Name: Doug TenNapelBirth: 1966
Death: N/A
Occupation/Title:
Presently Doug works as a Gaming consultant due to his knowledge and experience gained from working in the video game industry.
Bio Summary:
This Biography was taken from the Wikipedia site. “TenNapel was born and raised in the town of Denair, 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 Steven Spielberg's Dreamworks, he created for The Neverhood for the PC. The sequel, entitled Skullmonkeys, followed in 1998. As for his film production, works on TenNapel's first feature length live action film, entitled Mothman, began somewhere in the late 90s, although as of 2002, the film was never finished. Regarding television, TenNapel was also 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. His next book, Monster Zoo, is due in early summer 2008. TenNapel is also the lead singer of an independent band called Truck.”
Early Life/Family:
Married with 3 daughters
Education/Training:
Point Loma Nazarene University
San Diego, CA
Graduated: 1988
Degree: Bachelor's Degree
Major: Art/Fine Art/Illustration
1984-1988Career Outline:
TV Series/Animation/Films
- Doug's first professional animation gig was for the Fox Saturday morning cartoon Attack of the Killer Tomatoes.
- Doug finally got one of his own creations on TV and America hasn't been the same.
(Earthworm Jim—is also a video game)
- While Doug was working with the original EWJ team at Shiny in 1993, he was responsible for creating many of the key characters in Earthworm Jim, including Jim, Evil the cat, Queen Slug for-a-Butt, Psy-Crow, Princess What's-Her-Name, Chuck & Fifi, Doc Duodenum and Peter Puppy.
- Koghead and Meatus - This is a ten minute puppet animated short shot on widescreen 35mm!
- Sockbaby
- Mothman - Doug's self-funded indie film is not related to the Mothman Prophecies movie. It is live action and has evolving lengths from seven to 90 minutes! You will likely never see this film since Doug has little time to finish it. We might be able to hammer together a movie trailer and post it here someday. If you see Doug in person NEVER ask about his film. He is in therapy over it.
- Creature Tech - New Regency/Fox is making Doug's graphic novel into a live action movie! He's writing the script! The studio has approved the outline and he's in the middle of the first draft.
Children’s Books:
- Doug's 5 children's book series called "The Strange Kid's Chronicles". They're out of print and getting difficult to find. The covers were illustrated by Michael Koelsch.
- Goodie Bear Cafe Goodie BearGoodie Bear is a character Doug created for Japan. He is "The world's Smallest Bear" being about as big as the tip of someone’s little finger, and lives in a broken coffee cup with a ladybug friend. He was also the mascot for the Goodie Bear Cafe in Tokyo which Doug painted a mural for while he was there.
- Joe Potter designed the logo.
Comic Books
- Monster Zoo
- Flink
- Black Cherry
- Iron West
- Earthboy Jacobus
- Tommysaurus Rex
- Creature Tech
- Dr. Ong
- Solomon Fix
- 9/11 Vol. 1
- One of Hundreds of comic artists participated in Darkhorse's 9/11 graphic novel tribute that raised money for 9/11 relief. Doug's two pages document how he mourned the night of the murderous disaster.
For more dates and full list: http://us.imdb.com/name/nm0855066/
Impact on Gaming: unknown
Influences: unknown
Personality: Here is a quote from Doug’s myspace account. This quote is perfect in describing his personality (or a part of it). The question on the myspace account is “Who would you like to meet?” Doug’s reply:
“ Everyone. I just want to meet you one at a time. I don't like getting to know multiple people, I like to sit and interview you. Just you. Some say I have a problem with personal space and I imagine it's true, but I'm only lifting that rock you want to keep in place to see what bugs are under there. I prefer talking about what's under there because I don't give a shit about your favorite movie (though I'm sure your favorite movie is valid and entertaining to watch). I want to know what you think about God, how you came to your religion or rejection of religion, I want to know why you didn't have kids, and yes I'm rude enough or socially retarded enough to ask you. I apologize in advance.”
Anecdotes:
These two anecdotes can be found on the home page of Doug’s website.
-9/11- “My brother woke me with a phone call, “Doug, something is going on in New York. A plane hit the World Trade Center.” I turned on the TV and the second plane had just hit. “What the hell’s going on?”
Our greatest threat was revealed on that day. Not Climate Change. Not Europe’s perception of us. But a religiously motivated totalitarian regime. They did it with box-cutters. My hero, the President of the United States, has thwarted hundreds of attacks since then. I don’t think any of us could imagine a world where we wouldn’t be hit for seven years. I’m thankful. If Obama gets into office I will praise him til’ my dying day if he too, keeps us from being hit for another 8 years.
I’ll never forget the men and women in business attire leaping from the burning buildings because jumping was preferred to burning to death in an inferno.
We rallied together, behind a common flag to fight this enemy. Now when I look at a flag it has a different meaning to me. I used to love it because it represented America, now I love it because it represents an awakened America. We put flags on our houses again, on our cars, we waved them in the streets. When we were hit by enemies we didn’t cower, we got out our flags and showed the world we were united.
Then we forgot.”
-Evil Seals-
“It’s official. I’m afraid of seals. They look like bloated, hairy, leeches and seemed harmless until this last weekend when I snorkeled at La Jolla Cove.
These things are huge, I’m talking twelve feet long. Standing on a rock, fifteen seals swirled around and wanted the rock. They didn’t like me up there, and might have seen me as establishing my dominance given I was displaying my colors…my day-glow swim trunks from Target.
I crawled down the rock, snorkel and breathing tube pulled up on my head, and as soon as I put my feet in the water the seals would circle closer, put their head above water and show their teeth. I don’t care how brave you think you are, seals have the exact same sized teeth and jaws of a wolf. Their eyes roll back like a dolls eyes…then out come the yellow, sharp teeth.
Now I see why people whack them in the head as pups because nobody would dare attack them once they leave the pupae stage. Forget wolves, these guys are more like BEARS! Bears of the sea. If a great white was a mammal he’d be a seal. From now on I’m not snorkeling unless I buy a King Neptune-style trident.
Evil seals.”
Miscellaneous:
Here are some interesting questions that were asked on Doug’s FAQ forum on his website.
Q: Were you ever into superhero stuff like Superman and Batman and Spider-Man as well as classic old-school cartoons such as Looney Toons, Tom and Jerry, and Popeye and so on and so on? Cause Earthworm Jim seems like a mash up of both.
DTN: I respected the hero comics but never got into them. I was much more a Looney Tunes, Garfield, Bloom County and Peanuts guy.
Q: What kind of gamer are you?
DTN: I like strategy war games. Command and Conquer. I played my share of Halo. I like online Scrabble and Risk. I don't own any systems (other than the old Playstation, Nintendo etc.). I feel that if I owned a system I'd play it all day instead of work so I really try not to play many games. Most of the games I play I sneak around work from time to time. I'll obsess over them then throw them away.
Doug also won an award in 1997 for the Best Animation Produced for Game Platforms. The game that he won the award for was The Neverhood (1996) (VG) He shared the award with Edward Schofield and Mike Dietz.
Gameography:
- 1993 - Jurassic Park - Genesis
- 1993 - Stimpy's Invention - Genesis
- 1993 - Jungle Book - Genesis & SNES
- 1994 - Earthworm Jim - Genesis & SNES (cross platform)
- 1995 - Earthworm Jim 2 - Genesis & SNES (cross platform)
- 1996 - The Neverhood - PC
- 1998 - Skullmonkeys - Playstation
- 1999 - Boombots - Playstation
Related Links: N/A
Bibliographic References:
www.myspace.com/dougtennapel
us.imdb.com/name/nm0855066
tennapel.nomoretangerines.com
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doug_TenNapel
Contributors To This Listing: Katherine Windsor