
Born: Joseph David Murray
Birthday: May 3, 1961
Location: San Jose, CA, U.S.
Alma mater: De Anza College
Occupation: Animator, Writer, Producer
Years active: 1988–present
Joe Murray developed an interest in working as an artist as a career when he was three years old, His kindergarten teacher told his mother that he was the only student who drew zippers on pants. Joe’s first work as a professional artist was drawing caricatures of people and animals at an amusement park at age 16. Later, he took a position as a political cartoonist for a San Jose newspaper.
An agency hired Murray as a designer, which allowed him to invest his earnings into his own independent animated films. While still a student in 1981, he launched his independent illustration company, Joe Murray Studios at age 20.
One of his first animated student films was “The Chore.” It was a two-minute short about a harried husband who’s chore is to put out a difficult cat for his wife. It was drawn on typing paper, and shot with a 16 mm camera. Completed in 1987, “The Chore” earned Murray the Merit Student Academy Award two years later in 1989.
In 1988, he created two network IDs for MTV. Joe also provided storyboards and layouts for 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 Colossal Pictures studio in the early 1990s.
Murray created, and was the executive producer, for the animated series Rocko’s Modern Life, which aired on Nickelodeon from 1993 to 1996.
After season 3, Joe handed the project over to Stephen Hillenburg, while Murray continued to manage the cartoon production. After 52 episodes of Rocko’s Modern Life, Nickelodeon cancelled the series, and Murray took a break from animation to produce and illustrate children’s books.
Joe returned to television cartooning, selling his cartoon Camp Lazlo to Cartoon Network Studios in 2005. Camp Lazlo ran for five seasons followed by a TV movie Where’s Lazlo? The movie won an Emmy for Outstanding Animated Program (For an Hour or More).
While Murray developed a new television series, he began work on an independent film project, Fish Head, and he started producing a new short series, called Frog in a Suit.
Joe launched a crowdfunding campaign in 2010 fund, KaboingTV, a web network dedicated exclusively to cartoons. Murray developed his Frog in a Suit series specifically for the platform. KaboingTV premiered on March 11, 2011.
He worked on the PBS animated series Let’s Go Luna!, which aired from 2018 to 2022, as well as the hour-long TV special Rocko’s Modern Life: Static Cling, which premiered on Netflix.
In 2023, Murray completed his independent film, now called Fiego and the Magic Fish; a reimagining of the fairy tale “The Fisherman and His Wife.” The short earned an award for Best Direction for an Animated Film at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival.
Joe Murray is the author of the book Creating Animated Cartoons with Character: A Guide to Developing and Producing Your Own Series for TV, the Web, and Short Film.
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