THE FISH HOOKS FINALE

<sob>
It's been a long time coming, but the end of Fish Hooks is upon us.
Sure, we finished up production 37 years ago. But this Friday April 4th 9:00 PM (Pacific time) the last and final  episode airs.
"The Big Woo"
Here's a little teaser of what's to come:

Not every show actually gets a true finale and this one gives Fish Hooks a sweet, heartfelt send-off. I unabashedly admit I got a little misty while we were making it.
Hope you do to.

RIP ODERUS URUNGUS

On a lazy summer afternoon

whilst home from college

my best pals drove up to my house and shouted,

GET IN!

When I asked obvious questions like 

WHY 

and 

WHERE ARE WE GOING 

they replied with one word:

GWAR

I eyed them quizzically.

I say, good fellows...

What, pray tell, is a GWAR?

But they wouldn't say.

And we drove all the way into Philadelphia

with nary an explanation.

Eventually we ended up at a club called

The Revival.

Ah... music!

We got there in time to see

TAD

A Sub Pop band 

I liked a lot.

So that was cool.

But afterwards

 the stage became thick and choked with smoke.

An unholy heavy metal racket erupted 

from within and

ENORMOUS

HULKING 

CREATURES

stalked out from it's depths.

They were legion.

Some had instruments.

Most bore giant cartoonish weapons.

Some just leapt around in a less-than-half-naked state.

And it was only a matter of minutes before 

someone/thing was decapitated in a hail of 

fake blood, latex and 

EW...

was that raw meat?

This was

GWAR

They were loud.

They were violent.

They were offensive.

They were funny.

And they were so over-the-top

in so many ways that you could't help but 

admire the lengths they went to entertain.

I saw them play many times afterwards.

Sometimes on tiny stages

and other times in venues large enough 

to be attacked by

a crack addicted dinosaur named

Gor Gor:

They were ALWAYS being attacked by something.

A giant robot sent from the Vatican

A Government Superhero Morality Squad

A Cybernetic Dead President

You name it.

Nothing was sacred.

Nothing was too ridiculous.

And they made fun of themselves even more than

they did everything else. 

So you could see why I thought they'd be 

perfect for an episode of

Codename: Kids Next Door.

Well...

not perfect.

I could't let this band of 

ultra-violent 

intergalactic 

perverted 

drug-addicted 

weirdos

ANYWHERE NEAR

a kids show.

But I could use their music.

I had the idea of taking two of their songs,

stripping out the lyrics

and rewriting them

to make a KND rock opera.

So I approached the band about getting the rights to the music for

THE PRIVATE PAIN OF TECHNO DESTRUCTO

and

GOR GOR

And they agreed!

Even with the stipulation that 

we could only credit them as 

RAWG.

Great, right?!

Except no one in the band knew 

where the master tapes were.

So what'd they do?

THEY 

RE-RECORDED 

THE SONGS FOR US!

I'm still kicking myself for not 

making the time to fly down 

to Virginia to see them record.

Once we got the songs,

I doodled up a sooper rough board for

rock star storyboard artist 

Kim Arndt.

She promptly threw it in the trash 

and made something better.

And thus

OPERATION: FOODFITE

was born!

And now I hear that 

GWAR

founder and lead singer

Dave Brockie

(aka Oderus Urungus)

has passed away.

I got to meet him once when he was 

in NYC for a GWAR art show.

 He was very nice,

very funny

and a great storyteller.

Sorry to see you go,

Oderus.

You made heavy metal fun!

CARTOON NETWORK ACTION PACK #41

We used to have a lot of fun 

writing and drawing comics for

Cartoon Network Action Pack.

Storyboard soopuh star

Maurice Fontenot 

always rocked some serious pencils,

like these from

OPERATION: SLITHER:

If you wanna see the whole story,

see if you can find a copy of

Action Pack #31:

EARLY PEPPER ANN DESIGNS

Back before  Pepper Ann was  Disney's  Pepper Ann she was a comic strip  in YM Magazine (aka Young and Modern Magazine) (nee Young Miss Magazine)
Shockingly, the internets don't have no examples of the strip. But I can assure you that PA looked a lot like this guy:

Which isn't shocking since

Sue Rose 

created both

Fido Dido

and

Pepper Ann.

Before Disney,

Sue pitched a

Pepper Ann series to 

Nickelodeon

but they asked for for it to

NOT

look like Fido.

Enter 

Mr. Warburton!

I had been working with Sue on 

Fido Dido stuffs for a long time.

We had similar styles and 

got along sooper good.

So she asked if I'd help

figure out what a

non-Fido 

Pepper Ann 

might look like.

We all know what PA ended up looking like...

but here are some early sketches that

Sue and I kicked around:

It's so fun

looking back at 

old stuff like this!

KENNY AND THE CHIMP LAYOUT DRAWINGS

A long time ago,

after a storyboard was done,

we did layout drawings:

They set up the scenes for

the overseas studios.

It put the characters a bit more on model

and served as waypoints for the animators.

These days storyboards are

MUCH MORE

meticulously posed out

and then cut together with the voices

to make an animatic.

So layouts aren't all 

that necessary.

Some shows 

(like The Simpsons)

do both layouts and animatics.

But most productions don't have 

the time or budget.

Still, it's nice to find some old ones in the archive!

 SOOPER ADDED BONUS:

After we recorded Kenny and the Chimp

I had all the voice actors 

sign the storyboard:

That's

Tom Kenny as Kenny

Frank Welker as Chimpy and Professor XXXL

Greg Berger as Hotline Voice

Candi Milo as Salmonella Fitzgerald

Eddie Deezen as Ice Cream Guy

NEVER!

I hope he's not still

waiting for this.

I RISKED IT ALL FOR A BILLY AND MANDY CLEAN-UP GUIDE

It's amazing what you can find 

when you break into

Maxwell Atoms'

house late at night.

Most of it is 

NSFWOAR

(Not Safe For Work Or Anything Really)

But it was worth fighting past

the evil creatures 

Mr. Atoms

summoned from the 

depths of Burbank

to stop me.

For instance,

I was able to nab

an awesome

character clean-up guide from

The Grim Adventures of The Billy and Mandy.

It's a fantastically detailed crash course

on how to pound the B&M characters 

on model whilst still keeping the 

life and expression

that the storyboard artist 

gave them.

Check it:

Totally worth having a 1000 year curse put on me, right?

SO YA LIKE MOVIE COSTUMES?

Last week 

the fabulous 

Mrs. Warburton

and I went to a

fashion show/costume exhibit

at

The Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising

The fashion show part had former FIDM grad

and Project Runway star

Nick Varreos 

showing off some of his Academy Award-inspired gowns.

which were lovely--

but yeah 

big deal

whatever

who cares

because 

BATTLE ARMOR!!!

No,

the fashion show 

didn't include these

costumes from 

Pacific Rim,

but 

the gallery show 

afterwards 

did!

Highlighting

many of this year's Oscar nominated films,

the exhibit spanned an impressive

cross-section of 

movies.

Like 

Star Trek: Into Darkness

Man of Steel

(the detail on this costume was sooper intricate)

GI Joe: Retaliation

My youngest son

went to pre-school with the son or 

Ray Park

(Snake Eyes, Darth Maul, The Toad, etc)

He's a really great guy

so we were psyched

to see his costume here:

I think this was from Thor:

One of the my favorite parts of the exhibit

was the paper-craft hair on

the mannequins:

Obviously 

it wasn't all

sci-fi 

fantasy 

action movie 

costumes

or

Mrs. Warburton

would have run screaming into the night.

There was stuff from

Anna Karenina:

The Great Gatsby:

American Hustle:

But 

yeah 

big deal

whatever

who cares

because 

SAMURAI!!!

The show is running until

April 26th

so you've got 

time to see it.

Details are over

HERE