It was really fun doing a reversal episode, where we’re seeing a “villains come and ambush the heroes” story from the villains’ perspective. As far as KO, Enid, and Rad were concerned, it was just like any other episode where they had to kick some bad guys off their turf!
Some cute selected storyboard drawings of Darrell and Shannon scenes, for Villains Night In! Credit as always to @killapedeand@maxcollins(under@jpolgar1‘s supervision) for their awesome revisions!
One of my favorite episodes (actually, several of my favorite episodes) of OK KO that I’ve worked on has come out! It was awesome to collaborate with my roommate/bff (and voice ofTattletail!) @ryannshannon to write and storyboard VILLAINS NIGHT IN! More posts incoming (both about VNI and other episodes I haven’t posted about yet).
I wanted to be sure to post the animatic for the “Follow Orders” sequence because it’s one of my favorites. This scene and the “playing house” sequence weren’t in the outline- Ryann and I just really wanted to make them! I think they’re really funny explorations of the character’s home lives.
We wanted to evoke the feeling of being stuck at weird friends/family’s homes and being horrified by them (as well as the horror of being subjected to that one wild kid who takes things too far). The Box-Bots are Evil, but they’re fundamentally Lawful (and have each other). They operate completely differently than Fink, and just don’t know handle the chaos inherent to a minion who is organic. It’s a funny (and very Real) contrast! I think it came together as a hilarious vector for how different each family’s brand of love and dysfunction can be, and how baffling kids’ lives can be to each other. We really followed our hearts on this one and got to bring a lot of realness to it. I’m very happy with it!
It would be much better if I could find the original designs for all these characters but they’re either buried deep in some folder or I dont even have access to them. I’ve never inquired but it seems very early in OK KO’s development a ton of background character concept art was produced. I was still freelancing for OK KO on this episode and was given the original concept art as well as the board artists redesigns.
You’ll have to take my word that each of these are a departure from their original concept design. My job was to blend a little of the old in with the new for the final design.
Purrcival has been revised, I’m not sure by who, but I had drawn him holding a book in his left hand. I dont mind that it needed to be taken out but I want to be clear that I did not draw that hand.
Behind the scenes info from Character Designer Ben Bates!
More from ‘Red Action to the Future’. I’m not sure how well the idea really communicates in the final episode (or what sense it makes, it actually really weirds me out since at her age she should have already reached her maximum height) but as Red Action ages she gets quite a bit bigger. I worked really hard making slight adjustments here and there to make her proportions continue to make sense and balance. (I did not draw the “normal” Red Action on the left but all the other stuff is me with colors by the Color Stylist).
Or whoops, no, I also didn’t draw the lines around the mouth or the muscles(?) in the arms on far right version of Red Action. I was unaware she was supposed to be that old when I was originally assigned the job.
Behind the scenes info and designs from Back In Red Action from Ben Bates!
Ok these are from ‘Red Action to the Future’ and this is the first time I’ve watched a finished episode with my work included! It turned out great and reinvigorated my sense of self-worth haha!
All the work for this episode was drawn while I still worked full-time at Marvel Animation as a storyboard artist on Avengers Assemble, I did this OK KO stuff as a freelancer on the side (and had a blast doing it). The first few images are my line art with our Color Stylist Kali tearing it up with the colors.
The third image is a screenshot from the finished episode. At first I thought the overseas animators were using my chip bag design as a texture, just pasting it in digitally, but careful examination reveals its hand drawn! Those Koreans are killing it, nearly perfectly replicating a fairly complicated design for animation.
Speaking of design, the next two images are straight from the storyboards. As you can see the design for the box and bag were already pretty well defined by the board artist. I simply fleshed out the concept. Now that I work full time at Cartoon Network on OK KO as a Character/Prop Designer thats mostly what my job is. The storyboard artists design everything and I draw a pretty version of it.
Its an interesting reversal from my previous experience at Marvel Animation. Avengers Assemble was a script driven show, which meant as a storyboard artist I was being dictated what to draw by the writers. And anytime a new character or prop appeared it didn’t matter what I drew in the boards, the Character/Prop designer was entitled to design as they saw fit. For example we didn’t have any design for Whitney Frost (aka Madame Masque) when she first appeared on Avengers Assemble. For my own amusement I tried to introduce body shape variation (because its fun to draw different types of people) and designed her in my boards to be a heavier, stocky woman. Naturally this was rejected.
OK KO is a board driven show, even though each episode still begins with a group of writers hashing out the plot, the storyboard artists are really the authority and creators of the episode and in a broader sense the show. Whatever is in the boards my job is to primarily execute their vision.
Perhaps both of these experiences describe the differences of most script driven shows and most board driven shows. I just find it interesting how I can go from one end to the other and stay in the same place on the totem pole.
Designs and behind the scenes info from Designer Ben Bates!!
Finally gathered some of my stuff from Villain’s Night In & Villain’s Night Out! Everyone did such a good job on these eps! I had the opportunity to do a redesign of Billiam Milliam for this ep (brilliantly voiced by Justin McElroy) based on Dave & Haewon’s amazing board drawings. @haewon-lee was inspired by the new moon emoji for Billiam’s waiter minions, & @scrotumnose designed all the veggie villains as a tribute to characters from princess tomato and the salad kingdom. Dave also came up with Boxman’s 3 verrry fashionable party outfits. Also had a great time dressing Darrell in his beloved costumes based off beautiful boards for Villain’s Night In by @cartoonfuntimeand@ryannshannon ! Character color by @kalidraws and art direction by John Pham!
A selection of boards I did for Villains Night In!! This episode was really special to me because for one, it was a Fink episode, but also because I actually pitched the premise of it to Ian/Toby at a writing meeting. Since they’d already had “Villains Night Out” in the works, the idea was easily tweaked to be included as supplemental episode! We even worked together a bit with @scrotumnose+@haewon-lee to make sure the events of both episode hooked up together.
It was a real dream come true to get to board on this ep with my roomie/bff @cartoonfuntime ! Our tastes really mesh, and we had a great time, coming up with wacky babysitting antics. Our personal childhood experiences are sprinkled all over the place in this episode, and I think it really helped create something interesting and funny!
Shout out to our Revisions Team for seriously busting ass figuring out the BG layouts, and to @stevieborbolla for helping me out with the pose of Venomous holding Fink at the end. It was very important to me that it look beautiful!!
New OK KO ep: “Villains Night In” is airing tonight! A personal favorite, written/boarded by me and my beautiful roomie+bff, @cartoonfuntime !! We put all our love in this one, don’t miss it!!
Hey all! A bit of a lengthier post but here is some stuff from the episodes “Villains Night In” by @cartoonfuntimeand@ryannshannon and “Villain’s Night Out” by @scrotumnoseand@haewon-lee that I did. Props to the board teams for a great two parter!!
Colors by @kalidraws and art direction by John Pham
