Dylan Amico
Avalon
As a self proclaimed artist... I needed to share the vision I've had for years. After various other creative ventures, Avalon was born–a small scale brand that represents my thoughts and emotions about society, people, art, and identity. With myself leading both the creative direction and business operations, Avalon has grown into more than just a clothing brand, and it’s a conceptual movement. Every campaign, garment, event, and post begins with a message, which I shape into something entirely original.
I oversee the full creative process—from concept development and design to marketing, production planning, and content
strategy—acting as both brand strategist and visual storyteller. While I lead creative direction and manage the brand’s identity, I’m supported by a
small team that helps bring ideas to life through hands-on production and event execution. All promotional work featured here was fully conceived,
directed, and produced by me, with the help of my college roommates and collaborators who have been instrumental in building Avalon into what it is today.
Inspired by "The Burning Monk" photograph and Pink Floyd's "Wish You Were Here" album cover, Birth reimagines that same eye-catching, absorbing concept through the lens of Avalon.
The project reflects Avalon’s identity as an omnipresent force; recasting famous iconography using mannequins to suggest that we are the subject, we are one.
Executed primarily through practical effects, my team and I used kerosene to ignite a mannequin and captured the moment on Polaroid. I then animated evolving frames using Kaiber AI and refined the sequence in Adobe After Effects, blending analog and digital to explore themes of destruction, rebirth, and artistic transformation.
Mona Lisa is a reimagining of Leonardo da Vinci’s iconic painting, created through Avalon’s visual lens.
The project is part of a larger statement: using mannequins to recast historic figures and moments, offering the perspective that we are the subject—we are Mona Lisa.
To create the piece, I placed a mannequin in front of a poster of the original painting, suspended a frame from the ceiling, and positioned the camera to replicate the composition in-camera. I then used Adobe After Effects to track the slow camera pan, ensuring the new image moved naturally within the scene. Through motion tracking and compositing, the altered artwork blends seamlessly into its environment.
Balet explores the idea that time doesn’t separate us—objects, images, and people all carry the same energy across eras. Using a vintage TV, an old wardrobe mirror, and a hologram-like ballet figure, the piece creates a contrast between past and future. The slow, abstract movement of the dancer evokes a feeling of freedom, while still holding an undercurrent of ambiguity and quiet tension.
The video was created digitally, using Kaiber Ai, and displayed on an old television set built into an antique dresser. Filmed with practical effects, Balet blends digital imagery with physical space, creating a layered, haunting moment that feels both distant and personal.
American Dream was created to make a statement—presenting Avalon’s mannequin figure, a reflection of humanity, as a faceless office worker, a number in the system. The piece critiques the devaluation of human life and the years spent working for systems that don’t even know your name.
Inspired by the eerie, liminal world of Severance, the video was shot practically using an overhead setup and a vintage television. A slow zoom and flickering Avalon logo turn a minimal scene into a layered symbol of routine and erasure. It draws a direct parallel between viewer and mannequin—both trapped in cycles of unseen labor—reinforcing Avalon’s identity as a brand grounded in message, mood, and meaning.
The Polaroid Project was created to document Avalon’s work through a physical medium—capturing moments in print as tangible evidence of the brand’s evolution. In a world of fleeting digital content, these instant film portraits offer something real: a sense of presence, permanence, and reflection.
Each image is raw and unfiltered, serving as a visual archive of Avalon’s identity. Beyond just documentation, the project celebrates community and preservation—turning everyday moments into lasting artifacts of the movement we’ve built.
Talk Show continues Avalon’s exploration of the mannequin as a stand-in for humanity—this time placing it in the role of the passive consumer. The piece critiques how people absorb media without question, their identities shaped by what they consume. The mannequin, blank and motionless, becomes a reflection of that cycle.
Created in January 2025, the video features a mannequin bust seated before a vintage television—nude, exposed, and eerily still. Shot entirely with practical effects and a tripod pan, the footage was refined in After Effects to heighten the unsettling tone. Talk Show reinforces Avalon’s themes of detachment, conformity, and fractured identity.
As Avalon has evolved, our clothing has become a core part of the conceptual movement behind the brand. Each piece is created to be entirely original and entirely handmade—serving not just as fashion, but as an extension of the brand’s identity and message.
Since launching the line in August 2023, I’ve designed, created, and marketed four full garment collections. Every piece is crafted by hand using techniques like sewing, sun printing, and painting with bleach. This process has helped me develop skills in textile production, fashion construction, and creative material use. The gallery below showcases each piece in detail—from our most recent designs to our very first.
With the release of our newest piece, we launched the Photo Legacy Project to bring together Avalon’s collaborators, supporters, and creative community—not just to celebrate the brand, but to embody it. Inspired by Andy Warhol’s celebrity Polaroids and Avalon’s core philosophy that we are all the same—just like the mannequin—we invited every attendee to wear the prototype shirt, regardless of who they were or how they looked. On May 11, 2024, we captured over 50 instant portraits, creating a visual archive that reflects unity, presence, and identity through simplicity. The event was promoted using flyers I designed in Adobe Photoshop, distributed both online and throughout Columbia, Missouri.
Invasion was created as part of Avalon’s ongoing exploration of the mannequin figure as an omnipresent, faceless entity - our symbolic stand-in for humanity. Set in New York City and framed as a breaking news broadcast, the video blurs reality and fiction to explore how people respond to the unknown. The use of AI reinforces the eerie, uncanny tone; intentionally unsettling, and central to the emotional experience we want to create.
Produced in December 2024, the piece was built using MidJourney for image generation, Kaiber AI for animation, and ElevenLabs for voice cloning. Designed as both a narrative and promotional piece, Invasion positions Avalon as a surreal, cult-like presence—fusing visual storytelling with future-forward tools.
The Object was created to capture a specific feeling—one of quiet power and mystery. I’ve always been fascinated by objects that seem to hold energy, like antiques or untraceable artifacts. This piece was about channeling that energy into Avalon’s world and connecting it to the mannequin, turning it from an observer into something seeking meaning.
Centered around a glowing prism, the video was shot entirely in-camera using LED lighting and practical effects. The result is atmospheric and minimal, reinforcing Avalon’s themes of ritual, tension, and impersonal power.
1950s places the mannequin in the strange, hyper-idealized world of postwar America. The goal was to explore the figure as a constant—unchanged and unchanging—moving through time without context or identity. Here, the mannequin becomes a reflection of the era itself: polished on the surface, but distant and disconnected underneath.
This project continues Avalon’s narrative of using the mannequin as a symbol—one that carries across time, observing rather than belonging. By setting it in this specific moment, 1950s questions what’s real, what’s remembered, and what’s worth preserving.
Motherboard continues Avalon’s mannequin narrative—this time placing the figure in a space overtaken by technology. Trapped within the walls of a giant motherboard, the mannequin wanders without purpose, swallowed by the very systems it once observed. The setting is both literal and symbolic: a liminal space where identity fades into circuitry.
The video was created using MidJourney to develop the visual environment and Kaiber to animate the scene. These tools helped build a surreal, tech-driven world while maintaining the brand’s focus on atmosphere, detachment, and symbolic storytelling.
Science was created to bridge the gap between Avalon’s conceptual content and its physical products. While our garments are handmade, this video presents them as part of the mannequin’s world—linking the clothing directly to everything the mannequin represents: constructed, detached, and stripped of identity.
Part of Avalon’s AI campaign, Science is one of four videos I conceived and produced using MidJourney and Kaiber. It builds a surreal, synthetic space where mannequins wear Avalon garments with eerie stillness—blurring the line between product and concept, and reinforcing the brand’s impersonal, omnipresent tone.
