Royal Rumble was the title of my fourth episode in season 1 of Xiaolin Showdown. It's also a good descriptor for the process of directing it. This turned out to be the last episode I directed, though I was still heavily involved in the show for its subsequent seasons. Why? Because there were some lessons I hadn't learned yet.

Never heard of this one? That's probably because it didn't get past the pilot stage. It was a 3-minute Looney Tunes-type showdown, based on a Mattel toy line, between top-tier WWE wrestlers Kane and John Cena. Since the project was so short, I'll take the opportunity to present something people outside the animation biz rarely see: multiple drafts of a storyboard as it goes through notes and revisions.

Our third episode of this series was where we took command. We'd already taken to the show like fish to water from the beginning, but now that the 2-episode shakedown was behind us, our funniest stuff was pouring out, and we drew the best-looking storyboards we could. See them all from start to finish here!

Following my five-season tenure on Avengers Assemble, I took on a new role as the “go to” guy for special projects while working on the next Spider-Man series, titled Maximum Venom. Those project are presented here for your general amusement.

I've spoken before about "magic scripts" in the cartoon biz. At least once on any given season, I get a script that I can see play out like a movie in my head the first time I read it. Then the storyboard flows out of me with seemingly no effort at all. That's what this one was like. The art was sharper, the gags were funnier, and more personality made it into the finished show. In many cases, the storyboards were better than the finished animation.

Tutenstein was based on a comic by Jay Stephens and produced by Porchlight Entertainment for Discovery Kids. I drew six storyboards for the series in the spring and summer of 2003. And despite being completely outside the intended viewership, I enjoyed every minute of it.

Somehow I wound up with an odd, sporadic history with the Men in Black franchise when it became the only IP that I encountered in both my comic book and animation careers. Afterward, any time I was asked what I'd worked on, eyes often lit up when I listed the MiB opening title. More than one viewer said it was the coolest opening they'd ever seen. I will go as far as to say it's the coolest opening I ever worked on.

Of the many TV cartoons I've directed and storyboarded, It's hard to pick one that was more fun to work on than Xiaolin Showdown. It featured four kids learning martial arts, racing villains all over the world to find mystical objects called Shen Gong Wu. It was like we stepped out of a jail cell, blinking in the bright sunshine as our producer handed us the keys to a hot rod and said to drive as fast as we wanted. I love it so much, I'm doling it out one episode at a time so you can see exactly how much fun it was.

When I was a kid in the 70s, building stuff with Legos was one of the ways I got my creative brain thinking about how to draw things. When I was looking for work in 2002, a studio named Creative Capers hired me to draw Legos. How does that click together for ya? This was only a brief storyboarding assignment, amounting to just 4 minutes of screen time, but it fun enough to make me wish I'd done more. See the whole movie here and my storyboard for comparison.

While we worked on season 4, one of the MCU films that came out was Civil War, which featured the debut of Black Panther. His first solo film was already in pre-production. Someone in one of the executive chairs decided that this gave us enough momentum to shift gears and turn Avengers Assemble into a Black Panther TV series with the Avengers as supporting characters. The new title would be Black Panther's Quest, and we were all there for it.

A gang of Egyptian mummies is revived in the modern world to protect the 12-year-old descendant of their pharaoh from an evil sorcerer on a quest for immortality. Rather than stumbling around as dried-up zombie husks, they draw power from Egyptian gods that turns them superhuman guardians against villains and evil spirits. See my storyboard for one episode of this series, drawn in the last days of the pre-digital era when TV cartoons changed forever. And not entirely for the better.

Season 4 was truly packed with major events. After the original team goes missing, Black Panther brings together the "New Avengers" until the others can be found/rescued. After some more crazy adventures, everyone is transported to Battleworld where the Beyonder makes them his pawns in our version of Secret Wars. Boyoboy those are trigger words for me. Find out why in this article.

The studio was Wildbrain and the client was actor/fitness guru Jake Steinfeld, better known under the brand name "Body by Jake." After a successful career of training adults, he made the commendable decision to turn his breezy, positive, and encouraging style toward children's health. And there are few better ways to reach children than through cartoons. I heartily endorse EVERYTHING Jake has to say in these cartoons. Well done, sir.

I've been an anime fan since 1980, so you can imagine what a thrill it was to actually get to work on an anime series, drawing storyboards that would be animated in Japan. This series took a long, winding road to my door and was in heaps of trouble when it finally arrived. What was it like to help rescue a medium that I'd always revered? Find out in this article!

Avengers Assemble was simultaneously the hardest and most rewarding series I've yet worked on. I directed all the even-numbered episodes in this season of 26, which set me up to do the grand finale. After seasons 1 and 2, I knew I was in for something big, and I was not wrong.

If asked, I'd have to say that one of my favorite things is being contacted out of the blue with a job offer. Even if I have to decline the offer, it's always affirming to get some proof that I haven't been forgotten. Getting that proof was even sweeter in Covid world when daily human contact shrank to the size of a Zoom window. And that's how I ended up working on two episodes of Samurai Rabbit.

It's hard to describe what a rush it was to make this series during the ascendency of the MCU. I've worked on plenty of shows that were tied to well-known IP, but nothing compared to this. This was the season of the Squadron Supreme, Thanos, the infinity stones, AND Ultron, in addition to other villains destined for the big screen, not to mention a complete shift in digital storyboarding techniques, so we had a LOT to chew on.

Here's the story of my brief tenure on the Jackie Chan animated series, including a complete copy of my one and only storyboard, AND the story of my even briefer encounter with Jackie Chan himself at the start of it all.

Avengers Assemble was hands down the toughest show I ever worked on. Not only was I tasked with matching MCU production quality, I was given a team of untested artists to direct over long distance with the tightest deadlines I'd ever seen. Surprisingly, it was a challenge I was ready for and thrived on. Here is the story of how I ate that thing for LUNCH.

I didn't keep track of which Teen Titans episodes I worked on, but I certainly remember what I did for the TV movie that brought the series to a close. it was something special. Trouble in Tokyo wasn't just the grand finale, it was...set in Tokyo. Knowing that we could dial the anime influence all the way up made it extra exciting.