More Scooby Doo, Gatorsburg!

This was one of the best looking shows of first season and it was a model of how to make the show simple and strong by limiting the number of locations the gang travels to. Nice red and green contrast here.

Scooby Doo Mystery Incorporated, Hex Girls

I have been working on the latest Scooby Doo series for the past year and a half. These BGs are from the Hex Girls show #7. When it aired, I don't really know. I don't watch cartoons! Just kidding I actually still love to watch by myself or with my kids. This is a fun show to be a painter on.

"Batman Under the Red Hood" BG paintings

Her are some Backgrounds I painted from Under The Red Hood. They are dark. You might know, it's a dark story too. These two are from Ra Al Ghul's place. Bruce Timm loved the green! I enjoyed this project very much! Oh I didn't do the cover art btw. I believe on this and Crisis on two Earths, Josh Middleton did the covers.

More BGs "Under the Red Hood"

Here are a couple more Production BGs I did from Batman Under The Red Hood.

Justice League Crisis on Two Earths

Hey all! I know I'm a little slow getting this out but better later than never right?
Here are a couple of production bgs done for this WB DVD "Justice League Crisis on Two Earths." This was the first time for me to work on a Bruce Timm project and I was happy and excited to work with him. I found him to be very enjoyable to work for because he knows what he wants and is very direct about telling you. I like that. Soon I will be working with him again. As for now I am on the Scooby Doo Series "Mystery Incorporated." It now airs on Cartoon Network weekly.

Mystery Project

I posted some of these images earlier because the movie was supposed to be released but never was so I had to take them down. It is still more than six months away from being released but if I don't tell you what it is. You won't know. Ha!

Planet Hulk Development Art

Hi all! I'm Steve Nicodemus and wanted to keep all the Marvel fans and animation students informed on the inside scoop of how the production of Planet Hulk the DVD animated movie evolved. I can only give you what I know from my perspective as a background painter. I was the only in house painter and background paint supervisor for the last four Marvel animated movies starting from The Next Avengers, Hulk VS, Tales of Asgard and Planet Hulk.
Before we had final designs approved for the colosseum, An Sara village and the lava chamber, I had rough sketches that were done on post-it notes. These are used to establish the locations in the storyboards. Fedja Jovanovic did these with amazing detail. Then I took them and did these three samples. I did more. When I find them I'll try to post them. It was easy for me to blow them up in photoshop and start working. I knew from working on other productions that once we got into full swing that time would be short to get these paintings looking good in short time. So I took the opportunity to take the comps to as close to finish as I could. This saved me later when the shipping dates were locked and it's up to me to get everything done. We did have some money left over from development to use on some freelance painters but it was limited. The only design that changed in final was the An Sara village but it was close enough that I was able to submit this comp on the shipping deadline. The colosseum comp was mostly used for the CGI artists to follow for color and lighting.
I did have to help them out by providing them with texture maps that they used for some of the surfacing. I hope you enjoy these and if anyone has questions I will be happy to answer them. I enjoyed working on these projects and hope they decide to do more and ask me to come back. Cheers!

Freelancing getting in the way of motorcycling

Ted Blackman did this cartoon of me saying how I won't get my bike done for the Hansen Dam ride in November. Funny Ted!

Planet Hulk DVD Production Art

Hi all,
As promised, here are the production Key backgrounds done for Planet Hulk. Fedja Jovanovic designed the layouts and I painted them in Photoshop, version CS3. Time of day, lighting and color all help to push emotional cues. It's not just pushing buttons on computers, it's pushing YOUR buttons, lol. Ok lame joke. I really should take the time and break down how I do these. I'll try to do that, not for you pros out there, no I'm not talking to you. For all you youngsters who like art and would like to know how to take my job away from me. Yeah good idea Steve! Hope you enjoy them!

Planet Hulk DVD

Hi all, I'm sorry it has been soooo long since my last post. I have been very busy working on many different projects. I will fill you in on those later. The good news is that Planet Hulk DVD is finally out this week. It was about a year and a half ago that we finished production on this, the best of the Marvel direct to DVDs to date. I had a lot of fun working on this and all the other Marvel DTVs. Let's hope that Disney will decide to continue the momentum we started and not take the Marvel brand into a Marvel Musical direction, LOL. In a separate post I will show some of the key paintings that were done for this. Hope you fans will buy this one and support us and our hard work. The crew was really all the A+ players in the industry. Frank Paur (Producer), Sam Liu (Director), Phil Bourassa (Character Design), Fedja Jovanovic (Background Design), James Peters (Color Models) and so many other great board artists and hats off to the production crew that kept us organized. It was a pleasure working with these guys and I was honored to be a part of this project. Interestingly enough since Marvel stopped production on the direct to DVDs, We all have ended up working at Warner Bros. producing a lot of the DC DTVs. More on that later. Enjoy this one for the time being. Check back later for the production bgs.