This made my day...

El Tigre DVDs with all 26 episodes now on sale at Amazon.com

Adios Ricky

The incredibly gifted Rick Garduno has died.

My first reaction was anger. Damn it, Ricky, this is way too soon. And you were such an extraordinary talent. What a waste! Anger at myself for ignoring his last message asking to meet so he could apologize over our last argument. I'll be taking that regret to the grave. But the anger in me is long gone and now I'm just sad.

Thanks to Gabe Swarr, I met Ricky back in 2003. We were both young artists from Mexico City trying to make it in the industry. We connected instantly. He joked that I was too Mexican. I shot back that he wasn't Mexican enough. And for some reason, even thought we were both natural Spanish speakers, we only spoke in English.

While we were both working on Mucha Lucha I fell in love with his mischievous and subversive boards. I really loved designing for him. We got into huge fights but we always made up, like real friends. As soon as I had my first pilot at Disney, Ricky was the first person I asked to help me board a chunk. When he turned in his part, I was crying and laughing my ass off. Ricky, like usual, had done way more than I asked. And he completely poured his heart and soul into it. He just couldn't help himself. After that, I swore than anything I ever worked on, Ricky would be my wild card.

Years later, and after working together on other shows and pilots, El Tigre was greenlit for series at Nickelodeon. I asked Ricky to board the first episode of the series, which was very difficult. We were still trying to figure out the show, the writing and the crew. He jumped in fearlessly. Like before, he did way more than anyone asked and he poured his heart and soul into that massive board. He was under a microscope. The board was a mess with genius ideas sprinkled all over it. He was almost fired after that one. But he kept at it and worked his ass off. Ricky kept pushing the envelope. His Tigre episodes are some of most beloved, inventive, subversive and mischievous. He was so good, writers would request him to board their scripts. In 2008, El Tigre won the Annie for best show. It was for "The Grave Escape", a Day of the Dead themed two part episode Ricky boarded (with Eddie Trigueros). Ricky had come through yet again.

As time passed, we began to grow apart. He was fed up with the industry and turned me down when I asked him to board our last Disney pilot. He was done with the studios. The last time we had dinner, he scared me with some of his new radical and extreme ideas. He insulted everything we had worked on together. This was very painful to hear. He implied I was a sell out for selling the studios my personal stories, art and heart. I was furious and I said things to him I will always regret. When the bill came, he paid to mock me and we went our separate ways.

By this point, his personal comics got sadder, hilarious and heartbreaking. He was baring his soul. We should have all seen this coming. Maybe he wanted to meet one last time to say good bye. I'll never know.

All I know is that the Ricky I loved, the funny mischievous genius, the one that changed my life, that Ricky will stay with me forever. I will always tell his story and keep his memory alive.

Adios, hermano.

We will meet each other again some day.
I swear. 
jorge

Muertito at Shopfanatico.com

I'm very happy to announce that MUERTITO shirts are now selling at SHOPFANATICO.COM

New SUPER MACHO shirts at Surropa.com !!!

Celebrate 5 de Mayo in style with a Super-Macho shirt!!!
Men, women and kids sizes available. You get 20% off if you type in the code "supermacho20"
If you buy one you can punch me five times in the face!

Dear ladies and machos, the brand new SUPER MACHO t-shirts are now available at Surropa.com !!!

If you buy one I'll let you punch me in the face.

Super cute Frida costume for Halloween!!!

Is she super cute or what!?


Check out this amazingly cool family. They are the best!!!!

The original 2005 pilot

El Tigre, The Adventures of Manny Rivera PILOT from Jorge R. Gutierrez on Vimeo.

EL TIGRE wins FOUR more Emmys!!!

Yup, the little Tiger kid keeps on fighting.

El Tigre just won four more Emmy awards in the following categories:

INDIVIDUAL ACHIEVEMENT IN ANIMATION
"El Tigre, The Adventure of Manny Rivera", Nickelodeon
Eddie Trigueros
Storyboard Artist for "The Thing That Ate Frida's Brain"


INDIVIDUAL ACHIEVEMENT IN ANIMATION
"El Tigre, The Adventure of Manny Rivera", Nickelodeon
Gerald De Jesus
Art Direction for "No Boots, No Belt, No Brero"


INDIVIDUAL ACHIEVEMENT IN ANIMATION
"El Tigre, The Adventure of Manny Rivera", Nickelodeon
Jorge R. Gutierrez
Character Design for "The Good, The Bad & The Tigre"


DIRECTING IN AN ANIMATED PROGRAM
"El Tigre, The Adventure of Manny Rivera", Nickelodeon
for "The Good, The Bad & The Tigre"
Dave Thomas, Director
Gabe Swarr, Director
Andrea Romano, Voice Director

Best Halloween Costume Ever.

Super genius cartoonista Tara Billinger

spotted in a super market in Mexico City...

El Tigre nominated for another EMMY!

Mega super congratulations go out to Supervising Producer & Director Dave Thomas, director Gabe Swarr and Voice Director Andrea Romano for their recent Best Direction Emmy nominations!!!

The episode nominated was the epic "The Good, The Bad & The Tigre".

Dave Thomas directed the whole episode with the "good" ending:




And Gabe Swarr had his Tigre directorial debut with the "evil" ending:
Go her and click on #2 ending!


You guys are my heroes! I still can't believe how luck we were to work with you handsome geniuses.

AMAZING FAN TRAILER!

Best Tigre Fan EVER!

Check out super kid Dominck wearing an amazing El Tigre costume for Halloween!!! I especially love his kick butt poses and charmingly mischievous attitude. Dominck, you are AWESOME.


Special thanks to the loving and creative parents Valiant & Elaina (who dressed up like White Pantera & Maria!) for allowing me to post these inspiring pics. Thank you guys!!!

El Tigre PS2 video game

All these designs were done for the El Tigre PS2 video game. Super genius Tigre writer Scott Kreamer and I wrote the story, Steve Lambe & Miah Alcorn did a bunch of cool skeleton henchmen designs, Roman Laney & Gerald de Jesus designed & painted some cool Aztec inspired BGs and I got to design Mikla, a new Az-Tech super villain that was going to be a big part of Season 3.

I have yet to pass the first level.

BG design by Roman Laney & Geral De Jesus

Character Designs by Steve Lambe

Character Designs by Miah Alcorn

Happy Valentine's Day!

This amazing drawing showed up from our little 4 year-old nephew Emilio!

Sandra drawing Frida!

Click the image below to see super Sandra draw in real time. That's how fast she really is!

too hot for TV!

As I was getting the next big post ready I found some of my designs that were a deemed a little too risky to be on the show...

Where can I see EL TIGRE?

This is the number one e-mail question we seem to get. Here's what I know...

TV:
It still airs in the US on Nicktoons Network. And on Canal 5 (my favorite channel as a kid) and Nickelodeon in Mexico. We have been told it's airing everywhere in the world by fans but we don't really know which channels.

ON LINE:
You can see all 26 full length episodes on TurboNick for free!

Itunes has the first 19 episodes and will hopefully post the last 7 soon.

As far as I know, you can find every single episode on the bit torrent sites out there but the quality is all over the place.

DVD:
There's a DVD selling in Latin America called "Dia De Los Malos." I don't know if they'll ever make them for the US or any other market. Keep your fingers crossed.


VIDEOGAMES:
There's a PS2 and a Nintendo DS games out there.

BOOKS:
There's the big NICKTOONS book which has an El Tigre chapter (with lots of development designs) and a ton of art from all the other amazing Nick shows like Ren & Stimpy, Teenage Robot, Invader Zim, Avatar, Sponge Bob, Mighty B, etc...

And of course there's the McDonalds toys....

And the Tazos...

And I forgot (thanks Jack) about the T-Shirts we made for Nick.com...

Please let us know if it's airing in your country (thanks Romson from Russia)!

EL TIGRE nominated for two more ANNIE awards!!!

We just found out that El Tigre has been nominated for two more ANNIE awards!!! For those who don't know, the ANNIE awards are like the Oscars or the Emmys of the American animation industry.

In 2007, El Tigre received four nominations (Best TV Animation, Best Music, Best Character Design & Best TV Show) and won two (Best Character Design and more importantly Best TV Show!).

So this year, we were not really expecting anything. As you can imagine, we are super happy and surprised with the following noms!!!

-Best TV Writing for Scott Kreamer's hilariously genius script for "Mustache Love"

-Best TV Character Designs for my humble doodles for "The Good, The Bad & The Tigre"

These two nominations are really for everyone who worked on the series. It's so satisfying to see all the hard work the incredible crew put into our little show is yet again recognized by our peers. Congratulations to the whole El Tigre crew!!!

Below some of my designs for "The Good, The Bad & The Tigre"

How to Make an El Tigre cartoon - part 1

I will now go through our usual process to make each El Tigre cartoon. I have broken it down to 10 steps and I'll be really condensing some parts so please bare with me.

Television budgets and schedules are very VERY demanding so we had to be very disciplined to make the best cartoons we could in the time allowed. I am extremely proud of the fact that we were always on time and on budget. It's to the credit of our amazing crew that we pulled this off!

As much as I loved how the show turned out, I can only dream of what it would have been like if we had more time.

These were rough guidelines and never a "formula". We weren't going to force anything in if it didn't feel organic.

Almost every single story was based on something that happened to someone on the crew. And it wasn't just Sandra and I, all the writers, directors (like Dave Thomas with Zebra Donkey) and board artists pitched in their childhood experiences. We had WAY more stories than we got to make!

All the "reality rules" of the Tigre universe were pretty clear. People, and especially El Tigre, could get hurt and even die. Throughout the series a lot of characters actually died, which I loved. Without this, there was no real threat and nothing was at stake. But we made sure the show had funny action instead of violence. Which was a lot harder than you think.

And this doesn't mean Tigre "won" in every episode. Doing the right thing wasn't always "legal" and vice versa. We loved exploring the moral grey areas in each of his conflicts. As you can imagine, my favorite episodes were the ones with the bittersweet endings.