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.