I AM A CHARACTER DESIGNER AND A STORYBOARD ARTIST. THIS IS SOME OF THAT WORK.
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Zhu Zhu Tech Drawings
Pencil
Being a character designer isn’t always sitting around coming up with the look of a character. It also involves technical drawings like turnarounds, mouth charts for speech purposes, expression sheets, and action poses. You aren’t just creating the look of a character, you’re creating a personality to serve the story.
These are such drawings in developing the character of Jilly for the CGI animated film Zhu Zhu Pets: The Quest for Zhu based on the toy line that was popular at the time.
Happy Dragon
digital
Time for a little happy dragon action. This is a little optimistic reptile character I came up with to bring some smiles to the internet. It started with one of those head drawings, and I got to thinking I wanted to see what the rest of his body looked like. Before you knew it, a number of action poses sprung forth.
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Mickey Mouse Clubhouse
Ink & Digital
Back in the mid-aughts, I was hired for a brand new job description at Disney Television Animation to draw “storybooks” for a brand new show called Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. In the world of pre-school animation, storybooks are when you illustrate an episode from a story outline by the show’s writers which is then used to focus test the story with actual pre-schoolers. The feedback helps the writers write their scripts to maximize the educational content and the fun in the episode. Oftentimes, this pre-production art of mine helped influence the show visually, too, kind of like how visual development does for films and TV. I usually would only get two weeks from blank paper to final color art for each episode, so it was a whirlwind existence back then, but man, it was so cool getting to draw Mickey and the gang for the first two seasons of that show.
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CHARACTER DESIGNER CHARACTER DESIGN
Digital
What good is a character designer if he can’t even design himself?! This started as just a front 3/4 view self-caricature which later evolved into a full-on 2D character turn. Adorable, ain’t I?
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The Meeps
digital
A few years back, I was working on a proof of concept project with director Trevor Wall called The Meeps. Trevor had come up with the basic character designs of his animal rock band, and he asked if I might help him refine them and do the character designer technical drawings such as the turnarounds, mouthcharts, and anything else needed before these guys were built in CG.
When designing for CG and doing a turn, you have to think of the characters as if they were real three-dimensional sculptures. In CG, you can’t get away with typical 2D drawing cheats where some details are conveniently left out for the sake of a nice drawing. Everything will be there when it is modelled in CG, so your hand drawn turns have to be that way, too. Every spot, every hair curl, everything needs to be at the same height and position from one view of the turn to the next. It really requires a bit of extra thinking.
The characters were animated in a music video that is on YouTube. I included a few screen grabs here so you can see the final result.
SCOOBY DOO & GUESS WHO?
Digital
Back in 2017, producer Chris Bailey was beginning to get his Scooby Doo television series off the ground at Warner Bros. I was brought in early on as one of the freelance character designers and worked on a couple of episodes before they settled on hiring an in-house designer. What a thrill to get to work on a classic show like this for a few weeks. Also a thrill was getting to work on the episode where Batman and Joker were guest stars, voiced by the original voices from the ‘90s animated Batman show, Kevin Conroy and Mark Hamill.
Working with Chris, these are a few of my drawings (with the exception of Batman which was all Chris).
GLOE GIRAFFE DOG TURNS
Digital
I was the in-house character designer on Journey to GloE, a production at Splash Entertainmentbased on the GloE Bear toy. The story took viewers into a land of fantasy with all kinds of interesting creatures. This one was a favorite of mine – a giraffe dog creature conjured up in the imagination of a little girl based on two of her favorite toys. The production was computer-generated, which means as a designer, you need to be very precise with your two-dimensional drawings as if you were making a physical sculpture – from one turn pose to the next, every little detail needs to be in its proper place because it actually will become a sculpture in the computer. There are no drawing cheats you can do as you would normally have with a hand-drawn animated production. Then written notes are always helpful to clarify things for the artists who follow you in the production pipeline.
There’s more about Journey to GloE on the studio’s website which you can see by CLICKING HERE.
TIM VISUAL DEVELOPMENT
Watercolor, gouache & colored pencil
A few years back, my friend Brian Ochab had an idea to do a parody film of Vincent, a short
stop-motion film Tim Burton made at the beginning of his directing career that told the story of a boy who wanted to be like Vincent Price that was narrated by Price. Brian turned it around making his story about a boy who wanted to be like Tim Burton which Sir Christopher Lee was kind enough to narrate for us. I was art directing the short which involved character designs and visual development before we decided not to pursue our groovy little production. These were a few of the vis dev pieces of which I was quite fond.
ANIMAL CHARACTER DESIGNS
Digital
In 2023, I worked on an educational children’s series for both publishing and limited animation where I had to design a number of characters. Unlike most projects I have worked on, this one came with the goal to use as few lines as possible within the characters, choosing instead to separate shapes with the use of color. Challenge accepted. These are a few of the animal characters that came from my stylus throughout the year.
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ZHU ZHU PETS: THE QUEST FOR ZHU
Pencil
Zhu Zhu Pets were a VERY popular line of toys – little electronic hamsters that would roll around making charming squeaky noises. Cepia, the toy company behind them, hired Moonscoop (now Splash Entertainment) to create some movies and webisodes based on the toys. Working with director Bob Doucette, Stephen Silver and I were the character designers for the whole property.
These are a few of my action drawings created for the first film, The Quest for Zhu.
THE TESLA TWINS
Digital
While not an animation project, designing characters for a comic book series took on the same design principles as animation. The brainchild of Jeff Knurek who draws the Jumble puzzle comic in newspapers, The Tesla Twins comics were used to teach electrical science to kids in an exciting superhero way. While what you see here are my character design drawings, Jeff wrote and drew the comic books.
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LITTLE BROTHER
Digital
Sometimes the work of a character designer involves LOTS of exploration. This was for an
animated project (that shall remain unnamed) where the assignment was to design a little
brother to a tween girl that had already been established in a previous animated project. So,
one needed to follow a certain look that was already in place, as well as follow the story that
said he was an overweight kid wearing a hoodie, jeans, and sneakers. The client for this project couldn’t quite figure out what they wanted exactly. I think I counted at least sixty variations that I drew, and there was another character designer also working on ideas. The client finally picked one because we were up against a deadline in order to stay on schedule! It just happens that way sometimes, so you roll with it.
THE ROCKETEER STORYBOOK
Digital
Back in 2018, the Wild Canary studio was hard at work on a new interpretation of The
Rocketeer for children, following the adventures of a young girl who was the granddaughter of the original Rocketeer character from Dave Stevens’ comic books and the 1990’s era Disney movie. I was hired as a freelancer to help with prop designs for the pilot episode, as well as painting a storybook.
In the world of pre-school animated shows, storybooks are not published books you’d find in a store. They are an illustrated version of an episode that is taken into pre-schools and read to
kids like a book for the sake of focus testing the stories. I did this kind of work for Disney in the mid-aughts for Mickey Mouse Clubhouse and the My Friends Tigger & Pooh shows. For The Rocketeer, I was asked to paint this storybook that was drawn by another artist (who it was, I do not know). So, here are a few of my digital paintings for The Rocketeer.
GLOE FACIAL EXPRESSIONS
Digital
As the in-house character designer on Journey to GloE (produced at Splash Entertainment
based on the GloE Bear toy), one of my duties was to draw facial expressions of many of the
characters. Working with director Bob Doucette on the style and range of exaggeration he
desired. The humans were a little more restrained, while many fantasy creatures were allowed
to have a broader range of zaniness to their facial movements.
There’s more about Journey to GloE on the studio’s website which you can see by CLICKING HERE.
LALALOOPSY
Digital
While working for independent studio Moonscoop (now Splash Entertainment), I was the lead character designer for two seasons of the Lalaloopsy television show that aired on Nick Jr., along with designs for several Lalaloopsy-themed webisodes and TV/DVD movies. It was a real challenge to take a very specific style of toy that was already on the market and convert the characters to a workable design for animation, along with designing special poses, countless costumes, and variations on their hairstyles all in service to the stories. I liked to say my job involved lots of polka dots and bows.
Unfortunately, I am not allowed to publicly post any of my hundreds of pieces of art for those
shows. What I will post, though, is this self-caricature I did in the style of the show that gives you a sense of the show’s look. AND, I will share these images of some of the toys that were based on costumes I designed for the show. One of my favorites was the Marie Antoinette inspired dress and bouffant hair made of spaghetti & meatballs for character Jewel Sparkles, and the mustached Bea Spells-a-Lot. It was just so delightfully silly.
FAIRY VISUAL DEVELOPMENT
Digital
While working on a project all about fairies, an assignment that came across my desk was to
come up with a design for a “funny little poofy creature.” Just that description alone conjures up a lot of ideas in one’s mind, but after consulting the script, this was the array of choices
presented to our client. Now if only I could remember which one they picked!
ALLIGATOR VARIATIONS
Mixed media
Over the years, I’ve had reason to design alligators for various projects. It sure is a fun creature to draw – one with limitless possibilities as evidenced by these variations. I kinda like that Naplegator. He’d be a diminutive force to reckon with!
BackStoryboards
