Tomas Muelling is a freelance art director, animator, illustrator, and designer living on the cool (East) side of Portland, OR. He gained real-world experience in several design-related roles while working at the Portland-based marketing agency Fiction Tribe, before striking out on his own as a full-time freelancer in March 2025. Between his time at Fiction Tribe and his freelance work, Tomas’ previous clientele includes large corporations like Verizon and Amazon, independent artists like ego n friends, brands like Naturipe Berries, and cultural destinations like The Smithsonian. His portfolio of work runs the gamut from animated produce ads, tech software explainers, and a live action educational series on satellites, to album covers, DJ visualizers, tattoos, logos, interactive characters, and just about everything in between. Tomas studied under Meta Newhouse, who is now a department chair for communication design at the PRATT institute, as well as at storied Italian institutions like Tipoteca Italiana, Raffles FM Milano, and The MADE School of Arts.

Tomas' artistry combines childlike imagination and tongue-in-cheek humor with tech savvy and sophisticated design skills. No matter the medium, Tomas' background as a lifelong illustrator and artist is at the heart of all his work. Playful and at times peculiar, his art style fuses influences from the richly imagined worlds of videogames, oddball cartoons from Newgrounds and Cartoon Network, the brash vitality of graffiti, ‘70s psychedelia, indie comics, and the lawlessness of the early internet days. As a designer, he’s heavily inspired by Western typography, the raw aesthetics of grunge and punk, Japanese character designs, and the balance between general maximalism and simple illustration styles. In the future, Tomas is eager to work on more projects involving art direction, consumer-facing animation and design, typography, and animation that blurs the lines between two-dimensional and three-dimensional images.