Following Cerebus:

Back in 2007 I was asked by Dave Sim to do an interview for his magazine Following Cerebus. In the process of the interview by correspondence Dave also asked if I'd like to do a Cerebus/Mouse Guard jam cover. Well after several years, the issue has been released (available here) and I can share the process of the cover art (which I now cringe at in terms of inking & coloring crudeness)

Dave sent over the inks for his piece. The idea he had was to have Cerebus waking up to find guardmice climbing on him. I told Dave to ink his piece in fully, that instead of jaming on the layout, just to finish his own drawing and inks, so the styles would only look different between the characters, not from the top to bottom of the image.

I drew & inked my mice on a sheet of bristol on the lighbox with a printout of Dave's inks behind it. That way I was able to match up the contact points where Saxon's sword is touching Cerebus' nose, the mouse feet touch Cerebus' belly etc. It also allowed me to get the shadows to fall in the right spots on the fence and Cerebus himself.

I merged the inked pieces together in photoshop and edited out the inkwork where the two pieces overlapped. Then I colored the piece. The colors look a bit over-saturated and over textured to my eye now, but I do remember at the time wanting to do less texture on Cerebus than the mice to push the idea of two different artistic styles coming together.

As a side note, as one of my donations to the silent auction at Detroit Fanfare this fall, I will be donating the original inks to my part of the jam cover as well as a signed copy of the issue it appears on.

Fan Art:

Fellow Michigander and all around cool artist Jeremy Treece did this Mouse Guard piece as part of his u-stream commission drive. The artwork is on chipboard (think the backs of notepads, sketchbooks, and kids puzzleboxes) and because of the toned surface he was able to use white and black to great effect. Thanks Jeremy

Upcoming Appearances:
New York Comic Con: Oct. 13-16