"XIAOLIN" Warriors

Here's some ancient warrior spirits I did for XIAOLIN SHOWDOWN. We had no guidelines, only that they be from different cultures & eras in time. Here's some that I came up with:

This was an extra design I didn't have time to finish. Too bad; she's kinda cool.

Any of you XS fans who also like toys (and there might be one or two of you...) should be on the lookout for the new XIAOLIN SHOWDOWN action figures , available at a mega-store near you. Take it from someone who used to draw them, the sculpts are really good, plus they come with cool little accessories.

...and starring Chris Battle as himself

Cartoon people is funny. Sometimes we get all giddy/bored/drunk and draw our co-workers into the shows. All of our shows for Cartoon Network are chock full of cartoon cameos by their crew members. Witness:


I did some of the storyboards for "Dexter Detention" and as a goof, added a bunch of crew members to this list. The model designer did me one better and stuck me in with the other delinquents.


When an episode of PPG called for a guy who steals some Powerpuff dolls, Stef Choi decided I looked like a criminal & thus my life of cartoon petty thievery began.

Some Post-It Sketches

Believe it or not, those were actually done for work. (Working on an R-rated feature is a totally different kind of animal...)





I did this doodle a few years ago on a little 1.5" x 2" post-it, and it's been a favorite of mine. One of those few times I committed to laying down straight ink.

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Remember, kids: This Saturday night is the opening of THE UNICORN SHOW @ GALLERY NUCLEUS! It'll be a big, cool group show featuring work from a lot of my pals like Tony, Stef, Anna, Brianne, Jay, Jenny, Mari, Megan, and Shannon. They make all your favorite cartoons, so go support them!!!

GIANT ROBOTS!!

While working on DEXTER'S and PPG, I became known as the go-to-guy for giant robots. (...and if you ever watched those shows, you know there was a LOT of 'em...)

The infamous POWERPUFF DYNAMO:

Ya know when these robots do all their cool transformer shit? Someone has to figure out how all that stuff actually works:

For THE POWERPUFF GIRLS MOVIE, I had to design Kaboom Baboon's BaboomBot, which would be realized in CGI. This required WAY more detailed work than usual: Full turns with no cheats, special drawings for the workings of the hands, etc.

Here's the result:

...All that hard hand-drawn work probably just went to further the myth that 

all cartoons are just "done by a computer". *SIGH*

Dan Krall's Blog

In case you didn't know, this week my pal Dan Krall quietly started up a blog. Don't know the name? You know his work: Aside from designing backgrounds for DEXTER'S LABORATORY and THE POWERPUFF GIRLS, Dan helped Genndy Tartakovsky create the world of SAMURAI JACK, for which he won an Emmy for his Art Direction. After lending his magic to FOSTER'S HOME FOR IMAGINARY FRIENDS, and MY GYM PARTNER'S A MONKEY, he's now working for LAIKA on their upcoming feature CORALINE.

While Dan's website has been around for awhile, this is the first chance you all have to see sketches of his travels near and far. From Budapest to Burbank, Dan can't help but notice the beautiful ugly people out there and share them with us all.

Get yer geek on

This began as a color study for a marker drawing I was doing for an art trade and turned into... well, this:


The recipient asked for a Paul Rudish style SW pic. Nobody's better at being Paul than Paul, so I went for a Glenn Barr inspired design. (Not that I think I make for a better Glenn)

The TEENAGE ROBLOG

If you haven't checked it out recently, the good folks over on MY LIFE AS A TEENAGE ROBOT have been posting an avalanche of amazing work on their show blog. The latest post features stunning paintings of Prof. Wakeman's youthful adventures done in an old pulp magazine style.

MLAATR is one of the best designed shows around; Rob, Alex, and the gang definitely created something truly special throughout it's 3 seasons. Sadly, Nick passed on a 4th season, so we'll all have to look elsewhere for our weekly design fix. We can only hope for a DVD set someday...


Last year, Frederator published THE MLAATR SKETCHBOOK, available from Cafe Press. It's chock full of great pencil art from the show. Order one here while you still can!

I like it rough!

The best part about drawing has gotta be that first, rough blast of creativity. I always wind up doing my initial roughs on little bitty post-it notes and then enlarge the drawing for a final pass to clean it up a bit.

Here's the final product of one of those post-it drawings:

...and just 'cause everybody's pal Lambey is proudly flying his STAR WARS geek flag, I figured I'd to post this one, too:

New Year's Karma

In the interest of creating some positive karma for myself and also to help out a great bunch of kids, I'm turning my blog over for a moment to my friend Nile. She's got a great local organization to tell all my fellow Los Angeles residents about. Take it away, Nile:

OK, all you cool artist cartoonist people.... please check out Inner City Arts @ http://www.inner-cityarts.org. This is one of the coolest places on the planet. Situated in the heart of Skid Row (downtown LA) it is a place that inner city kids can change their life through art. My friend Kate Park (she is 13) is taking Animation there. Lots of inner city kids got into Cal Arts after spending time at ICA - and their lives were changed forever. Check out the website - but better still GO THERE and check out the place. They will give you a tour. It is AWWWWWESOME!!! And you art farts have so much to offer these kids!

PEACE,
Nile (a friend and fan of Chris Battle)

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.