Uh Huh, you heard that right, Xena is
somewhat responsible for Nothin' Butt Dogs. Uh,
didn't she have a horse, not a dog? You would be correct, sir.
She had in fact a beautiful horse named Argo, who was every bit as smart as Lassie and
offered comedy relief from time to time, but no, no dog for Xena. So how the
heck did we get from there to here?Wellllll we (me and Judes) met 10+ years
ago on a Xena message board (for zeus sakes, where does the time go?). We
were both there quite a few months and didn't even notice each other.
Which wasn't too surprising from my side, since Judes (the artist behind Nothin'
Butt Dogs) rationed out her posts like she was on a budget. I (that would be me,
Les, the voice behind Nothin Butt Dogs), on the other hand, was posting left and
right
with my hokey lil' stories and poems. How she didn't notice me, since I
was annoyingly everywhere, I do not know. We both had a mutual buddy
though (who I noticed recently
has a Hollywood writing credit for a film. Way to go JC!) and finally stumbled
over
each other on one of JC's threads. I think I was telling Judes she was
wrong about something. You can't help but notice someone who's tellin' you you're wrong,
especially when they're right (as I usually am. Hah!).
At some point after that, I discovered she had quite the drawing talent and
she found out I had tons of hokey lil' ideas running around in my head and she soon
started bringing them to life in art. Sort of cool having your very own
Picasso at your fingertips. So our creative collaboration
started with Xena. Woo we wasted a ton of time creating stuff for that
show. Need proof? Here you go,
huffin' and puffin' gabs, an early
animation and the hokey poem that goes with it.
And
here's one of our first cartoons, Xenapot,
which only makes sense if you know that the series finale ended with Gabby, the sidekick,
sailing off into the sunset, talking to a pot, that held Xena's ashes (They
killed Xena? What were they thinkin'? Ah not to worry, it's the Xenaverse where
nobody ever stays dead).
I won't bore you with anymore Xena stuff, but suffice it say this time
wastage for Xena went on for quite awhile, until we discovered we had another
obsession in common, Dogs. Our creative
ventures started to veer off in that direction, probably circa-Season 5 of Xena
(their big jumpin' the shark year). Most of our early
dog stuff was about my two Cairn Terriers, Murph and Maddie. I think we
focused on my two, because Judes had lost her beloved Terrier Mix, Bumber, so
she was dog-less for a few years before she rescued Idgie, her current Jack
Russell Terrier. Of the dog stuff we created together,
Cairntoon
is my favorite, which introduced my Collie, Oz. Judes drew it in that same
pencil style she used for Xenapot. This leaning towards humorous cartoons
was fixin' (Did I mention I'm Texan? Just had to drop a fixin' in this here
write up at some point ;-)) to come in real handy, as we stumble onto our dog butt idea. It was
during one of our marathon phone calls, where we basically just talk about
nothing (Seinfeld has nothing on us :-)). In this instance, it was about
decorating my kitchen and joking about how popular chickens are for kitchens.
Vedy kitchy dontchaknow. Oh! Oh! you know what would be perfect? A
chicken butt clock. Oh no wait. It has to be a cow, because the tail can
swish for the second hand. Oh yeh, that's got kitchy written all
over it.
 Soon
thereafter, Judes sends me these quick sketches. Of course, I loved them
(Have I mentioned I'm a huge fan of Mama's Family? Just to give you a reference
point for my taste :-))but I thought you know what would be even cuter, Murph's butt.
I had a couple of butt shots of Murph that I shared with her and we then
proceeded to have a whole discussion of how cute his butt was. I'm sure
others would be more focused on the likes of say Brad Pitt's butt. Not us,
we were having an in depth discussion of all the cutest dog butts there are.
Judes, you just have to draw some dog butts. Chickens and Cows have
nothing on the adorableness of a Dog. Besides, you know there's got to be
dog folks out there just like me that would totally get the humor of it.
She thought I was nutz, but went along with it and drew several dog butt
sketches.
 The
slogan, Nothin' Butt Dogs, came soon thereafter from Judes and we knew (well
actually me mostly. Judes for the life of her couldn't imagine anybody liking
it) we had a pretty good idea. Unfortunately, we had no where to go with
it at that time. We both had, and still do, fairly demanding full time
regular joe jobs, that just didn't leave enough time to design, market, produce,
bill and ship products. So our lil' idea languished on the shelf for
another 2 or 3 yrs, until I stumbled on
Cafepress.
Woowee, what a revolutionary idea
Cafepress was. They do all the tedious work, producing, billing and
shipping, and we get to do all the fun stuff, designing and marketing.
Getting to be creative was then and is now the main reason we wanted to do this.
It is such a high knowing there's folks out there wearing one of our designs.
 After
discovering Cafepress, we spent a few
months refining our idea and designing a webpage, before actually opening our
store for business. Here's some of the first drafts of Nothin' Butt Doxies and
Nothin' Butt Cairns. I don't know how noticeable it is, but Judes had done
more of a gradient fill of the colors and it lost some of the cartoon-ishness
that was in her original sketches. She's still grumbling at me 4 years
later, that she had to go back and redo several of the designs to capture the
original cartoon-ishness (I don't know, I still say I was right on that
one. Hah! see, right again. ;-)).
Fast forward to the present (2008) and we are embarking on a new creative
endeavor, Animations, that parody TV shows with a dog twist to them.
Animation is really Judes' first love.
Coupled
with my bottomless well of TV knowledge, we hope to bring ya'll some humorous
(one hopes) parodies. First up, Star
Trek Voyager, since I've been totally obsessed with this show over the last
year (driving Judes mad I might add). Great cast (Kate Mulgrew, Jeri Ryan,
Robert Picardo and a few others), high re-watchability factor and with its
quirky charm with leanings towards campy, a perfect candidate for parody.
I was driving Judes over the edge endlessly talking about it, so I think it's
her hope to get this one out of the way first and no longer having to hear about
Voyager (I've actually got quite a few more Voyager ideas floating around in my
head, but for Judes' sanity, maybe we should go with Brady Bunch next).
Not to worry, there will be more dog butts on the horizon too. I think
we still have about 100 more breeds to go. Not to mention, additions for
our other designs as well. So keep checking back to see what's new.
Les and Judes... |