RICK and MORTY - Interdimensional Cable 2:Tempting Fate - Concept Sketches

Jerry's quest to make everyone like him goes horribly wrong when faced with giving up his wiener in order to keep the most important being in the universe alive in an alien hospital. For the backgrounds we decided to give it a clean look, similar to an apple product. The first sketch is the St Gloopy Noops waiting room where Rick rigs an alien cable box to watch improvised commercials. The next one is the courtyard area where Jerrys press conference is staged. Last but not least is the old reptile played by Werner Herzog, his epic monologue about human culture revolving around the penis had the crew in stitches and disbelief that he decided to do the role.

RICK and MORTY - Big Trouble in LIttle Sanchez concept sketches

Tiny Rick! This was one of the crews favorite episodes and most manageable production wise, and its always nice to see Jerry and Beth work out some of their troubled marriage and actually have a fond moment once in awhile even though Tiny Rick steals the show. The first character Glaxo Slimslom was played by Jim Rash, we wanted him to come off like a soothing host at first but give him enough facial space for big expressions when shit hits the fan, I love the simple nacho shaped head. Next is the coveted XenoBeth, this was a collaborative effort with Maximus Paulsen, Gerry Galang and myself. This was by far the most complex character of the season, and it took many rounds to simplify her enough to not be a complete nightmare to animate, Max and Gerry did a few versions and then I did these roughs to get her on track. Her mouth was probably the most complicated mouth we've done to date and still took some time to refine. Next are my takes on Worm Jerry, ewww. For both characters we tried to work their stock colors into their new half breed bodies. The Nuptia 4 world was inspired by a hotel in St Tropez that has bubble structures overlooking the Mediterranean Sea. The mythologue therapy lab was a tricky one because it still needed to come off as a relaxing resort juxtaposed with making the most awful monster version of its guests. We played up the idea of their world being crystal powered and when everything goes dark the back up emergency lighted version of the crystals come on. Lastly is a first pass of the individual battle pits lined along the hall of mythologoues that the guests monster versions of themselves tear each other apart in, all of which was refined further by the BG and color team.

RICK and MORTY - The Ricks Must Be Crazy - sketches

This episode took some planning in figuring out the confusion of what world belonged to whom, and what character designed the following universe based on their good or bad design aesthetics. The first sketch was my first take on Zeeps world that his character created for Kyle's people to produce Zeeps power. Justin wanted his world to reflect that of Frank Lloyd Wright, real pristine clean design where every detail works in harmony with the other. The next sketch is of Zeep and some of his expressions based on the storyboards, if you look at some of the Cromulon head rejects from my previous post you'll see where Zeep began. Everyone was super excited to have Stephen Colbert on board to do a voice. The last set of characters were all rejects for the primitive tree people that Morty gets mixed up with in Kyles Teenyverse. It helped to have the characters figured out ahead of time in order to figure out what their worlds consisted of, but believe it or not Kyle was the simplest design that took the longest to land on.

RICK and MORTY - Get Schwifty- Early Concept Sketches

Time to get Schwifty in here! The first piece is a concept sketch of a flashy solar system set up as a Japanese game show with a disco ball sun and comets spotlighting recently removed planets as contestants with the intention of a giant plasma ray committing animated genocide on a cosmic scale if they don't perform a hit song stat. The next page is a variety of Cromulon head roughs, I started out with more of a deity take similar to the Rapa Nui heads but Justin wanted them to look bored in search of that sweet melody. Next is Birdworlds establishing exterior, I wanted to form the structures around the idea of swallows nests made of mud mixed with adobe style homes, and give off the sense of birdpeople being hunter gatherers. For the interiors I loved the idea of having the inside/outside feel of building his home around the trunk of a tree with bohemian/native american details, but my favorite detail is the scattered newspapers underneath his bed nest of twigs, even Tammy can't change old bird habits.

RICK and MORTY - Total Rickall - The evolution of a parasite

Total Rickall had a crazy amount of new one off characters and once again the board artists had a real challenge having to stage and track so many characters on screen together. For the true die hards, if you noticed the green rocks from episode 2 that Rick puts in the trunk of his ship you might have seen a couple pink eggs attached to the rocks, the same rocks Rick throws in the trash at the top of this episode. The first parasite, post transformation, is the only one with larvae growing off its back suggesting that others had been laid in the house. From the beginning Justin pictured these parasites with a beef jerky body and after much research of microscopic bacteria/parasites (which is absolutely terrifying by the way) I started some roughs. During that process I thought it needed a dramatic death mechanism by having its neck foreskin fold over its face ending with tendrils shooting out its mouth gasping its final breath to contrast the colorful over the top nature of the parasites pre-transformation. The first page above exhibits my initial roughs and the more refined color versions I tried, but the transformations proved to be a real challenge for animation so the color team had to really simplify the color which worked better in the long run. Next are some early sketches for Tinkles and friends, which were a lot of fun to be able to introduce another style to the show, the far right one is the final color version credit to the color team. Lastly Hamurai, I started with more of a cartoony take on him but Dan wanted to go with a more realistic look to him.

RICK and MORTY - Auto Erotic Assimlitaion Early Concept Sketches

Here's some early concept sketches I did for the latest episode, first being Ricks subterranean layer where he chained up Blim Blam the Korblok. There were many iterations of Blim Blam before landing on the right hand side one and the color team took it further for the final broadcast version. Originally the six blue blob patterns I designed as six beak mouths above his red mandibles only to be used when he screamed but it got lost in translation so it remained a pattern instead. The following pieces conveyed the architecture of the planet I wanted to use, gave it more of what I imagined as a futuristic scientology style campus canvased with cultish looking church glass. The BG team ran with it and turned it into a unique metropolis and the painters simplified the glass color in a way that made this one of the prettiest RAM episodes despite its bleak ending.

RICK and MORTY- Morty Night Run

This episode was so jam packed with really fun designs. The first two pieces are rough concept drawings I did of a shady space garage that Rick sells his anti-matter gun to Krombopulous Micheal. I wanted to give it a wet and steamy mood to it, and for the final version the color team took it another 10 steps and really made it look amazing. I did quite a few rounds on everyone's favorite assassin, K Micheal, who "just loves killin" played by Andy Daly. These were my favorite 5 out of like 40 before his color was finalized. The next two are roughs of a character that got scrapped from the episode, Krootch, an alien pimp that tries to trick out Jerry as he's walking around Asteroid City lost and confused trying to find his way back home. It was a funny bit but Harmon felt like the stakes needed to be higher and make the environment scarier and unpredictable to terrify Jerry more. Next, are some sketches for the Garble alien who was a throw away character I did as a redline from season one that Justin and I always loved and wanted to find a way to get him into the show for season two. I didn't realize how much it would get used this season, but it was awesome to see it make an appearance in our Simpsons couch gag and a version of them as handmade puppets for a live action promotional ad for the show. Next, is my second pass on the Jermaine Clements character, Fart of course. Loved the way it seeped in and out of tight spaces....brrrrrraap! Lastly, my first rough of Gear City focuses on Gearheads garage. Justin wanted to have a mix of bright plastics with greasy gears and I tried to give it many chasms below the surface level so there were a lot of options for the ship chase sequence to dip and weave in and out of levels of gears and piping.

RICK and MORTY- A Rickle in Time

We're back!!! Second season premiered last Sunday, so excited for the new season to finally air and for all the whining about the wait to be put to rest! The first episode probably had the least amount of designs to do out of the whole season but the storyboard team sure had their work cut out for them given that it was rewritten and re-boarded so many times in order to make the high concept script easier to track. The first image above is a rough concept of the void outside the garage with an infestation of Shrodingers cats falling into the abyss below with the first version of the time split efx. I did a few animated takes on the time split efx and a few rounds on the testicle time lord monster before we landed on the final look but after that there wasn't much for design to tackle. The next image is skateboard art I did for the season 2 premiere party gift to the crew. It highlights characters from an upcoming episode that should rival the interest of the meeseeks episode from season one. Everyone was really excited to get these as much as I was.

RICK and MORTY - Season 2 Publicity Art

The wait is almost over for season 2 to come out and I swear it was worth the time. Adult Swim had made their choices for the billboard art this year, but I still wanted to make an original publicity piece that reflected how intense this season is, bar has been raised. This is a piece that started as a collaboration between our prop artist Brent Noll and myself, we discussed what the story to it should be. Brent did a sketch of everyone hovering around a Rick-made chemical invention in his garage. I wanted to raise the stakes and take it further by seeing some apocalyptic destructive Kaiju creatures outside demolishing civilization, and get some good ol' family fun by involving the whole family defending the house from invasion....and of course all roads of resentment leading to Jerry just for being such a, well,...Jerry. I thought it would be funny to put Jerry in this liquid tube that controls the gunnery contraption that Morty is in by tracking Jerrys arm movements, except he's afraid of everything and shoots up the garage 'accidentally'.  Meanwhile Rick is completely engaged in watching cat videos on You Tube rather than save the world from chaos in an instant because..... it can wait. So I recomposed everything and made a quick rough color version of this and just took it the rest of the way with a little help from Jason Boesch on finishing color touches. Secondly, is a quick sketch I did of an Escher-esque Gromflamite compound as another possibilty for publicity art but didn't make the cut. Can't wait for the premiere of Season 2, July 26th!!!!!

Nursery Art 2

Finally finished the other panels to my sons bedroom during some time off. He still reacts to the art and imitates whats going on in each picture which is a joy to watch. Unfortunately it will probably be replaced by TMNT in 2 years but I'm enjoying watching him have fun with the series.

Simpsons Couch Gag Rick and Morty Crossover

Well there was an 'accidental' animated murder tonight of one of America's beloved icons, the Simpsons. Rick and Morty invaded Fox tonight and immediately take out the family thanks to Mortys poor driving skills. Rick gathers some Simpsons goo in a vile, a family portrait, and sends Morty to Asteroid city to make a replacement family, only one problem, vile has been compromised with Rick DNA, (a pc way of saying it). I did the first concept of mutated Simpsons characters that stuck, Jack Cusumano added the yellow on the final to tie in the Simpsons original skin color. Carlos Ortega did quite a few key poses to help guide the animation of the mutation which came out beautiful. Next is a concept I designed of the weird alien cattle that produces the Simpson eggs. This was such a fun bit to get to do, luckily Matt Groening is a huge fan of Rick and Morty and was gracious enough to give us the opportunity to do a guest couch gag crossover. So cool! Hope you enjoy it!

Cartoon Pilot walks into a Black Hole....

Inbetween seasons of Rick and Morty I art directed a sci-fi animated comedy pilot. Still not clear as to whether or not it will see the light of day but I wanted to post a few images that I spent a lot of sweat on. The top four Bgs I designed and painted, thought the characters would play well off this look without any black lines which was a much different process than Rick and Morty. I designed the main cast, although the sad sack gay robot was changed later on to be a little more beaten up and gruff looking, I still liked this version. Lastly, the family's spaceship 'Polio', I designed loosely resembling the shape of a thanksgiving day turkey.    

Alien Admissions models

Above are some characters models I made for my Alien Admissions short that we put out just before Christmas. The top sheet are two coked out cuban toucans that run a roach coach in violation of a number of health code violations, only the big guy made it into the short. Below that is Wiggleton, created as another student character in the classroom that also didn't make it into the short unfortunately. He was to be eaten by our Blob character once chaos in the room broke out, only to be regurgitated as a piece of bacon by demand of the principle so she wouldn't lose out on Wiggletons tuition payments.  Lastly is the intention of the cyborg version of Thora I had but this also didn't make it in the short as seen so hopefully when we get to make a couple more episodes then we can address the changes.

Nursery Art

My wife requested some art for our sons room, so naturally I couldn't go buy art for the room and started to write out a quick children's story to fill up the walls with story art of our own. She has a thing for lemon trees so I decided to make it something nice and simple centering on a baby lion living in a giant mystical lemon tree comprised of tons of characters who could never logically live in  a lemon tree of course. These first two pieces are already hung up and my son laughs at them every time as we sing it to him in the midst of a diaper change. I'm planning on making at least two more pieces to the series to fill up the rest of the room once things slow down with Rick and Morty.

Alien Admissions

Alien Admissions is live as of today! This is a project I created along with Andra Moldov and Matt Carpenter a couple years ago, which has finally been brought to life in an animated form. Its a super low budget short created for the web with high hopes to continue on and make more. Plenty of room for improvements but am happy with the results nonetheless given the small amount of time and budget that it was executed in. There was a lot of characters to establish in its first outing, so hopefully if we get another shot at it we can get out and explore their world more, and show how the aliens integrate into society in the most awkward way possible. Enjoy humans!