Baron Minker, worldbuilding projects, creative technology, 3D printing, puppetry, music, animation, and whatever else happens when curiosity takes the wheel. If the client work shows what I can do for others, these projects show what happens when the boundaries disappear.
What is this section?
This is what happens when nobody is telling me what to do. No client. No brief. No approval process. No committee. Just an idea and whatever amount of obsession is required to bring it into existence.
Most of the projects in my portfolio start with a problem that needs solving. These projects start with curiosity, what tools have I yet to explore in order to express my ideas?
Why does this section exist?
Because experimentation is where most of my favorite ideas begin. A lot of the techniques, workflows, technologies, and creative approaches that eventually find their way into client work usually start here first.
The sandbox. The place where I can follow an idea far past the point where it would normally make sense. Sometimes those ideas become commercial work years later. Sometimes they don’t. Either way, the exploration is valuable.
What is Baron Minker?
Baron Minker is probably the best answer to the question: “What does Dane do when nobody is telling him what to do?”
It’s part science fiction story, part music project, part puppet show, part design laboratory. Part excuse to learn entirely new skills. What started as a simple creative idea eventually became an excuse to combine everything I love into a single evolving universe, storytelling, music, illustration, animation, costume fabrication, worldbuilding, 3D printing, creative technology, film, graphic design. It’s all in there somewhere.
What is your approach?
I tend to take every creative interest I have and throw it into a meat grinder. The result usually looks something like Baron Minker.
Growing up, I wanted to make comic books, make music, create toys, build worlds, design album covers, make movies, all of it. The beautiful thing about personal projects is that nobody tells you those things have to be separate. Instead of choosing one discipline, I started letting them collide. That’s where the interesting stuff tends to happen.
What are you actually experimenting with?
Everything. Animation, practical effects, cinematography, physical fabrication, storytelling, 3D character designs.
AI has definitely become an assistive tool in the editing process and dissolving of mundane tasks, but generative art that hands all the power to a robot will never be satisfying to someone like me. Long live the human touch.
I’m less interested in specific tools than I am in discovering new ways to tell stories.
Why does this work matter?
Because this is where the other projects come from. When people look at Dead Comics Society, Tame Impala, Museum of Failure, or any of the other work in this portfolio, they’re seeing the polished outcome. This section is the genesis, where the experiments, obsessions, and the weird stuff lives.
These projects remind me why I started making things in the first place. To show myself that I simply could.
Viva la Baron!
