Rhode Montijo received his BFA in Illustration from California College of Arts and Crafts in 1996. Thanks to a grant from the Xeric Foundation, Rhode Montijo was able to release his comic 'Pablo's Inferno' to a wider audience. While his love lies in working on his self-published comic, recently Rhode Montijo has been paying the rent, working on Character Design and Storyboards for various multi-media projects.He has also worked for many Mondo Media shows like Thugs on Film and The God & Devil Show. It was while working on Mondo when he meet Kenn Navarro and Aubrey Ankrum and created the popular dark humored flash cartoon series, Happy Tree Friends (1999) .In the Rhode worked as writer, director and art director and also did the voices of Lumpy and Splendid. After five years working on the show, he officially left Happy Tree Friends in 2004 to focus more on his comic-book work.