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I was attracted to animation layout work because of my interest in composition and illustration. Whereas some animation artists are drawn more to character acting or story or special effects, my fascination was always more with the background art. Also, I thought this was where my strengths and skills as an artist were best utilized, and so I spent most of my animation career in layout. Over time, changing technologies and production methods led to changes in roles and job titles. Hence, my screen credits vary from "Layout Artist" or "Background Layout", to "BG Boards", to "Background Designer", even "Rendering Artist", even though (in layman's terms) all of this work is basically just me drawing backgrounds for animated cartoons.
Duncanville
Duncanville
My work from the third season of Fox TV's "Duncanville": I really enjoyed working with the crew at Bento Box Entertainment (which was working for Fox, which was owned by Disney, so drawings had to be approved ultimately by both Fox and Disney). In the post-pandemic world, many animation artists were working remotely, so I did all of these drawings from the comfort of my home studio.
Media: Photoshop + Wacom Cintiq Pro 24
High Guardian Spice
High Guardian Spice
I worked on this show briefly, but I enjoyed the fantasy themed environments. I should note that not every element within these scenes was drawn me - layout is a team effort, and sometimes you compose a scene using elements drawn by other artists, and sometimes you are revising scenes previously drawn by other artists (due to changes in story or art direction). That said, the bulk of the drawing in each scene here is by my hand.
Media: Photoshop + Wacom Intuos Pro M tablet.
Norm of the North
Norm of the North
This was a brief freelance gig where I only worked on the interior tomb of the Treasure Mountain, but I did get to draw the Terracotta Army! The production was CGI animation, but my drawings were used as reference by the modelers who created the 3D sets.
Media: Photoshop + Wacom Intuos Pro M tablet
Muppet Babies
Muppet Babies
Disney acquired Jim Henson's properties and produced a CGI remake of "Muppet Babies". I worked on this show only briefly, creating these designs for the interior of the Muppet Babies nursery. This was another CGI production that used 2D drawings as reference for the 3D sets.
Media: Photoshop + Wacom Intuos 4
Oswald the Lucky Rabbit
Oswald the Lucky Rabbit
Before Micky Mouse, Walt Disney created Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, but lost the rights to Universal Studios. In a strange turn of events, the Disney Co. got back the rights some 70+ years later. I had the opportunity to work on a new animated series that was to feature Oswald, but unfortunately, the series was never released. Still, I had a blast doing these!
My role was primarily background design, although I also did storyboard cleanup (where I drew backgrounds for the storyboards, but the character poses were not mine). Also, this is early development work, so it tends to be quite rough.
Media: Photoshop + Wacom Intuos 4.
Futurama
Futurama
I worked on the original run of Futurama, as well as the DVD movies that were made some years later. Futurama was one of my favorite productions to work on because it blended science fiction, cartoons, and an off-the-wall sense of humor. Plus, there were always new alien landscapes to draw! However, production schedules were very tight and I had to learn to be disciplined and efficient, to get a lot of work done fast.
Media: Graphite on Animation Paper
The Simpsons Movie
The Simpsons Movie
The Simpsons movie production overlapped with the Futurama DVD series, and I worked on both at Rough Draft Studios. There were some weeks where I went back and forth between Futurama and Simpsons Movie, working 2 or 3 days on one production and then hopping over to the other. Very hectic time!
Simpsons backgrounds are usually drawn in line (no tonal rendering), yet you can see some tonal rendering in some of these. That is because one sequence of the movie (the Homer and Marge love scene) was supposed to be fully rendered in a Disneyesque style. However, the idea was abandoned, and my renderings were not used in the film.
In the 2nd slideshow, I include the early stages of the scene with Disneyesque candles. The first slide is rough sketches which I produced after discussing the scene with the sequence director. Once we decided on camera angle and composition, I began a full size drawing in blue pencil (slide 2), followed by the final rendered stage (last slide). While this background was ultimately not used in the film, it was an opportunity to make a fun portfolio piece.
Media: Graphite/Blue Pencil on Animation Paper
CrocPond
CrocPond
CrocPond was intended to be a series of direct-to-video educational films for children. Unfortunately, the production ran into financial problems and was eventually shutdown. At least, I did get the opportunity to work on some fun environments. Also, I should point out that most of these renderings were "layout cleanups" where I was working from rough layouts or line drawings developed by other artists who worked with me on this project (so I was responsible for the final renderings, but not all of the initial compositions).
Media: Graphite or Color Pencil on Animation Paper.
Spirit Stallion of the Cimarron
Spirit Stallion of the Cimarron
My first experience working as a layout artist on a feature film was in the layout department at DreamWorks. I rendered backgrounds on Spirit, Stallion of the Cimarron. I wish that I had saved more backgrounds from this time, but things got lost in moving from place to place over the years. Still, I have many fond memories of that time!
Media: Pencils on Animation Paper
One additional note: Being a layout artist is more than just drawing backgrounds. You need to understand camera movement and, in those days, you had to mark up field guides for the camera department. You might also be expected to draw one or more character poses to indicate how characters would be staged in the scene. These drawings were for reference only, since the animator would completely redraw any characters once the scene left the layout department. Still, the layout artist must consider the staging of characters; your backgrounds should be designed around the intended character action. I added two image carousels here that show some scenes in which I included my character drawings, just to show how the action was intended to be staged.
I worked on other productions besides the ones listed above, and I did many more background drawings than are shown here. But as noted above, some drawings were lost in moving from place to place over the years. Some drawings I just never saved because, in the pre-digital age, the studios kept the original artwork, and the only way to keep samples of your work was to Xerox them, which meant getting up from your desk and walking to the Xerox machine (which was usually already in use) while taking precious time away from meeting deadlines. Finally, some backgrounds just weren't all that great, so I didn't waste time Xeroxing them. Besides, it's a lot of work to make a website like this (scanning/formatting/cataloguing stacks of old drawings), and I think the above drawings should be enough to give you a sense of how I have spent a good chunk of my career.
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