I Have An Emily The Strange Story
My Emily The Strange Eras
1999-2001 2002-2006 13-Year Break 2019-2023 2024-2025
Emily the Strange® (Wiki, Website, Instagram) is a fictional character and clothing brand created by artist Rob Reger. She also became a goth pop icon through her presence in Hot Topic from their inception in the late 90s and throughout the 00s. The character has been developed through collaborations with Rob and many artists at his company, Cosmic Debris.
I met Rob at the San Francisco Art Institute in 1995. After graduating, we collaborated on several projects, including an early version of Oopsy Daisy. I moved to Boston to study design, but Rob kept calling—urging me to skip school and come back to join the art department at Cosmic Debris.
And that’s what happened. I returned from Boston a year later as the first employee Cosmic Debris hired specifically for Emily the Strange. It didn’t take long before a full-time artist made sense. We built the brand one catalog at a time, releasing four new collections a year.
Her first book, which I co-wrote (though later copies have removed my name) have been translated in over a dozen languages. I worked anonymously as part of what became a larger team. I sometimes used the pseudonym “pillowgoat” as a designer credit, which was also the publishing name for my zines at the time. I was inspired to do so through admiration of SF legends The Residents, their Cryptic Corporation, and their love for anonymity. At the time, I thought it would be stronger if the character did not have an artist’s name attached. I was the lead designer for the T-shirts for many years and helped shape the brand’s voice and visual world.
I first came on board in February 1999 and worked with the company through spring 2006.
After a 13-year break, I returned in 2019—and continue to “create content” to this day. Continue reading for a more thorough chronological history.
My Emily The Strange Eras
1999-2002
The Cosmic Debris Art Department (1999-2002)
For the first three years, it was just Rob, Nöel, and myself in the Art Department. And Seth. Seth was also a part of Bunnyhop, and the guy who kept all the computers and software running. In the early days, the Cosmic Debris T-shirt catalog contained multiple groupings. Emily Strange was one. There were collections by artists Amy Davis and Fawn Geihweiler, and a line called Cosmic Girls with assorted collections. Nöel was starting to build Yum Pop, and Rob and I soon developed Oopsy Daisy. I first created Oopsy as a project to help me learn how to use Adobe Illustrator.
Emily The Strange’s character’s popularity exploded when Chronicle Books published a series of story books and full line of stationery. The brand was simultaneously a fixture at Hot Topic.
2003-2006
Cosmic Debris Art Department 2003-2006
After a few years, after the brand had expanded, Cosmic began hiring more illustrators and designers, and my role shifted to art director. During this time, Rob and I also co-developed Oopsy Daisy and co-created Boyz on Da Run for the Disney Channel (YouTube, Disneywiki).
The physical toll of constant Adobe Illustrator work on my hands, arms, and wrists forced me to step away in 2006.
By 2006 I was so burned out and overworked—as the brand had expanded and the designing and post-production work was just too much. The line had expanded, there were three trade shows a year, and never-ending licensee needs. It was non-stop. Four design seasons a year. I had to step away. I had to take a break.
A 13-Year Break 2006-2019
How to reinvent yourself as an artist?
In the summer of 2006 I stepped away from Cosmic Debris and decided to take some time off. The Oopsy Daisy character had brought in enough of a savings that I could afford to take some time away from “work,” especially while living in my “dilapidated flat.”
I wanted to reinvent myself and not cement myself into being known as “the Emily guy” or “the Oopsy guy.” I wanted to take a break from character artwork and explore who or what I would be without these characters, and get back to making “fine art,” away from the computer.
Little did I know I would soon become “the Smokey’s guy.” After Emily Wick and I rented a studio space that also had a storefront on Telegraph Avenue, we called the space Smokey’s Tangle. We ran the storefront as a funky gallery focused on the community, without trying to make money. It was a thankful position to be in. Thank you, Oopsy Daisy.
Smokey’s specialized in what we called “creative photo booths,” open studios with free portrait photo sessions. We captured a lot of visitors’ images. Sample themes were: Imaginary Pizza Restaurant and Imaginary Pool Store. We also organized the local galleries and helped facilitate the biannual art nights in the neighborhood. We ran the space for almost ten years.
My personal artwork during these years ranged from books to paintings to videos. Trade books included the What If? series (Amazon), and Cool Coloring Book series (Amazon).
Art books included a book of my paintings (Dogs), drawings (Earth Messages), (Adventures of Everything), and anthologies of my zines (Rock n Roll Coloring Books, We Like Bugs & Books Like That).
My artwork took a serious turn toward what was directly around me after I began focusing on documenting my neighborhood and creating site-specific work, like mapping the McDonald’s parking lot across the street (Temescal Now).
Upon coming across the Oopsy archives, Emily Wick suggested we start an Instagram for Oopsy Daisy—her first social page. This soon expanded to include the other characters in her world: GoraX, Princess Pretty, Sidney Punk—plus an online print-on-demand t-shirt Oopsy Shop.
2019-2023
A Return To Character
In 2019, Emily Wick and I took over the Emily the Strange® Instagram account, and began curating past artwork and introducing new designs.
I soon began creating new “content” as it was now called, through the remixing, of decades of existing artwork.
We also launched new T-shirt collections—the first Emily the Strange T-shirt designs I had created in 13 years.
These designs were all created using a mouse and a keyboard, and an iMac computer with Adobe Illustrator software.
Official Emily The Strange Threadless Shop
In 2021, at Emily Wick’s insistence, we began working on some Emily stop-motion paper cut-out animations based on her designs.
It didn’t take long before I figured out a way to create this type of animation directly in Adobe Illustrator—the program I know best.
Creating moving images was one thing we could finally do. Not that they were easy—they were actually labor intensive—but at least we now had movement.
The labor was intensive enough that I overworked my hands and arms, as well as the mental health toll of dealing with the never-ending social media needs.
The company had expanded, and a new team took over the Instagram, allowing Emily Wick and myself to take a break from working with the character—again. “I’ll be back,” as we used to say in the ’80s.
.
2024-2025
Stranger Returns
Strange Cat Art School offers groovy experimental drawing lessons featuring Emily The Strange® by professor Brian Brooks
Strange Cat Art School Animation by Brian Brooks
In 2022, I gifted myself a new iPad for my birthday. I also got myself an Apple Pencil. I had never used an Apple Pencil before, nor had I ever drawn directly on a computer screen with a stylus. All of my cartooning for the past 20 years had been done either in Adobe Illustrator—using a keyboard and mouse inside an iMac—or hand drawn on paper and scanned into the computer. Drawing directly on the screen with a stylus is an astonishingly different way to interact with a digital drawing.
It took a while before I began using it for actual drawing. At the time, I was fully immersed in my index card and ballpoint pen phase. I was satisfied with those parameters and the simplicity of the process. The Apple Pencil remained unused for months.
I didn’t begin using it until I was on an airplane, trapped in a seat. That constraint—nowhere to go, nothing else to do—pushed me into trying it. I began my first series of digital illustrations in 2023. They were weird drawings of the Emily character. It felt strange to draw her by freehand again.
Oddly enough, I found myself incapable of drawing the character “straight.” My versions of her seemed to come from somewhere else—like they belonged to a different her, in a different world, one more driven by complete imagination, blending art and the act of creation with the character herself. I’m not sure if they belong in the world, or side by side with the “official version.”
I keep certain parameters that help prevent the digital drawings from appearing too digital—like maintaining one pencil width, only using black, and not zooming in too far.
I’m drawn to what comes out naturally, following wherever the Apple Pencil takes me. I’m still figuring it out. I’m calling this experiment Strange Cat Art School.
Emily The Strange® wordmark and character likeness are a registered trademark of Cosmic Debris. Used under exclusive license with Cosmic Debris. Emily The Strange® ©1993-2025 Cosmic Debris. All rights reserved.
Emily The Strange Official Website
Emily The Strange on Instagram.