Nathan Jurevicius

Nathan Jurevicius (born 1973) is a Canadian/Australian illustrator, director, toy designer, author, and fine artist whose diverse range of work has appeared in numerous publications, advertising campaigns, festivals, and galleries around the world.

The creations were focused around large vinyl figures, including the Octocity Scarygirl, Treedweller, Dr MayBee, Chihoohoo and more, and have been called one of the defining toy lines of the mid-2000s.

His most acclaimed project to date is Scarygirl, which started in 2001 with a vinyl toy range and has since developed into graphics novels, online games, a VR Free Roam experience, and an animated feature film that is currently in production.

Appearing in comics, vinyl toys, games, and internationally exhibited artwork, Scarygirl is about a misshapen orphan searching for the truth about her past.

The cute but slightly odd little girl was abandoned late one night and later found and brought up by a friendly octopus called Blister and guided by a mystic rabbit called Bunniguru.

A vision of psychedelic colours, surreal landscapes and personal discovery, Scarygirl recalls the fables and folklore of our shared cultural memory.

Since its inception in 2001, Nathan Jurevicius' Scarygirl brand has developed an underground following of fans throughout the globe through its online Scarygirl comic, video games, graphic novels, numerous limited edition vinyl toys, designer products, and travelling shows.

Initially created as on online concept, Nathan's plans for Scarygirl changed direction when acclaimed Hong Kong based toy-manufacturing company Flying Cat contacted him to create a set of limited edition toys.

The Scarygirl world was then expanded further with two mini-series of figures created by Kidrobot – City Folk in 2007 and Swamp Folk in 2009 – and then a limited edition Blister the Octopus 8” vinyl art toy in 2018, which was produced by Gums Production in Hong Kong with exclusive colour-ways released by Kidrobot and Toy Tokyo.

In 2007 Nathan Jurevicius was approached by MTV Canada to collaborate and create characters for their Summer 06 and Winter 07 campaigns, which were directed by filmmaker Anthony Scott Burns.

In 2008 Nathan completed his first graphic novel based on Scarygirl.

The two-part, textless graphic novel traces the small heroine's adventures from the moment she is mysteriously dumped at a remote beach.

Together with two newfound friends – gentle Blister, a super-intelligent giant octopus, and philosophical rabbit Bunniguru – Scarygirl sets off towards the huge city to uncover some secrets about her past and about the strange man who haunts her dreams.

The hardback graphic novel was released by Australia's leading Independent publisher, Allen and Unwin, and distributed in North America by Last Gasp and ARX in Brazil.

The graphic novel has since garnered various accolades including winning the 2009 Aurealis Award for Best Illustrated Book/Graphic Novel, the 2010 CBCA Notable Picture Book list and included in International Youth Library's The White Ravens 2010, an annual selection of outstanding books for children and young adults.

Working with Passion Pictures Australia, in 2009 Scarygirl was adapted into online game.

The number of players has surpassed 1 million and has been hailed as " one of the most beautiful and unusual flash games on the web..."

The game has been awarded IGN's 'Indie Pick of the Week', the Communication Arts Award of Excellence, and FWA's Site of the Day, was nominated for Best Browser Game at The Escapist Awards, was a finalist for an AFI for Screen Content Innovation, and made the cover of May 2009's Stash DVD magazine.

Following on from its success, TikGames approached Nathan to develop an adaptation of the Flash game.

Scarygirl was also part of the Silent Comics event at the 2011 GRAPHIC festival at the Sydney Opera House.

The event paired the visuals of well-known wordless comics and graphic novels - such as those of Peter Kuper and Robert Crumb - with live performances by bands such as Gotye and Plaid.

Scarygirl was paired with Australian band Seekae.

In early 2012 Nathan completed the novel's sequel 'The Adventures of Scarygirl', which expanded on the original book and completed its cliffhanger ending.

It featured additional 80 pages as well as sketches from Dr MayBee's journal.

Scarygirl the console game was released by Square Enix for Xbox Live (18 January 2012), PlayStation Network (24 January 2012) and Windows PC (May 2012).

Nathan's production design was hailed as “a delightful contradiction of cute and creepy and comes to life in the environment and character designs”.

and that the “stylish visuals paint imaginative characters and a diverse world of mountaintops, cities, oceans, and caves in a 2.5D style… the overall aesthetics are beautiful… ScaryGirl elicits a nostalgic kind of triumph.”

In 2016 Scarygirl was a recipient of the Hall of Fame Award at the Designer Toy Awards.

In 2019, Nathan became the Creative Director of Dark Slope, a Toronto-based virtual and augmented reality (VR and AR) developer.

Their first project was Scarygirl: Mission MayBee, a first-person action game that brings up to eight players together to save the world from Dr MayBee and his diabolical experiments.

Scarygirl Mission MayBee was released worldwide by Zero Latency in 33 locations across 18 countries including Canada, Australia, Spain, France, Japan, and the United States.

A film based on Scarygirl is currently in production at Passion Pictures Australia with Like A Photon co-producing.

Scarygirl is set to be released into theatres in 2023, and will star Jillian Nguyen and Tim Minchin.

Scarygirl is directed by Ricard Cusso, with Sophie Byrne producing the film and John Stevenson acting as executive producer.

Part of the first wave of Western vinyl toy designers, Nathan has created over 150 different characters, which often reference owls as their symbology is important in his Lithuanian heritage.

His various owl series include the wind-up Peleda range from Toy Tokyo, which was sold in Urban Outfitters, and his collaborations with Kidrobot, which include the Misko wooden series, the mini-figure Night Rider series, and the Dievas Dunny.

Nathan also worked with IKEA to create the limited edition Swedish-produced glass sculpture, Sutemos, which translates to Nightfall in Lithuanian and was sold in IKEA stores worldwide.

Nathan also created the Scarygirl spin-off toy concept 'Mini Treehouse', produced by Strange Co and Flying Cat.

Solo exhibitions of The Toys and artwork have travelled the globe with multiple appearances in Canada, Australia, Taiwan, USA, and Japan.

The brand was adapted and renamed 'Dudson' for a series of 90 x 15 second teaser animated clips for the Toronto subways (a first for Canada), which were created in conjunction with Wild Brain (previously Decode and DHX Media).