Left-Brained, Right-Brained

California Cartoonist founder and Principal Artist Dave Stephens and managing partner Danielle Cervantes Stephens work as a team to provide engaging and sophisticated illustration to clients across the United States and abroad.

Dave and Danielle are fun, provocative, visionary and talented but also intuitive, timely, responsive, and focused on deliverables. (In other words, they work to light up both sides of your brain!)

With thirty years of design and communication experience between them, Dave and Danielle have combined their individual skills to offer you the best practices in art, entertainment and business.

"Team D" understands that managing schedules, details, deadlines and production with artists can be tricky. To ensure the commissioning of studio art is as easy and enjoyable as possible, Danielle works closely with clients to advocate their needs to Dave.

Concentrating on their clients' needs, concept, budget and deadline and striving for your over-the-moon satisfaction is Dave and Danielle's first priority and why clients return to work with them year after year.

Who We Are

Dave has been a professional artist for nearly 25 years. He has been a professional member of San Diego Comic Con since 1991 and a long-standing member of the International Society of Caricature Artists (ISCA).

He is also a proud member of the National Cartoonists Society - you may visit Dave's official page here.

In the 1980s, Dave was a colorist for Turner Classic Movies, then an animator in the early 1990s for Marvel Productions' animated Saturday-morning cartoon Attack of the Killer Tomatoes. Not long after, Dave branched out on his own to do commercial art and founded California Cartoonist.

In his San Diego studio, Dave specializes in character development, cartoon maps, caricature commissions and commercial art and animation for web, books, magazines, mobile apps, branding and advertising.

Danielle is a communications expert and former national award-winning news reporter. Her background allows her to offer effective project management, marketing and branding.

Danielle is also a talented graphic designer and art director, focusing on typography and color theory. Danielle has crafted California Cartoonist's business identity, including its website and social media assets, and she designs save-the-dates, invitations, logos, identity packages, ads, and stationery for families and businesses.

The couple has been married since 2007. They have one cat, three dogs and enjoy traveling, museums, reading, exploring both the outdoors and urban life together. Dave is a wild edibles, geology and archaeology enthusiast, while Danielle likes to tinker in her garden and experiment with new recipes in the kitchen.

Past Clients

California Cartoonist has worked for some of California's largest media groups, including Disney, NBC, Universal Pictures, Sony and The San Diego Union-Tribune. Their other corporate clients include GE, Genentech, Hilton Hotels, Trader Joes, San Diego Padres, Southwest Airlines, Sketchers, Map Doodles, Symantec and Stanford, UCSD, USD, SDSU and Point Loma Nazarene University.