The Good The Bad and El Tigre

Inspired by the greates motion picture of all time, Jean Claude VanDamme's Bloodsport, The Good the Bad And El Tigre is one ofd my favorites.

We had originally wanted all El Tigre episodes to be half an hour long. After the pilot we knew that the kind of stories Jorge wanted to tell would be difficult to tell in 11 minutes. With 30, we could tell an epic story, had lots of action and relax the pacing to let the jokes breathe. The Good The Bad And El Tigre gives you a pretty good look at what we had in mind.

Mother's Glove

I had a feeling that the episode with the super sexy super hero lady would get some extra love from the fellas on the crew - both at home and in Ireland... And I was right! Everyone did an amazing job on this episode, from Sean Szeles' board, through Boulder's animation, up to Shawn Patterson's music. All top notch!

Cactus Kid

Cactus Kid is by far the strangest El Tigre episode... Which is why I love it! We thought the strangemess would put a lot of people off, but we've gotten some of our best fan feedback from this episode.

There was a valid concern expressed at the script phase that Tigre sliceing up the Cactus Monsters might be too graphic. So we went with a sort of David Fincher/Friz Freeling solution to the problem.

Instead of actually seeing Tigre slice up the monsters, we implied it by cutting to reaction shots of Frida and Granpapi, and splattering cactus juices across their faces.

Wrong And Dance

Wrong and Dance is the second cartoon of our strongest half hour. Another great personality driven story, executed with great imagination by Ricky Garduno.

Charlie Update

My boy is growing fast. He's 12 pounds now, and almost half as tall as his mother! (He's 24 inches tall, and she's 64 inches.... Okay, that math doesn't really work, but he is getting really big!)
I haven't seen Speed Racer or Iron Man, and I'm probably going to miss Indiana Jones too. This is what I do with my time instead:

...Which is way more rewarding to me. Charlie loves picture books, and I love reading them to him. M. Sasek's books are his favorites. He kicks his legs and squeels at the good pictures - which is pretty much all of them. He also likes to babble along with me as I read to him. It's a hoot.

So if you see me around, I won't be able to give you my opinion on the new Hulk tor GTA 4. But, if you need any facts on the Saturn rocket, or the name of the first monkey in space, I'm your man!

Love And War

Something really cool happens in second seasons. After a dozen or so half hours, the artists and writers figure out the characters, and move away from plot driven stories and gags, toward personality driven stories and jokes.

Love and War marked that turning point in Tigre. We knew the characters well enough that we could start looking for entertainment not just the situations, but how the individual characters reacted to them. From this point on the episodes just got better and better, for as long as it lasted.

...Not that I did any of that in my beatboards. I continued to focus on the visual structure, and action - leaving all the juicy stuff to the people who are way beter at it than me. In this case, the phenominal Eddie Trigueros.

Crouching Tigre

I like all of the individual parts of this episode. The music, the script, the board, the animation - they're all really good, but they don't really come together as a whole, which, as the director, is my fault. So, appologies to everyone on this episode. But we did come back gangbusters on,"Love and War," amd Wrong and Dance!"