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Meet the Spaghetti Team: Masters of flexibility and creativity
Within our team of talents at HLabs, Spaghetti Team has made a name for themselves by embracing exactly what their name suggests—creative chaos, but with just the right bite. Whether they’re animating data for The Economist x IBM or cooking up mesmerising worlds for brands like Hilton Grand Vacations and WWF-Canada, this trio knows how to balance structure with spontaneity.
© Hilton Grand Vacations — Comic illustration for HGV’s Super Squad campaign
Who they are
If Spaghetti Team were an animated series? Dru sums it up best: “A group of artists trying to cook up the perfect masterpiece while getting sidetracked by ridiculous adventures—probably involving occult programming incantations and a sentient spaghetti monster.”
And if their illustrations had a theme song? “Something chaotic and upbeat—like an old-school cartoon intro mixed with jazz, chiptune, and punk rock. That’s pretty much our vibe.”
So if that got you hooked, we caught up with Dru, Tudor, and (sort of) Chay to find out what goes into their secret sauce.
Al dente, with extra sauce
“We like to say our style is al dente with a healthy dose of saucy,” laughs Tudor. “Structured and intentional, but loose and expressive—just enough bite to hold up but never stiff.”
For Dru, that balance comes down to teamwork. “We assign tasks based on everyone’s strengths, but we’re careful to maintain a cohesive look. Sometimes a project leans extra saucy when we’re pushing visuals, and other times it’s more al dente because of timelines or technical constraints. It keeps things interesting.”
Projects with IBM and The Economist definitely leaned into the extra sauce—where the team pushed their style into vivid, animated data worlds and playful, unexpected directions.
Cooking up an illustration—Spaghetti style
The Spaghetti process? Fast, iterative, and a little chaotic—in the best way.
“It starts with rapid sketches and thumbnailing,” says Tudor. “We sketch loose, iterate often, and refine as we go. Happy accidents are embraced early on, but we always bring things back with strong design principles.”
Dru adds: “Then comes the structured side—locking colors, adding motion, and making sure everything works across platforms, whether it's an interactive graphic or a social loop.” The team’s versatility is their not-so-secret weapon, combining 2D, 3D, typography, and even a little bit of code when needed.
Meet Dru
How would you describe the Spaghetti Team's creative style?
It depends on the project—sometimes extra saucy when we’re pushing visuals, and other times al dente when timelines and tech constraints make us keep things simple. It keeps things fresh.
What's your process when collaborating with your teammates?
We assign tasks based on everyone’s strengths but try to keep everything cohesive. Sometimes that means collaborating directly on one file, other times it’s dividing and conquering. We’ve gotten pretty good at swapping files and adding our own spin without breaking the overall look.
What's the wildest or most unexpected project you've worked on?
One of the recent Wired projects where we had to use live coding and generative art techniques to animate spaghetti noodles in real time. It was wild but super fun!
Meet Tudor
Who are your biggest artistic influences—classic fine art or something wilder?
A mix of both! I love surrounding myself with everything from classic artists like Gustav Klimt and Alfons Mucha to contemporary artists like Maciej Kuciara and Ash Thorp.
What’s the secret sauce behind your creative process?
A mix of playful experimentation, strong fundamentals, and a dash of organised chaos. We like to sketch fast, iterate often, and trust our instincts. And, of course, no great illustration happens without a little bit of teamwork and a lot of constructive feedback.
How do you balance keeping things playful while still delivering polished visuals?
We embrace happy accidents in the early stages but refine them with solid design principles. It's always a good thing to have more content and ideas in order to trim what's not working than having too little. Think of it like plating a dish—things might get messy in the kitchen, but the final presentation is always chef’s-kiss worthy.
What’s a Rich Text element?
The rich text element allows you to create and format headings, paragraphs, blockquotes, images, and video all in one place instead of having to add and format them individually. Just double-click and easily create content.
Static and dynamic content editing
A rich text element can be used with static or dynamic content. For static content, just drop it into any page and begin editing. For dynamic content, add a rich text field to any collection and then connect a rich text element to that field in the settings panel. Voila!
How to customize formatting for each rich text
Headings, paragraphs, blockquotes, figures, images, and figure captions can all be styled after a class is added to the rich text element using the "When inside of" nested selector system.
Meet Rick
What’s your go-to tool or technique that never fails?
It might be a bit of an animation cliché, but after all these years I’m still in love with facial and body rigging tools—especially plugins like Joysticks ’n Sliders. It makes creating fluid character animations so much easier. You just place your character in extreme poses—like looking left, right, up, and down—on different keyframes, then connect those to a joystick. The plugin calculates all the in-between positions for you. It’s still magical to see those static poses blend so smoothly as you move the joystick. I bet every animator still makes their character do a little dance before cracking on with work.
How do you keep your creativity fresh and avoid turning into overcooked spaghetti?
Any animation can be broken down into dozens of steps—and for each step, there are multiple ways to approach it. It’s tempting to try to make everything look perfect all at once, but when you tackle too many layers at the same time and something breaks, it becomes hard to trace where the problem actually started. It helps to build your animations layer by layer. Just like cooking spaghetti sauce—some ingredients simply need to be added last. Focusing on solving one problem at a time really helps keep your creativity sharp (and your sanity intact).
What’s the weirdest feedback you’ve ever received on an animation?
When you start working on briefs, you quickly discover that everyone seems to have their own version of the dictionary lying around the house. My idea of “fluid” motion might look static to someone else. What I see as “bright and happy” might make another person feel depressed. And what I think is “bold and brave” might come across as painfully dull. I guess what I’m trying to say is: if you ever find yourself on the verge of pulling your hair out because your client says your perfect render of lava should look “more like lava,” it’s probably time to ask what lava means to them.
Meet Chay
Walk us through how a Spaghetti Team illustration is made—from doodle to masterpiece.
Having transitioned from primarily design and animation work into illustration, I naturally approach each piece with an animator’s mindset—always imagining how it might move. That instinct often breathes extra life and energy into what I draw.
My process starts with gathering inspiration, whether it’s exploring styles, colours, textures, or Procreate brushes on platforms like Pinterest, Dribbble, and Awwwards. From there, I dive into sketching, shifting elements around like puzzle pieces until everything clicks. A quick brainstorm session with the team follows, and then it’s time to build out the first version of the illustration.
If you could illustrate anything with zero limits, what would it be?
If there were no limits (and no time constraints), I’m imagining what if I could illustrate every day of my life up until writing this blog post, no matter how mundane or adventurous. I think that would make a pretty fun piece of art.
What’s your favourite project so far?
My favourite by far has got to be the recent Composting Guide we did for 11th Hour Racing, which features a PDF full of bright and beautiful custom illustrations. I loved creating these fun and geometric looking illustrations of fruit, vegetables, infographics, stats and everything compost related. Check it out here!
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