Kyle Adam Carrozza is the creator of Mighty Magiswords and the voice of Prohyas Warrior as well as the voice of numerous recurring characters such as Grup the Dragon, Old Man Oldman, Nohyas and most of the talking Magiswords (his most famous Magisword role being Zombie Pumpkin Magisword) among many others. Prior to Magiswords, he also created MooBeard the Cow Pirate which premiered in Nickelodeon's Random! Cartoons in 2008.
Carrozza was arrested in June 2024 on two counts of child pornography possession.
Early life
Kyle Carrozza was born on May 19, 1979 in Catskill, New York. As a little kid, Kyle was influenced by many cartoon shows on television, mostly Bob Clampett's Looney Tunes. Most of the cartoons he watched were inspirations for his own drawing style. Shows such as Beany and Cecil and Garfield helped influence his drawings. He also got into anime in 1996 while he was at high school and particularly enjoyed watching Ranma 1/2 and Project A-ko. Several of his animation influences were from Bob Clampett, Bruce Timm, Doug TenNapel, Jhonen Vasquez, Tex Avery, Ralph Bakshi and numerous others.[1]
During his summer times when he was a teenager, he attended several drawing classes titled "Center for Character Animation" where he studied under famous cartoonist Brian Mitchell. Mitchell taught him most of the things he never got at school. He graduated from Catskill High School in 1997 and in the Art Institute of Philadelphia in 1999.[2]
Animation works
He first did some storyboard work for some independent animation studios for pitches that never got greenlit. He later worked on Jon McClenahan's Startoons studio when he was a senior in high school doing cleanups and inbetweens in Animaniacs for two days. Then, he later got a job at Funnybone Interactive in Canton, CT where he was an animator, voice actor and character designer for selective JumpStart titles. After that failed through, his short MooBeard was greenlit by Frederator Studios and it premiered in Random! Cartoons in 2008.
He also did several storyboards work for Fanboy and Chum Chum!, another Random! short that got greenlit as well as storyboards for Fish Hooks and both storyboards and Flash animation for Doc McStuffins as well as character layout for The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie: Sponge Out of Water before going to Cartoon Network.
Mighty Magiswords
Kyle's new animated series Mighty Magiswords finally premiered on Cartoon Network Video and Cartoon Network Anything on May 6, 2015. This series is billed as the first online digital series. Kyle also provides the leading voice of Prohyas in the show and does the voice of the announcer who says all the magiswords names in the show, as well as numerous other voices. This show also stars Grey DeLisle as Vambre and Eric Bauza as Phil and Hoppus. His shorts are storyboarded by his recently married wife, Lindsey Smith and famous comedy musician Luke Ski, who is a co-host on the podcast "Kyle and Luke Talk About Toons".
He created the characters in high school in 1996 and pitched it between 2005–2007 under two different titles; "Legendary Warriors for Hire" and "Dungeons and Dayjobs" until Cartoon Network picked it up.
Other works
While working at Funnybone, he started his comic book series Clare's Stupid Life for Antarctic Press. It has since gone on to become a 6-part series for Radio Comix's long-running comic anthology Furrlough. Clare was recently voted the ninth most popular comic feature in FURRLOUGH'S 140+ issue history.[3] He also did some work on the comic series Ninja High School for the same company. He also did a comic titled Frog Raccoon Strawberry on Dumm Comics from 2008 up to 2014 because he and his animator friend, John Berry, were too busy on production with Magiswords. Kyle also did graphic drawings and designs for Kee Kee Koki; a Spanish comic created by Looney Tunes artist and cartoon director Dave Alvarez. He even created some characters for the comic series and original designs. He also worked on the ABCmouse.com website for a year. He was also a freelance artist at one time, offering his services to many deviants (patrons of the website DeviantArt) and doing graphic designs.
Most of Kyle's non-cartoon work is music, as Kyle is a profound musician. He is very skilled at playing accordion and keyboard. As a youth, he recorded his songs with a karaoke machine and later upgraded to using a computer when he was 21. He currently writes songs monthly for The FuMP and occasionally plays live shows.
Trivia
- Kyle's inspiration for his music came from Rockapella (he gained interest from watching them in "Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?" in PBS in 1991), Conehead Buddha (who played a concert at his high school years back and he performed live with them when his song "Bob from Accounting" got into airwaves), The Aquabats, Dr. Demento, Weird Al Yankovic (who is guest starring in Magiswords as well) and They Might Be Giants.
- He met almost everyone of his idols. He met the Aquabats upfront at a concert and had a deviantArt ID taken with Christian "MC Bat Commander" Jacobs, and not only was a supporter of They Might Be Giants but was a frequent editor of the TMBG Wiki until 2010 due to his schedule, and also drew and designed the characters in the CD label for the tribute album "We Might Be Giants, Too!". He met Weird Al numerous times: such as in an Q&A section at Weird Al's website back when he was in college at the AiPH asking him about his experience with Billy West (who Kyle later worked with voicing MooBeard in his cartoon short), at a signing of a Weird Al tribute album he helped contribute entitled "Twenty Six and a Half" and frequently at Cartoon Network Studios when Al records for the character Papa Kotassian in the series.
- Kyle wrote fan letters to Jon McClenahan of Startoons and was invited to the studio for 2 days but denied a job offer as he already accepted a full-tuition to the Art Institute of Philadelphia. Jon stated that his work for the studio was probably re-done.
- Kyle was booked for Funnybone when the AiPH sent his portfolio to the studio. While working with JumpStart titles, he co-developed some pitches that never got released such as Freakmore Academy (where Kyle was going to voice the character Norm L. Kid) and did voices for characters such as Brady Bear. He was laid off two years later when Knowledge Adventure decided to go completely 3D.
- His first music break was when Dr. Demento played his song Bob from Accounting on air after he sent him a cassette tape featuring his songs. Dr. Demento was also the reason for bringing Weird Al into the picture and Luke Ski (who is friends with Kyle).
- While being compared to the style a lot, Kyle gets frustrated when his work is compared to John Kricfalusi as he believes that his styles have more influence than one. This leads to suspicion as for fans to think that Kyle hates John as John criticized his art work in his blog in 2007 (Kyle e-mailed John when he was younger as well), and as a retaliation, made a Frog Raccoon Strawberry comic that pokes fun at John and his work. Even though at one point, Kyle became aware of the blog (which may hint the reason why he has a grudge against him), he bashes out at others for referencing Kricfalusi and his works. Although he is more laxed at this point, he still wishes to not bring up conversation about his experience with Kricfalusi but was more open to talk about his current and past works such as "Cans without Labels" and his recent sexual allegations. Kricfalusi himself has no recall of Kyle whatsoever though.
- Kyle is a huge Super Mario fan since 1988 and drew comics of Mario as a kid.
- The Tree J may be based on the fact that Kyle wanted to be a radio dj growing up.
- Kyle's favorite show is The Shnookums and Meat Funny Cartoon Show and worked with both creator Bill Kopp, whom voices on Magiswords, but series director Jeff DGrandis whom directed his short, MooBeard. Shnookums and Meat was also one of the influences for Mighty Magiswords.
- At age 8, he was a winner at the "Young Playwright's Project" at a local Albany museum. His concert, Cartoon City, featured several characters that he would later use for his pitches such as Superkat (his first creation since he was 3 years old, later used for Caffeine & Johnny) and Haarco and Fuzzball (supposed antagonists for a concept "Hatz & Pug"). He even got a chance to meet artist Mark Kistler at the time.
- He attended cartoon classes with animator Brian Mitchell and got the opportunity to work on some projects for a defunct studio he was involved in called Fantastica Animation where he animated a lost pilot called Da Heist and storyboarded the opening sequence to an unlicensed kiddie show called Cappy the Kangaroo.
- Nohyas appears to be based on Negaduck from Darkwing Duck, as Kyle is a fan of the show.
- Kyle did all the storyboards, character designs, many of the voices and some of the music score, yet he didn't animate it at all once despite being a professional traditional animator, even though the show was initially animated in-house before the series greenlit.
- Although Kyle did several track demos for the score, most of the accordion playing on the show was done by professional accordionist Mike Bolgner.
- As of 2019, Kyle returns to the Animaniacs crew after 15 years doing freelance storyboards for the Hulu revival of 2020. Several Magiswords illumni such as Zoe Moss are also involved in the project as well.
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