For the last two years I’ve sent Christmas packages to many of the clients I’ve worked with during that year. Now I’m debating whether or not to send anything this year. Two years ago I sent out a fairly elaborate package (pictured). I bought giant-sized Hershey’s Symphony chocolate bars, removed the labels and replaced them […]

Sad news. It appears that VeggieTales may soon be no more. Big Idea, the studio that fifteen years ago gave us Larry the Cucumber and Bob the Tomato, has recently laid off most of its staff and announced that the company’s owners are facing bankruptcy. Details are posted at Phil Vischer’s blog. This isn’t the […]

I recently ordered a copy of Kyle Baker’s new book How To Draw Stupid and Other Essentials of Cartooning (Amazon.com link). For those of you who aren’t familiar with Baker’s work, he’s a prolific cartoonist with a background in comic books and animation. His work has appeared in numerous publications including BusinessWeek, Entertainment Weekly, The […]

Tod Carter is an uber-talented artist. He’s worn a lot of hats over the years from animator to story artist to director to illustrator. He’s worked on projects for companies such as Disney, DreamWorks, and Big Idea (VeggieTales) as well as several TV commercials. I had the privilege of working under him on 3-2-1 Penguins! […]

Last Saturday NBC aired another new episode of 3-2-1 Penguins! Here’s some of the character design work I did for that episode. In this episode the Penguins and the kids land on a planet inhabited by alligator-like characters. This guy was the Emporer. The script described him as an Elvis fan and director requested that […]

As I mentioned in my last post, I recently attended the Motion 08 animation conference in New Mexico. One of my favorite seminars was “Character Design: Capturing Ethnicity”  given by Dan Haskett.  Haskett is a Disney veteran who has spent the last twenty years working all over Hollywood as a character designer. He contributed design […]