Mac 'n' Cheese

I'm sure most Moms can relate to this.

Orange Sweater

Finally...my first post of 2013.

Merry Christmas!

 This year's Christmas card.

SpongeBob Christmas Illustration

I was commissioned to do this papercraft piece as one in a series of SpongeBob Squarepants Christmas cards. This is not a commercial illustration but simply an internal Nickelodeon/Viacom piece.

T.U.F.F. Puppy Tank Commander

Here's a page of rough pre-storyboard designs I did for T.U.F.F. Puppy episode "TUFF Choices". The script called for a badger tank commander and this is what I conceived -- a WWII-style commander. Storyboard artist Dave Thomas ended up taking the character in a different (and better) direction, but I had fun doing these anyway. 

Dogs

These are two pages of development I did a few months ago for a pilot. The client did not approve the designs.

P.J. Bear

A page of rough development sketches for a recent project.

Joe Friday & Bill Gannon

Watching the late '60s Dragnet on Netflix inspired me to draw Sergeant Joe Friday and his partner Officer Bill Gannon. I did this in about 2 hours.

Dance!

"Dance!" is another paper-craft piece I submitted for July's gallery at Nick. I did a watercolor wash as a simple backdrop.

Superman

Superman is a paper-craft piece I did recently for the July studio-wide gallery show at Nickelodeon. Beneath are the rough Post-It sketch and the cleaned-up rough.

HULK

I thought I would try to veer off from working in my usual cartoon style in favor of a more 3-dimensional comic book style. Hulk began as a very rough Post-It drawing, scanned in, cleaned up and colored in Sketchbook. I tried to turn this one around as fast as possible; it took me about three hours.

Ginger

Working on my color design and playing around with dry-brush textures. This one also began as a Post-It drawing, scanned in, redrawn in Sketchbook and colored in Photoshop.

Purple Monster

Here's #1 in a brief run of monster designs I'm doing for fun. This one started off as a Post-It note sketch, redrawn, inked and colored in Sketchbook.

T.U.F.F. Puppy "Dog's Best Friend"

KIL-R deceptively appears to be a friendly robot but, at Snaptrap's command, transforms into a laser-shooting "killing" machine programmed to fight Dudley and his fellow T.U.F.F. agents. I designed these for "Dog's Best Friend", season 2, episode 42.

Waitress

This waitress started off as a Post-It sketch, scanned in and redrawn in Autodesk Sketchbook, then colored in Photoshop. (Come to think of it, if this gal waited my table, I'd be worried about finding a long strand of brown hair on my plate.)

Vega-Tables

No, I didn't spell "vegetables" incorrectly. You can blame composer Brian Wilson and lyricist Van Dyke Parks whose song "Vega-Tables" from the SMiLE album is the inspiration for this little illustration. The song is silly fun; my wife and I love Wilson's catchy melody and Parks' clever lyrics: "If you brought a big, brown bag of them home, I'd jump up and down and hope you toss me a carrot."

The Vacation

I bet every parent feels like this when going on a trip with the little ones in tow. (I feel like this when my wife and I take the kids to the grocery store!) I thought I would show my process from start to finish. It seems like I usually begin with a good idea drawn badly, as you can see from the Post-It sketch. The most important first step is getting the idea down on paper quickly, no matter how rough, cryptic or terrible the drawing is. I then scanned in the drawing and came up with a more refined, but still rough, drawing using Autodesk Sketchbook. I drew some of the elements in different colors to clarify the composition in my mind. Next, I cleaned up (or inked) the drawing in black, also using Sketchbook. Finally, I brought the drawing into Photoshop and colored it with pastel dry brushes.

Big Bad Wolf

 This is the third papercraft piece I did which appeared in last month's gallery show at Nick. The piece measures 11x11".

Fireman

"Fireman" is paper-craft piece #2 from this month's gallery show at Nick. This piece is currently available for sale.

Cereal Box

My first post of 2012 is from this month's gallery show at Nickelodeon featuring the artwork of the T.U.F.F. Puppy crew. This is another one of my paper-cut pieces, this time a vintage-style cereal box.  Most of the piece is hand-cut pieces of colored paper, then mounted on a pine box roughly the size of a cereal box. Below is the original sketch. This one was a lot of fun. This piece is currently available for sale.

T.U.F.F. Puppy "A Doomed Christmas"

Here are two assembled pages of designs I did for the recently-aired T.U.F.F. Puppy episode "A Doomed Christmas". (Shout-out to super-awesome storyboard artist Fred Gonzales!)

Santa Dude

Based on a real guy my wife and I saw standing on a Burbank street corner wearing a bright red zip-up sweatshirt, matching jeans, brown socks, brown shoes, and a Santa hat...while taking drags on a cigarette.

1950s Stewardess #3

I finally got around to coloring the third and final stewardess in the series. I went back to the line-less, sponge-painting style of #1, which knocks #2 out of continuity, but oh well.

Animation Award Nomination!

http://www.annieawards.org/consideration.html

Wow! I came into Nick this morning to happily discover that I received a nomination for the 2011 Animation Awards (Annies) in the "Character Design In a Television Production" category for my work on the T.U.F.F. Puppy episode "Iron Mutt"! I'm incredibly excited and humbled to be a first-time nominee. Thank you to my wife and family, creator Butch Hartman, art director George Goodchild and board artist Brandon Kruse. Best wishes to all my fellow nominees!

Race Car

Here's a piece of "pro bono" development freelance I did a year ago which was not accepted. I had a lot of fun designing and painting my first race car.

Red Sweater

Just another fun exercise in color styling and digital sponge-brushing.

The Duke

The Karate Kid

Listening to Bill Conti's score to The Karate Kid (1984) inspired me to do a quick sketch of Mr. Miyagi and Daniel LaRusso doing his famous "crane technique". I did it in one pass, without overlays, in about three minutes. The impromptu drawing surprised me and I thought the likenesses of the caricatures were pretty good, so I spent an hour coloring it. It might have been a good idea to have Mr. Miyagi holding a small Bonsai tree, but 'oh well.' This one was a lot of fun to do!