Biography

I had a warped suburban sixties childhood growing up in San Jose California. When I wasn’t drawing cartoons, I was reading them in the paper, or watching them on TV. It was my world. I knew I wanted to live there.

I started trying to get my comic strips syndicated when I was 11, and in frustration of the rejections, started publishing my own newspaper at 12. I started getting wrapped up in writing and politics. After a stint as a caricature artist at an amusement park at 16, I was hired at an Ad agency as an illustrator and designer at 17, while also working as a political cartoonist for a local San Jose Paper. I suppose in keeping with the journalistic and advertising culture, I developed a horrible destructive alcohol and drug habit. I started my own illustration business at age 20 amidst a drug haze and horrible hangovers  while continuing to send off my comic strips to syndicates to continuous rejection. At 24, I hit bottom with my drinking and drugs  and got clean and sober. It was a wild ride, and I was ready to get off. So far, it has stuck.

I was making a decent enough living in the eighties as an editorial and advertising illustrator. Enough to get married and buy a small tiny house in San Jose. My illustration and design work started specializing in character creations for corporate communications, marketing, awareness campaigns, etc.  I had a long list of very prestigious clients. I finally accepted that the shrinking comic strip market was not going to open their door for me, but I realized all of the work I did on creating the worlds and characters for those rejected strips taught me a lot, and was going to help me even more down the road.  I was loving my life so it was ok. I had a great studio space in a little town called Saratoga in the hills near San Jose.

Then it happened.

After checking out a local animation festival, I was smitten by the really cool films coming from the independent animators. It was the late eighties, and animation was starting to make a comeback. I took a beginning class in animation at a local community college to see if I could pull it off.  A student film that I made won a couple of student animation awards including a Student Academy Award, and was picked up for distribution, much to my shock. But I was hooked. I found an outlet to tell my stories and for my characters to come to life. I stared hiring people to help with my new passion and added business.

After sending a pencil test of my next film to a small struggling kids cable channel called Nickelodeon to see if they wanted to give me money to finish it, they instead asked if I wanted to come up with a cartoon series idea. I thought that was the most ridiculous thing I had ever heard. My weirdness would never make it on a kids channel. I politely declined. The head of development said they wanted weirdness. Next thing you know, I have my own show called  “Rocko’s Modern Life” . But a month before production began, my wife took her own life.

Deep in shock from my wife’s sudden death, I was grateful for a creative project to pour my angst, pain and fear into. Although I had an all-star crew, Rocko became a very personal project for me in which I could invest my heart and soul. But for much of production of RML I was sinking into a pit of grief, while battling the demons of television and volume animation. Nickelodeon didn’t see it as a personal project for me, and I quickly learned the finer points of entertainment and television commerce.  I couldn’t take it anymore after 3 seasons. It went four with Steve Hillenburg as Creative director and under mutual agreement, the show ended after 52 episodes. I didn’t drink or use as a result of the suicide, but I needed some intense recovery and therapy. Both from the suicide and from the show. I think I had PTSD.

I ran from entertainment,  and went back to college. I started a new family with a remarriage and birth of two beautiful girls. I wrote and illustrated some children’s books including  Who Asked the Moon to Dinner  while taking my daughters to preschool and feeding the ducks. I started developing a book about some scouts at camp which seemed like it wanted to be an animated series. I really didn’t know if I wanted to battle that monster again but before I knew it, I was back in TV production with “Camp Lazlo”. I can’t seem to keep wives and have a show at the same time however. I went through a divorce during that production. Trying to make it as a Disneyland Dad by taking my girls to Emmy Award ceremonies and bringing them on stage when we won.Yes, we won two prime time Emmys. Not bad. But , again, happiness in TV production was elusive. The crew experience was different from Rocko. Where the Rocko crew was a family grateful that we all had a project we loved, the Lazlo crew had been tainted by a decade of steady work in a harsh industry. Lot’s of gossip , drama, network battles. The show ended after 61 episodes when a new regime came in to Cartoon Network and cancelled it. That was fine with me. I was ready to get back to my independent film that I started during the break between Rocko and Lazlo called “Fish Head”.

I worked on my film and wrote a blog about what I had learned about character creation and my experience in producing two animated shows. How to produce a show without losing your integrity that works for both you as an artist and for the network.( which I felt I finally learned on Lazlo). That turned into an ebook to appease the many questions I was getting which turned into a book that was published recently through Watson Guptil/ Random House called  “Creating Animated Cartoons With Character” . I also started mentoring animation students and professionals through my Cartoon Master Classes. I do a lot of consulting, lecturing, and occasionally get to wear a cap and gown as a commencement speaker for art college graduations. I’m loving the new talent that is making it’s way into the animation community. All this while continuing my independent film work and painting. I’m involved in a lot of personal projects with various canvases. I may end up back in commercial entertainment, I may not. As long as I do projects that say something and are pushing me as an artist and a writer.

I recently remarried to a wonderful, beautiful Belgian school teacher named Aleide who doesn’t know anything about American television animation, which I find very cool. I’m struggling a bit with parenthood of my two teenage daughters, but I have a pretty nice life in a converted barn house in the foothills of the Angeles Crest Mountains of Southern California. Rocko seems to be having a lot of renewed nostalgia which is both great and weird at the same time. It’s finally on DVD through Shout Factory and I know a lot of fans have been waiting for that. I’m grateful for the support of the fans, but it’s sometimes hard continually talking about something that I created almost 20 years.

I know, I know. A luxury problem.

Such is the life of an artist. I’m not sure what my shelf life is, but since I was close to death several times whiling drinking and abusing drugs, I feel that the last 26 years have been a gift and everything is gravy. Still with many ups and downs, but still I can feel it, and make art about it.

Very lucky.