TAGS Apr. 8 & 9, 1993

India ink on copier paper.

The break room, where Tags go to rest their heels, grab a snack and watch a little television.

Wensdae (weasel) enjoys America's past time, which is yet more evidence of Schulz's Peanuts influence. If that as a topic wasn't obvious enough, ball player Schultz (sic) should have pushed it over handily.

Player Davis is a nod to Jim Davis, creator of newspaper strip, Garfield.

Waterson (sic) is a nod to Bill Watterson the creator of the popular Calvin and Hobbes newspaper strip.

The name of the team, "Mallards" is a not so subtle play off the "Mighty Ducks of Anaheim", the then Disney company owned NHL hockey team.

Dive!

Multi-color ball point pen ink on paper.

A sketch book drawing exploring a possible design of a scuba diving costume for Tuff-Girl.
The large, redundant emblem was conceived to be part a diving harness as a container of sorts. Also to that harness is a knife holster.

120 [m ] - Ben in the End

both: black ink on copier paper


Late in 2007, I had the opportunity, to write/storyboard the animated end-page for the new show, Ben 10 Alien Force. After the credit roll and the end, Cartoon Network Studios punctuates the show with five seconds of animation of what is their logo acting as a sort of clap board. The logo splits opens like a window, some quick animation happens, then the logo claps shut.

I guess I had a lot of ideas for five seconds of animation. In the first board, I had Ben in mid run coming to a stop before slamming/activating the watch - BOOM! Too much?

It ended up being a truck shot of a standing Ben, from a tight close up of his eyes.

New episodes of Ben 10, Alien Force airs Saturday mornings.

120 [m ] Summer Consumer Ad

Blue pencil and black roller ball ink on copier paper.


The two biggest properties on the network last year (at least by the standards of marketing and licensing push) were Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends and Ben 10. Of course, we have to tell people stuff like that, thus the function of the consumer ad.

The creative problems are these: 1) one is a comedy while the other an action show; 2) nary shall the two meet and mingle; and 3) we had one ad page.

The logical evolution of this was to choose a property or defer the ad until another time. I think we went with the later.


This image actually consists of two visual metphors which I have kept re-introducing at the conceptual stages of image campaigns for the respective programs.
For Foster's, it's about imagination, so the metaphor is things coming out of Mac's head. That's not what the show is about, but to the uninitiated, it's close enough.
For Ben 10, it's a bunch of alien heroes coming out of the boy, Ben. On that show, Ben turns into one of a dozen and counting alien forms through DNA manipulation - yada, yada, yada. The metaphor works well enough.

Now that I think about it, neither our marketing nor our licensing groups has ever favored visual metaphors. They both love big character, however.

Eh, I should just give up.