“3-2-1 Penguins!” Character Designs

“3-2-1 Penguins!” Character Designs

On Saturday morning NBC aired another episode of “3-2-1 Penguins!” which I was fortunate enough to work on. For much of the series my job was to design various aliens which the Penguins would encounter as they hopped from planet to planet. If the script called for a prop or gag that would change a character’s appearance, it was also my job to do a concept sketch and/or turnaround drawings so that the modelers and animators could replicate it correctly.

This particular episode (“Practical Hoax”) didn’t require any new characters. However, the script called for several “photographs” of various characters and it was my job to illustrate the “photos”. I’ll show you those tomorrow. In the mean time, here’s a few of the concept sketches I did for this episode:

fidgelwithpieclrv1.jpg

This episode featured several practical jokes. Here Zidgel, the ships science officer, gets hit in the face with a pie.

midgelfeetwithglueclrv1a.jpg

Midgel gets stuck in some glue.

zidgelwithguacrghv1.jpg

For another practical joke, someone puts guacamole in Captain Zidgel’s hair gel. I did a few sketches to experiment with how that might look.

zidgelwithguacclrv1a.jpg

Ultimately the director chose version A.

Tomorrow: Cartoon “photos”!