SCOOB!
Scooby-Doo
In summer of 2015, I was brought on to the pre-production team of SCOOB! with Reel FX and Warner Brothers Animation. My task as a creature and animal anatomy expert was to bring some of the classic Hannah Barbera characters to life with some exploration into their anatomy and proportions. here's a look at some of the character work I did on Scooby Doo himself.
I did a lot of work on Scooby's anatomy and look early on in the project when he was leaning closer toward "real dog" territory. I produced images of muscle layovers, bones and motion studies to show how Scooby might move around with more accurate dog anatomy.
Muttley
Early on in the project, I was asked to explore what Muttley might look like if he had more dog-like proportions. I produced many drawings of Muttley but these captured the overall look we headed toward for a while. In the end, he returned to looking more like himself which, I think is perfect. Muttley has always been a favorite
JabberJaw
Jabberjaw isn't really in the movie but he does make an appearance in the credit sequence. Early on he had a much bigger role and I had the pleasure of working on him! Early sketches leaned more toward actual shark and he eventually become more himself!
Dynomutt
Dynomutt was pretty figured out by the time I got to work on him. My job was to figure out some of the aspects of his mechanics. I explored breakaways, facial expressions, abilities and weapon ideas.
Grape Ape
I had the pleasure of working on Grape Ape when he was still in the film. I explored what he might look like as something between a gorilla and a gigantopithecus. He ended up looking more like an overgrown chimp later. I also explored expressions - a ton of fun to work on.
I offered concepts and draw-overs for the modeling teams on this project. A lot of my work was making sure characters stayed on model and true to the overall look of the film early on in pre-production.
Animal Characters
I wasn’t only in charge of redesigning some of the more iconic HB characters. I was also put on task to make characters that were just regular animals. Of course, drawing animals is one of my favorite things to do so it was some of my favorite work on the project.
When working on characters like this, I usually provide captions and photo reference (not shown) to help guide the team down the pipeline as they model and animate the asset.
One of my favorite animals to design was a saber tooth tiger. We exaggerated the sabers and bulk of the animal quite a bit but I worked to keep the integrity of the fossil record within what the director wanted at the time.
