He is best known as the creator of Nickelodeon's Rocko's Modern Life, Cartoon Network's Camp Lazlo, and PBS Kids' Let's Go Luna!.

Born and raised in San Jose, California,[1][2][3] Joe Murray said that he developed an interest in working as an artist as a career when he was three years old, but his father didn't approve.

"[4][5] At age 16, he became a full-time artist, drawing caricatures of people and animals at an amusement park in his spare time.

[1] Taking the position of political cartoonist for a newspaper in San Jose, Murray's cartoons often targeted then-President Jimmy Carter.

[6] Murray has cited Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Walt Kelly, Mark O'Hare, Max Fleischer, Jay Ward, Tex Avery, Bob Clampett, and Chuck Jones as his main influences.

[8] [9] In the early 1990s, he did the storyboards and layouts on A Pup Named Scooby-Doo, Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog, Bobby's World, and The Twisted Tales of Felix the Cat, while working as a freelancer at Drew Takahashi's now-defunct Colossal Pictures studio.

[4] Murray created, and was the executive producer, for the animated series Rocko's Modern Life, which aired on Nickelodeon from 1993 to 1996.

He voiced the character Ralph Bighead in the episodes "I Have No Son" and "Wacky Delly", and a caricature version of himself in "Short Story".

[4] In 1992, two months prior to the production of season 1 of Rocko's Modern Life, Murray's first wife,[10] Diane, committed suicide.

Murray initially believed that he would create one season, move back to the San Francisco Bay Area and "clean up the loose ends I had left hanging".

Murray described all 52 episodes as "top notch" and that, in his view, the quality of a television show may decline as production continues "when you are dealing with volume".

[4] After completing 52 episodes of Rocko's Modern Life, Murray took a break from the animation business and produced two children's books and illustrated two others:[13] Who Asked the Moon to Dinner?

[19] On April 20, 2010, Murray launched a donation drive on Kickstarter to fund the project, KaboingTV, a web network entirely dedicated to cartoons.

[27] By June 5, the project surpassed its goal of $16,800 and Murray developed episodes of his Frog in a Suit series for the platform.