Gary Baseman (born 1960) is an artist, particularly known as an illustrator and cartoonist, who lives and works in Los Angeles, California. Baseman received a degree, Phi Beta Kappa, from UCLA in 1982. He has since worked as a fine artist, commercial artist, editorial artist, and as a television and film art director and producer of animation.

His work is distinguished by big-eyed characters in slapstick
situations and vivid use of colour. He has cited influences as varied
as Warner Brothers cartoons, vintage American comic strips, Hieronymus Bosch, Day of the Dead artifacts, and Japanese pop art. Baseman’s work is part of the permanent collections of the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C. and the Museum of Modern Art in Rome. As an illustrator, his corporate clients include Gatorade, Mercedes-Benz, and Nike. He also created the art for the popular board game Cranium, as well as the cover and packaging art for the 2007 album The Crumbling Empire Of White People by Mr. Smolin.

Baseman is a creator and an executive producer of the animated television series for ABC/Disney called Teacher’s Pet, which won the Emmy award for Best Daytime Animated series three times (two years consecutively), as well as a BAFTA for best International Children’s Programming. Teacher’s Pet was adapted to a feature film released by Buena Vista/Walt Disney Pictures in 2004.

A prolific artist, his work has appeared on the pages of Esquire, Forbes, GQ, The New Yorker, Time, Reader’s Digest and Rolling Stone magazines, as well as in The New York Times. Chronicle Books published a monograph of his work titled Dumb Luck: The Art of Gary Baseman, in 2004. Baseman is further renown as a creator of designer toys, most notably characters based on his fine art including Dunces, Hot Cha Cha Cha, Dumb Luck and Toby, all produced by American manufacturer Critterbox. Baseman has also contributed designs for collectible toys including Dunny, Qee, and Trexi.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Baseman