Tree Frog Ron

This is Tree Frog Ron. Spokes frog for Tree Fruut Breakfast Cereal, Tree Frog Ron is as his name states is a tree frog who wears Hawaiian shirts, and does elaborate musical numbers while seeking out his beloved Tree Fruut Cereal in his commercials. He's a loose spoof of Toucan Sam.

Ron is kind of like the supportive gay uncle scraps never had, helping him through tough times and supporting him with the cereal mascots guild. He is a flamboyant, middle aged frog, who hangs out at dance bars. A lot of comedy surrounding him will be derived from how ridiculous it is to try and peg down or attack the sexuality of a children's cartoon characters.

Ron has two tree frog nephews and one niece that occasionally join him in his commercials. Teddy, Eddy and Betty.

Breakfast Cereal mascots

This is Yummy Mummy. Truth be told he's not a terribly important character. You just need a token spooky cereal mascot. It is by far my favourite character design I did for this project. I think this would be a good time to thank Kate Mclellan. She did the colouring for a lot of these, and I think Yummy Mummy was the best one she did as well.

This is Lenny the Lion. SpokesLion for Frosted-Yums Cereal, Lenny is an athletic lion who plays many sports, and is a real go getter. Some might call him a keener. Under the surface Lenny has a big of a mean Jock quality to him. He's kind of a jerk. He participates in sports with the kids that eat his Cereal and says eating his cereal as their breakfast gives them the competitive edge. The teams they play against feel it's an unfair advantage for them to have a lion come in as a ringer. Lenny is pretty much a direct spoof of the modern incarnation of Tony the Tiger

This is Tasty-Bit.Spokesperson for Tasty-Bit cereal, Tasty-Bit is a walking talking piece of Tasty-Bit cereal, spoofing the various cereal brands over the years that have gone that route to make their spokes person a piece of their product. Tasty-Bit wears a fez and often smokes a cigar. He is often ridiculed by the other mascots for being an unimaginative idea for a mascot. This is a particular sore point for him and he's always trying to earn the other mascots respect. It doesn't help that all he can talk about is his qualities as a breakfast cereal. How he won't go soggy in milk, is high in fibre... etc. His commercials usually involve him encountering families at breakfast, explaining to them his qualities as a cereal.

Scraps' Heist Crew

Some more Breakfast Serials stuff. This here is Scraps' heist crew.

You see Scraps isn't pulling off all these elaborate cereal heists all by his lonesome, oh no. When he first finds himself out of work he starts to attend a support group for out of work advertising mascots. While there, he befriends some of the other members with less scruples than most. He gets them hooked on Sugar Scraps, and recruits them to help in his cereal robberies. They are:

Lil' Chief. Mascot for the Fightin' Injin's Football team for decades until it was deemed that the team name was racially insensitive, and they were renamed the Thunder Bolts, leaving the Chief without a job. The Chief is pretty much a racist caricature based on native stereotypes. He's more like what you might have seen in an old western then anything factual. He speaks in broken English, and engages in all sorts of Indian cliches, like rain dancing or threatening to scalp those who anger him. He has not adjusted well to being unemployed.

Babboon Slim. Mascot for Red Bottom Slim cigarettes, until an anti smoking group raised hell about a cartoon baboon pushing cigarettes, saying it would make kids more likely to want to smoke. The cigarette company caved to the pressure and fired Slim. Slim is like a cross between Joe Camel and Chester Cheetah except a Babboon. He's cool, he's hip, and he smokes like a chimney. He talks in Jive, and always wears his shades.

Hey it's my old friend Casual Rex! For the purposes of this show he has assumed the role of mascot for Casual Rex brand condoms, "Don't Rex your life!" Subsequently the condoms proved to be very ineffective, "rexing" many peoples’ lives resulting in a class action law suit that ran Casual Rex Condoms out of business. Rex is one laid back Tyrannosaurus who loves the ladies. He drinks, he smokes, he swears, he has an extensive collection of hats for all occasions. His Morals are somewhat questionable, and he's not afraid to use the fact that he's a dinosaur to get his way. Whether it's playing the "Jurrascist card" or simply intimidating people.

This here is Billy. He's not in the crew per say. Billy is kind of the Sugar Scraps kid. It's his favorite Cereal, although he's not a fan of the re branding  preferring when Scraps was on the box. He's kind of representative of these kids that are out there that have to have the cereal like the ad campaigns say. Billy's one of those kids your parents probably wouldn't want you hanging out with. He starts fires, breaks things, and is generally up to some kind of no good. He is drawn to Scraps and the gang as he idolizes them, although has a bit of a love hate relationship with them when they steal his Sugar Scraps.

Colonel Coco

Rolling along with the Breakfast Serials, this is Colonel Coco. The Spokesperson for the Cereal that bears his name, Colonel CoCo is an eccentric gamesmen who just loves everything Coco. But nothing satisfies his Coco cravings like a big bowl of Colonel Coco's breakfast cereal. He's kind of like a cross between Captain Crunch and Colonel Mustard, except really really into Coco. 

Under the surface though Col. Coco is more sinister then his Coco loving exterior would have you believe. He takes on more the persona of Coco themed super villain. Coco Manor is equipped with many booby traps, like trap doors that lead to his pit of "Cocodiles". As Head of The Cereal Mascots union, he wields a lot of power in the breakfast cereal world. Unbeknownst to the rest of the union, he is using that power for total Coco domination of all cereals. So when whom he perceives to be his biggest rival, Scraps, falls upon hard times, He sees this as his opportunity to eliminate Sugar scraps.

Back in the day, kids could send in cereal box tops to gain membership into an exclusive Col. Coco fan club called the Cocoteers. They would receive a badge, and the more box tops they sent in the higher up they would become. Today the Cocoteers have taken on the role of a secret organization bent on furthering the Coco conspiracy. They have members everywhere, from the police, to political offices, to leaders of industry. 

Recently his Cereal company has added The Coco crew as an entourage for the Col. to Hip up his image ( reference to the ill advised crunch crew that briefly joined captain crunch in the 90's).  They are obviously his old Cocoteers dressed up in hipper urban attire. They take on a roll as Coco's bumbling henchmen, doing his bidding when needed. 

More to come!

the Breakfast Serials

So I haven't been posting much on here lately. Mainly because I've been mostly work on my big project in my spare time. I've been trying to shop the idea around and get it turned into a TV show but to date no such luck. So I've been working on more stuff to try and sell it. Splash pages, storyboarding a pilot episode, etc. I figured there's no harm in starting to throw the concept work up here though. If anything it will probably motivate me to get more done. So over the next few weeks I'll be posting up drawings of the different characters, and telling you more about the idea.

The show is essentially about advertising mascots, specifically breakfast cereal advertising .The characters are mostly parodies of cereal mascot archetypes we grew up watching. The show's aimed at adults and plays upon themes that we probably didn't consider when we were young watches these commercials between our Saturday morning cartoon shows.

The show is set up in a way so there's a continuing story, but you can enjoy a single episode not having seen the rest of the series. Each episode fallows a similar formula: It starts with a commercial with featuring one of the characters, and then fades out into a scene featuring that character, that either gives some added back story on the character or explains how they fit into the ongoing plot. Montages are used pretty regularly to advance the story, and most episodes finish with an action/heist sequence shot in the style of a breakfast cereal commercial.

This is Scraps Raccoon. He's the main character and loveable cereal mascot of Sugar Scraps, the sugary breakfast cereal kids love, and Dentists hate! The ads featuring him generally have him stealing Sugar Scraps from children, because as his catch phrase says, he's "Gotta have 'em Sugary Sugar Scraps!". He doesn't say much else besides that. Scraps has got it pretty good as the Mascot for Sugar Scraps. It gets him all he ever wants in life, which is essentially all the Sugar Scraps cereal he can eat!

All that's about to change. Sales have dipped slightly and the Cereal company Execs have decided that after a long run with Scraps on the box, it might be time to hip up the cereal's image. Enter Raz Raccoon. He's hip! He's cool! He's got lightning bolts in his fur! He raps! He Breakdances! He can skateboard up a vert ramp and slam dunk a basketball while shredding on an electric guitar! He's so cool, all the kids will surely want to eat Sugar Scraps again now.

With Raz in, Scraps is out on the street. With no marketable skills he has no money for shelter, or more importantly Sugar Scraps, which as he's on record saying, he's "gotta have 'em!". Life isn't kind, and he finds his beloved cereal a lot more difficult to obtain, now that stealing the cereal isn't part of a staged marketing campaign.

So Scraps dawns a mask to conceal his identity and turns to a life of crime. It's the only way he can still get his hands on the cereal he craves. Every time he steals a box though, he now has to gaze upon Raz's face on the front where his used to be. It starts to wear on him. While his obsession up until this point had merely been eating as much Sugar Scraps as possible, he now starts to feel the pain of rejection, and jealousy. So in between in his various cereal heists, he is working on a bigger plan. Kill Raz Raccoon, and take back his place on the cereal box!

I'll throw up more soon. I've got a lot more characters too come. Not to mention episode ideas.

Stay tuned!

Casual Rex vs. Predator

Ran into my old pal Casual Rex recently. Kind of worried about that guy. He gets drunk and picks fights with some pretty tough customers.

 And here's something I did way back in first year of College, on the first day actually. Fall 2005 we're talking. We were supposed to do a self portrait of ourselves at our creative peak. I seem to remember being told I had missed the point of the exercise. Had forgotten all about it until I was googling a band and the first thing that came up was their MySpace, and I was like I had one of those once upon a time. Remember when that was a thing? Turns out its still there, so I took a trip down memory lane, and came across this. The hat I'm holding kinda looks like a blob eh...

Shark Riders anticipated return!

Since everyone's been so good, I think it's about time I give the people what they demand. Some Shark rider action seems to be what most folks want to see out of me.

They seem to have found themselves in a bad situation here with a Giant Octopus creature of some sort. Even though they're pretty evil dudes our Submarine suited hero isn't going to leave them hanging. Or floating rather.

So I think it's about time you met the Shark Riders' nefarious leader. Haven't really thought of a name as of yet. We know he's the leader cuz he rides the number 1 Shark. Maybe he's just Number 1. Nah, that's lazy on my part. He's tough as balls this dude though. Rocks an old bell diver's helmet instead of the standard scuba gear, perhaps to mask a horribly disfigured visage? He's mysterious for damn sure. Naming suggestions are welcome.