Josh O’Keefe (JOK) is a seasoned Director and Art Director, renowned for his innovative approach and creative vision. He is the creator of the beer-soaked, high-octane cartoon ‘Doomlands’, currently streaming on The Roku Channel. Josh directed both seasons of Doomlands and the second season of Gary and His Demons, consistently delivering clever solutions and memorable moments in every project.
With a film degree and a strong background in Animation and Graphic Design, Josh has a keen eye for great composition and the ability to inject heart and nuance into any story. His passion for music, sci-fi worlds, and cult classic cinema often fuels his work, adding unique dimensions to his creations.
Read about the origins of Doomlands below….
10 minute read.
HOW TO MAKE A CARTOON SHOW
“THE STORY, SO FAR”
Written February 20th, 2025
I chose the animation degree I wanted to study when I was thirteen years old… Hey, I’m not a freak! We had to do it at my school. As a career counselling exercise or something... And it was the greatest day of my life when I was accepted to study that exact course: Animation and Interactive Media at RMIT University, Melbourne.
I was to become an animator… but then I dropped out.
Creating the illusion of life is wonderful and all, but what I really wanted to learn was how to give that life meaning. I switched gears and spent the next four years studying Film & TV instead. I became enthralled by cinema, especially Australian cinema (Mad Max, Wake In Fright, etc). When it came time to make a final graduation “film”, I pitched a cartoon show instead.
I graduated at the end of 2015 with a 13 minute ANIMATIC of a short called ‘Doomlands’. All the other kids made films on proper cinema cameras, fully polished, and I handed in a crudely drawn animated storyboard. I don’t think it’s normal to graduate film school with just an “animatic of something”, but this was ten years ago in Australia and I really don’t think they knew what to do with me.
Crowd funding with Kickstarter was just becoming a popular thing then too and I thought it would be a great idea to ask all my friends to give me money to turn my graduation animatic of Doomlands into an actual animation. It was amazing that we raised over $10,000, but also a lot of pressure! Now all my friends were like “Where’s that cartoon we paid for?”. I eventually did complete the 13 minute short, with the help of some pals. We called it ‘The Pilot Episode’ and Doomlands was BORN!
The debut screening was set for The Tote in Melbourne, a famous rock and roll joint, and I stirred up a bit of a fuss with the bands we booked to play alongside the premiere.
It must’ve been a slow news week because I ended up on national radio talking about Doomlands, a cartoon show that didn’t even exist yet! The day of the screening it was completely sold out and we had people showing up from out of town without a ticket. People were jumping the back wall into the beer garden just to catch a glimpse!
After the screening a few more blog posts and articles came out about Doomlands and the blockbuster premiere. Amongst it all I received an email from a Canadian producer, Mr. Josh Bowen, who wanted to “talk about my property”. I had no idea I had property. We spent the next few months talking about the possibilities for Doomlands until one day he said he was going to Hollywood and asked if I wanted to come along and pitch the show.
On the day of the first pitch, I met Mr. Bowen in real life for the first time. A couple of hours later I was in a conference room with him and some TV executive pitching Doomlands. I’d spent years already thinking about the idea and the characters and the world but none of it helped at that moment. I bombed hard. I sweated, I choked. I think I swore - twice?
Afterwards, I ‘Sad Keanu’ sat on a park bench while Mr. Bowen scrolled through his emails. That was my first pitch and I told him it felt like he just took my virginity. Without looking up, he laughed, and said “Well you better shape up, because we’re pitching to Comedy Central tomorrow”.
Mr Bowen helped me get my shit together that evening and we workshopped how I was going to pitch. All the preparation didn’t help my nerves though, and on our way to Comedy Central I told the Uber to pull over. I ran into a liquor store… liquid courage was what I needed! I came back out with a ‘mickey’ of Jameson and a six pack of PBR. Mr. Bowen understood the whiskey, but what was the beer for?
When we sat down to pitch at Comedy Central I pulled out the beer and slid the cans across the long table. “Beer is what they drink in Doomlands, we might as well have a can!”. Genius. I thought I was a fucking genius.
The beer was a hit, it was one of the exec’s birthday and I felt the pitch went amazingly. I went out and partied all week thinking Doomlands was going to be on Comedy Central and was very hungover for the pitch we gave to Quibi.
Dreams really do come true in La La Land, and the next week after pitching we entered a development deal with Jeffrey Katzenburg’s new company Quibi. They were a new platform and wanted Doomlands to be a part of their hot new cartoon slate! They had a Roiland claymation planned, and another stop motion involving toy cars and Jon Favreue.
We were to supply two more episodes in the form of animatics and Katzenburg would have to give the final say on whether we got the greenlight. It wasn’t exactly an easy road but through the help of Mr. Bowen and Look Mom Productions, we scrambled together those animatics and sent them in. I was nervous though, I had relocated to Canada and my whole future was now on the line. We had just sent Katzenburg, the man who once said “No” to Toy Story, 20 minutes of crude scribbles and pee pee jokes.
When we got the call, I was so happy we got the greenlight, I kissed Mr. Bowen on the lips! Or maybe he kissed me? Anyway, we smooched because Quibi had committed to giving us ONE MILLION DOLLARS for Doomlands Season One!
Quibi was a funny little thing, and it had a nifty little trick. You could watch shows landscape, AND vertical - seamlessly. This was exciting on paper but it meant we had to animate the whole first season in SQUARE format. For the animators reading this, let that sink in, and check the framing in the pic below.
Usually if you're animating a mid shot you can get away without animating legs if a character is walking across the screen, but not in square format… not in vertical mode!! You have to animate EVERYTHING! And all the backgrounds? SQUARE TOO! We quickly realised we’d committed to double the work just for this nifty trick, but that wasn’t the only problem to overcome…
The pandemic hit a week after we got the greenlight. All my dreams had come true and the world was coming to an end. Because we were all isolated and quarantined we had all our writer’s rooms over zoom. Long, long writing days over zoom. And then when it came time to record… Also Zoom! The comedy that we were chasing relied on ensemble recordings, embracing improv and stepping on each other's lines… but that was made a little tricky over a video call.
When we recorded Rhys Darby’s character he was back in New Zealand while we were all in Toronto and the 5 second delay on his lines became a living hell for Mark Little, the voice behind Danny Doom.
All in all, at least we had something to do during those boring pandemic years. I also moved in with Mr. Bowen’s mother during the pandemic as a way for us to bubble together and work closer. Mother Bowen cooked us dinner every night. When you sell your TV show idea, no one tells you that you’ll move in with your producer’s mum, but that’s what happened.
The real kicker was when Quibi collapsed. We were half made and half paid. It’s hard to launch an on-the-go streaming service when everyone is stuck at home. The first thing I thought was no one was ever going to see the ‘vertical version’ of the episodes, all the little easter eggs we snuck into the quibi version… but then I also thought, no one is even going to see the show, vertical or not!
Mr. Bowen was the first to assure me that we had come too far, and the show had to go on! After a brief moment of uncertainty, it was another purple streaming service that came to the rescue and saved Doomlands from a doomed fate!
The Roku Channel scooped us up and released Season One in 2022, and even gave us the greenlight for another Season! Thanks Roku!
It is now ten years after I graduated university with my Doomlands animatic, and it is surreal that we’ve even made a second season!
It is an absolute privilege to have even ten thousand dollars to make a cartoon for your friends, but to have the support to make two seasons of your cartoon idea for an American audience is a whole other thing. I’m incredibly fortunate to all those that have helped nurture Doomlands along the way, from my mates back in Melbourne, to the producers and friends I surround myself with now.
I wanted to write this story about how Doomlands came to be, so that other budding cartoon creators reading could maybe understand what it takes to get your cartoon on TV. Upon reviewing all of this back however, I’m not sure there’s much concrete advice here.
Perhaps you're thinking you've just read the words of a delusional artist who wanted to make a cartoon and just got lucky, and perhaps you're right. But the world is more bonkers than ever these days, and you can get lucky too. Don’t wait for someone to give you a million dollars to make something, just start making it and the shit you need will be there, eventually. Field of Dreams: “Build it, and they will come”.
I guess there’s that thing too, about never giving up. Just keep doing it. From the very first sketch of Danny Doom, to launching Season Two in LA in 2025, there has been so many times when I wanted to give up, especially when things got tough or seemed impossible.
Thankfully, I always had a friend who would push me along... Or I’d see someone wearing the Doomlands tshirt they got as a kickstarter reward and get stoked again. I always needed a reason to do that crazy thing, and spend hours upon hours drawing silly drawings... and it turned out that reason was always my friends, my family, the people who were just stoked that I was excited by something. Stay excited.
I will end this story with a “To be continued...”, because after ten years, we’ve only just begun. Stay tuned for more adventures of Danny, Lhandi and The OASIS crew in the next chapter... DOOMLANDS III