THE ADVENTURES OF JIMMY NEUTRON
After working on Delgo for a year, I moved back to Texas to work on the Jimmy Neutron TV show in 2003. Working on an animated episodic tv show is one of the most difficult things I’ve done in my career. Mostly because of the sheer amount of animation required versus the limited amount of time you have to create it in. When I worked on the show we had to average almost 30 seconds per week per animator. It was very grueling work and we didn’t get much time to polish our shots unless you wanted to spend more time at the studio (unpaid that is). Usually, you barely had time to get a single idea blocked in and then had to start refining it as quickly as possible once that was approved. I have to admit it was a very stressful time working week to week trying to get all of my shots approved and “finaled.” I use that term loosely, because “final” was more like “good enough to read.” Still, in many ways it was rewarding and I think the writing on the show was quite good. It’s not the work I am most proud of, and I only lasted one year before burning out on it, but I am happy to have done it and with such great animators who all went on to do bigger and better things.
Because there is so much footage, even for just one year’s worth of work, I’ve broken it into episodes for archival purposes, as well as put together a montage of shots that I like. Most of the shots I have done the primary characters and objects, in a few it may have been background chars, and in many it’s both. Even now over 15 years later, I still feel like I’m learning, but the Jimmy Neutron show was definitely a learning experience, and one that I will never forget.
