Builder of Worlds, Brands, and Teams
Art Director. Creative Director. Author.
Worlds | Stories | Teams | Innovation
For more than three decades, Philip Straub has helped create immersive worlds across games, publishing, film, and consumer products. From leading AAA development teams to building original universes like Utherworlds and Meet the Imaginaries, his work combines artistic vision, strategic thinking, and emotionally resonant storytelling.
Philip brings a rare blend of Creative Direction, Art Direction, worldbuilding, team leadership, and brand development—transforming ideas into experiences that connect with audiences across mediums.
Creative Direction & Worldbuilding
Building worlds, franchises, visual identities, and preproduction materials for games, film, publishing, and entertainment brands.
AI Strategy & Creative Innovation
Helping creative organizations integrate emerging AI technologies into production pipelines while maintaining quality, originality, and artistic intent.
Original Intellectual Property
Creator of Utherworlds and Meet the Imaginaries, with opportunities in licensing, publishing, games, film, and consumer products.
Project: MOVE–A Symphony in Paint
A Living Portrait by Philip Straub
In a body of work often exploring shadow and introspection, MOVE stands as a deliberate pivot toward light. Conceived as a "Symphony in Paint," this piece transforms dancers into living sculptures of clay and pigment, exploring the rhythm of human connection.
This is a true hybrid production: featuring textures from my original paintings and driven by my own lyrics and score, it is a digital ballet where every frame is choreographed to the beat.
Project: The Great Toe Grazing Incident
Meet The Imaginaries
In our first chapter, "The Great Toe Grazing Incident," Joy the fairy sets out across the canopy to find her dear friend Hugo. But the forest is currently in an uproar—Hugo has accidentally grazed the toe of the highly dramatic Monsieur Sneed, and the massive giant has gone into hiding!
Project: Take Me–A Portrait of Obsession
A Living Portrait by Philip Straub
Where does one soul end and another begin?
While much of Philip’s work builds worlds, TAKE ME deconstructs the self. Rendered in a stark, monochromatic aesthetic reminiscent of wet clay and graphite, this piece explores the terrifying beauty of losing oneself in another person. The figures do not just touch; they shatter and merge, mimicking the feeling of all-consuming desire.
Driven by an original dark-ambient vocal composition, this is a visual poem about the dissolution of boundaries.
Project: Take Me–We Become the Stories we Consume
A Living Portrait by Philip Straub
A cinematic short about truth and the stories that change us.
In a world where whispers travel faster than facts and repetition becomes distortion, this piece asks: When the original truth is stretched and reshaped, where does meaning go?
Echo Chamber follows the symbolic “Weavers” , the keepers of the first thread of truth. We witness their world unravel under the weight of rumor, technology, and emotional gravity.
Created as part of the Living Portraits series, this work blends visual world-building, choreographed movement, and layered sound design — including original lyrics and vocal textures — to explore how modern narratives can consume the human experience.
Project: Peel–The Unraveling of Self
A Living Portrait by Philip Straub
PEEL is a short film that explores identity, memory, and the quiet layers we shed as we move through a lifetime. Part of Philip Straub’s Living Portrait Series, it blends painterly composition, choreography, and AI-assisted filmmaking into a single cinematic meditation on the human experience.
At its core, PEEL is a story about transformation — the ways in which love, loss, and memory shape who we become. The film follows one woman across the seasons of her life, revealing how the threads that bind us to others illuminate our deepest truths… and how letting go becomes its own form of grace.
Every frame began as a still image — expanded, animated, and reshaped through next-generation creative tools. Through motion and light, they evolve into an intimate portrait of a life both fragile and luminous.
Project: Utherworlds Short Film
Utherworlds is a cinematic origin story that bridges art, emotion, and myth. It follows Lucas Sellers, an artist consumed by loss, who is drawn into a world shaped by the thoughts and emotions of all sentient beings — a realm where beauty and terror intertwine, and every feeling has form.
This short film reimagines the Utherworlds mythology introduced in the illustrated novel, revealing the moment Lucas first crosses into this living landscape of dream and memory. Built through months of visual and emotional experimentation, it blends traditional art direction, worldbuilding, and cutting-edge AI filmmaking into a single creative process.
Many of the frames began as a painting — expanded, animated, and reshaped through emerging technologies — evolving painterly composition into cinematic motion. The result is both familiar and strange: a meditation on grief, imagination, and the power of creation itself.
Project: Emergence - Living Portrait
Emergence is part of the Living Portraits series — cinematic interpretations of transformation and the human condition by artist and world-builder Philip Straub.
Each piece begins as an original digital painting, then evolves through AI-assisted filmmaking into motion and emotion — exploring what it means to awaken, to face the storm, and to rise.
The lyrics were written years ago for an acoustic guitar song by Philip Straub, reimagined here as a visual meditation on self-evolution and inner rebirth.
Created entirely using Veo’s Extend tool, with every frame expanding from the original painting.
Project: Velocity of Vision
A short film that transforms painted environments into living, breathing worlds. Using high-speed cinematography techniques, the camera glides through neon-lit skylines, layered architectures, and vast technological vistas. The result is an immersive, atmospheric experience that invites the viewer to feel the pulse of speculative futures — not just as paintings, but as places alive with motion, mood, and possibility.
Project: Shadow of War CG Story Trailer
Middle-earth: Shadow of War – Story Trailer Art Direction
Philip provided art and creative direction for the Shadow of War story trailer in collaboration with the internal Monolith team and Blur Studios, helping shape the cinematic tone, visual style, and narrative impact of the piece. Philip’s role included guiding character design, mood, lighting, and environmental aesthetics to ensure consistency with the game’s art direction.