El Tigre Concept: Grandpa's Crib

A little more about the environmental development of El Tigre in this post.

Above: Early sketches for Grandpa's Crib.

A number of years ago Jorge Gutierrez asked me to create concept sketches for his show  El Tigre. The goal was to create a bunch of fun visual ideas that I would then feed to the crew in Los Angeles. Since I was working overseas, I would basically have to pitch my concepts to the crew with lots of written notes etc.  If Jorge, co-creator Sandra Equihua, director Dave Thomas, and art director Roman Laney liked the direction of a certain rough idea, we would explore it further in additional sketches.

The Concept- Grandpa is a retired super-villain, and we wanted his room to be a little over the top. His every vice at the ready, gambling TV, exotic drinks, and lots of gold, red, and black. It was inspired in a large part by the movie Scarface.

The earliest sketches simply explored shape.

Episode 15: Rising Son Color

For Rising Son I focused on contrasting a "clean" fresh look (note the rare blue skies) against the grit and grime of Miracle City. Some of the color variations are subtle. I had a good idea of what the creative leads on the show were looking for. But since we were on a pretty tight deadline, and I was working from Asia, I thought it would be better to give those variations and let the leads choose.

Episode 14: Licito Color

By episode 14 we were over half way through the season. The color for the main locations of the show had been fairly well established... so I was able to focus more on parts of the story that were unique to the different episodes. For E 14 I wanted to play the cool exteriors off the warm interiors for maximum contrast. I wasn't allowed to change the character color over the course of the show... so I simply tipped in characters from the color model sheet to test how they would read on the backgrounds. 

EPISODE 013: PARTY!

Though all the episodes of "El Tigre" have a similar feel... I tried to give each episode a unique pass of color that would describe the story and emotions of the characters. Often I would give a "straight" color treatment that I thought would fit the story well... then try another pass of something a bit different. That was the case of episode 013.

This episode was in fact one of the most difficult to design... just for the reason that there were LOTS of characters. I was very fortunate to have directors that were willing to let me experiment. Most of the time these experiments lead to interesting ideas... and other times... well ... looking back I often wonder what I was thinking about. :)

At the time of this post I am working with "El Tigre" creators Jorge and Sandra (as well as "El Tigre" art director Roman Laney) on Jorge's feature film "The Book of Life." It's been a joy... and we are getting to do a lot of the things that weren't possible in TV.

Episode 012: The Moustache Kid Color

Above: A first pass on the color script for episode 12, with color variations for some of the scenes.

A first pass like this would be discussed by the core creative crew of the show... then adjustments made accordingly. Unfortunately in TV you don't get much time for adjustments.

In the world of "El Tigre" facial hair is a sign of power and manliness. In this episode Manny gets his, and more than he bargains for.

Episode 011: Mother Color

Some of the episodes mostly take place in established locations, which means that there are less new locations to design. However, the color of new locations must enhance the overall story, and work well with more established locations.

Episode 010: Late Manny Color

Above: A sketch by art director Roman Laney.
Sketches like these would help both the storyboard artists, and the art team about the area that the story would take place. This is really useful when planning color and light.