HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Here's a cartoon title card-style piece of Hanna-Barbera's J. EVIL SCIENTIST, his wife GOONDA and their son JUNIOR. Known as MR. and MRS. J. EVIL SCIENTIST, the spooky-fun family originally appeared in a 1961 SNAGGLEPUSS cartoon! The terrifying trio went on to star in their own comic book series published by Gold Key. I did this piece for Steve Banes, who is the Art Director at East West DVD of Brooklyn, NY and North Hollywood, CA. Steve's a big fan of Hanna-Barbera and Mr. and Mrs. J. Evil Scientist! I do quite a few DVD cartoon cover illustrations for Steve and East West. I appreciate all of the work, Steve! HAPPY HALLOWEEN EVERYBODY!

More HANNA-BARBERA TV MEN!

A couple of weeks ago, I posted a few of the HANNA-BARBERA TV MEN portrait-style pieces that I recently did for an upcoming book on classic Hanna-Barbera merchandise. As I mentioned in that post, the book is being put together by Funko President, Brian Mariotti. I thought that I'd post a few more here today...DICK DASTARDLY (from WACKY RACES), BARNEY RUBBLE (from THE FLINTSTONES) and RANGER SMITH (from YOGI BEAR). Hope you enjoy them!

BEWITCHED

It's almost Halloween and one of my favorite TV witches is SAMANTHA STEPHENS from BEWITCHED! I did these two BEWITCHED pieces based on the terrific animated opening to the 1960s TV series. The opening, animated by Hanna-Barbera, featured wonderful caricatures of stars ELIZABETH MONTGOMERY as the beautiful witch, SAMANTHA and DICK YORK as her mortal, advertising executive husband, DARRIN STEPHENS. SONY has been doing a great job with the season-by-season DVD releases of the BEWITCHED TV series. Season 4 was just released and I need to pick that up soon!

RIP from THE RIPPING FRIENDS - SPUMCO

Here's a couple of characters that I inked for John K. and Spumco back when they were putting together production art and model sheets for the animators of THE RIPPING FRIENDS. The show originally ran on Fox Kids in the Fall of 2001. I'm not sure which Spumco artist did the blue pencil drawings of RIP and SLAB. I inked (with a brush) a handful of character poses and expressions. Here's RIP, and if you scroll down, you'll see SLAB. I took liberties with the colors that I've given the characters here, but I think they turned out well. In addition to lending my inking skills to John K. and Spumco, I also hand-lettered a few of the JIMMY THE IDIOT BOY and GEORGE LIQUOR stories found in the sensational issues of SPUMCO COMIC BOOK that were published by Dark Horse Comics a few years back.

SLAB from THE RIPPING FRIENDS - SPUMCO

PETER POTAMUS & SO-SO

Here's an image of PETER POTAMUS & SO-SO drawn by legendary Hanna-Barbera Character Designer, Iwao Takamoto. I took his pencil art and inked it in with my brush, pen and ink. It's great fun to give such a nice cartoon drawing the lush, thick-to-thin lines with a brush! Here's a nice example of the "before and after" process from pencilling to inking. I thought I'd give the black and white inked art some color. The contrast of the solid black areas to the colors is always very visually appealing to me.

THE BEATLES - 1965 TV CARTOON

I'm a big fan of JOHN, PAUL, GEORGE and RINGO...THE BEATLES! Being a Cartoonist, I've always loved the 1965 ABC-TV cartoon versions of the Fab Four. I put together this set of color cartoon BEATLES art for a licensing proposal that never happened. Each BEATLE here looks as he did on an existing model sheet. What sensational caricatures and designs! I re-inked the model sheet art with a brush and gave the lads color. THE BEATLES logo and individual names are hand-lettered. There's been some really nice merchandise produced over the last few years, but I'd love to see more top-notch licensed product based on THE BEATLES 1965 TV cartoon!

PEBBLES

I originally did this image of PEBBLES FLINTSTONE as a black and white piece of art. I was just looking through some of my old FLINTSTONES Little Golden Books. A couple of the books that feature PEBBLES, made me want to throw some color on this image. I like how it turned out...with the colored pencil on the cheeks and elbow.

MAGILLA GORILLA & TOP CAT!

Here's a couple of pieces of Hanna-Barbera's, MAGILLA GORILLA and TOP CAT. I really enjoy looking at the old "painted-style" cartoon art that appeared in 1960s Little Golden Books, on Whitman coloring book covers, etc. Especially the Hanna-Barbera characters! I did this MAGILLA and TOP CAT art as an homage to the "painted-style" cartoon art. Little Golden Books Illustrator Mel Crawford was the best at painting the H-B characters!

HANNA-BARBERA TV MEN logo

Last week, I posted a few of the portrait-style illustrations that I did of various HANNA-BARBERA characters for a soon-to-be-released book on classic H-B merchandise by Funko President, Brian Mariotti. Brian wanted a name for the series of illustrations and we came up with HANNA-BARBERA TV MEN. Here's the logo that I designed. Of course, it needed to be cartoony. I know Brian will give the logo eye-catching cartoon colors! It's hand-lettered.

The RANKIN/BASS blog!

My good friend, RICK GOLDSCHMIDT, is the official historian of Rankin/Bass Productions. He's written a couple of books about the studio, The Enchanted World of Rankin/Bass: A Portfolio and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer: The Making of the Rankin/Bass Holiday Classic. Rick also has a blog, http://www.enchantedworldofrankinbass.blogspot.com/, where he keeps Rankin/Bass fans informed of what's happening in the Rankin/Bass world. Rick also keeps us up-to-date with his music projects! Rankin/Bass Productions have given us the classic holiday TV specials RUDOLPH THE RED-NOSED REINDEER, FROSTY THE SNOWMAN, THE YEAR WITHOUT A SANTA CLAUS, SANTA CLAUS IS COMIN' TO TOWN, LITTLE DRUMMER BOY and the cult-classic feature film, MAD MONSTER PARTY! I'm posting a few pieces of Rankin/Bass character art that I've done over the last few years. The HEAT MISER and SNOW MISER from The Year Without a Santa Claus, SAM THE SNOWMAN from Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, and FELIX FLANKIN from Mad Monster Party. Be sure to check out Rick's blog!

TENNESSEE TUXEDO DVD COVER ART

The text for this post is below with the GO GO GOPHERS character art!

GO GO GOPHERS DVD COVER ART

I'm posting the character art that I did for the GO GO GOPHERS and TENNESSEE TUXEDO DVD covers. The DVDs were released earlier this year from Classic Media and Sony Wonder. Here's RUNNING BOARD, RUFFLED FEATHER, COLONEL KIT COYOTE, SERGEANT OKEY HOMA, TENNESSEE TUXEDO, CHUMLEY and MR. WHOOPEE. The finished art was submitted to Classic Media as black and white images. I colored the images here for posting on my blog. Both GO GO GOPHERS and TENNESSEE TUXEDO were components of THE UNDERDOG SHOW. I've posted scans of the DVD covers below. Being a huge fan of 1960s TV animation, this was a great project to do!

TENNESSEE TUXEDO and GO GO GOPHERS DVD COVERS

If you haven't already done so, pick up these DVDs of great 1960s TV animation! Both from Classic Media and Sony Wonder!

SNOOPER & BLABBER

Here's a couple of HANNA-BARBERA characters that I would love to see a licensee and Warner Bros. Consumer Products do new vintage-style merchandise of...SNOOPER & BLABBER! I understand that Warner Bros. Home Video is tentatively planning a 2007 release of the complete QUICK DRAW McGRAW SHOW on DVD. SNOOPER & BLABBER should be included on that set, as they were a component of the QUICK DRAW McGRAW SHOW. A SNOOPER & BLABBER fan approached me and asked me to do this color illustration of the SUPER SNOOPER DETECTIVE AGENCY detectives. It was fun to do!

MR. MAGOO

One of my clients is CLASSIC MEDIA in New York. CLASSIC MEDIA owns some of the all-time great classic cartoon characters. They are ROCKY & BULLWINKLE, UNDERDOG, CASPER THE FRIENDLY GHOST, GERALD McBOING BOING, ROGER RAMJET, MR. MAGOO and others! From time to time, I'll get a call from CLASSIC MEDIA's Creative Director, Tony Knight, to create an illustration of one of their sensational characters. Tony is a pleasure to work with! Here are a few of the MR. MAGOO pieces that I've done for Tony and CLASSIC MEDIA.

HANNA-BARBERA art for upcoming H-B classic merchandise book!

My pal BRIAN MARIOTTI, who is President of Funko (home of the Wacky Wobbler), asked me to do a series of portrait-style illustrations of various HANNA-BARBERA characters. Brian is going to include the illustrations in his upcoming book on classic Hanna-Barbera merchandise. I'm posting five of the twelve illustrations here...FRED FLINTSTONE, GEORGE JETSON, MR. TWIDDLE (from WALLY GATOR), PETER PERFECT (from WACKY RACES) and OFFICER DIBBLE (from TOP CAT). Along with these five, the other seven illustrations that will appear in the book are of MR. SPACELY (from THE JETSONS), RANGER SMITH (from YOGI BEAR), MR. SLATE and BARNEY RUBBLE (from THE FLINTSTONES), RUFUS RUFFCUT, DICK DASTARDLY and PROFESSOR PAT PENDING (from WACKY RACES). Brian and I decided to call the series, HANNA-BARBERA TV MEN. I'm in the middle of creating the HB TV MEN logo now. Brian says he's hoping to have the book available by the holidays this December. He also tells me that cartoon genius, JOE BARBERA, has written the foreword for the book! My fiance, Leslie, and I visited Brian at Funko earlier this year. He showed us a few of the page layouts and they looked great!

GROOVIE GOOLIES on DVD Oct. 24!

Celebrate Halloween with the release of The GROOVIE GOOLIES Saturday "Mourning" Collection on DVD Oct. 24! The complete series is being released by Navarre Corporation's BCI. I was happy to help out horror aficionados (and fellow Goolians) Wally Wingert and Dan Roebuck with their production of one of the DVD set's special features, "Goolians : A Docu-Comedy". I recently did this GROOVIE GOOLIES illustration for a GOOLIES project that never saw the light of day.

UNDERDOG character art samples - For the UNDERDOG Style Guide from Classic Media