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.