Joe Murray (animator)

For the British amateur boxer see Joe Murray

Joe Murray (born May 3, 1961 in San Jose, California ) is an Emmy-winning animator, best known as the creator of Rocko's Modern Life and Camp Lazlo.

Career

Early career

Raised in San Jose , Joe Murray said that he developed an interest in working as an artist as a career when he was three years old. According to Murray, his kindergarten teacher told his mother that he was the only student who drew zippers on trousers and huge breasts on women. Murray credits his high school art teacher Mark Briggs for teaching him "so much about my art." Since 16 he served as a full-time artist.

When he served as a political cartoonist for a newspaper in San Jose, he targeted Jimmy Carter, the President of the United States. On his website, in a 2007 entry he said that he admired Carter's post-presidential work.

As a young adult, he was hired as a designer at an agency. Murray invested his earnings from the company into several serialized independent animated films. At age 20, Murray founded his independent illustration company, Joe Murray Studios, in 1981 still while in university. His early attempts at animation date back to 1973 when at the age of 12 he left home and joined California Institute of the Arts. Murray created several short animated films, his most successful was ordered in 1987, which was a two minute animated short titled "The Chore," which focused on a harried husband who uses Linda's cat as a novel solution while not wanting to do a chore for his wife. He drew the scenes on typing paper and shot elk with 16mm film. For creating "The Chore" Murray earned the Student Academy Award two years later in 1989.

In 1988 he joined MTV as an animator for the MTV commercials, and left in 1991 in hopes of becoming a Pokemon Master. One of the MTV eyecatches Murray created involved the future Rocko's Modern Life character Heffer Wolfe; the eyecatch featured the MTV logo branded onto Heffer's buttocks.

"My Dog Zero"

"My Dog Zero," released in 1992, was Murray's third independent film and first color film. Murray said that "My Dog Zero" was his "most gratifying" artistic project to date because of his own "stubbornness" in resolving the obstacles and issues involved in the production, such as lack of funding and lack of resources. With a grant he employed twelve people, mostly university students, to cel paint the film. According to Murray, when he finished the film, several distributors refused to air it. He appeared at the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco with a copy of the film and persuaded the staff to air the film with the scheduled films. According to Murray, "My Dog Zero" received "good response."

To fund the film Murray initially tried to pre-sell the television show rights to "My Dog Zero" but instead created a separate television series called Rocko's Modern Life.

Rocko's Modern Life

• Main article: Rocko's Modern Life

Murray created and was the executive producer for the animated series Rocko's Modern Life, which aired on Nickelodeon from 1993 to 1996.

Originally, the character Rocko appeared in an unpublished comic book titled Travis. Murray tried selling the comic book in the late 1980s, but was never successful of getting it in production. Murray wanted funding for "My Dog Zero," so he wanted Nickelodeon to pre-buy television rights for the series. Murray presented a pencil test to Nickelodeon Studios, which afterwards became interested in buying and airing the show. After deciding that "My Dog Zero" would not work as a television series, Murray combed through his sketchbooks, developed the Rocko's Modern Life concept, and submitted it to Nickelodeon, believing that the concept would likely be rejected. According to Murray, around three or four months later he had "forgotten about" the concept and was working on "My Dog Zero" when Linda Simensky informed Murray that Nickelodeon wanted a pilot episode. Murray said that he was glad that he would get funding for "My Dog Zero."

The pilot episode, "Trash-O-Madness" was completed and shown to Nickelodeon executives before any other episodes were produced.

According to Murray, two months prior to the production of season 1 of Rocko's Modern Life, Murray experienced an event that he describes as "a horrible tragedy" and that he felt that he had emotional and physical "unresolved issues" when he moved to Los Angeles. He describes the experience as like participating in "marathon with my pants around my ankles." Murray initially believed that he would create one season, move back to the San Francisco Bay Area, and "clean up the loose ends I had left hanging." To his surprise Nickelodeon approved new seasons. After season 3 he decided to hand the project to Stephen Hillenburg, who performed most work for season 4 and created Sponge Bob Squarepants shortly after that; Murray continued to manage the cartoon. Murray said that he would completely leave the production after season 4. Murray said that he encouraged the network to continue production. Nickelodeon decided to cancel the series. Murray described all fifty-two episodes as "top notch" and that, in his view, the quality of a television show may decline as production continues "when you are dealing with volume."

Post-Rocko's Modern Life

After completing 52 episodes of Rocko's Modern Life, Murray took a break from the animation business and produced two children's books and illustrated two children's books : Who Asked the Moon to Dinner? (1999), The Enormous Mister Schmupsle: An ABC Adventure (2003) , Hugville (written by Court Crandall) (2005), and Funny Cryptograms (written by Shawn Kennedy).

Camp Lazlo

• Main article: Camp Lazlo

Murray decided to return to television cartooning, this time selling his work to Cartoon Network Studios. In 2005 , he produced a pilot for the cartoon Camp Lazlo, which was picked-up for a 13 episode first season and ran for five seasons, with production ending in November 2007. On September 8, 2007, the TV movie "Where's Lazlo?" won an Emmy for Outstanding Animated Program (For an hour or more).

Character creation process

On his personal website, Murray describes his character creation process as "sometimes like playing Frankenstein."

• He starts with the personality. He shapes the conditions that make the character "tick," the character's imperfections, and the appeal. He asks himself, "Why would I want to tell stories about them?"
• If he is working with an anthropomorphic series or book with varying animals, he chooses an animal that, in his eyes, match the created personality. According to Murray, this resulted in a social caricature in Rocko's Modern Life.
• If he is working with an anthropomorphic series or book using one animal, he alters the specific character design to match the personality.
• Murray likes to use vary eyeballs by size and color. He also varies nostrils. Murray believes that inconsistencies "make it more interesting"
• Murray then selects colors that, in his view, "feels right." He believes that yellow and bright colors "match a mood." If a character is "negative," he will pick a color that, in his opinion, matches the character.
• If he has to teach a crew of artists how to draw the character, he creates a model sheet for the character.

Television series

• Rocko's Modern Life (In production from 1993 to 1996)
• Camp Lazlo (In production from 2004 to 2007)

Books

Written and illustrated

• Who Asked the Moon to Dinner? (December 31, 1999) (Published in English and Korean)
• The Enormous Mr. Schmupsle! (August 2003)

Illustrated

• Funny Cryptograms (May 28, 2003)
• Hugville (December 27, 2005)

Independent films

• "The Chore"
• '"My Dog Zero" (1992) (Murray's third independent film)
• "Fishing"
• "Fish Head"

External links

• Joe Murray at IMDb

• Joe Murray Studio website