“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.

Shameless Self-Promotion: Download My New Portfolio

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To any art directors/art buyers out there:

As a freelancer I’m always looking for new clients and fresh projects. So this blog is as good a place as any to announce that a new, updated PDF version of my character design and illustration portfolio is available online. You can download it for free here or on my website. Feel free to print it out and keep it on file for your records.

I’ve also posted an updated version of my resume here.

Finally, you can join my mailing list here. I send out a promotional email 3-4 times a year, and a “snail mail” postcard once or twice a year.

To the rest of you, thanks for indulging me. Regular blog posts will resume tomorrow. (If you like animation, you’ll enjoy tomorrow’s post.)

Concept Sketches for “3-2-1 Penguins!”

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As I mentioned in Friday’s post, I’ve spent the last few months designing characters and props for the TV series 3-2-1 Penguins! which airs Saturday mornings on NBC. Last weekend the first episode I actually worked on (”Green-Eyed Monster”) was broadcast. My name was in the credits, which means that for two seconds on Saturday I was ignored by millions of people. Still, it was kinda cool.

(EDIT: I owe an apology to several of my friends and relatives who tried to watch the show but missed it. Turns out NBC’s Saturday morning schedule varies from city to city, even within the same time zone. Penguins airs at 10:30am in Minneapolis, 11:00am in Chicago, and Noon in Dallas. To make things worse the TV listings in Chicago, where I spent the weekend, listed the wrong time so I missed my own premiere. Back home my DVR was set to record it, so assuming the TV guide was correct I can still see it when I get home tonight. Anyway, thanks to everyone who tried to watch. It means a lot that you made the effort.)

Penguins was created by Big Idea, the company behind VeggieTales. Big Idea owns all of the concept art I created for the show, but they have graciously allowed me to post sketches on my blog after each episode airs.

The Green-Eyed Monster (pictured above) and the Sheep were based on some rough sketches provided by the director, the very talented Tod Carter. The rest I came up with largely on my own.

I’ll post more sketches from future episodes I’ve worked on after they air.

(All artwork is copyright © Big Idea. All rights reserved.)

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Shamelesss Plug

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3-2-1 Penguins!

I spent most of the summer and fall doing character design work for 3-2-1 Penguins!, a new animated series on NBC from the creators of VeggieTales. It’s a fun adventure comedy with lots of goofball humor.

The first episode I worked on, “The Green-Eyed Monster”, airs tomorrow morning on the peacock network (10:30am central time, check your local listings). The episode was directed by the very talented Tod Carter, and it was a privilege of working under him. For some characters Tod gave me a few rough sketches to build off of, the rest I did on my own. I also designed a few props.

I can’t post any artwork until after the episode airs, so look for a few sketches on Monday.