My History with Shadow Puppets Part 7

In June 2007, I was contacted by Simon Capet, artistic director of the Victoria Philharmonic Choir. He asked me if I'd be interested in production designing a live shadow puppet theatrical presentation of Dvorak's epic masterpiece, "The Spectre's Bride". It didn't take long for me to agree to the proposal.


The two shows took place at the University of Victoria’s Farquhar theater in British Columbia, Canada on October 30 and 31, 2009. The sold out performances featured a 65-piece orchestra and 80-voice choir, along with soloists Ken Lavigne, tenor, Anne Grimm, soprano, and Bruce Kelly, baritone. It premiered a new English libretto by Mollie Kaye. Puppeteer Tim Gosley assisted by members of the Puppetry Guild of Victoria handled the choreography of the shadow puppets presentation.


My tasks included designing all the sets, characters and props. You can see some more sample of this work here.

New Studio Space

It's actually been a few months since Fuelcell moved into it's new studio space, but it's been such a busy few months I haven't had a chance to post some photos, until now. It features a covered entry with a better view, our walls are a bit thicker, and there's much more usable space than the last studio.


So much space in fact that we used a bit of it to house the classic 1988 Williams pinball: The Cyclone, one of my favorite tables when I was a teenager. Chris Eng, our junior programmer, currently holds the high score at 9,952,390.

My History with Shadow Puppets Part 6

In July 2004, I had a meeting with Anissa Dorsey, director of development at Cartoon Network. Anissa expressed her enthusiasm for my work and asked me if I'd be interested in doing shorts for CN. After a few weeks of brainstorming, I came up with a concept for a series: Insanely Twisted Shadow Puppet Show!


I proceeded to do a visual package demonstrating my concepts and pitched the project to Cartoon Network, as well as Disney and Nickelodeon. Cartoon Network and Disney both passed, but Nickelodeon liked the idea. After a few back and forth discussions, Nickelodeon decided to give me a budget to produce 10 short interstitials (the short pieces that go between the shows and the commercials) based on the idea.

Insanely Twisted Shadow Puppets aired on Nickelodeon on Halloween 2005. You can view all the interstitials here, and read a production diary of the project here.

Bellingham Comicon

I will be a guest at the Bellingham Comicon this coming Saturday, October 24th.

A few days ago, I was asked to submit some artwork to publicize the event. To my surprise and delight, a still of our upcoming videogame was used as the cover of Take Five, the entertainment section of Bellingham's prime newspaper, The Bellingham Herald.


If you live in the Pacific Northwest, come on by. I'll be there with books, comics, prints, etc, and will be on hand to answer all the questions you might have about ITSP. Hope to see you there!

My History with Shadow Puppets Part 5

In 1993, when I did effects animation on Demolition Man (Check this clip to see some of the animation I did with John Van Vliet and James Mansfield), I had to ink all my drawings with black pens so that high contrast elements for the optical printer could be created. I thought the drawings all filled in with black ink looked really cool!

Once in a while, I return to that technique, and start filling in my effects concepts with black ink so I can get a stark silhouette of the design. Here are samples from The Iron Giant and Osmosis Jones which I did while I was the leading FX designer at Warner Brothers Feature Animation.

My History with Shadow Puppets Part 4

At the beginning of 2000, after completing the effects work on "The Iron Giant", I joined the visual devellopment team on the movie, "Osmosis Jones" for which I designed and supervised the special effects.

One of my early assignment was to create a series of teaser posters for the movie.

For this, I decided to work in a shadow puppet and high contrast silhouette style.

Unfortunately all my posters were rejected in favor of a more cartoony approach. You can click here for a larger view.

Joe Answers some Questions @ Joystiq.com

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My History with Shadow Puppets Part 3

In 1997, I wrote and illustrated my first storybook, A Search for Meaning: The Story of Rex. In July 1998, I took the plunge and self-published the book as a signed and number limited edition hardcover (1000 copies printed).

In the book, a little fox named Rex goes through a series of strange landscapes, meeting weird and unusual creatures in his search for enlightment. The story is somewhat autobiographical and reflected my own spiritual quest at the time. I used several black silhouette ink drawings within its pages, as well as on the cover (although, the current edition of the book uses a different, more colorful cover).

The following two years, I wrote, illustrated and published three more books in the same format: The Mystery of He, The Great Shadow Migration and The Bird, The Spider and the Octopus. Each one explored more of my strange concepts and philosophy. These first four books in my bibliography all used shadow puppet imagery to various degree to convey rhythm, mood and ideas.

These limited edition books were a big hit at the San Diego Comic-Con and quickly sold out. In 2004, I digitally remastered all the artwork and repackaged all four books into a 126-page anthology called Parables, again using a silhouette illustration as the cover.

These works were the launch of my publishing career and they really helped defined my illustrative style. I still have a soft spot for them.

My History With Shadow Puppets Part 2

From 1996 to 1998, after seeing a Kandinsky exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), I became completely obsessed with doing fine art.

At the time, I was supervising special effects for Warner Bros Feature Animation which was a pretty demanding job - but still, I managed to create 75 fine art pieces in that two-year period which were displayed in several gallery shows.

The pieces were mostly abstract in nature and were done in a wide spectrum of mediums: acrylic paintings, wood sculptures, collage and ink and mixed-media. They ranged from large to small and complex to simple. All the pieces are very silhouette oriented and several of them use black to strongly define the shapes.

Doing fine art was a way to relax and express myself without commercial constraint, but more than that, it allowed me to build and elaborate my own visual language and iconography which would later show up in all my further work: special effects, book illustrations, comics, etc. A lot of the ideas I came up with during this phase of my art are being transposed and developed in our game, Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet.

I rarely have time to do fine art these days but every once in a while, I'll create a piece for a gallery show and as usual, the silhouette aspect is always present. You can view a sample of some of my fine art work at this link.

My History With Shadow Puppets Part 1

Although my art has many facets, I've always enjoyed the art of silhouette. Perhaps it is due to the fact that I see the world in 2D, having lost an eye at the age of twelve. My world has been 2D for many years.

But then again, in 1974 at the age of nine, three years before I lost my right eye, I designed this logo for my mother's store. The store has been sold and resold several times, but the logo still stands.

Looking at it today, it bears a strange resemblance to some of the design work in ITSP.

Interview @ The Reticule

Here's our latest and probably last interview for a while. Click here to read.

Interview @ Platform Nation

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