GPK: Non-Flushable Tokens

Concept, illustration, and animation for Topps’ Garbage Pail Kids, parodying the NFT boom with collectible digital cards and plenty of gross-out humor.

Topps NFTs

Flush Your Money Away with GPK: Non-Flushable Tokens

Garbage Pail Kids has spent decades making fun of whatever happens to be popular, so the NFT boom was an obvious target. Topps created Non-Flushable Tokens, a digital card series parodying recognizable crypto projects, platforms, and personalities through the gross-out humor and visual puns GPK has always been known for.

I worked with Topps and veteran GPK artists Joe Simko, Brent Engstrom, and David Gross on concepts, illustration, and animation for the collection. I developed original card ideas of my own and animated artwork created by the other artists, finding ways to add movement and new visual gags without losing what made the original paintings work. The collection sold out within 20 minutes.

CLIENT
Topps NFTs

STUDIO
Weirdo Works

YEAR
2022

MY ROLE
Concepting, illustration,
and animation

CARD ILLUSTRATION
Joe Simko
Brent Engstrom
David Gross

DELIVERABLES
Digital Trading Cards, Character Illustration, Animated Cards / GIFs

RESULTS
Collection sold out in 20 minutes

Illustrator: Joe Simko | Animator: Justin Gammon

Illustrator: David Gross | Animator: Justin Gammon

Illustrator: Brent Engstrom | Animator: Justin Gammon

Using NFTs to Make a Mockery of the Craze

Flushing Away the Fad

We started with some of the most recognizable names and visual cues from the NFT and crypto boom, then looked for the joke hiding inside each one. Bored Ape Yacht Club, CryptoKitties, MetaMask, Luna, Rarible, and others gave us plenty of material to corrupt in true Garbage Pail Kids fashion.

The trick was making the parody readable even if someone only vaguely knew the reference. Wherever possible, we also worked familiar GPK characters into the concepts, connecting the new digital collection back to the trading-card world collectors already knew.

Bringing Art to Life with GIFs

From Brush Strokes to Flush Strokes!

Animating someone else’s Garbage Pail Kids painting came with its own challenge. The artwork already had a finished gag, composition, and personality, so the goal wasn’t to simply make everything move. I had to find the right extra beat without stepping on what the illustrator had already created.

Sometimes that meant a small reaction or bit of secondary motion. Other times there was room to extend the joke into something the still image couldn’t do. Either way, I wanted the animation to feel like it had always been hiding inside the original artwork.

Illustrator: Joe Simko | Animator: Justin Gammon

Illustrator: Brent Engstrom | Animator: Justin Gammon

Illustrator: Joe Simko | Animator: Justin Gammon

Artists Flush Out Disgusting Masterpieces

Finding the Art in Fart

One of the best parts of the project was getting to work alongside Joe Simko, Brent Engstrom, and David Gross, artists who have helped define the Garbage Pail Kids look for decades. Each brought a different drawing and painting style to the collection, which also meant each animation presented a different problem to solve.

I wanted my animation to respect the hand of the original artist rather than smooth everything into one digital style. That made the collaboration especially fun: the cards still looked unmistakably like their illustrators, but motion gave each one another chance to land the joke.

Finally Flushing a Childhood Dream

A Step Away from Potty Training

This part of the project was especially satisfying because I got to take a few cards all the way from idea to finished animation. I developed the concepts, sketched the characters, painted the final artwork, and then animated the finished cards myself.

As someone who grew up collecting Garbage Pail Kids, getting to contribute original characters to the same world was a pretty great full-circle moment. Apparently all those years staring at disgusting trading cards counted as professional development after all.