Douglas TenNapel is an American musician, animator, and Eisner Award-winning artist who has made shows for Channel 101. He is best known for creating Earthworm Jim, a character that spawned a famous video game, cartoon series, and toy line.
Biography[]
TenNapel was born and raised in the town of Norwalk, California. He started out as an animator on Attack of the Killer Tomatoes: The Animated Series. He soon began working in the video game industry on projects like 1993's Jurassic Park and Stimpy's Invention for the Sega Genesis and The Jungle Book for the SNES and Sega Genesis. In 1994, he created Earthworm Jim, the character that would star in Shiny Entertainment's video game, toy line, and cartoon series. In 1996, working for Dreamworks, he created for The Neverhood for the PC. The sequel, entitled Skullmonkeys, followed in 1998.
Work on TenNapel's first feature length live action film, Mothman, began in the late 90s, although as of 2002, the film was not finished. In television, TenNapel was the creator of the Project G.e.e.K.e.R. cartoon series for CBS, and was a consulting producer on the ABC series Push, Nevada with Ben Affleck.
As a graphic artist and cartoonist, TenNapel released his first comic book in 1998: GEAR, a surreal epic based on his real life cats, Simon, Waffle, Gordon and Mr. Black in a war against dogs and insects using giant robots as weapons. The cats from GEAR would eventually become the Nickelodeon series Catscratch. His second graphic novel, Creature Tech (2002), became the focus of a bidding war between movie studios. 20th Century Fox and Regency Enterprises won the war and are developing the script for a live action motion picture based on the novel.
TenNapel did the cover art for several of Five Iron Frenzy's albums, including a sculpture for their live album, Proof That the Youth Are Revolting. TenNapel has also created album covers and artwork for several Daniel Amos CDs, The 1999 tribute to the band, When Worlds Collide, the Neverhood soundtrack Imaginarium: Songs from the Neverhood and others. Flink, a graphic novel by TenNapel, was released in late 2007 through Image comics. Monster Zoo, was released in early summer 2008. In June 2009 his latest graphic novel Power Up was released. TenNapel is also the lead singer of an independent band called Truck and is currently working on a Cartoon Network Original called Phibian Mike.
TenNapel is politically Conservative and frequently writes articles for Andrew Breitbart's Big Hollywood.
External links[]
- Douglas TenNapel IMDb page
- www.TenNapel.com
- www.Sockbaby.com
- A review of TenNapel's Gear at The Daily Cross Hatch.
- Review of Black Cherry.