Jim Soper Retrospective

Jim Soper is a marvelous talent from the small Boston, Massachusetts animation industry who is now the lead character designer on Looney Tunes Cartoons. Most of the story of how Soper was discovered was already discussed in Browngardt's entry, so here is a recap from it.

"Browngardt discovered Lead Character Designer Jim Soper at just the right time, just before Soper made plans to quit the animation business altogether after being stuck doing uneventful motion graphic projects that didn't make use of his real skills."

 To go further in detail, Soper worked in the Boston animation industry for about ten years before being discovered by Pete Browngardt. The Boston studios Soper worked for, which included the likes of Clambake Animation, Hero 4 Hire, and Soup2Nuts, had wanted to do a form of traditional animation on their projects, but they never really knew how to achieve desirable results on that end due to lack of available talent, time, and resources to effectively accomplish it. The schedules were very long and merciless on Soper, who ended up hurting his arm while being overworked on one project. It turned out to be focal dystonia. An effect of this dustonia is that Soper's drawing hand would randomly cramp up at a certain point in time while working. Ten years of this destructive life style unfolded before Soper made plans to give up the business altogether.

Due to the smallness of the Boston industry, Jim Soper ended up serving in various positions in the Boston studios such as character designer, storyboard artist, animator, layout, and animation director. You can see an example of this in the special Hero4Hire did for a baseball team's mascot named Wally, where he takes both storyboard and animation credits. His most prominent position in Boston was that of animation director, and later storyboard and layout director at Evan Sussman's studio Hero4Hire from 2013 to 2017. He was responsible for bringing in traditional animation to the studio.

The point is that I'm glad that Soper is now on a show where where his drawings can reach millions and millions of more people than the obscure Boston studio work could ever have. I don't even  have much knowledge of the individual work Jim Soper did while in Boston. The only specific credit I have on hand is his storyboarding and animation credits for the kids geared baseball cutout animation special Wally's Opening Day for Hero4Hire.

A project he worked on at Hero was for Sesame Street's original youtube content. The Kitchen Crew, a blend of live action and traditional animation put over real life kitchen appliances

.Jim Soper's team profile from the archived Hero4Hire website in 2013. This confirms that he was lead animator for Hero's Nick pitch short Kid Impressive. If I had to guess what character he animated, it would have to be the monster, although this is just speculation from my part.

His profile from the archived Hero4Hire website in 2017. His next stint at Warner Bros. would prove that he was indeed born in the right era.


On Looney Tunes, Jim Soper is Lead Character Designer bases on his mastery of the 1940s funny animal style that dominated classic cartoons in all major studios.

So what makes Jim Soper's art of classic cartoon characters stand out? One answer: His mastery of drawing appealing golden age cartoon character designs.

He has a great understanding in structure and volume in character poses. In this drawing, you can see visible structure lines. While invisible in the final image, these lines help make the character come alive off the page. It makes the designs feel like it was from an actual Termite Terrace animator from the mid-40s.

A page from a guide on structure from Soper himself.

There's also the proportions Soper nails down to make his 40s approach successful. What Soper nails with Daffy is he makes him look like a classic screwball character by a combination of drawing his head and body skinny but making his bottom look really large and thick. Also, his tall eyes that make up most of his head adds a youthful exuberance to the duck.

The last thing I enjoy about his Daffy is making the the most of his extremely expressive hands as shown below.

Onto his Bugs Bunny, the thing that really gets me about his take on Bugs is that he can do both extreme ends of Clampett's two most best animators extremely well.

Bob McKimson:

Rod Scribner:

I'm really stunned at what range Soper has on drawing the rabbit. Bugs is a very tricky character to draw already, let alone the two specific Bugses that were drawn by two of the very best Warner Bros animators of all time during the golden age.

Bugs has been Soper's favorite Looney Tunes character since his childhood because he was always in control of the situation at hand, which deeply spoke to Soper's anxiety issues.

Porky is really hard to get right. Porky's classic design has an ambiguous quality to his age. He was used as both an adult and a little kid in his late 30s appearance. Even when he was an adult, he has that young boyish innocence to him. His eyes are very hard to get right, they're basically tall rounded rectangles with some curviness to them. These style of eyes Soper drew appear to hearken back to the early Clampett-Jones cartoons of 1938.

This is one of Soper's other styles. He can draw various golden age cartoon characters extremely well, but it's not the only thing he can draw extremely well. Small heads, thick, strong bodies with sharp dynamism in poses. More examples below.

Next style.

This is my personal favorite of Soper's styles. I love the ruggedness of the linework and the overgrown noses that look crusty.

To see more of Jim Soper's artwork, check his Instagam at https://www.instagram.com/jimsoper85, Twitter at https://twitter.com/JimSoper4 and Tumblr at https://jimsoper85.tumblr.com/.

Listen to Jim Soper's podcast interview for the Drunken Opinion at https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/baddrunks/episodes/2018-09-25T07_56_44-07_00/.

Detailed Profile and Art Analysis on Alex Kirwan

Alex Kirwan is one of the most valuable artists working in the US TV animation industry. His skills in art are extremely versatile, being able to nail plenty of different art styles. His drawings, designs, and paintings are often incredible to say the very least.

Alex Kirwan was raised in Duluth, Minnesota, being the son of the acclaimed artist Dave Kirwan. With his dad's influence, the young boy exhibited an natural talent for the arts. When Alex was just a teenager, his father took part and won in a international storyboard contest for Hanna Barbera. The next year, Alex participated in the contest, and was disqualified based on him being too young for the contest. But vice president of Hanna Barbera, Larry Huber was so amazed with Kirwan's boards that he and Fred Siebert hired Kirwan from school to be an employee of Hanna Barbera. Kirwan's first job in the industry was to draw storyboard clean-ups for Johnny Bravo. After the first season of Johnny Bravo, Huber and Siebert formed Frederator and encouraged Kirwan to pitch them ideas for Oh Yeah Cartoons.

The resulting three cartoons Alex Kirwan made included 25 Cent Trouble, Thatta Boy, and Magic Trixie. Truthfully, these shorts do not hold up that well today to a number of reasons, and as such are not a true indicator of what Kirwan is capable of. Magic Trixie is the last and the best short out of the three as it succeeds the most in having a distinctive style.

While not working on his own ideas, Kirwan found a peer in the form of Rob Renzetti. Kirwan and Renzetti held very similar interests, so much so that they worked on each other's pilots. Kirwan was responsible for cleaning up Renzetti board rough's on his cartoons. One of these cartoons was My Neigbor Is a Teenage Robot, which was greenlit to be a show by Nickelodeon. When production started a few years later, Renzetti took Kirwan with him to develop the show further. Kirwan was the show's most important collaborative besides Renzetti himself. It was Kirwan who suggested the idea of using 30s Art Deco posters for the show's art direction. Teenage Robot was also the first show where Kirwan provided informative and detailed character design style sheets, which he would continue to do so for the remainder of his career.

Since Tennage Robot ended, Kirwan has been on a number of great shows, the most promient of which has been Art Director on Wander Over Yonder. Once again, Kirwan provided amazingly detailed style guides that detailed the ins and outs of the character designs. Kirwan took charge of the character, color and background teams, making sure the show looked beautiful. The show's art direction is indeed one of the best in terms of this decade in American cartoons, a high feat considering that there was a very high number of designs to be completed for each episode, considering the ever changing settings of the show, which dictated the design of new backgrounds and characters constantly for every episode. It is perhaps for this reason why Browngardt decided to seek Alex Kirwan and make him in charge of the art teams for the highly demanding series of classic Looney Tunes creations. Alex is second only to Pete in terms of authority for the new series.

But enough about his history, I've been hyping this guy up to be one of the best, so let's see his artwork, shall we?

The use of color is great here. The busy scene at the top with the ghosts contrasts wonderfully with the ordinary human family at the bottom. The shape variety and the striking colors of the ghosts contrasts with the normal shapes and duller colors of the humans.

These designs show Kirwan's skill of versatility in art styles. He nails each of these styles with grace.

Some gorgeous Happy special poses from the Mighty B!. Terrific, specialized acting on the dog as he suffers over being hungry. Kirwan can nail the cartoony style down well with elegance.

An page from the character style guide that Kirwan make from McCracken's models. In here, Kirwan shows his vast knowledge and attention to detail over the subtleties of Wander's design. He looks simple at first glance, but Kirwan shows the very easy and subtle mistakes that storyboard artists could make that could lessen his appeal.

An analysis of how Carl Barks drew Donald in comparison to his regular appearance. Massive props to Kirwan for noticing so many of the little quirks and nuances that nobody else would bother to notice that differ Barks's Duck from normal Duck. Kirwan is so good at breaking down unique artists for other artists on the production below him. This guide was for Ducktales 2017, but unfortunately the production took on a different design direction.

This superhero painting Kirwan did has a clever concept in demonstrating the various powers of the best known superheros through only their arms and hands peeking out through the portraits. Very well done.

Onto some more disturbing designs, because Kirwan can pull that off well also. This is the design for the clone of Dipper from Gravity Falls that got stuck in a paper jam while being formed. Kirwan does an ecellent job showing the results of that event, with the clone's face being severely folded like paper to create an unsettling, off-kilter variation on Dipper's design, with another fold in his mouth that makes him have the appearance of a hand puppet.

A series of concept design of a witch for Gravity Falls. Rad disturbing designs with weird spaced out eyes, bandaged hand feet, big thumb nose, elongated wrinkly and bumpy hands, the hand patterns on her robe and what appears to be saliva in her mouth in two of the concepts. Just delightfully wicked.

Did you know Kirwan also does sculptures too? The sky's the limit for him.

Frankenstein picture with good use of purple and pinks to elicit a psychedelic feel to this.

Really nice, stylized dark Pinocchio painting.

A visual deveopment piece for Destination Imagination. Alex Kirwan shared an Emmy award with other major contributors of the special. Absolutely surreal and insane piece.

To see more of his artwork, check his Instagam at https://www.instagram.com/alexkirtoon/, Tumblr at https://alexkirwan.tumblr.com, and portfolio at https://alexkirwanportfolio.com.

Detailed History and Profile on Pete Browngardt

This is the first of a series of articles describing the cartoonists of the new Looney Tunes Cartoons, arriving later this year on streaming, mobile, and broadcasting.

Peter Browngardt grew up in Sag Harbor in Eastern Long Island. His four older brothers were what led him to experience the art of animation at a young age. His brothers were knowledgeable with animation and filmmaking, and gave little Pete the tools to create his own animation at the age of 7. He made animation tests throughout school, and dabbled in stop-motion following the success of the Nightmare Before Christmas.

Browngardt's older brothers knew of CalArts, and so Pete's goal was to get in to the school. He got accepted, and he found himselve be roommates with Audie Harrison.

Browngardt did 3 student films for CalArts's Open Show showcase in his four years at the university, and two of his films got into the highly esteemed Producer's Show. These include:

Mochilla, his freshman film, centered around a little boy who tried to make his pet lizard a Godzilla monster,  but only ends up killing the reptile when feeding it inappropriate foods.

Imaginary Problems, his sophomore film, revolved around an old depressed imaginary friend in therapy whose creator does not remember him anymore. This made it to the 1999 Producer's Show.

The Greatest Ride in the Universe was his senior film. An old man is abducted by aliens and he is forced to be raped by a giant alien bug. This made it to the 2001 Producer's Show.

With the attacks of 9/11 slowing down work in the animation industry in California, Browngardt moved back to New York. In this period, Browngardt moved from place to place between New York studios, having to learn how to do multiple disciplines that made his skills more well-rounded.

Browngardt found a mentor figure in New York in the form of Stephen DeStefano, one of the most amazing cartoonists in the business. DeStefano was impressed with Browngardt's drawing ability, and ever so often, offered work to him whenever DeStefano was on a job of his own.

In the summer of 2006, DeStefano relayed news to Browngardt that Cartoon Network was open to show pitches. They both came up with 3 pitches for shows to show for Craig McCracken and Rob Renzetti. McCracken in particular was amazed by Browngardt's Uncle Grandpa pitch and kept the pitch in the back of his head for later. Uncle Grandpa was inspired by the lively friends of Pete's dad, who were called uncles by the Browngardts, despite not being blood relatives of them. These "Uncles" would allow young Pete to go partake on fun activities that bordered on being illegal for a young child to partake in, such as flying a plane, driving their Cadillac, and making cannons that shoot out potatoes. The Uncles and dad also exhibited an optimistic personality, one that rubbed off of Pete. Dad in particular, would say "Good Morning" every morning to him.

Someone else also was impressed with the Uncle Grandpa pitch booklet: Carl Greenblatt. He offered Pete a character designer position on Chowder, which was staffing up with artists after it just got greenlit for production. But Browngardt wanted a storyboard position instead as he loved the opportunity of getting to work on a board-driven cartoon show. Greenblatt made a compromise with him because of Browngardt's lack of experience: He would first start off doing revisions to storyboards, then he would move up to be a principle board artist. Pete did exactly that, and advanced to board artist position two-thirds through Season 1 of Chowder.

After 2 seasons of boarding on Chowder, a new program known as Cartoonstitute, started up in the studio with McCracken and Renzetti as the main executives in 2008. Although at first reluctant to pitch, Browngart recieved helpful words of encouragement from McCracken to re-pitch Uncle Grandpa to him and Renzetti. Pete did exactly that, and got greenlit on the spot to work on a development storyboard. He reworked the storyboard three times as the kid that got help from Uncle Grandpa was too generic to be funny. The kid eventually became a acne-riddled, nerdy kid, and that was the key to achieving the desired funniness. Giant Realistic Flying Tiger came out of Browngardt's memories of He-Man riding up on Battle Cat, being awesome. However, the deadline to pitch the board to the execs was very close, and Browngardt could not draw a convincing tiger at all. The solution was to go on Google Images and insert a photo of a tiger in place of an actual drawing. It received tons of laughs at the pitch.

The finished pilot would go on to be nominated for an Emmy. However, Browngardt's chances were killed when he was asked to make a pitch bible for Uncle Grandpa. The show was received for being too edgy, (Browngardt thought that the freedom of Cartoonstitute would mean that the execs supported more mature shows.), and too complex (Browngardt overthought the structure of the show, when it should have been simplified into an easy to digest format like the pilot).

The monsters in the Uncle Grandpa pilot were well received with the artists at the studio. Browngardt improvised and freeformed their designs while making the pilot. He thought that the good reception of the monster designs would translate to into a show, although he didn't have much faith in it getting picked up. Browngardt made a bunch of imaginative monsters and pitched it to the execs, who greenlit it, much to the shock of Browngardt.

Secret Mountain Fort Awesome is what resulted from the pitch, a wholly unique, one of a kind show in CN's catalog. Unfortunately, the show did not last long at all, but Browngardt was not about to give up just yet.

When Secret Mountain was not picked up for a third season, Pete Browngardt sought to revive Uncle Grandpa. He had been preparing for this as he and Audie Harrison had made a second secret pilot episode of Uncle Grandpa towards the end of Secret Mountain's run. Along with that, Browngardt and Harrison did two more storyboards. The secret pilot and the storyboards were made more for kids in mind unlike the teen edginess of the pitch bible. The show structure was simplified back down to Uncle Grandpa helping a kid with a problem, which would become one of the common formats the show took. Uncle Grandpa was finally greenlit to be a show and three productions seasons were made for overall 153 11 minute episodes.

After Uncle Grandpa ended production, Browngardt hurried off over to Warner Bros for reasons that are unknown to me. (I presume it was for Development purposes and such). While there, he answered the demands Audrey Diehl, a new creative executive for the production of one thousand minutes of a new Looney Tunes series.

Now Browngardt is the showrunner on the new series of Looney Tunes Cartoons. He is a fit and capable leader for this daring show. He holds a high level of appreciation for cartoonists. For example, Uncle Grandpa had a few episodes comprised of shorts from guest indie cartoonists. Heck, the final episode (Exquisite Grandpa) was virtually a game of exquisite corpse between the storyboard artists. He has the showrunning experience needed to put together a show of this wacky and INTENSE caliber. What I mean by intense is, the production of this show is much more complex and labor intensive than the average American TV animated show. Going out and finding the rare artists capable of wielding an accurate 1940s cartoon style, and keeping up the high bar of quality expected from the new reboot is undowbtably a very daunting task. Not to mention, that both SMFA, and Uncle Grandpa were highly character-driven as well as they were ultra-wacky, which is a must for anyone helming a Looney Tunes series. He also has experience directing cartoon shorts of varying lengths as most Uncle Grandpa episodes were split into a main 8 minute story and a 3 minute short at the end.

He has the ability to seek out any cartoonists who holds strong potential. Browngardt spotted Nick Edwards's gorgeous artwork on Twitter and reached out to him to join the LA animation industry on Uncle Grandpa. Now Edwards is a supervising director on a new CN show. For Looney Tunes Cartoons, Browngardt discovered Lead Character Designer Jim Soper at just the right time, just before Soper made plans to quit the animation business altogether after being stuck doing uneventful motion graphic projects that didn't make use of his real skills. Soper's cartooning ability is absolutely phenomenal, able to replicate the 1940s funny animal golden age cartoon style with grace.

See the results of Browngardt's excellent hardworking team later this year on Looney Tunes Cartoons.

The majority of Browngardt's past history was taken from a great Tongue and Pencil episode which you can watch at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_SDfJmiERf4. Thank you Chris Prynoski.