colorful characters?

Here are some miscellaneous marker comps, all of them designs I had trouble "seeing" until I sketched them in color.

Too Hot for TV!

Here's a very different sort of character evolution.
We professional cartoonists like to create work that amuses both ourselves and our peers, and occasionally forget that we are actually creating product for a children's network. Luckily, there's a whole bunch of people whose jobs are to make sure no one oversteps the boundary.

I thought it was pretty funny to see Bernie Peterson's sexy Coppertone girl (for upcoming ep "infectious Personality") have her innocence restored in this series of revisions and re-revisions. Katie Rice and Jill Friemark did the designs.

Marty Party

I thought I might give a glimpse of how involving the design process can be, even for a one shot character. While technically would-be Wakeman boyfriend Marty Rossians was not a villain, he needed to visually give the impression that he was one. At first I start doodling faces, trying lots of different ideas. Here I work fast, spontaneity helps provide surprising results I wouldn't arrive at otherwise.
I avoid narrowing in on a particular direction for a little while. I'll show all these options to Rob and he'll help give me some focus.
Here I'm beginning to consider his silhouette, and deciding which body type and shapes form the most pleasing contrast when compared to Wakeman. I'm also deciding what kind of cartoon animal he should resemble.
Nearly there, the final will be a combo of these two.
Color always helps me find the final design. It shows me the amount of detail actually required in the line-drawing,how many shapes it needs to be broken into. It also really fleshes out the personality (violet skin? Now that's evil!).
Here's the final pencil rough, ready for clean up. As you can see, we decided an owl-man seemed to have the most humorous/creepy effect.

Misty Memories

Did someone say Misty? That sounds like a request just unusual enough to honor!When Scott Peterson's first spec outline for us included a teenage, female space-ninja, I knew he was a good fit for the show. However, I started to re-think that decision when he had the audacity to point out to me that my first misty design (above) looked a little similar to Tiff. Oh, I suppose he had a point.

Crust Crazy!

So you like Brit and Tiff? Well, there's plenty more where that came from. These great sketches by Jill Friemark suggest some slightly different stylistic directions for the series. Even the drawings that were stylistically different than what we ended up with were very useful in honing the personalities (and fashion sense) of what would eventually become two of our very favorite characters.

Brit and Tiff beginnings

When we learned that Teenage Robot would become a tv series it was several years after the pilot was made, and Rob and I wanted to tackle the show with a new stylistic approach. Initially it was easier to find that new style through developing characters we had never seen before, so I started playing with the female bullie cousins Rob had described to me. At first I simply enjoyed playing with the visual style and costume ideas, but the suprise was watching how their personalities began to solidify (thanks to some valuable direction from Mr. Renzetti).

Who says we're original?

Here are some black and white villian portraits that were eventually painted (in color) for the "Legion of Evil" episode. We've always found it fun (and a little bit of extra work) to break the show's usual visual style to make a special story-point, or to create a dramatic effect. Some of these are homages to artists, comics, or animation of which we are fond. These still images were inspired by a scene in the classic Bob Clampett/Daffy Duck cartoon "The Great Piggy Bank Robbery" pictured below. What tributes have you recognized?

Seonna's "Animus"

I realized that we've yet to plug Animus, a beautiful new book written and illustrated by our own our emmy-winning lead backround painter Seonna Hong. The design,colors, and technique are all truly inspiring, the story is melancholy-sweet, and it's a pop-book to boot! You can get yours at Flopdoodle, as well as at other places.

Jenny comes of age

I thought that it might be interesting to note that Jenny's evolution didn't stop when the series began. As a design is finally put to the test by a team of artists there is usually a natural streamlining and strengthening process that happens, and sometimes it takes the model sheets a season or so to catch up. Here's a comparisson of the seasons one and two xj9's. The individual differences are subtle, but the overall effect is (hopefully) more appealing.

the birth of Jen?

Here is the sketch that Tracy (Rob's wife) identified as more appealing than the "final" results of our labor, and thus Jenny began to take her more familiar form. I had drawn this sketch, but had dismissed it early on, probably because I had felt it was less complex than some of our other concepts, and therefore less interesting. There are two valuable lessons here, both of which I've revisited and relearned many, many times in 7-8 years since;
1) In hand drawn animation, simplicity is one of your greatest allies, stripping away that which is not important is almost always more important than adding fanciness on top, and 2) It's difficult to have perspective when you're deep in the trenches.