Illustration Throwback Thursday: Achmed Jr!

Back in 2011 I helped superstar ventriloquist Jeff Dunham design a new dummy for his show. The character was the son of his popular “Achmed the Dead Terrorist” character, named “A.J.” aka “Achmed Jr., the Almost Dead Terrorist”. The idea was that he was supposed to be a typical smart ass teenager who wasn’t quite dead and isn’t really interested in being a terrorist, which exasperates his father. Here’s some of the other art from the process:

I’ve actually done a number of concept designs for Jeff, but only a few have actually become parts of his act. He has a lot of ideas for characters but like a lot of comedy writing/concepts some stuff never gets anywhere, and some stuff is changed so much as to be unrecognizable from the original concepts. Jeff sculpts and builds his own dummies, so he really only uses my designs as a springboard for what become very much his own creations.