#Behind the Scenes Artwork: Butch Hartman

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Early production deep-dive - Part 1: The show’s creation  

This year marks the 20th anniversary of the show’s premiere, and to celebrate it until April 3rd we’ll have multiple daily posts of cool information we’ve found about the show. 

For starters, let’s take a deep dive back to the early 2000s, even before 2004, all the way to 2001 when the show’s idea first came up!

On an interview for the DPOFPA (Danny Phantom Official Forum Picture Archive), Butch Hartman shared the story of how he first came up with the idea: it was February 2001, after hearing that the channel was looking for a boy’s action show and during a drive back to California with his mother, that he brainstormed different names until settling on Danny Phantom, although it almost didn’t go that way: 

"Butch Hartman: But it's kind of fun to know he was almost called "Jackie Phantom". Once I had the name I knew it would have to have something to do with ghost fighting or monster hunting. C'mon? "Danny Phantom"? He's not gonna fight bad breath!  I was also going to give him a group of super powered teen sidekicks to help him. The entire show was going to be called "Danny Phantom and the Specter Detectors". (Source: https://web.archive.org/web/20080102170004/http://hometown.aol.com/zcat6/IntBH2006p3.html) 

Although he contacted a couple people about it, such as Bob Boyle and Steve Marmel, who would later become DP’s art director and DP’s co-writer, respectively, Hartman worked on the development by himself on the first months, letting the idea simmer while trying out different concepts and styles, until settling on an early character design for his main character:

(Source: https://web.archive.org/web/20071029162015/http://frederatorblogs.com/post/3385)

[Image Description: Three images of black and white early concept designs of the character Danny Phantom drawn by Butch Hartman. 

Image 1 -Danny in a crouching pose, hovering above the ground. His hair is black and he looks forward slightly to the right with a surprised face. He wears a white jumpsuit with a black collar, along with white gloves and black boots. There’s text underneath: ‘How does he have phantom powers? 2/9/01 Friday’.

Image 2 - Danny standing in a confident pose, hands closed in fists and a smile on his face. His hair is white and his eyebrows are black. He’s wearing a black jumpsuit with his collar, belt, gloves and boots all colored white. The text ‘Danny Phantom’ is written to the right side, next to his legs, and below is Butch’s signature and the date ‘3/01’.

Image 3 - Two Danny designs side by side. The Danny on the left is standing with his hands balled into fists by his sides, and he’s smiling while looking to the right. His hair and eyebrows are black, his jumpsuit and gloves are white, while his boots and collar are black. He also wears a black underwear above his jumpsuit, reminiscent of old superhero costumes.The next design shows Danny in movement, like he’s mid-walk while flying forward. He has a surprised face while looking at the right, one of his hands is closed while the other is open and facing outward. His jumpsuit, gloves, boots and collar are all white, except for his underwear which is black. He has a ghost outlined on his chest as a logo. /end ID] 

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Early production deep-dive - Part 4: Web information  

On the next annual upfront of the channel, hosted on March 19th 2003, Nick would announce the show once again, this time getting more attention, enough to prompt internet users to go fishing for more information.

On the Nicktoons Forum of the site Animesuperhero, one person returned with hot news after checking the crew’s personal sites.

“Title -  Danny Phantom/Crash Nebula/Kim Possible Artwork  have you guys seen this? http://www.silvertoons.com/silvertoons/portfolio.asp” (Source: https://web.archive.org/web/20210413012318/https://animesuperhero.com/forums/threads/danny-phantom-crash-nebula-kim-possible-artwork.3384331/)

“Title - Danny Phantom /Crash Nebula Theme Song i apologize if this has been posted but http://butchhartman.com/html/danny.htm and then http://butchhartman.com/html/crash.htm has the theme (im guessing) rolling in the background.” (Source: https://web.archive.org/web/20210413012313/https://animesuperhero.com/forums/threads/danny-phantom-theme-song.3407701/)

The first link led to Stephen Silver’s personal site, specifically, his ‘Portfolio’ section where he displayed several of his character designs for the shows he worked on, including Danny Phantom background characters, ghostly villains like Lunch Lady and Skulker, and of course, the main character himself. These were publicly shared as early as July 13th 2003, presumably even earlier.

(Source: https://web.archive.org/web/20030713195848/http://www.silvertoons.com:80/silvertoons/portfolio.asp)

[Image Description: Six images of the designs shown in Stephen Silver’s site, most are small and in low quality. 

Image 1 - Screenshot of a site, the background is black and the title ‘Portfolio’ is on top in red letters. Underneath it are four rows of six images, with multiple character designs on each one, some with black backgrounds but most with white ones.

Image 2 - Two rows of three characters each. First row features ghost cowboys and the second row shows human cops.

Image 3 - Two rows of two characters each. First row shows the ghost Lunch Lady and a human chef. Second row features a human janitor and a human lunch lady, with a different design than the ghost Lunch Lady. 

Image 4 - Two rows of two characters each. First row shows designs for the Technus/Skulker fusion armor and the second row shows a character in both human and non-human form.

Image 5 - Three rows of characters. First row shows one adult and three kids, the first two are background characters while the third one is presumably an early design Danny and the fourth is presumably an early design for Tucker. The second row has three human kids and the third row shows Danny twice in his Phantom form.

Image 6 - Two rows with one character each. The top row features Skulker, in an early design where his ghostly hair was orange instead of the usual green. The bottom row shows the design for a non-human character, most likely a ghost. /end ID]

The second link led to Butch Hartman’s site, which had sections for audio clips of his shows, where he had uploaded the original (first version) of the Danny Phantom theme song as early as July 4th 2003. 

(Source: https://web.archive.org/web/20030716013439/http://butchhartman.com/html/danny.htm)

[Image Description: Two images taken from the 2003 Butch Hartman website.

Image 1 - Screenshot of the site, the words ‘Butch Hartman’ are displayed in white on the top left, with seven circles with different images underneath, that each lead to a new section of the site. There’s a drawing of himself on the top right corner and the background of the whole site is a light green. The current section’s title ‘Danny Phantom’ is displayed in white colors, with the text ‘Coming Soon!‘ underneath. There’s an illustration of Danny on the left.

Image 2- An illustration of Danny in his Phantom form. He is wearing a black jumpsuit with white gloves, boots, collar, and a white stripe around his waist. He has white hair and green eyes. He is looking to the right with a serious face while standing on a flying blue machine. His hands are grabbing the handles, there’s a green button between them and the machine is releasing air below it. The background is purple. This is the same illustration of Danny on the left of the 2003 Butch Hartman website. /end ID]

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