Here are some projects that will always hold a special place in my heart.

Tasty Time With Zefronk (2008-2011)

The Emmy-nominated series about a wiener dog with a cooking show!

In 2007, while half-asleep, a crystal clear voice in my head started screaming “I…am LeFRONK!”. My eyes popped open and I leapt out of bed and sprinted to the computer. With pencil in hand, I quickly sketched out a cartoon chihuahua. It looked pretty good so I showed it to my wife, Heather. She paused for a second and said “Cute! But his name is LeFronk. That sounds more like a wiener dog.” And she was right! So I whipped up this two-page pitch, and changed the first letter of his name, because it sounded funnier:

From there, I pitched it to my agent at the time, who didn’t know what to do with it since there was no real story to go along with it. So I sighed and tacked the two pages to my wall.

About two weeks later, I got a call from Emily Hart at Disney (who I had met while living in Orlando years earlier) saying she saw my book Tickle the Duck while vacationing in Hawaii. She asked me if I had any projects to pitch. I had already been working on some other show concepts, so I sent them to her. She said those weren’t quite right for Disney, so I paused, then gazed at the Zefronk pages tacked to the wall. Then I spoke. “Well…I’ve got this other idea that you might like.”

And she did like it. In fact, she loved it. She asked if I was okay with Zefronk making kids snacks instead of meals, and of course I said “Um…yeah!”

From there it was a whirlwind.

I was asked to create more flushed-out drawings of the characters and setting.

The image I created shows a simple doghouse from the outside…

But inside is a TV studio with a high tech, gourmet kitchen. (Our daughter, Katherine, chose colors for the kitchen. Now she’s an interior designer in Los Angeles!)

Then I was asked to come up with some supporting characters. Here’s Dom, the sneaky neighbor cat and Sue, Zefronk's sous-chef!

I asked to write the episodes and they were kind enough to let me give it a whirl. But my drafts were bad. So they hired the great Craig Shemin (of Muppets fame) to come in and write them, all. Then…they brought in music wizard Jeff Zahn to write the theme song and music. Then…to my astonishment…they hired voice legend Rob Paulsen (Pinky and the Brain and many others) to voice Zefronk, and Mark Hamill (of Star Wars fame) to voice Dom the cat. Crazy, right?! The simple, yet exquisite, animation was done by Odd Bot animation in Los Angeles, and boy, did they do a great job!!

Twenty episodes were produced and ran in repetition from 2008-2011 on various Disney channels. It was even nominated for Daytime Emmy!

Watch my favorite episode below. You can also do a search on Youtube for more Tasty Time with Zefronk videos.

Apprécier! (Enjoy!)

Some of the episodes ended with these short live-action sequences! Fun!

Zefronk was internationally known!

Thank you for following along!

Farm Force (2005)

Winner of the Nicktoon’s Film Festival Viewer’s Choice Award!

In the summer of 2003, I came up with this little idea about farm animals with superpowers—A dim-witted Pig with super strength, a savvy Hen with technical egg-laying abilities and a Zen Master Bass, with Super-ninja skills. It was originally created as a TV series, and a producer friend of mine gathered together a team of people to develop, pitch and produce it. We decided to produce a short film to help cement the pitch.

It made a big splash.

It was picked was up by Porchlight Entertainment (closed in 2011) and eventually Heather Henson (Jim Henson’s daughter) came on to fund the project. After much development, the series came this close to being green lit, but in the end, the deal fell apart.

What we were left with was a fantastic short film that still holds up to this day. We submitted it to the Nicktoons Film Festival in 2005 and it won the Viewer’s Choice Award! Exciting!

Thank you to Rob Cowie, Dom Carola, Paulo Alvarado, Gregg Azzopardi, John Webber, Travis Blaise and all the other fabulous people that contributed to this amazing project. It was an experience I’ll never forget.

*Note: The fantastic concept drawings, stills and animation below were created by a dedicated team of animation pros, but the title card of the video was created by Ethan Long. Here’s the original sketch of the title card, and then the final image.

Watch the hilarious short film below!

Empty Nest (2020)

The award-winning animated short!

Every so often, I go through the period where I create birds as an ode to joy. In the summer of 2019, I was creating a lot of this bird art and posting it all online. People responded really well to them! One person who responded was Lori Burton née Bilter, who was a classmate of mine at Ringling. She was now the head of the animation department at Booker High School for the Visual & Performing Arts in Sarasota, Florida.

Lori reached out and wondered if I was interested in having my birds animated. I said “Of course!” and told her that I’d actually boarded out a story just the week before. Can you say serendipity?

My story was about three little birds leaving the nest, which is what I was preparing for as our last two children were finishing up high school to leave for college.

I had also written a song and recorded a demo, so that was ready to go to, too. I asked my youngest son, Carson, a bassoonist and music theorist, to transcribed the song into sheet music, and he agreed to help:

We setup a time to come to the school and meet the class. It was a small group but filled with budding animation students eager to work on my project. I can come on strong so they may have been scared of me, but I’ll never be sure. Regardless, it was exciting to meet the team.

There was a lot of back and forth and things started pretty smoothly. The goal was to time the animation to my music. I put a lot of pressure on them to be thorough and communicated this constantly. I take great pride in what I do and wanted this to be really good. Feeling pressure is how I learned and felt that it was needed for this project. I hope they understood that.

Then we put our noses down and produced an animated short. Here are some moments from the process.

Empty Nest was released at the beginning of COVID, and went on to win various awards and get accepted into numerous of Film Festivals. Overall, it was a creative success for everyone!

Lori, Maren, Tallulah, Janeth and Matthew: Thank you for making this non-commercial venture something to remember. I will always cherish our time working together.

So. . . without further ado. . .

Empty Nest!

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