Cartoons are one of those things, like music, that just stay with you your whole life. I remember watching Speed Racer and Gigantor when I was a kid and can even sing the opening songs without skipping a beat. I, uh, even remember, word for word the Heat Miser and Snow Miser songs from The Year Without a Santa Claus. It came as quite a nice surprise when I started to receive mail from fans of the show I art directed a few years back called Mutant League. Reading those letters reminds me of how I felt when I watched cartoons. And, just like these fans who miss Mutant League, I long tosee those old shows I grew up with again. I started posting clips of Mutant League on Youtube and it's nice to make those folks happy. It also gets you to thinking just how much work goes into putting a show like that together. I thought I'd spenda little time talking about what that's like. When you have an animated film, having the concept of what the show isabout is great and all, until you have to bring that entire world to life. The art director's job is to visualize every aspect of the world, from what characters wear to what their homes look like. Youdon't even want to know how many pages of drawings and storyboards Ihave from the design process. Let's just say that I literally wasn't able to draw or use a pencil for two weeks after we wrapped pre-production. My wrist had to stay wrapped in a bandage. I know, poorme. Lol. The first thing I did on Mutant League was to work with the creativeteam to come up with supplementary characters. The world had to be populated with not only the main stars of the show but their teammates, co-workers, and even people walking around in the background. The main characters were once normal people who, while watching asporting event, were exposed to toxic chemicals that erupted from theground. The people suffered massive injuries and physical changes thatturned them into mutants. Those who weren't affected were now called“Norms” and the rest mutants or muties. The main thing we had to dowas make sure there was a quick distinction between what norms looked like as opposed to the mutants. As you can see, the very first challenge presented itself right away–clothing. Mutants are either moderately or severely modified humans sowe had to come up with clothes for the norms and the mutants. Some mutants could barely wear clothes since they've been turned into crustacean type mutants with claws. Other mutants had fins or horns ontheir heads so hats were out of the question. To give some of those types of mutants personality, we gave them eyeglasses instead. Sometimes we used the horns as hair and arranged them to look like they'd been styled at some mutant barber shop. Another thing we did was to make the clothes some of the mutants worea bit torn and ragged, to show that they had a difficult time getting dressed. In the Mutant League world, muties looked like monsters, but they were once human and we did everything we could to convey that. Seems like a lot of little details to put into a cartoon but it'st hose minor touches that help sell the world as one fans grow to love. Next time I'll talk about some of the other cool things we did to make the world of Mutant League come to life.