Squidbillies Pilot Design

Hello [adult swim] fans. I was involved at the very beginning of the Squidbillies pilot production working on the character design. I was given drawings from the writers that they did themselves, and knew that they wanted a very "un-educated" style, meaning the type of art I (and many others) used to draw in high school. In order to get into the mindset, I did my sketches in ball-point pen on notebook paper. I really like some of the designs posted here, and wish that they had gone for something like these. Ultimately, all these designs below were never used. I struggled to draw un-well, but could never reach the level of un-sophistication that they wanted. However, I had a lot of fun working on these, and the show has come a long way since the pilot. I love the colors and the backgrounds done by Ben Prisk at Primal Screen of Atlanta.




Originally, a lot of the humans were going to be a lot more humanoid. I was really stabbing in the dark with some of these very first ever concept sketches. (I think I remember them hating the first one in the middle.)



I LOVE these studies below with the squids chewing dip. I had years of reference in my very own high school in northern Florida.



In one version of the pilot (that was re-written 704 times), they had a fat brother who couldn't leave his room. Is that in the show?



I love this last one. I actually used reference from my 9th grade (1988) yearbook for the hair.


So, that's it. There are a few more that I may post later, but these are my favorite drawings that I've ever seen associated with the show. (And there's a point I'd like to make here, and it's that as a lover of cartoons I have no problem with a show like Squidbillies and have enjoyed many others that are poorly drawn or poorly animated, eg. Dr. Katz. However, as a cartoon designer, it may not be a project that will challenge my skills and keep me entertained. So in this case, I ultimatley felt like I had nothing that I could "bring to the table", and this, in no small way, affected my decision to move to NYC, and to ultimately jump onto the Venture Brothers team.) There may be some more never before seen pilot design sketches out there that I don't know about that are also worth seeing. If so, hopefully this will get the ball rolling. And speaking of Venture Brothers, I'm scanning away right now!