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"I got into trouble for it," Swarr, 34, said with a laugh.
But those doodles and flipbooks turned into a career for Swarr, who was recently nominated for a Daytime Entertainment Emmy for outstanding directing in an animated program.
The nomination was for an episode of the Nickelodeon animated series "El Tigre: The Adventures of Manny Rivera." (The awards will be announced Aug. 30.)
"I was the assistant director the first season," said Swarr, who is the son of artist Fred Swarr and Valerie Swarr, who is a framer. "And then I became the director and I think it was the first episode (of the second season) I directed that got nominated."
Normally, you'd figure a director would remember which episode he got nominated for, but Swarr explained that animators have so many projects and the intense work often overlaps, so it's easy to mix things up.
(Swarr was right, the nomination was for the episode "Day of the Dead.")
"An animated movie can take five years to make," Swarr said. "With TV shows, you're doing 26 half-hours in a year and a half. TV is a lot faster."
In the series, which ran for two seasons and is now available on iTunes, Manny is conflicted about using his super powers as El Tigre because, even though he knows he should be good, being bad is so much fun.
His father is a good super hero who wants his son to fight evil, while his grandfather is a super villain who believes Manny should go to the dark side.
"I directed all 26 episodes of the second season. It had a good run," Swarr said.
He continues working steadily at Nickelodeon. Right now, he's directing episodes of the computer-generated series "The Penguins of Madagascar," which premiered in May and is doing well, according to Swarr.
His next project is a series based on the movie "Kung Fu Panda," which is set to premiere next year.
"I'm moving up to supervising director on 'Kung Fu Panda,'" he said. "It's a very ambitious, very involved show."
And what does the director of an animated series do?
Just about everything.
"The director gets the script and follows it through to the end of the show," Swarr said.
"It's good to start at the bottom and work your way up before you begin directing. You have to have a good sense of storytelling, cinematography, good drawing skills and know how to use sound and the story board. And you've got to be able to supervise a team."
The storyboards, which are like comic strips, are the key to an animated show and help determine how the story will be told and what it will look like. Swarr explains they are highly technical and detailed.
Most of the actual animation is done overseas.
"With TV budgets, it's just too expensive to do it here," Swarr said.
While he loved old Warner Bros. cartoons (the early Daffy Duck was his favorite) Swarr knew that computers were the future of animation. While he was still in high school, he saved his money to buy an Amiga computer, the kind many animators used.
When he graduated from Manheim Central in 1994, he headed to the Joe Kubert School of Cartoon and Graphic Art in New Jersey. By his third and final year, he decided to move to California.
A big fan of the "Ren & Stimpy Show," Swarr offered his service for free as an intern at Spumco, the company that produced the show.
"I worked my way up," he said. "For about six years, I'd work for them, then do some freelancing, then work for them again."
While Swarr enjoys directing, his dream is to have one of his own ideas picked up and turned into a show. He's pitched a few ideas.
"I pitched a show to Disney in 2002, 'Big Pants Mouse,' about a mouse with magical pants, and I directed the pilot and it went all the way through development, but they didn't pick it up," he said.
Swarr is also involved in a Web site with a bunch of fellow animators called Dumm Comics (dummcomics.com), for which he draws a weekly comic strip.
"I love animation, I love to draw," he said. "And I still doodle all the time, even at meetings."
But he doesn't get into trouble anymore..000
E-mail: jholahan@lnpnews.com
