” he says. “I’ve found out that conforming to what you think they want, isn’t usually what they want.”