Episode 002: Nightmare Green or Nightmare of Living Guacamole

Above: The story arc... worked out by Dave, Jorge, and Roman. This helped us all sync ... especially in the early episodes.


Sometimes new locations would need to be designed... in this episode I worked up a version of the local market... trying out a few different color schemes.

El Tigre! location design

-Before El Tigre went into production, show creators Jorge Gutierrez, and Sandra Equihua and art director, Roman Laney and I talked about what direction the show should take. At this point the show hadn't been "green-lit". I started making rough pencil, and then sketches of the main locations that would eventually be used in the pilot episode.


Above: A few of my early exploratory sketches from "El Tigre!"

Most of my early sketches were close in value, with little or no black in the backgrounds. There was a lot of black on the characters, and I wanted them to read well. But this gave a sort of calm feeling, and Jorge wanted everything in the show to be "Super Macho!"... having more contrast, more texture, more of everything. It made designing a bit more difficult, but also gave the intensity Jorge wanted. A lot of the art styling was worked out in the pilot by Roman. By the time "El Tigre" had been picked up as a series... the look had been fully established.

Above: Art director, Roman Laney, and his team took a lot of the development art, and created a beautiful, and unique look for "El Tigre". Check out Roman's website to see more amazing art from the show.

Episode 001 : Vendetta

My main job on "El Tigre" was working with the creative team to help establish the color and look of each episode by creating a rough "colorscript"... indicating color, light, and mood. This information was then passed onto the rest of the team to help guide the art.

All my color scripts are based on director Dave Thomas' beat boards. Dave's boards are great to work on... the staging is clear... and there is little guesswork on my part.

Each week show co-creator Jorge Gutierrez, art director Roman Laney, Dave Thomas and I would have a phone conference and talk about the direction each episode should go... and any adjustments that I would need to make on the previous weeks episode.

The First production episode of El Tigre was probably one of the more difficult ones. We were still trying to establish the style and look of the show... so I tried out a few color variations throughout the episode. The colorscripts became easier and easier as we established the color of each location. Though this could also change... depending on the mood and story we were telling. Jorge hates purple and pinks, because they are not manly enough. In this episode I wanted to echo the purples and pinks of the villains costume in sections of the episode. But I gave him an alternate "bluer" version. Surprisingly he and Roman decided to go with the pink/purple version.