If you happen to watch a new Cartoon Network series this week with some wild visual elements that look like graphics from an Atari 5200 video game, thank/blame Squirrel Hill native Ben Jones.
He's the creative force behind "Problem Solverz" (8:45 p.m. Monday, Cartoon Network), a 13-episode, quarter-hour series that follows three friends who investigate problems and offer solutions. Horace is human, Roba is a robot and Alfe looks like the cousin of "South Park's" Mr. Hanky but is, according to Mr. Jones, part-dog, part-anteater, part-human.
When: 8:45 p.m. Monday, Cartoon Network.
Mr. Jones, an artist who works in painting, drawing, sculpture and video, also gives voice to Alfe and Roba. He's previously created animation for "Yo Gabba Gabba" and "Wonder Showzen."
He moved from Pittsburgh at age 4 and grew up mostly in central Massachusetts but he still has family in Pittsburgh and gets back occasionally, though not as much as he'd like.
"I have a whole bunch of aunts and uncles there," he said. "I went back for a wedding last year and missed a couple of weddings since then. So let's take this time to apologize for all the weddings of my cousins I've missed."
Mr. Jones, 34, said his father, Frank, worked on the crew of "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood" doing lighting, and family members still run Barone & Sons, a local real estate appraisal company.
After the family moved out of Pittsburgh, Mr. Jones' father got into computers as a software engineer, always bringing home the latest hardware. The family had computers in the house, and Mr. Jones said that influenced how he makes art today.
"We had the first Macintosh at the house and I'm using a Macintosh now to make a TV show," Mr. Jones said. "A lot of the work I do and my generation does uses that visual language of video games -- bright colors, neons -- that was the language we grew up with in the '80s. Like Monet grew up with haystacks and glorifies those and celebrates those landscapes, my generation grew up with video games or neon BMX bikes or crazy hip-hop clothes, and now we're seeing with all these shows this new visual language that reverse engineers it. I think that's just a natural extension of the modern visual language."
First Published: April 3, 2011, 8:00 a.m.