Nerd Armada

A love-struck apprentice to Ms. Endive, she believes that Chowder is her boyfriend. Unfortunately for her, he's still in the "girls are icky" phase.

All I know is sometime in Novemeber. So feel free to take a little nap until then.

Not the most exciting shot ever. Here's another scene from the Mahjongg Night board. But you get a glimpse of Chowder's bathroom and his burlap-sack pajamas.

He's a dream come true for Chowder. Or is he a nightmare?

We originally called him the Twice Cream Man, but someone owns that name. We didn't find that out until we had already recorded half the episode! So we had to go back and re-record every mention. That's an issue we've run into a lot. We make up stupid food names only to be told they're already tradmarked. We were even told we couldn't use the name "Kimchi." That's like saying we can't use the word "Ketchup." Screw that. We're using it.

I'm all for protecting copyright infringement, but it's getting kind of out of hand. Soon every word will be trademarked. I should get a jump on it and trademark the word "and." I'll be a gazillionaire from royalties.

Here's another scene from Mahjongg Night. This little guy is in charge of turning on the lamps in the city. What a fun job. Kudos to the crew for making this stuff look so amazing. Here's a quick run down of whose work you're seeing as I post this stuff:

Art Director - Dan Krall!
Background Design - Bill Flores & Rebecca Ramos
Background Paint - Joe Bingelli & Anna Chambers
Character Design - Phil Rynda & Serapio Calm
Prop Design - Mark Bachand & Tara Whitaker
Model Cleanup - Frank Homisky & Laura Dalesandro
Color Stylists - Roger Webb & Brain Smith

She's the thorn in Mung Daal's side. A meticulous mountain of a woman who insists on perfection in everything she does. Her cooking style is the complete opposite of Mung's. He cooks from the gut. Make food with love and it'll taste good. Endive doesn't understand love. If one wants proper food, one must cook properly. She's basically Martha Stewart taken to the millionth degree. With Oompa-loompa colors.

A while back I put up a panel of the mahjongg ladies from my Chowder board. Well here they are in their multitude of colors.

The story is inspired from my own childhood. Each Tuesday night my mom plays mahjongg with her friends. They rotate who hosts it. When it was my mom's turn, she would set out all sorts of goodies that I wasn't allowed to snack on. I'd lay in my bed at night and hear the clack-clack of the tiles as the women yelled expletives at each other for taking their nickels away. Apparently her friends' favorite part of coming over was my mom's egg salad. I wasn't into the egg salad so much. I wanted the chocolate.

My mom believes there's a direct correlation between each character here and the actual ladies she plays mahjongg with. That's not true. Her friends are weirder looking. (If you read this, mom, that's a joke.)

This Chowder character is the King of the Sky. When I was working on the second board, I wanted to have the wind blow. I thought it might be fun to turn the weather into a character, like when you see a big face in the clouds. But I wanted him to be weirder and more of a real character. And since I love Katamari Damacy, I was inspired by the king in that game.

Here's the the Katamari version. The purple tights are a direct lift.

And yes, there is a full fledged Katamari-inspired episode in season one.

This is a Chowder character named Kiwi. He occasionally pops up and makes a random comment. He started as a doodle I made back when I was working on the pilot. I never found a place for him in that board, but I was able to squeeze him in my second board. He's shown up in a few boards now. His arms wiggle. Oh, and when you see him, he'll be stop-motion.

This is a character from a Chowder board I did called "Shnitzel Makes a Deposit." As is often the case, I over-board my episdoes and so I had to make trims. He's gone. I always gotta kill my babies. Poor little dead babies.

I like this guy, though. He'll have to show up some other time.

There's an interview with me up on the Channel Frederator Blog. As usual, I sound like a massive douche and ramble on way too long. But I would like to give a big thanks to Jeaux Janovsky for curating such a nice series of interviews there and including me in the mix.

So who wants to see some clips from the Chowder pilot? Who wants to see me making a fool of myself?

Cartoon Network shot a promo for this month's upfronts. Upfronts are basically a big show and tell where the network presents their programming to advertisers so they'll keep buying advertising space. Without the advertising we can't make the programs. So it's important to get everyone excited. Yes, I look silly. Is that any different than normal? I dunno.

See the Chowder Promo. Click on "New Shows" then on "Chowder." The "Sizzle Reel" is the promo. The other links are two clips from the pilot.

Enjoy.

Here's a really awesome drawing done by Warren Leonhardt. We've never met, but I 'm sure he's a fine, fine fellow. He's certainly a very talented artist. Check out his blog. You'll be happy.

Chowder Update: We're just about ready to ship our first batch of black and white art to the overseas studio. So far the production has been chugging along very smoothly. The stories and storyboards are turning out great. The actors have been doing a fantastic job at the record sessions.

One interesting part of the process is working with the designers. I have to make all these people understand the way I draw so they can try to replicate it. It's a strange thing to deconstruct your art style. I never even really thought of myself as having a style. But now I can see that I have definite likes, dislikes, and drawing quirks. I guess I put more thought into what I drew than I realized.

It's always been hard for me to draw the same thing consistently. That's why I knew I could never be a true animatior. My fast, loose lines kind of go where they please. It makes for an interesting, lively doodle, but boy is it difficult to draw consistently. I don't usually construct the pose first. I draw a character from the eyes outward, feeling the expression as I go. More often then not this results in a character who doesn't fit on the paper or in the storyboard panel. Hooray for copiers and computers!

Here's a screenshot from the pilot. From L to R: Shnitzel, Mung Daal, and Chowder.


It's weird to look at. The models have firmed up slightly since I made this (almost two years ago). I'm sure a few seasons in I'll look at the episodes we're doing now and feel the same way. It's interesting how most shows evolve the character models. It's like actors changing their looks over of the run of a sitcom. But when you draw the characters over and over and over, you start to feel a natural proportion evolve. That can only come with time. I haven't drawn them enough yet.

Yesterday I stopped at Whole Foods on my way home from work. Since I've been feeling a little under the weather, I thought I might get something nice and cold for my throat. So I grabbed a box of Mango popsicles. "Mmmm," I smiled. "These will be nice to have later."

I was wrong. Terribly wrong. When I took a bite that night, I tasted the worst popsicle I've ever had. Yes it has mango. It also has CHILE!!! Hot chile!

Look carefully at the box.



In tiny letters is the word "chile"!!!! Tiny fricking letters!



And there's a chile barely visible in the corner next to the pictures of the ingredients.



Yes, I should have looked more carefully at the box before I grabbed it. But really, there needs to be a warning: "Hey dumb white people, this doesn't taste good. Please don't eat it." A dessert like this is totally unnecessary. It's cruel, is what it is. Your mouth thinks you're getting something cold and pleasant, and you get fricking fire instead. Not cool.

I like hot foods. I even like hot sweets like ginger candy. I don't want hot ice cream. Ever. Sorry Mexico. I really like most all of your food. But you lost me on this one.

All the storyboard artsits are hard at work here on Chowder. I've had some people ask about our board process. Most animated shows have scripts that are roughly 18 pages long for an 11 minute episode. Our storyboard artsits don't recieve a script but instead get a two-page outline. It reads like a summation of the cartoon. There's no dialogue and all the events are laid out, as well as what the characters are feeling and want.

This gives the storyboard artsits tons of freedom to craft the episode. It gives them a lot more responsibilty as well. They have to be writer, director, actor, and editor all in one. But what you gain from doing it this way is a cartoon written by people who tend to think visually. It's how we worked on both Spongebob and Billy & Mandy, and I really like the system. You get comedy that isn't all based on snappy dialogue, but more on funny behavior and sight gags. The hard part is finding storyboard artsitis who can write. They're in very small supply.

The board artists are on a six week schedule. They have three weeks to rough out the board, then they pitch it to me. We spend a day working together to smooth out the kinks, beef up the jokes, and cut extraneous bits. After that they get three more weeks to clean it all up. Then they pitch it to the crew, acting out all the parts as they show the drawings. Done! Then it's on to the next board. We do 26 of these per season.

Well I'm off to write more outlines! I'll be back soon with another update.