Rocket Dollar Illustrations

2021–2022

Rocket Dollar helps people invest their retirement savings in things a normal 401(k) won’t touch: real estate, startups, crypto. They hired me for one animation in 2021, then came back twice more. By the end, my artwork was in their shipping app.

1. The DeLorean

Summer–Fall 2021

They wanted a looping animation of a time-traveling DeLorean in their brand colors, which suits a company whose pitch is taking your future into your own hands.

Pixel art animation of a DeLorean warming up and launching, in Rocket Dollar's colors — *The finished animation.*

Over two rounds of review with their product designer, Rodney Martinez, I tuned the flame, the timing, the sky and ground colors, the drifting particles and the car’s warm-up before takeoff. It shipped in several sizes for regular and Retina screens.

Work-in-progress layers of the DeLorean animation — *Drawing the car was a job on its own. Every effect after that was another stack of layers.*

Before we’d wrapped, they were asking whether I did illustration too.

2. App Icons

October 2021

Next was a set of nine pixel art illustrations for the app’s navigation and dashboard: a domed house for Home, a seedling for Invest, a gold coin for Fund, an astronaut for Profile, a glowing treasure chest for the investment account, a columned bank, a gift box for Rewards, and two more treasure chests, one hitchhiking (Transfers) and one eating a deposit (Contributions).

We agreed on scope on October 5 and I delivered final files on the 18th. Thirteen days.

First and second drafts of the app icons — *First and second drafts. They wanted the house to look like it belonged in Star Wars.*

Rodney passed the first draft around the company before we’d even met about it:

“Great work again — I sent the illustrations around the horn yesterday and heard many good things.”

Early icon concepts — *Early concepts, most of which didn't make the cut.*

That meeting set the direction: read like an icon, sit on a square canvas, and lean on one main color. The second draft added outlines, and they liked those enough to keep them.

Second draft of the app icons, with outlines

Third draft of the app icons at production size

I kept every draft in a shared sheet with room for comments, so their team could give notes whenever they had a minute instead of waiting for a call.

Final and near-final app icons — *Final and near-final drafts. The treasure chest took the most tries.*

Their CTO paid a bonus on top of the invoice for the turnaround, with a note:

“You’re our go-to for the next round of art regardless of style on pixel or vector art.”

3. The Vector Redraw

March–June 2022

Five months later Rodney wrote again. The new version of their web app had just launched with my icons in it, and they wanted more.

Rocket Dollar social post showing app screens with the icons — *The icons showed up in screenshots across Rocket Dollar's posts in 2022. This one is worth a read on its own:* *here*.

The ask started wide open: concept pieces for crypto, real estate and surveys. I’d begun sketching when the brief changed. After talking it over with their CEO, they decided the pixel icons should match the vector style their in-house designer was using on the marketing site, so the new job was redrawing the house, coin, chest and astronaut as vector art that worked in both places.

Concept sketches for a cryptocurrency illustration — *Sketches for a crypto illustration, shelved when the brief changed.*

Vector versions of the icons in color and in muted tones — *Along the way, Rodney found that muted, single-color versions suited their screens better.*

Partway through, Rodney traded the treasure chest for a safe, which felt more modern and more secure. That meant designing one from scratch. After a round of sketches (dial or keypad, classic or futuristic) we went with a modern keypad.

The finished set went out in June 2022 as PNGs plus the Illustrator source files, so their team could keep using them without me.

Near-final and final vector icons — *Near-final and final drafts.*

Three projects in about a year, each one bigger than the last, and each one started because they asked for more. Rodney’s team knew what they wanted, gave specific notes, and showed up when they said they would, which made the work easy to get right.