B. K. Taylor


B. K. Taylor is an American illustrator, cartoonist, writer, production designer, costume designer, puppeteer, and musician known for his work on the Odd Rods collector stickers of the late 1960s, his covers for Sick magazine, his comics in National Lampoon, and for his work as a staff writer on ABC’S popular sitcom, Home Improvement. He lives in Metro Detroit and continues to work as an illustrator and writer, performing occasionally in a local rock band.

Education

B. K. Taylor studied art at Detroit's premier art school, the Art School of the Detroit Society of Arts and Crafts, under advertising department Chair and instructor Harry Borgman.

Career

Taylor began his varied career while still in art school in Detroit, illustrating covers for Sick magazine. Since then, he has been using his creative ideas to create book, magazine, and trading card illustrations, muppet designs for Jim Henson and others, and has worked on writing teams for television and feature releases including Home Improvement with Tim Allen, and Disney's Mulan.

''Sick'' and ''Mad'' magazines

At least as early as 1966, Taylor was doing cover illustrations for Sick, while still studying at the Art School of the Detroit Society of Arts and Crafts.
He illustrated a piece in Mad issue #357, titled "The Mad World of Religion," written by Rick Rodgers.

Odd Rods and other stickers

In 1969, Taylor created 44 stickers for the Donruss Company's group of non-sports trading card/sticker series, Odd Rods. The series was very popular with schoolchildren of the time, resulting in a string of sequel series.
In 1988, Taylor created more collectable stickers for Leaf/Donruss, "Awesome All*Stars," a spoof of baseball cards featuring humorously grotesque monsters. There were 99 cards in the series.
In 1989, for Leaf/Donruss, Taylor created Baseball's Greatest Gross Outs, featuring more cartoon parodies of baseball players with names like "Long-arm Lenny" and "Garlic-breath Gary." The set featured 88 stickers as well as a repeat of some of those stickers with a 36-cardback poster.
In 1983 he did another set of collector sticker cards called Zero Heroes, featuring tragically flawed superheroes with names like "The Fantastic Fast Guy," "Lard Lady," and "Milk Man." Each card had a short bio of its character on the back, featuring the character's origin and final outcome. Zero Heroes was a joint venture between General Mills and Donruss. There were 66 cards in the set, including a few non-character designs with various Zero Hero logos, a medal, a name tag, and a do-not-enter sign.

Muppet Creative Consultant

In 1974 he became a puppeteer on Detroit-produced the Hot Fudge Show, a children's entertainment show starring Arte Johnson. At the same time, he worked for Jim Henson as a puppeteer and puppet designer. He is listed in the credits of the 1975 production, The Muppet Show: Sex and Violence, as Muppet Creative Consultant. He's done character design for Sesame Street and The Muppet Show. He was a writer and designer for Nickelodeon's Eureeka's Castle and "Time for Manners," for which he also created backgrounds.

National Lampoon

From 1975 to 1987, Taylor created a run of comic pages for the "Funny Pages" section of National Lampoon, including "Timberland Tales," "The Appletons," and "Stories from Uncle Kunta" His work first appeared in the 1975 special edition "National Lampoon's Very Large Book of Comical Funnies" with the comic strip "The Appletons," a family feature which supposedly ran in the 1950s. In October 1976, Taylor's "Timberland Tales" first appeared in the "Funny Pages" section of the National Lampoon. Over the next ten years, both strips ran in that section regularly, alternating from issue to issue.

Children's magazines

Taylor also contributed illustrations to children's magazines, including Highlights for Children and Scholastic's Hot dog! and Dynamite. In Hot dog! his illustrations were featured in a regular piece called "It’s Not Fair!," a page of reader-submitted jokes based on the theme of unfairness, the best of which would be selected to appear in the next month's issue with an accompanying illustration by B.K.

Book illustration

Taylor's work has appeared in Scholastic Books, including 101 Silly Monster Jokes and 101 Nutty Nature Jokes as well as books for Sesame Street, such as Sesame Street 1, 2, 3 Storybook: Stories About the Numbers from 1 to 10. He has worked on several other humorous titles, including Would Somebody Please Send Me to My Room! A Hilarious Look at Family Life and ''I Run, Therefore I Am—Nuts!''

Home Improvement

From 1991 to 1995, Taylor co-wrote five episodes of the popular Home Improvement:
  • "Baby, It's Cold Outside"
  • "Read My Hips"
  • "I'm Scheming of a White Christmas"
  • "'Twas the Blight Before Christmas"
  • "Swing Time"

Disney

Taylor has also worked as a creative consultant for Walt Disney Feature Animation on Mulan, and other projects.

Movie design work

He was a production designer, costume designer, and voice actor for the 1989 movie, Moontrap. with Walter Koenig and Bruce Campbell.

Editorial cartooning

In 2009, Taylor illustrated a series of cartoons for a one-of-a-kind print media campaign focusing on the credit card interchange issue. The campaign was art directed by Jay Ragsdale with creative design from penczner media, for Unfaircreditcardfees.com. The campaign received national attention, and won the 2010 Reed Award for Best Public Advocacy Campaign.

Sticker sets

  • Odd Rods
  • Odder Odd Rods
  • Oddest Odd Rods
  • Odd Rod All Stars
  • Fabulous Odd Rods
  • Fantastic Odd Rods series 1
  • Fantastic Odd Rods series 2
  • Awesome All*Stars
  • Baseball's Great Gross Outs

Comic strips

In National Lampoons "Funny Pages" section, Taylor alternated between two and sometimes three strips of his creation:
  • "The Appletons: A Saga of an American Family" - featured Helen, the earnest and clueless mom; Kathy and Bobby, the mischievous and somewhat less clueless kids; and Norm, the mischievous and subversive dad.
  • "Timberland Tales" - featured Doctor Rogers, an earnest Mark Trail-type; his girlfriend Kathleen; Maurice the Indian Boy, an unbelievably naive and bulbous teenager; and Constable Tom, a dimwitted, musclebound Canadian Mountie. The latter two characters were featured much more frequently.
  • "Stories of Uncle Kunta" - a less frequently run comic featuring a narrative format with impossible tall tales told to two white children by Uncle Kunta, a satiric cross between Walt Disney's Uncle Remus and Kunta Kinte from Roots, the blockbuster TV mini-series of the time.
In 2020, he released I Think He's Crazy-The Comics of B. K. Taylor, a compilation book of these and other comics.
In 2009, he illustrated an editorial strip for a public advocacy campaign commissioned by Unfair Credit Card Fees:
  • "Interchange Able"

Awards

Taylor's work has been recognized with several awards: