JOE MURRAY

'Joe Murray' (born May 3, 1961 in San Jose, California) is an Emmy-nominated animator, best known as the creator of ''Rocko's Modern Life'' and ''Camp Lazlo''.

Contents

Early career

Post-Rocko

Current

External links

Early career

Joe Murray had developed an interest in working as an artist as a career when he was five years old. As a young adult, he was hired as a designer at an agency. Murray invested his earnings from the company into independent animated films. At age 20, Murray founded his independent illustration company, Joe Murray Studios, in 1981 while still in university. His early attempts at animation date back to 1986 when he joined Cal Arts. Murray wanted to expand the possibilities of working in an animation career, but made it clear by his animation style that he didn't want to become a "Disney Drone." Joe created several short animated films, his most successful was made in 1987 , which was a two minute animated short entitled "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. The film was praised by many and earned an award two years later in 1989 for Outstanding Film Making.
In 1988 he joined MTV as an animator for the MTV commercials, and left in 1991 in hopes of starting his own projects. One of the MTV eyecatches Murray created involved the future ''Rocko's Modern Life'' character Heffer, which had him expose the MTV logo branded onto his buttocks.
==Rocko's Modern Life==
Murray created and was the executive producer for the animated series ''Rocko's Modern Life'', which aired on Nickelodeon from 1993 to 1996. Although Murray is highly credited for his work on ''Rocko's Modern Life'', he is often overshadowed by his former employee Stephen Hillenburg. The future ''SpongeBob SquarePants'' creator worked as a writer, director and storyboard artist on Rocko, and many people mistakenly believe Hillenburg was the creator of Rocko.
Originally, ''Rocko's Modern Life'' was an unpublished comic book entitled ''Travis''. Joe tried selling the comic book in the late 1980s, but was never successful of getting it in production. In 1992 , Joe had another idea, but instead going with animation. After finishing his independent film ''My Dog Zero'', he focused on changing the story into a TV series. Murray presented a pencil test to Nickelodeon Studios, whom afterwards became interested in buying and airing the show. Murray focused on a pilot episode he had written called "Trash-O-Madness."
"Trash-O-Madness" was completed and shown to Nickelodeon executives before any other episodes were produced. Nickelodeon decided, though, that ''Rocko's Modern Life'' would make a better TV series than ''My Dog Zero''. During the making of season 3 of ''Rocko's Modern Life'', Murray faced problems with work and his personal life, so he decided to hand the project to Stephen Hillenburg, who did most work for season 4, though Murray continued to manage the cartoon. In 1996 , Murray asked Nickelodeon executives to stop producing the series because he wanted more time to spend with his family. It was supposed to be on Hiatus after the last episode ("Turkey Time / Floundering Fathers") but was later cancelled.

Post-Rocko

After completing 52 episodes of ''Rocko's Modern Life'', he took a break from the animation business and produced three children's books, ''Who Asked the Moon to Dinner?'' (1999), ''The Enormous Mister Schmupsle: An ABC Adventure'' (2003), and ''Hugville'' (written by Court Crandall) (2005), all of which are available for purchase at Amazon.com.
In 2000, Murray launched his Flash animation website, www.joemurraystudio.com. As of 2006, the site has been down for unknown reasons. As of 2007 the site is owned by JiveCo Records.

Current

Eventually, 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. The show is now currently in its 5th season.
On July 6, 2006, Murray was nominated to an Emmy for Oustanding Animated Program (For Programming less than One Hour) for ''Camp Lazlo''.

External links

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★ Joe Murray brief at Cartoon Network Pressroom: [1]