Super Muerto Brothers!

Here's two pieces I did for a special Dia de Los Muertos art show featuring works by the EL TIGRE crew. Dia de Los Muertos is the Mexican Day of the Dead celebration, and perhaps the most recognizable image of this holiday is the calaca. Borrowing a page (or maybe a whole chapter) from Pringle, I came up with these guys:



If I can manage to find a local printer in time (I moved last year and don't know where to find jack shit in my new environs), they'll be hanging in the lobby at Nickelodeon in Burbank for Halloween, that other Gringo holiday.

*HOT NEW UPDATE! Thanks to an assist from everybody's pal Lambey, the Brothers Muerto will be on display! Come on down for margaritas, kids!

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EL TIGRE Sneak Peek now online!

Check out the freshly leaked preview for Jorge Gutierrez & Sandra Equiha's EL TIGRE! I've been doing some work on the series for a few months now, and while I had nothing to do with this promo, you should definitely take a peek at what's gonna be one of the best new cartoons for '07!

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PS: Many thanks to my NY cartoon pals Diane, Nina, and "Mister" Tom for finding time to hang out while I was in yer fine city!

Animal Farm

Naw, I'm not gonna get all Orwellian on you; Just thought I'd share a couple of animal designs from XIAOLIN SHOWDOWN:

Sorry, no rabid squirrels this week.

As a bonus, here's some phone doodles I did while I was
on hold with Apple Support last week.

MELTDOWN!

Tired of looking at the same old post for the past few weeks? So am I. My computer, on the other hand, couldn't care less. Why else would the hard drive fail? That's right-- right in the middle of freelance, my trusty lil' G4 made a nice, whiny pop and shut down for good. A trip to the Apple Store confirmed the worst: my lil' buddy's HD was a goner. While replacing a hard drive is easy, restoring your system from your back-up HD is another thing entirely. Things aren't going smoothly, so don't expect any pretty new artwork for a few more days.

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YOU MUST GO TO THIS ART SHOW!

Check it out: This weekend, it's time for another cool show by cartoon superstars Chris Reccardi and Lynne Naylor at M MODERN GALLERY in Palm Springs. It all goes down Saturday October 14, from 7:00-10:00 pm, so make the drive out to the desert to see some of the coolest art ever!

XIAOLIN Dim Sum

After last week's crocodile tease, here's some assorted tasty XIAOLIN SHOWDOWN morsels for all:

Yeah, but what have you done for me lately?

I'm so dang busy these days, it's hard to find the time to spiff up my artwork to make it blog-worthy. Since most of that stuff is only half-polished, here's a giant prehistoric crocodile from XIOALIN SHOWDOWN to tide you over: It's hanging out in a deep-sea cavern next to Atlantis, so that's why it's got the glowing eyes 'n' stuff. .............................................

TOP SECRET!

People sometimes ask me "What are you working on now?" and "When can you post some stuff from EL SUPERBEASTO?" Well, it's like this: I recently finished up work on BEASTO, and it won't be coming out 'til 2007, so in the meantime, I can't post any of the artwork I did for the movie. (They even made us sign papers that specifically mentioned blogs!) Maybe if they put some of my art on the official website, it can be considered "declassified", but not until then, I guess. ....so as I search for that next cool project, I'm doing some work on Jorge Guiterrez & Sandra Equihua's wild new show at Nickelodeon, EL TIGRE. That won't be out until 2007 either, so you can't see any of my stuff for that, too. :( ...I'm also working with the cool cats over at GHOSTBOT on a sooper secret project that I can't even tell you about! What's next for this kid? As soon as I know, I'll let all of you know....

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HOW DID I ALMOST MISS THIS ONE?

Giant Robot's sister store GR2 has an awesome Post-It art show, POST DEUX, on display thru September 19. Their walls are covered in tons of the little yellow stickies (Nearly 2,000) featuring the doodles of 32 different artists. Super-cool; Check it out! ....and be sure to stop at Beard Papa for creampuffs before you leave.

I'm a simple man

Sometimes, it's the simple props that are the most fun:






Even a complex prop like a cop car can be made simple:

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THE TRUTH ABOUT ANIMATION

This is a quote by a good friend of mine in the biz, who is actually a totally happy, upbeat, successful guy. He is also an awesome cynic. I'm not bitter (for reals!), I just find this too funny, and 100% acurate. Remember, deep inside every cynic is a frustrated optimist. :)

NOTE: This post contains a bad word.

Doodle Dump

As usual, most of these are all done on 2x3 Post-Its.

I think aliens would enjoy the Japanese athetic.

I don't know what this is about; Maybe that we don't send letters or cards anymore 'cause of e-mail?

Okay, this was done on 4x6

O-yasumi nasai!

Sweat Shop!

This one's for everyone who went down to Comic-con and got hot 'n' sweaty amongst the nerd herd:


I didn't go myself, but I felt the hot 'n' sweaty out here in the San Fernando Valley as record temperatures blew out power to several lucky areas last Saturday, including our block. For 2 and a half days, 108 degree temperatures turned our home into a lovely mid-century oven. Perfect conditions for attempting to finish the freelance I had under-taken! Trying to work in a crowded, noisy coffee joint (not recommended) led to finally renting a hotel room the 2nd night so I could work and we could actually sleep.

Today, power was restored..... and we had a refridgerator to clean out. So thanks for putting up with the lack of a new post for the *big* weekend. I have a new batch of doodles to post once I clean 'em up a bit, so just be patient...

...and if you didn't go to Comic-con, this is all you missed.

Shady Business

Nothing too fancy here... just some stuff where I had to do some lighting effects:




Sometimes to draw the lighting effect, ya gotta rework the board drawing. In this case, the Powerpuff Girls are so specific in their posing (Due to their flat, UPA-inspired design) that only those of us who worked on the show since the beginning knew how to pose them correctly. There are often rules as to how a character can be posed in order to work with their unique designs. The PPGs probably gave freelance board artists more headaches than any other show at the time... (other than DEXTER'S LAB)

This is an example of what we would call "Models as layout":

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POWERPUFF Z EPISODES ON YOUTUBE



A weird experience for those of us that worked on the original, but it's pretty cool. You can check out full episodes and more here.

GOIN' APESHIT!

Here's some more stuff from the BILLY & MANDY episode that featured the "Anime" Billy & Mandy. The little Chim-Chim-esque monkey winds up coming into the "real" world, and eventually goes mano-a-mano with Grim to see who gets to be the kids' new best pal. Oh yeah, they fight John Woo style with household cleaning products. (Don't ask)







...and just in case you're curious to see how those anime-style Billy & Mandy turned out, here ya go:

PEACE OUT, G.