Joseph David Murray (born May 3, 1961) is an American animator, illustrator, writer, producer, and director. He is best known as the creator of Nickelodeon's Rocko's Modern Life, Cartoon Network's Camp Lazlo, and PBS Kids' Let's Go Luna!. Murray is the winner of two Primetime Emmy Awards for Camp Lazlo and the TV film Camp Lazlo: Where's Lazlo?.
Early life
Born and raised in San Jose, California, Joe Murray said that he developed an interest in working as an artist as a career when he was three years old, but his father didn't approve. According to Murray, his kindergarten teacher told his mother that he was the only student who drew zippers on pants and breasts on women. Murray credits his Leland High School art teacher Mark Briggs for teaching him "so much about my art." At age 16, he became a full-time artist, drawing caricatures of people and animals at an amusement park in his spare time.
Murray has cited Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Walt Kelly, George Baker, Mark O'Hare, Max Fleischer, Jay Ward, Frank Tashlin, Tex Avery, Bob Clampett, Chuck Jones and Walt Disney as his main influences.
Career
As a young adult, Murray was hired as a designer at an agency. He invested his earnings from the company into independent animated films. At age 20, Murray founded his independent illustration company, Joe Murray Studios (or Joe Murray Productions), in 1981 while still in university. His early attempts at animation date back to 1986 when he joined De Anza College. Murray created several short animated films, his most successful was made in 1987, which was a two-minute animated short titled "The Chore," which focused on a harried husband who uses his cat as a novel solution while not wanting to do a chore for his wife. He drew the scenes on typing paper and shot the scenes with 16 mm film. For creating "The Chore" Murray earned the Merit Student Academy Award two years later in 1989.
In the early 1990s, he did the storyboards and layouts on A Pup Named Scooby-Doo, Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog, Bobby's World, and The Twisted Tales of Felix the Cat, while working as a freelancer at Drew Takahashi's now-defunct Colossal Pictures studio.
In 1988, he did two network IDs for MTV, and left in 1991 in hopes of starting his own projects. One of the MTV ID's Murray created involved the future Rocko's Modern Life character Heffer Wolfe; the ID featured Heffer being pushed out of a building with the MTV logo branded onto his buttocks. Diane, committed suicide. Murray had blamed the show being taken as the reason for his wife's suicide. Murray felt that he had emotional and physical "unresolved issues" when he moved to Los Angeles. He describes the experience as like participating in "marathon with my pants around my ankles". Murray initially believed that he would create one season, move back to the San Francisco Bay Area and "clean up the loose ends I had left hanging". To his surprise, Nickelodeon approved new seasons. Who Asked the Moon to Dinner? (1999), The Enormous Mister Schmupsle: An ABC Adventure (2003), Hugville (written by Court Crandall) (2005), and Funny Cryptograms (written by Shawn Kennedy).
Murray was working on a web-based cartoon named The Family Pop, which was produced in Flash and was in the middle of negotiations for this cartoon just prior to the onset of Camp Lazlo. On September 30, 2008, Murray added a new feature to his website, The Tin Box, where Murray posts some of his independent work. The first work posted was "Where's Poppa", a short episode of The Family Pop.
Camp Lazlo
Murray decided to return to television cartooning, this time selling his work to Cartoon Network Studios. In 2005, he produced a pilot for the cartoon Camp Lazlo, which was picked up for a 13-episode first season and ran for five seasons, with production ending in November 2007.
On September 8, 2007, the TV movie Where's Lazlo? won an Emmy for Outstanding Animated Program (For an Hour or More). During the production of Camp Lazlo, Murray underwent a divorce. While he is working out details about production and distribution, he has started work on his next independent film project, Fish Head, and working on producing a new short series, entitled Frog in a Suit for his web network; KaboingTV. By June 5, the project surpassed its goal of $16,800 and Murray developed episodes of his Frog in a Suit series for the platform. KaboingTV premiered on March 11, 2011.
Murray worked on the PBS animated series Let's Go Luna!, which aired from November 2018 to November 2022.
Murray also worked on the hour-long Rocko TV special Rocko's Modern Life: Static Cling, which premiered on Netflix on August 9, 2019. This included reprising his voice role as Rachel Bighead. In October 2019, Murray and his wife relocated from California to Belgium, and at the time Murray expressed interest in developing new series for Nickelodeon Europe.
In 2023, Murray completed work on his independent film, now entitled Fiego and the Magic Fish. A reimagining of the fairy tale "The Fisherman and His Wife", the short was produced by his Garden Box Studio in Belgium and received a Cannes Film Festival award for Best Direction for an Animated Film in 2024.
Character creation process
On his personal website, Murray describes his character creation process as "sometimes like playing Frankenstein".
- He starts with the personality. He shapes the conditions that make the character "tick", the character's imperfections, and the appeal. He asks himself, "Why would I want to tell stories about them?".
- If he is working with an anthropomorphic series or book with varying animals, he chooses an animal that, in his eyes, match the created personality. According to Murray, this resulted in a social caricature in Rocko's Modern Life.
- If he is working with an anthropomorphic series or book using one animal, he alters the specific character design to match the personality.
- Murray likes to vary eyeballs by size and color. He also varies nostrils. Murray believes that inconsistencies "make it more interesting".
- Murray then selects colors that, in his view, "feels right". He believes that yellow and bright colors "match a mood". If a character is "negative", he will pick a color that, in his opinion, matches the character.
- If he has to teach a crew of artists how to draw the character, he creates a model sheet for the character.
Murray explains that one of the interesting aspects of character creation is the evolution of the personalities over time. In a one-time movie, the characters will have a static personality, but for a television series, the characters will change from season to season, developing new relationships, and even changing from mere background characters into a main character.
Filmography
Television
{| class="wikitable sortable"
|-
! Year
! Title
! Role
!Production company
!Network
! Notes
|-
| 1993–1996
| Rocko's Modern Life
| Ralph Bighead
| Games Animation (Nickelodeon Animation Studio)
| Nickelodeon
| Creator, director, story, story editor, writer, main character designer, producer, executive producer, storyboard artist, layout artist, voice actor
|-
| 2005–2008
| Camp Lazlo
| N/A
|Cartoon Network Studios
|Cartoon Network
| Creator, writer, story, storyboard director, executive producer, storyboard artist
|-
| 2018–2022
| Let's Go Luna!
| N/A
|Brown Bag Films<br/>9 Story Media Group
|PBS Kids
| Creator, writer, executive producer
|}
Films/Specials
{| class="wikitable sortable"
|-
! Year
! Title
! Role
! Notes
|-
| 2007
| Camp Lazlo: Where's Lazlo?
| N/A
| Creator, writer, story, storyboard artist, director
|-
<!-- Please do not change/add that this is an unreleased project --->
|-
| 2019
<!-- Please do not change/add that this is an unreleased project --->
| Rocko's Modern Life: Static Cling
| Rachel Bighead
| Creator, director, writer, storyboard artist
|}
Internet
{| class="wikitable sortable"
|-
! Year
! Title
! Notes
|-
| 2011
|Frog in a Suit
| Creator
|}
Books
Written and illustrated
- Who Asked the Moon to Dinner? (December 31, 1999) (Published in English and Korean
- Crafting a Cartoon (September 12, 2008)
- Creating Animated Cartoons with Character (August 24, 2010)
Illustrated
- Funny Cryptograms (May 28, 2003)
- Hugville (December 27, 2005)
- Fishing
References
External links
- Joe Murray's Blog