He has been described by the New York Times as an "instrumental figure in the Los Angeles hip-hop scene"[5] and by the BBC as "one of the greatest living tattoo artists in the US".
[6] Growing up in the Harbor area of Los Angeles County, young Cartoon began doing illustrations and graffiti then going on to airbrushing clothing and lowrider custom cars.
Machado then moved on to working in the music industry doing album covers, tour merchandise and later tattooing recording artists and other celebrities.
His other work includes hand painted signs, screen printing, wall murals, clothing, and toy sculptures of cartoon cats.
[4] Cartoon has tattooed the bodies of Kobe Bryant, Dr. Dre, 50 Cent, Eminem, Christina Aguilera, Travis Barker, Pink, Justin Timberlake, Beyoncé Knowles, Danny Trejo, Melanie Griffith, Shaquille O'Neal, Lewis Hamilton[7][8] and Snoop Dogg.
[2] As a kid Machado would go into the streets with friends and write on the side of school walls and handball courts[17] emulating the quality of art he saw at his parents' shop.
[18] His first paying job was at age 12 doing illustrations for a client of the print shop his parents owned, which lead to his father regularly giving having him work on logos and menu designs for local restaurants.
[14] An early inspiration were the graffiti artists LEE and Fab Five Freddy from New York City, after first seeing their work in the music video for Rapture by Blondie.
[14] Machado's father also enrolled him in Karate school where the family business had been printing the diplomas with hand-stippled pen and ink illustrations of tigers and dragons as well as making the gym's obi belts.
[16] One of his first breakthroughs came as a fluke when a photojournalist from Car and Driver came to his high school asking if anyone could do a graffiti set for the backdrop of their magazine cover to which he took the offer.
[22] Growing up in the 1980s and 1990s Machado saw the worlds of hip hop, tattoo culture, and street art in Los Angeles all fuse together.
[1][23] In 1988 his sister gave him work making graffiti for movie sets[17] and his mother would type up the invoices on a typewriter to help him get paid.
[15] Machado first big break into the music industry came after approaching Eazy-E at a car wash. Eazy-E then requested Machado to do some work for artists on his label Ruthless Records which included tour merchandise and three album covers; Paid the Cost, Kizz My Black Azz, and Black Mafia Life.
[27][28] Cartoon was doing murals on lowriders in Japan and Oriol would take the pictures for a local magazine called Fine, which would pay them $400–800 every month for shots of the cars.
The two also co-founded Soul Assassin studios in the early 1990s at a warehouse complex along the border of Skid Row and Little Tokyo which was the creative hub for where they worked with major brands.
[33] Machado designed posters for the 2008 film Righteous Kill and in 2009 he was commissioned by Universal Studios to do billboards for the Fast & Furious movie.
[34] In 2012 Mister Cartoon partnered with Snoop Dogg to start an automotive car care product line called Sanctiond.
[27][28] Mister Cartoon worked on a trading card project for the Topps company which was released in December 2020, depicting past and present players such as Mike Trout.
[40] In 2024 Cartoon worked with the city of Los Angeles tourism department as part of their largest ever global advertising campaign,[51] as well as designing a collection for Supreme in August 2024.