COCONUT FRED

One of my more recent gigs was Character Supervisor for Kid's WB's COCONUT FRED'S FRUIT SALAD ISLAND. It was my first time designing for a Flash animated show, and it turned out to be a fun gig! I was able to draw even looser than ever before, eventually developing a style that emulated one of my favorite MAD Magazine artists, Paul Coker Jr., and famed children's book author Jolly Roger Bradfield.








You can check out the work of some my friends/co-conspirators from CF like Matt Danner, Aaron Simpson, Mindy Allen, Tony Candelaria, and Gerald DeJesus by clicking on their names.

Random doodles

Ya gotta give me props

Some people think I'm just a character designer. Some people think I'm just a prop designer. The real answer is I'm BOTH. While working on DEXTER'S and PPG, we would design characters, props, and effects. (One or two of these is from JOHNNY TEST, which I freelanced while supervising characters on another show) Here's a sampling of some of my prop designs:

Simple props like these are fun, too:

BOOM.

Coming soon: GIANT ROBOTS

Just in time for Christmas!

This is a little piece I did for an upcoming feature I'm working on. Not sure if she'll make it into the film, since story details aren't final, so I thought she should have a chance to be seen:

This is the first thing I've ever colored digitally, by the way. (That's probably obvious) Here's the original
post-it clean-up:

Happy Holidays to all my cartoon pals & all my new blogger friends, too!

Boys ♥ STAR WARS

... and the sooner you gals get used to it, the better.

Ain't title cards the greatest?

Man, I love cartoons that still do title cards. DEXTER'S LAB was one of those shows that featured new, hand-painted title cards for each short.(Painted by the very talented Martin Ansolabehere and Sue Mondt) Here's a few of the ones I drew:

PUFF Pic

I did this for the POWERPUFF GIRLS MOVIE. It was going to be finished as a "realistic" photo of the girls and probably would have filled the entire screen when a character held it up to the camera. It wound up getting cut because of a goof-up with a tie-in contest on Cartoon Network's website. Dang.

The Anime Adventures of BILLY & MANDY

I recently did some freelance for THE GRIM ADVENTURES OF BILLY & MANDY, where I had to design anime versions of Billy and Mandy, who normally look like this:


I'm mainly a cartoony guy, not an action guy, but I guess I faked it reasonably well:




You can expect alot of swish pan BGs in this sequence, where they're fighting ninjas or something.


The monkey is supposed to be like Chim-Chim from the old SPEED RACER cartoons.

...this is how Grim turned out.

From the cutting room floor

This Librarian I designed for DEXTER'S LAB wound up getting her scene cut. I always liked this sketch, so now she can live on in cyber-space.

CARTOON BREW Shoutout!

Amid Amidi and his animation super-site Cartoon Brew currently feature a nice little blurb about some of us Cartoon Network alumni and our blogs (Including one of my cartoon pals Don Shank). Check out the posting here (Scroll down to the 3rd posting)

Not familiar with Cartoon Brew? You owe it to yourself to check it out on a daily basis; Lots of news about what's going on in animation around the world, plus Amid's always promoting all the amazing artists out there, so you might discover a new favorite. (Be sure to also check out Amid's blog Cartoon Modern, showcasing amazing mid-century animation design. ...and you know us Cartoon Network kids love us some UPA!)

Thanks for the mention, Amid!

Dexter Puffs

Okay, time for some more stuff from DEXTER'S LAB and POWERPUFF GIRLS: (Easily among my favorite shows that I've worked on)

COOL ART SHOW ALERT!

Want to see some really cool art by some true cartoon superstars? Then head out to M MODERN GALLERY
in Palm Springs this upcoming weekend of November 19 to check out GALAXIE, a new art show featuring paintings by Chris Reccardi and Lynne Naylor.

For those of you that don't know them, this husband and wife team are responsible for alot of the coolness found in many of your favorite cartoons! (REN & STIMPY, DEXTER'S LABORATORY, POWERPUFF GIRLS, SAMURAI JACK, and currently SUPER MONKEY ROBOT TEAM HYPERFORCE GO!) Their paintings must be seen to be believed. Take a trip out there and check it out; You won't be disappointed!

Click on the link in the text above for the gallery site. Check out Chris and Lynne's sites in the links section on your right.

So far, so good...

Looks like things are off to a good start, despite some snafus trying to post this afternoon. Thanks to everyone for the warm wishes; I hope to keep posting enough stuff to keep everyone coming back often!

Most of you know me, but for those that don't, from the 1st post, you can see that among other things, I've worked on animated TV shows such as DEXTER'S LABORATORY, THE POWERPUFF GIRLS, & SAMURAI JACK for Cartoon Network. It was an amazing run of great shows that I was privileged to be a part of. I got to work with a bunch of truly amazing artists, some of which have cool websites you can check out by clicking on the links section!

Just to switch things up, tho, I thought I'd post some work I did for Kids' WB's XIAOLIN SHOWDOWN . Since the characters were always getting into adventures around the world, we got to draw alot of fun stuff...


It's fun doing research for these kinds of characters...

...obviously me doing a little Mike Mignola riff...

It's about damn time!

Hey everyone; Welcome to my shiny new blog. After going through years of people asking me "Where's your website?" and then watching nearly every one of my pals start up blogs this year, I decided to jump on board and get my stuff up on the web, too.

Most of what you'll see here is from my work as a character designer in the animation biz, but maybe (just maybe) I'll actually find some time to post some personal artwork, too.

Thanks for stopping by!