The First Audience Member

I want to thank Alex for all the posts he's put up recently. It's been fun for me to review these long buried images. Some one asked why the first 'final' Jenny was scrapped. It's simple. My wife hated the design. She's is the first audience member for most of what I do and one of the few non-artists in my daily life. Also I like her a little bit and tend to value her opinion. I don't necessarliy always agree (she liked the pilot Wakeman better than the series Wakeman) but she reacted so strongly about Jenny that it made us reconsider our decision. You'll notice that the body stayed the same but we ended up swapping in a different head that we all really liked. Again my wife pushed for that head design. Years later she would actaully help create an episode by writing the outline for "Around the World in 80 pieces".

The Jenny that never was

After attempting many, many different takes on the robot girl character, Rob and I finally narrowed them down and agreed on a final direction for the design, and preparations were made to start story-boarding. Here is that final jenny design.



Luckily it didn't take us long to realize that we were wrong.

pre-prehistoric Jenny

Once upon a time (say...1998) Jenny existed only as words on paper and we had no idea what she looked like. These are some of the very first xj9's sketched as we tried to find her look and personality.



More to come...

pre-historic Jenny and pals

My art-director days are numbered here on mlaatr. Before they boot me out completely I thought that it would be a neat idea to start posting some of our more interesting production and development artwork from our archives before it all gets packed up. Enjoy!
Here's our four leads as they appeared in the pilot "My Neighbor is a Teenage Robot". Check out the Jenny with shoulder pads, beak-like lips, and- a square belly button?

My Life as a Teenage Wakeman?

Greetings! While in retrospect 39 half-hours and 73 individual stories (I think) seems like quite an accomplishment, we had hoped to continue simply because we had more stories to tell. While there's still a few suprises in store in the tail-end of season three, there are a few sagas that will never be seen. Such as this one: Jenny was to travel back in time to fight side by side with her mother, a teen-aged rookie member of the Skyway Patrol. Alas, so much of Nora's mysterious history will forever remain locked away inside Renzetti's glossy dome.

Visit the Frederator blog!

Fred Seibert, the grandfather of TR and all other Oh Yeah Cartoons, has a wonderful and wide ranging blog which covers a host of cartoon related topics. Many of the next batch of Oh Yeah Cartoon creators blog over there and Fred himself posts on a much more regular basis than yours truly. Recently he's been posting Teenage Robot title cards for THIRD Season. Consider it your first sneak peek.

http://newtoons.frederator.com/post/635

Have a Merry Christmas, Happy Holiday and a Robotic New Year

Tried to get some Alex artwork up over the last couple days but Blogspot is not cooperating. Will try again in 2006, after we get back from our winterbreak. In the meantime check out our new 2006 calenadar at Cafe Press.

http://www.cafepress.com/frederator.17513582


Best wishes to all our fans for a happy, joyful holiday season and a prosperous new year!

Annie Nominations Are In!

And MLAATR received 3 nominations. In addition to the general "Best TV Show" category, Alex Kirwan recieved a nomination for Production Design and Bryan Arnett got one for Character Design. Bryan is soft spoken but oh so talented with a pencil (and a golf club). You may recognize these Arnett designs from our one hour special.

Jenny A to Z Part 2

Jenny A to Z Part 1

Here are the Instructional Sheets we give to our artists on how to build Global Robotic Response Unit XJ9.