Monday, March 31, 2014

THE FISH HOOKS FINALE


<sob>

It's been a long time coming,
but the end of
Fish Hooks
is upon us.

Sure,
we finished up production
37 years ago.
But this Friday
April 4th
9:00 PM
(Pacific time)
the last and final 
episode
airs.

"The Big Woo"

Here's a little teaser of
what's to come:


Not every show actually gets a true finale
and this one gives Fish Hooks a sweet, heartfelt send-off.
I unabashedly admit I got a little misty
while we were making it.

Hope you do to.

Thursday, March 27, 2014

RIP ODERUS URUNGUS


On a lazy summer afternoon
whilst home from college
my best pals drove up to my house and shouted,

GET IN!

When I asked obvious questions like 
WHY 
and 
WHERE ARE WE GOING 
they replied with one word:

GWAR

I eyed them quizzically.
I say, good fellows...
What, pray tell, is a GWAR?

But they wouldn't say.
And we drove all the way into Philadelphia
with nary an explanation.

Eventually we ended up at a club called
The Revival.


Ah... music!
We got there in time to see
A Sub Pop band 
I liked a lot.
So that was cool.

But afterwards
 the stage became thick and choked with smoke.
An unholy heavy metal racket erupted 
from within and
ENORMOUS
HULKING 
CREATURES
stalked out from it's depths.


They were legion.
Some had instruments.
Most bore giant cartoonish weapons.
Some just leapt around in a less-than-half-naked state.
And it was only a matter of minutes before 
someone/thing was decapitated in a hail of 
fake blood, latex and 
EW...
was that raw meat?

This was


They were loud.
They were violent.
They were offensive.
They were funny.
And they were so over-the-top
in so many ways that you could't help but 
admire the lengths they went to entertain.

I saw them play many times afterwards.
Sometimes on tiny stages
and other times in venues large enough 
to be attacked by
a crack addicted dinosaur named
Gor Gor:


They were ALWAYS being attacked by something.
A giant robot sent from the Vatican
A Government Superhero Morality Squad
A Cybernetic Dead President
You name it.

Nothing was sacred.
Nothing was too ridiculous.
And they made fun of themselves even more than
they did everything else. 

So you could see why I thought they'd be 
perfect for an episode of
Codename: Kids Next Door.

Well...
not perfect.

I could't let this band of 
ultra-violent 
intergalactic 
perverted 
drug-addicted 
weirdos
ANYWHERE NEAR
a kids show.

But I could use their music.

I had the idea of taking two of their songs,
stripping out the lyrics
and rewriting them
to make a KND rock opera.

So I approached the band about getting the rights to the music for
and

And they agreed!
Even with the stipulation that 
we could only credit them as 
RAWG.

Great, right?!
Except no one in the band knew 
where the master tapes were.
So what'd they do?

THEY 
RE-RECORDED 
THE SONGS FOR US!

I'm still kicking myself for not 
making the time to fly down 
to Virginia to see them record.

Once we got the songs,
I doodled up a sooper rough board for
rock star storyboard artist 
She promptly threw it in the trash 
and made something better.

And thus
was born!


And now I hear that 
GWAR
founder and lead singer



I got to meet him once when he was 
in NYC for a GWAR art show.
 He was very nice,
very funny
and a great storyteller.

Sorry to see you go,
Oderus.
You made heavy metal fun!


Monday, March 24, 2014

CARTOON NETWORK ACTION PACK #41


We used to have a lot of fun 
writing and drawing comics for
Cartoon Network Action Pack.

Storyboard soopuh star
Maurice Fontenot 
always rocked some serious pencils,
like these from
OPERATION: SLITHER:









If you wanna see the whole story,
see if you can find a copy of
Action Pack #31:




Thursday, March 20, 2014


EARLY PEPPER ANN DESIGNS



Back before 
Pepper Ann
was 
Disney's 
Pepper Ann
she was a comic strip 
in YM Magazine
(aka Young and Modern Magazine)
(nee Young Miss Magazine)

Shockingly,
the internets don't have no
examples of the strip.
But I can assure you that PA
looked a lot like this guy:

Which isn't shocking since
created both
and
Pepper Ann.

Before Disney,
Sue pitched a
Pepper Ann series to 
Nickelodeon
but they asked for for it to
NOT
look like Fido.

Enter 
Mr. Warburton!

I had been working with Sue on 
Fido Dido stuffs for a long time.
We had similar styles and 
got along sooper good.
So she asked if I'd help
figure out what a
non-Fido 
Pepper Ann 
might look like.

We all know what PA ended up looking like...
but here are some early sketches that
Sue and I kicked around:







It's so fun
looking back at 
old stuff like this!

Monday, March 17, 2014

KENNY AND THE CHIMP LAYOUT DRAWINGS


A long time ago,
after a storyboard was done,
we did layout drawings:


They set up the scenes for
the overseas studios.


It put the characters a bit more on model
and served as waypoints for the animators.








These days storyboards are
MUCH MORE
meticulously posed out
and then cut together with the voices
to make an animatic.
So layouts aren't all 
that necessary.

Some shows 
(like The Simpsons)
do both layouts and animatics.
But most productions don't have 
the time or budget.

Still, it's nice to find some old ones in the archive!

 SOOPER ADDED BONUS:

After we recorded Kenny and the Chimp
I had all the voice actors 
sign the storyboard:


That's
Tom Kenny as Kenny
Frank Welker as Chimpy and Professor XXXL
Greg Berger as Hotline Voice
Candi Milo as Salmonella Fitzgerald
Eddie Deezen as Ice Cream Guy

Thursday, March 13, 2014

Monday, March 10, 2014

I RISKED IT ALL FOR A BILLY AND MANDY CLEAN-UP GUIDE


It's amazing what you can find 
when you break into
house late at night.

Most of it is 
NSFWOAR
(Not Safe For Work Or Anything Really)

But it was worth fighting past
the evil creatures 
Mr. Atoms
summoned from the 
depths of Burbank
to stop me.


For instance,
I was able to nab
an awesome
character clean-up guide from
The Grim Adventures of The Billy and Mandy.

It's a fantastically detailed crash course
on how to pound the B&M characters 
on model whilst still keeping the 
life and expression
that the storyboard artist 
gave them.

Check it:






















Totally worth
having a 1000 year curse put on me,
right?




Thursday, March 6, 2014

SO YA LIKE MOVIE COSTUMES?


Last week 
the fabulous 
and I went to a
fashion show/costume exhibit
at
The Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising


The fashion show part had former FIDM grad
and Project Runway star
showing off some of his Academy Award-inspired gowns.
which were lovely--
but yeah 
big deal
whatever
who cares
because 
BATTLE ARMOR!!!





No,
the fashion show 
didn't include these
costumes from 
Pacific Rim,
but 
the gallery show 
afterwards 
did!

Highlighting
many of this year's Oscar nominated films,
the exhibit spanned an impressive
cross-section of 
movies.

Like 
Star Trek: Into Darkness


Man of Steel
(the detail on this costume was sooper intricate)



GI Joe: Retaliation



My youngest son
went to pre-school with the son or 
Ray Park
(Snake Eyes, Darth Maul, The Toad, etc)
He's a really great guy
so we were psyched
to see his costume here:


I think this was from Thor:




One of the my favorite parts of the exhibit
was the paper-craft hair on
the mannequins:




Obviously 
it wasn't all
sci-fi 
fantasy 
action movie 
costumes
or
Mrs. Warburton
would have run screaming into the night.

There was stuff from
Anna Karenina:




The Great Gatsby:



American Hustle:




But 
yeah 
big deal
whatever
who cares
because 
SAMURAI!!!


The show is running until
April 26th
so you've got 
time to see it.

Details are over