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Memorable & Crpy A member of the talented team that shaped the original Scooby Doo, Where Are You?, background artist Eric Semones came to Hanna-Barbera fresh out of the Navy. "In 1964, I had wound up on a destroyer in the South China Sea during the Gulf of Tonkin incident in Vietnam," he says. "We would get movies like The Longest Day and Cleopatra from one of the supply ships. We always traded them for any of the Looney Tunes we could get. We loved the cartoons, and there was a name on the titles that stuck with me. Paul Julian." When Semones was discharged in 1966, he applied for a job at Hanna- Barbera. The next thing he knew, he was working on The Flintstones and Josie and the Pussycats. A few years later he was brought in to paint backgrounds for a new show called Scooby-Doo, Where Are You? By this time Paul Julian—the man whose work had captured Semones' attention on a Navy destroyer—was freelancing for Hanna-Barbera. Semones says, "Paul was like a flytrap. People would come from all over the building to see what he had brought in because it was stunning. I was this 22-year-old shy kid, and I was looking at this stuff, and I didn't want to make any noise. I just wanted to sit and study it. When I saw his work, I thought, man, I've got to put the pedal to the metal if I'm going to get anywhere in this industry." With the bar set, Semones used Scooby-Doo, Where Are You? to develop his craft, contributing to the show's gothic, creepy backgrounds—some of the most evocative and memorable in cartoon history. "Scooby-Doo gave me an opportunity to stretch," Semones explains. "There were some scenes where Paul would set the style, and it was really like a master's degree in fine arts." As for what makes Scooby-Doo still appealing after fifty years, Semones says, "The characters are funny, the writers use topical humor, and everyone likes a good whodunit." Facing Your Fears For background painter Tristin Cole, "What I love most about working on Scooby-Doo is that it's almost genetic for me. I watched my father [Corny Cole], who was a background painter for Hanna-Barbera, paint backgrounds for Scooby when I was growing up. He introduced me to Iwao Takamoto when I was eight years old, and imparted in me the great sense of respect he had for Iwao." Cole has worked on nearly 20 Scooby- Doo Direct-to-TV movies and more than 100 TV episodes. She's currently this page: A poster for a 2008 Direct-to-TV film designed by Eric Semones intended to capture the brush texture of the original backgrounds. F E AT U R E