BLAST FROM THE PAST: Cartoon Network Cartoon Cartoons #20 cover art!

It's a HOT one out there today in my area! Around close to 98 degrees! Yikes! We never get this kind of weather on the East Coast this soon in the season! 

Thought I'd post a cover I drew of the Eds trying to stay cool during a hot summer! I'm ready to build me a slip n' slide to cool off! 

Happy 25th Anniversary to Shrek! / Some of my work I did for the franchise licensing

Happy 25th Anniversary to Shrek! The first animated film was released today back in 2001. Hard to believe it's been that long! I thought I'd post some art I did for Shrek The Third and Shrek Forever After (Shrek 4 was still the working title it was called at the time I did art for the property). All the art I'm showing was done back in 2007 and 2010. Didn't do a whole lot for the 3rd film, but did a LOT for Shrek 4. It was my first time drawing these characters and working DreamWorks licensing and their approval process. While a lot of art had backgrounds, I had to keep a lot of the elements separate so that things could be mixed and matched if need be.

 

As a bonus to this post, I thought I'd post a piece of art and all the steps it took to get to the final version. 

The image below is of Shrek taking his morning mud bath. It's fairly simple in design and not much seems to change from image to image. Most of it I nailed first time out, and then it was fine-tuned in spots. My original sketch had him enjoying his bath a bit more and I tried to capture the nuance of the facial acting that was shown in the first film when he took a bath. That was changed though in the approvals to convey a  more "commercialized" look to all the scenes and characters. Any nuance was changed to show simple broad emotions that were clearly defined in each image. 

I would initially draw a bunch of images based on the art direction and scan them in submit them as JPEGs. All these were drawn on cheap copy paper. I photocopied the border grid on each page so I knew the exact space I had to fill. DreamWorks licensing would then review and do a redlined corrected version, meaning that they would draw over my art in red and made any corrections they wanted. I would then do new, clean, revised versions and resubmit the art batch again. As each batch of 10 images went to the approvals, I would always keep drawing or revising to keep it all moving. Some times it would be approved to go to the next phase (maybe 1 or 2 drawings at most), but most of my Shrek 4 stuff went through multiple revisions. All this on a deadline that kept getting closer and was being slightly tweaked.

With Shrek The Third, it was all fairly clean cut as the film was done in the can. Not so much with Shrek 4... There were many things still in flux and changing daily. Every time I submitted a piece with Rumpelstiltskin, he would come back looking slightly different from the reference I kept getting. Same for the witches and ogres. Fiona's "battle" outfit when she led the ogres had some minor tweaks to it. I will say that DreamWorks gave me a lot of great reference but you didn't know things had changed until you got the sketches back. I felt like I was the last person in the pipeline at times, but it sometimes goes like that. 

Not all, but for most images, there were around 3 or 4 revisions for each image. I kept each version and labeled them as it was needed for me to keep a record (as I got paid for revisions) and it made it nice to see how a piece of art progressed.

So, this piece just changed Shrek's facial expression. I originally drew his teeth the way they look, but they then wanted a more simple clean look to his smile. I did that, and then they saw it and went back to showing his individual teeth. He does look better that way. 

Keep in mind that this was an easy one and only had the initial drawing and two revisions. 

Once the final approvals came through (in batches) you moved to the inking stage. Once the inks were done, there were never any further tweaks done. Everything was always nailed down at the pencil stage.

I inked a bunch myself, but I had artist Dan Davis help me out with the inks (as our styles are close). Dan was a big help, and to be honest, I was burned out on seeing the same images over and over. The work had to be super tight and it felt like you were doing everything four or five times. You had to keep your enthusiasm up, which was hard at times. I don't think there were a lot of "cooks in the kitchen" at DreamWorks then either. It all went smoothly and nothing sat for too long. I think this was mostly a case of trying to do licensing for something that wasn't completely nailed down. 

I will say that it was a far cry from the way Disney moves these days. You submit something to Disney and it sits for months. Literally.

After this work, I think the next DreamWorks thing I worked on was the spin-off for Puss in Boots. From there, it was Kung Fu Panda 2, MegaMind, and Madagascar 3... though I'm not sure of the exact order at this point.

Somewhere in there, DreamWorks Licensing offered me future work internally. I turned it down at the time, or kept the offer open-ended, as I'm not sure what was going on then in my life. I might have had new Scooby work or something...  

 

BLAST FROM THE PAST: Cartoon Network Cartoon Cartoons #27 cover art!

Another cover that I liked doing! Cartoon Network Cartoon Cartoons #27 featuring Dexter's Laboratory. The two standout things that I remember most was that the UPC box is in the vertical position when I originally designed it to run horizontal. That's why my signature is in the exact spot that it is in. We had some control with covers and could request that certain static elements like title, logos, UPCs, etc could be slightly tweaked for the sake of art. Of course, these requests could get lost in the pipeline of production like this one. It still works for me though. Also, it gave me a big space to sign copies at conventions.

The other major thing that I remember is asking what was a good color that would represent a radioactive glow? The green I originally did and submitted wasn't working. I remember the editor laughing about it. She made inquiries and sent me a CMYK breakdown for a proper "radioactive" green. Up to that point in my career I never had a project that required a green color that looked "radioactive". Looking at the cover now, I wonder why I didn't consider coloring Dee Dee all green as well? The editor never mentioned it as an option. Possibly, in terms of licensing, they didn't want that for a cover and the character should look the way they normally look.

I did the whole cover from thumbnails to final color for DC Comics (this was back when DC paid you for thumbnails, too!). Sold the original final art that was inked on DC art board a long time ago. Still have the memories though and a copy hanging in my studio. 

 

BLAST FROM THE PAST: Cartoon Network Cartoon Cartoons #17 cover art!

Been a long time since I originally posted this Cartoon Network Cartoon Cartoons #17 cover on my socials, but I recently sold the last few copies I had of this book! They've been sitting in my comic con boxes, which I would drag to shows to stock my table. Recently, I've been selling stuff online to clear some stuff out.

I still like the cover a lot (it also hangs framed on my studio wall) as it had the Cow & Chicken and Johnny Bravo welcoming Dexter's Laboratory to the mix. Dexter's Lab had its own comic series (which ran for 34 issues or so) but when sales slowed they decided to cancel it and move Dexter and his adventures over to the Cartoon Cartoons comic.

  

One that got away: Care Bears

Back in 2003, I did an audition for the Care Bears. I didn't wind up getting it and not sure why it didn't go past this initial sketch at this point. It was for a book project and you can see the open gap in the center that would go into the fold of the book spine. You can't have anything important get lost in spine of the book so you really have to design a complicated layout well. Each bear was to be doing something in the shot and the art direction would tell you what else was to be drawn.

Overall, I still like it. It was all to be done as vector art (like my work for Strawberry Shortcake) and I think I got this audition either before or during the early stages of my work on Strawberry as other potential future work either down the line or in-between. As I mentioned in a previous post, you try out for stuff and some things you get and some things you don't. I was probably relieved that I didn't as doing it all as vector art would be really time consuming! My Strawberry Shortcake art was extremely complicated vector art though I'm proud of all that stuff and how it turned out.

For you process junkies, the art was drawn on cheap copy paper and then I lightboxed it onto a clean sheet of copy paper by inking it all with a Micron pen to finalize the art. With licensed work, it had to all be there and "on model" first time out as license holders usually do not want to have to go back and forth with revisions and lose any time. If you can nail it the first time with minimal instructions, it's all good! American Greetings owned both properties at that time and if you got in with them they would just keep feeding you work, which is always nice!

 

Have a Smurfy Day!

 

POWERPUFF GIRLS To The Rescue!

One that got away: Despicable Me 2

 

One IP that I did an audition for but didn't get was for Despicable Me 2. I did these sketches back in 2012 and while I thought they were fine, they didn't go to another phase. Never heard more about it and I moved on. I'm not sure why I didn't get it, but you do a lot of auditions and keep moving. Or you get the reverse of it, I was approved and was on the artist list to draw Sesame Street material but then just never got any work due to where I was in the pecking order. Ultimately, if you get a gig, it's great... but just keep moving and stay open to new opportunities!

These were also done by hand on paper. Yes, they are really clean and tight for being roughs and I inked the line to match the thin line look they wanted. It was a fast, rough ink just to pick out and fine tune my drawings for the initial approval process as that's how licensing goes. I also inked them in black, but once I scanned them in, I lowered the opacity on them to make them a light gray to simulate a pencil look. I used to do this from time to time.

Last thing about these... Not sure why I did two versions of Margo, but they did give me a plaid pattern to see how it would look as a skirt, so I'm guessing it was done to show them a more detailed look as opposed to a simplified one. Enjoy!

 

KUNG FU PANDA 2 - Art Icons & Elements

I thought I'd post these unique pieces that I did amid the work I did for Kung Fu Panda 2. These were done in November of 2010 as the film was released in 2011. These are art icons or elements that are created to accent a project or style guide! 

These were unique in that I did them with the pen tool in Adobe Illustrator at the time. Dreamworks gave me reference to work from and that made it easier as I didn't have to create anything out of my mind and deal with revisions. These were a fast turnaround and I think they came out looking cool! 

HAPPY EARTH DAY 2026!

 

In the immortal words of Stan Lee... 'Nuff said!

COMIC BLAST FROM THE PAST: Ed, Edd n Eddy in "An Ed For An Ed"

Here's another Ed, Edd n Eddy comic I did that was a lot of fun. It was titled "An Ed For An Ed." It was a busy script with a lot going on even though it all took place in Ed's basement bedroom. Page 2, panel 5 took some time in planning out as I had to draw multiple Edd's cleaning Ed's room which was a single background plate. As with any Eds script, there's a ton of "squish and stretch" exaggeration going on at all times. 

Drawing the Eds took some time but I normally could do a page/a page and a half a day. Inking the art was much faster as you had to match the loose "boiling line" look that the cartoons had and I could ink it all in a day if I had to. Everything, including panel borders, were done by hand. No rulers needed and that made doing the Eds comics a lot of fun! Usually I would ink half the story and then scan those pages in, digital clean them if needed, and then format them in the template. I liked breaking up the job into segments to keep things fresh. Nothing is more boring than a full day of constant scanning and file prepping.

Here's the whole story for your reading enjoyment!  

HAPPY EASTER: SCOOBY-STYLE!

For Easter, I thought I'd post this rare drawing most have never seen! 

In my archives, I recently uncovered an alternative sketch to the Scooby-Doo "Sneaky Easter Thief" project which was complete and never saw the light of day. I posted about it in June of '25. 

This was just another concept for the title/credits page that didn't get used.  

COMIC BLAST FROM THE PAST: Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy in "Model Citizen"

The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy was another cartoon series that appeared on Cartoon Network and was part of what I consider to be the second "Golden Age" of animated cartoons. I have a lot of sketches that I had drawn of Grim as there was a lot of exciting visual poses you could do with him and I took full advantage of it during my morning sketch warm-ups.

Here follows a short comic story that I had drawn and my favorite part of it are the opening panels at the local mall where the characters are hanging out. A lot of planning went into it visually that wasn't in the script and it was a lot of fun to design. Also, I needed to create a magical creature that was made of wire clothes hangers. That was quite a challenge and I went through a lot of scrap paper sketches before I settled on the final design! Enjoy this blast from the past!

COMIC BLAST FROM THE PAST: Ed, Edd n Eddy in "Spare Ed"!

Here's one of my favorite stories I drew featuring the Eds for your reading pleasure! As with a lot of comics based on animated cartoons, the script was rather wordy and I had no control over the placement of the word balloons or sound effects. I did draw the "END" at the end of the story and it was a thing I did to show a defined ending.

I sold the original artwork many years ago but have scans of it here. Overall, I still really love the original final art and layout for the story. The inks were super clean and the storytelling was clear and readable. There was a lot to get into the panels but it all works really well. The word balloons, however, killed some parts of the art though in a lot of spots. One such spot was the word balloon covering up the broken wood leg on the ground on Page 4, Panel 3. You see them all reacting to what happened but you don't see the actual broken wood leg until the next panel. So, I'm posting the original scans of the final inked artwork I did so you can see it in its glory. Enjoy! You can click on the pages and see the art in a bigger format!

As a final note, I used to love working on the Eds as the loose ink line was fun to do. It was freeing in a lot of ways and the Eds always had a lot of "squish and stretch" to them which pushed you to exaggerate the characters. I must have done it well because they kept offering it to me to draw.