'Big Pants Mouse'.
Gabe Swarr is an American animation director, producer and retro video game designer, known for his work for Spümcø and Nickelodeon on series like 'Ren & Stimpy', 'El Tigre: The Adventures of Manny Rivera' and 'Kung Fu Panda: Legends of Awesomeness'. As a cartoonist, he created the comic book series 'Big Pants Mouse' (2001-2002), which he released independently under the Dumm Comics imprint. He later turned Dumm Comics into a website for comics made by animators. It hosted new episodes of 'Big Pants Mouse' (2008-2010) and Swarr's nostalgic semi-autobiographical series 'Life In The Analog Age' (2010-2014). In 2020, he launched another webcomic, 'Weekend Short Fun' (2020), which he distributes through his social media channels.
Early life
Gabriel Bo Swarr was born in 1975 in Manheim, Pennsylvania. He studied Animation and Graphic Design at the Joe Kubert School of Graphic Arts in New Jersey for two years. Among his graphic influences are Osamu Tezuka, Sean Fitzgibbon and John Kricfalusi.
Animation career
After graduation, Swarr moved to California, where he found a job at John Kricfalusi's animation company Spümcø. He worked on the TV cartoon series 'Ren & Stimpy', 'George Liquor' and Kricfalusi's vicious parodies of Hanna-Barbera's 'Yogi Bear' and 'The Jetsons'. He also directed the music video 'Fuck Her Gently' (2001) for the band Tenacious D. In the 2000s, Swarr worked for other animation studios like Cartoon Network, Warner Bros., Wildbrain, and Neverhood.
Since 2006, he has worked as director and supervising producer on several projects for Nickelodeon Animation Studio. He wrote two episodes for 'Dexter's Laboratory' and one for 'My Life as a Teenage Robot'. He was supervising director, producer and title designer of 'Kung Fu Panda: Legend of Awesomeness' (2011-2016), a spin-off TV series, based on the 'Kung Fu Panda' animated series. He additionally directed the animated superhero TV show 'El Tigre: The Adventures of Manny Rivera' (2007-2008). Together with Jon M. Gibson, he provided a funny look at the Donkey Kong video game franchise with the animated short 'A Really, Really Brief History of Donkey Kong' (2008), for Iam8bit. In 2018, Swarr joined Warner Bros. Animation, where he is co-executive producer of the 2021 reboot of 'Animaniacs', produced by Warner Brothers and Hulu.
'Big Pants Mouse' #2 (October 2002).
Big Pants Mouse & Dumm Comics
In 1998, Swarr created his own pilot for a Spümcø cartoon series, 'Big Pants Mouse'. It starred a packrat whose magic pants get him in all kinds of adventures... and trouble. The animated series never saw the light, but Swarr used the character in two comic books published in 2001 and 2002 under the Dumm Comics imprint. Between 5 May 2008 and 25 May 2010, the feature reappeared as a webcomic on the Dumm Comics website, which was launched by Swarr and a couple of friends to host webcomics created by animators from the cartoon industry.
Besides Swarr's comic strip, Dummcomics.com offered room for webcomics such as John Balsey's 'Taboose', Kyle Carrozza and John Berry's 'Frog Raccoon Strawberry', Luke Cormican and Tegu Kaitenn's 'Wicked Wickle', Jack Cusumno's 'Rad Raz', Brianne Drouhard's 'Harpy Gee', Fungasm's 'Jumpin' Jack Jerboa', Ricky Garduno's '1930 Nightmare Theater', Chris Garrison's 'Our Heroes' and 'Zoo Laffs', David Gemmil's 'Sorry Guyz', Aaron Horvath's 'Mech Lab', Robert Iza's 'The Eternally Injured Ninja', Fred Osmond's 'Earthward Ho', Katie Rice and Luke Cormican's 'Skadi', Sean Szeles' 'Through the Porthole' and Boleander Yergabick's 'Rumpus McSnivel'. After years of inactivity, the domain expired in April 2022.
'Life in the Analog Age'.
Life in the Analog Age
Another webcomic series by Swarr hosted on Dumm Comics was 'Life In The Analog Age' (2010-2014), inspired by his youth in Pennsylvania during the late 1970s and early 1980s. As Swarr described it, it was a "more innocent time, before digital dominance and information overload". Swarr deliberately used an orange and purple color scheme, to provide the nostalgic look of an old photograph. Yet he didn't want to resort to an ironic or sentimental look at the past, but more a recollection of how he felt and thought about things that happened to him at that age. Interviewed by Amid Amidi on the website Cartoon Brew (6 June 2013), Swarr explained: "I'm pretty sure our memories aren't just a series of remembered facts of events. When you think back and remember how things were, yes you do recall what happened, but it's not always accurate. That's because, yeah, it was a long time ago, but it's mainly because you're using how you felt at the time as a frame of reference. Our memories are wrapped up in them. That's nostalgia to me, true nostalgia, and that's a lot harder to capture than just making fun of pop culture, fashion, or how poofy hair styles were." The first episode was launched on 20 July 2010 and published on a weekly basis. 'Life in the Analog Age' was also adapted by Swarr into a web animation series and in the retro video game 'Life In The Analog Age: Rainy Day', made in the style of a 1990s Nintendo Gameboy game.
Weekend Short Fun
In 2020, Swarr launched the web gag comic 'Weekend Short Fun', published in Twitter and Instagram. The series is centered around the anthropomorphic dog Montgomery Mutt and his dysfunctional family.
Recognition
Swarr shared the Emmy Award for "Outstanding Directing in an Animated Program" with his co-workers the series 'El Tigre: The Adventures of Manny Rivera'. 'Kung Fu Panda: Legends of Awesomeness' won two Emmy Awards for "Outstanding Children's Animated Program" (2013, 2014).
Other activities
Swarr created the action puzzler 'Bub-O-Collect' for the indie video game device Playdate. He directed the music video for Radiohead's song 'In Rainbows' (2008). He launched his own blog in July 2005. Since 2 October 2006, he also hosts his own YouTube channel.
'Weekend Short Fun'.