Mustache Love

The episodes featuring Raul The Mustache were good sweaty fun to make. Raul couldn't talk - he would change his shape to pantomime out his intent, and this forced the artists to be extremely creative. Luckily we had no shortage of creative board artists! Ricky Garduno was the first artist to try his hand at it, and did an amazing job with The Mustache Kid. Eddie Trigueros took it as a personal challenge to top him in Miracle City Undercover, and did some of his most clever and interesting work. Super artist Sean Szeles was up for the third one, Mustache Love, and did not disappoint either.

My main goal with the beat board was just to do a little of the heavy lifting ( crowd shots and location design.) and then to get out of Sean's way.

I still have regret fueled, guilt-nightmares over the was the massive multi-plane pan I drew - and made poor Roman Laney paint... Only to cut out of the finished cartoon.

If you're reading this Roman, I'm still sorry.

The Cuervo Project

Episode 24. About this time, I felt like I was starting to hit my stride on El Tigre. Composing in depth, which I hadn't really done before, was starting to feel more natural. The visual structure was becoming more instinctive and less cerebral. And I also had developed a real love for the characters, espeically Zoe Avez.

I never really thought of her as evil. I though of her as tragic. Here was a girl with a crush on on a boy who didn't like her back - and who often took advantage of her. Her father was long gone, driven off by her evil and abusive mother, or perhaps done in my her Grandmother. Who wouldn't feel sorry for her? I was always rooting for her, and glad that in the end, she finally got a win.

Big Night This Saturday

Hey Everybody,

Wish the El Tigre Directing crew luck on Saturday night. We're nominated for an Emmy!

Jorge and Jerry DeJesus have already won in their Individual Achievement categories, for Character Design and Production Design. Tigre alumnus Eddie Trigueros also won for Storyboard on The Mighty B! Hopefully we directors can keep up with out super talented colleagues!

Here are the beat boards for Chupacabros. There are only four more Tigre beatboards after this. Then I'll start posting beatboards from my current job - The Fairly Oddparents.

Mech Daddy

I'm a huge giant robot nerd. Working in Los Angeles, you don't get a chance to direct many shows about giant robots. So when Jorge gave me a chance, I really wanted to do a good job.

One thing I tried to do was push the contrasts - between close ups and wide shots:
Contrasts of small objects and large objects
Between wanton destruction and suburban life




Three dimensional character movement and two dimensional character movement.
Contrast between dark interiors and bright interiors
The rockets not starting was a little experiment in adding tension...

There's a killer shot missing here of Giant Robot Sanchez flying above the clouds with his children in his hand - and the bright sun at his back. It was put in after the pitch because of a suggestion by Audrey Diehl -one of our Network Executives, who always had really good ideas.

I think the shot worked so well because it nicely contrasted all of the tension built up at the end of the sequence.

Contrast between fast cuts and long cuts. This last shot ended up over 20 seconds long. The previous 20 shots were all shorter than three.

It was an experiment, and I think it came off. And if we had more episodes, I definitely would have tried to do more. 

Tigre + Curevo

This was the last beat board I did before Gabe Swarr became our second Director.  Prior to this I had directed every episodes myself. It was an awesome experience, but mentally and physically I was at my limit - and you can see at the end of the beatboard, my arm just gave out.

After Gabe came on, life got a lot better, and so did the shows. With half my Directing workload lifted, there was a lot more time to spend on everything! As the Supervising Producer I still worked on every episode. But with a super genius like Gabe at the helm, I didn't have to worry about much. His episodes are some of our best. My only regret is that we didn't promote him sooner.