“3-2-1 Penguins!” TV Series Now On DVD

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Last year I had the privilege of working as a character designer for 3-2-1 Penguins!, a Saturday morning animated series currently airing on NBC. Penguins began it’s life on VHS back in the 1990’s with several episodes being produced by Big Idea (the company that gave us VeggieTales). Last year NBC warmed up to the property and ordered an entire season of brand-new episodes for their Saturday morning TV block.

3-2-1 Penguins! could best be described as Star Trek meets Looney Tunes. Four zany penguins (Zidgel, Fidgel, Midgel, and Kevin) travel the universe in their space ship, taking along two kids (Jason and Michelle) to help them on their missions. Their main enemy is Cavitus, a melodramatic villain who is really just a hamster parading around inside of a giant robot suit. Each episode involves a run-in of some sort with aliens, robots, and other wacky interplanetary creatures (one episode takes place on a planet inhabited by lawn flamingos and garden gnomes). In the course of each episode Jason and Michelle learn a biblical lesson from the book of Proverbs.

This week the series began its rollout onto DVD. “Save the Planets!” (Amazon.com link) is a one-disc DVD containing three episodes from the TV version of the series:

  • The Green-Eyed Monster
  • More is More
  • Give and Let Give

Special features include:

  • Audio Commentary on all three episodes
  • How to Draw Kevin and Chancellor Gutt (one of the character’s I designed)
  • Animation Progression Reel
  • Pearls of Wisdom
  • Make Your Own Planet
  • Video Trivia
  • Discussion Guide
  • DVD-Rom Fun!

As I mentioned above, I designed misc. characters (and a few props) for about half of the episodes in the series. So I was pleasantly surprised to see that all three episodes chosen for this DVD were episodes I worked on. Hopefully more episodes will make it onto DVD in the near future.

3-2-1 Penguins!: Save The Planets! is available at your local Wal-Mart, in Christian bookstores, or on Amazon.com.

EDIT: Here’s a review of the DVD from Past The Popcorn.

“3-2-1 Penguins” Character Designs

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This past Saturday morning NBC aired another episode of 3-2-1 Penguins! which I had the pleasure of working on. There were only two characters who needed to be designed, Admiral Sowmaster and his assistant, Cash. Both were to be pig-like aliens.

Here’s an early rough concept. The Admiral is on the left.

After turning in the first concept I received some very helpful feedback and sketches from episode director Tom Bancroft. He suggested that we switch the size of the characters and make the Admiral the short one. He also wanted to model the Admiral after actor Edward G. Robinson. The face on my sketch is really just a cleaned-up version of a sketch Tom did based on old photos of Robinson.

3-2-1 Penguins! airs Saturday mornings on NBC. Check your local listings.

“3-2-1 Penguins!” Character Designs (part 2)

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Continuing yesterday’s post…I also designed a future version of Zidgel, the ship’s captain. He’s big on vanity and low on brains. As an old man, er…penguin, at first he appears to have retained his youth and vigor. Then, through a series of gags we find that he is actually wearing a truss, false teeth, and a toupe. It was a lot of fun to design both versions.

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Finally, there’s Kevin. In this episode the malfunctioning time machine has a reverse effect on him. Instead of growing older, Kevin actually regresses to a young penguin and eventually an egg:

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There was one last misc. alien character I designed for a brief “talking heads” scene on the ship’s monitor. Here’s the turnarounds and an expressions chart:

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“3-2-1 Penguins!” Character Designs (part 1)

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On Saturday NBC aired another episode of 3-2-1 Penguins! for which I did some character designs. The plot centered around a malfunctioning time machine that sends the penguins’ space ship into the future where they meet their future selves. (The lesson for kids was about respecting the advice of our elders.)

The original penguins were designed several years ago when the series premiered on DVD. I don’t know who came up with the original designs, but I’ve always admired them. The characters have great personality, contrast, and appeal. It was a real treat to take three of the four characters and create an elderly version of each one. Here’s the first two:

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I was also asked to design a generic alien character, a veeery old war-weary soldier. The director suggested he have three eyes and one of them be covered with an eye patch. The character only has a couple of scenes (no dialogue), and while he is held up as someone for the kids to revere he’s also played as a comic character. I wanted the design that was both respectable and a little silly:

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I did a lot of art for this episode, so more will be posted tomorrow.

“3-2-1 Penguins!” Character Designs

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On Saturday NBC aired another episode of 3-2-1 Penguins! which I did some character design work for. This was a funny episode (directed by Tom Bancroft) with a lesson about the importance of inner beauty and character as opposed to vanity.

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One of the characters I was asked to design was a cheezy George Hamilton-type alien with his own line of hair and beauty products.

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Another character was a beauty products saleswoman alien who’d had too much plastic surgery.

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Here’s some concepts of one of the characters covered in Avacado Hair Cream (he’s normally brown).

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And finally, a gag “photo” I illustrated of the mom of one of the caracters. I basically just added hair and glasses to one of the main characters.

3-2-1 Penguins! airs Saturday mornings on NBC. Check your local listings.

“3-2-1 Penguins!” Character and Concept Art

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On Saturday morning NBC aired another brand-new episode of 3-2-1 Penguins! for which I had done some concept work. This epsiode was directed by Rob Corley over at FunnyPages Productions (check out their blog).

The character art needed for this episode was pretty light and straight-forward. The only new characters were a race of tiny ear-people who spoke in Munchkin-like jibberish. My instructions were to take a human ear and add cartoon arms and legs. Like I said, pretty straight-forward.

The only other concept art they needed from me were some party hats for the Penguins to wear in a birthday scene, and a sketch of the twins and Grandmum after being splattered by an exploding cake. One of the running gags of the show is that you never see Grandmum’s face. It is either out-of-frame, or strategically covered by a well-placed prop. So I left her headless in the sketch, knowing it wouldn’t matter. (Although they did send me a turn-around model of Grandmum for reference, and yes she does actually have a face. I’ve seen it!)

3-2-1 Penguins! is a science-fiction comedy from the creators of VeggieTales. It airs Saturday mornings on NBC.