Raspberry Mouse Print process:

Earlier in the month I found that I was headed into C2E2 and the rest of my conventions with only a few copies of a limited edition print on-hand. So, I started work on a new print that I debut at C2E2, but have in my online store and will take to the rest of my conventions until they run out (edition of 300). I Ustreamed the process as I worked, but thought I'd post the process here on my blog as well, which will include new info not covered in the ustream because I continued to work on the piece long after the stream ended.

Julia liked how my last limited edition print was something the female Mouse Guard fans would find "pretty" while also not being too feminine for the male fans. So I set out with the same goal in mind. I swapped out the flowering branches with raspberry vines and the feathers for an actual bird. I did a rough sketch in my sketchbook and then scanned it. The image to the right is a photoshop corrected version where I had already made some adjustments in the distance between the mouse & the bird's head. Julia also likes the Dark Eyed Junco birds that hop around our back yard, so I used that bird as this mouse's mount.

With the above photoshopped sketch printed out to actual size (11" x 11" so it will fit onto a 12" x 12" sheet of bristol with a nice 0.5" border all around), I taped the printout to the back of a sheet of strathmore 300 series bristol. On a lightbox, I was able to see the printout to use as a guide as I inked. There wasn't a lot of black areas in this piece, I knew I would rely on color to help move the eye throughout my rather even-weighted lines. The background is also rather sparse, but I wasn't yet aware how that was a problem...I thought the lighter background would allow for a nice amount of breathing room.

As I colored the scanned inks, I started realizing that the composition wasn't working. There wasn't enough in the background to weight the figures to anything spatially. It was too  two dimensional and designey. I was struggling with the color choices too. My original plan was a dark grey mouse with a blue dress, and with a traditionally toned junco. But the grey and blue and more grey and, blue-grey that plan involved was too cool, and led me to this rendering to the right. As I signed off on my Ustream I said that I wanted to add more to the background, and I was sure that would also push the colors in a different direction.

Back on the original inked piece, I sketched out new raspberries and leaves and vines. I wanted them to overlap and have a bigger sense of depth. It took a few ties in sketching to get a composition that felt like what I was going for without being too heavy handed and cluttered. Even with that concern, the inks look busier than how I knew the final piece would look with all the color and adjusted palate. After a new scan of these inks, I patched in just the new lines (so I didn't need to be as fussy about trying to line up the new scan with the original inks).

The final image palette came together with a lot of help from Julia. She really didn't like the unconventional coloring on the Junco in my first pass...even though I could show her online reference for similar coloration in juncos, she thought the markings our backyard variety had were superior. After adjusting those colors and the background to something more pale and sky-like, the rest of the adjustments cascaded into easier and easier choices.

As I said at the start of the post, the new print (edition of 300) is now available in the online store

Free Comic Book Day Plans:
This Saturday I'll be making two local (MI) appearances. From 10-12:30 I'll be at Detroit Comics in Ferndale. From 1pm on I'll be at Green Brain Comics in Dearborn. Both stores will have the Mouse Guard/Rust Free Comic Book Day from Archaia and I'll be signing them (plus brining a few of my convention prints and original art). The artwork from this year's 8 page story will be available in the online store sometime that day.

And check back on the blog on Saturday night for a video of me reading the FCBD story.

Watercolor Wednesday:

Last week's set of 4 watercolors (which I insisted on breaking up and sending off across the world in different directions) was the result of a visual idea from my past. In 2007-8 I collaborated with glass artist Gary Bolt to make a glass casting of this group of skeleton characters: The King, Knight, Fool, & Villain. The group seemed like they would be fun subjects to watercolor and re-explore.

Tomorrow I'll post more paintings in my online store.

2013 Appearances: 
Spectrum Live: May 17-19
Heroes Con: June 7-9
Albuquerque Comic Expo June 21-23
San Diego Comic Con: July 17-21
*more 2013 dates coming*

Other People's Characters Part II:

*DIRECT LINK FOR PART I OF THIS POST*

Last week I addressed finding a creative voice when working with other people’s character's specifically licensed characters. This week, I want to touch on what I said was a different category of work, doing pieces for sole creators and or friends. This will again give insight to my thoughts for long-time readers, and offer up a look at perhaps unseen artwork by new blog readers.While some of the message from last week's blogpost rings true here also, there are a few key differences. Left: My piece for Katie Cook's Gronk where I focused on rendering Harli & Kitty being portrayed as real animals while keeping as true to Katie's design of Gronk & Kitteh as possible.

The first being that I'm generally being asked to contribute to do something for a creator I have a personal relationship with. This means the request is coming from a place of mutual artistic respect. I admire their work, they enjoy mine. So the expectation on their end is that I will do something in my own style, in a way that looks like what they have already seen and enjoy about my work. It also means that I will do something that honors their property is a way that is nothing but respectful.
Right: My piece for Jeremy Bastian's Cursed Pirate Girl didn't come together for me until I talked to him about getting the right balance of distorted anatomy and my flavor of illustration. Knowing Jeremy so well helped give me the freedom to do this piece that way.

Unlike the pieces from last week where the characters have been owned by multiple companies and have been portrayed in multiple mediums by several different creative teams, these characters and properties are owned by individuals, and they only have one incarnation. There aren't eras to sort through to amalgamate into one version...there is only their work as the reference and your interpretation.
Left: Subtle changes or wardrobe changes can occur between series, so there may need to be some creative choice making over what versions of the characters to show. For Sean Wang's Runners, I knew the piece was to coincide with the 2nd arc taking place on a wintry planet...but I had to balance his character designs with the way I render the textures and materials in question: rocks, snow, alien skin, wrinkles  fur cloaks, quilted parkas etc.

Like I said in last week's post what I decide to focus on for the piece or what I omit is a way of keeping a creative voice while doing this type of work. I try to work with the creator to pick a character or subject from their series that works well with my skill set and perhaps avoid the parts of their book I may not naturally pay homage to as well. I then focus on the parts of that character I think my sensibilities could render well using my style of framing, texture, and line. Right: With Shane Michael-Vidaurri's IRON book, he'd assigned me the tiger character, so that was locked in for me, but then I thought about what it is that makes Shane's work special and original. Shane's peppers his book with inset panels featuring subtle moments like landscapes or branches, or leaves. And I borrowed his palate as well

Figuring out what the tone of a piece should be is also a way to keep a creative voice. Should it be humorous, action packed, subtle, introspective? Many creators run the gambit of emotional range in their books. And choosing just one mood can be tough when trying to sum up the feel of that book. Left: With the piece I did for Stan Sakai and his book Usagi Yojimbo, I wanted to show Usagi as a well rounded character. Using the seasonal framework allowed me to do four smaller pieces that together become my version of him. In sprint he's lighthearted and doing something as enjoyable as flying a kite. In summer, he's busy training hard. For fall, I featured the beauty of performing a mundane task, and in Winter he's solemnly standing guard in the cold conditions. I tried to bring to the table a printmaker's voice and also use historical Japanese iconography in each season: the cherry blossoms, the koi fish, the cooking pot, the bridge and hat, as well as the kanji for each season.

Every pinup and cover should feel like it's telling some story in one image, but there is a bigger creative weight on storytelling with interior pages. To honor the sense of storytelling and subject when writing guest material can be as much of a balancing act as just doing art, if not moreso. Right: In my guest strip for Kark Kerchl's Abominable Charles Christopher, I had to think of something that fit into his northern wilds that would be amusing...and I also wanted to include his main character (who rarely interacts with the other animal characters. Karl does a great job of giving a sense of society and perspective to his ACC characters, there is a serious tone in the way the characters think about life. That was my jumping off point for this. How would snails see their progress in the world....then I abstracted it with the chess concept as a reveal for the joke.

The way the image will be used can also be a method of introducing creativity and a unique voice to an existing property. Left: For the folks over at Transylvania Televison, I did a design for their tee-shirt. They'd used a piece of mine before on a shirt, but It felt more like an illustration placed on a shirt as opposed to a tee-shirt design. This image needed to have a design element so the borders of the image made sense on a shirt...there is no background or horizon line to ground a standing character. Having LeShock dissolve into bats gave enough design strength and also reinforced the monster-movie tone of the show. Otherwise I took all the Muppet cover lessons and applied them here to a puppet character making the coffin and clothing as textured and real as I could and play up the shapes and colors of the puppet himself.


All of the above examples were pieces I was asked to do. But there have been times where, just for fun, and as a fan, I've decided to do artwork as an unsolicited gift. Right: This piece for Kory Bing's Skin Deep, was a way for me to have fun drawing all her cool character designs while trying to match the tone of her story and work. I deviated a bit more with the interpretations of the characters than I normally would, I just wanted to have fun and play with the characters. I still paid homage to Kory's work by staying very true to the costumes and the details of her characters. Kory had been playing with using stock patterns as backgrounds in her work at the time, so I used that as a way to fill up the space and give the piece some Skin Deep authenticity.

Watercolor Wednesday:
Last week's watercolors were all of mushrooms. After painting the first piece, and thinking it would be fun to do another, I wondered "what will be an easy way to tell them apart for the purposes of labeling for the store & blog?"  The answer I came up with was to paint a different quantity in each piece and name them accordingly. Another note, on the trio, I used rubber cement to mask out the dots on the mushroom cap, something I don't tend to do with these Watercolor Wednesday pieces.

Tomorrow I'll post more paintings in my online store.

2013 Appearances: 
C2E2: April 26-28
Spectrum Live: May 17-19
Heroes Con: June 7-9
Albuquerque Comic Expo June 21-23
San Diego Comic Con: July 17-21
*more 2013 dates coming*

Other People's Characters Part I

A Creative Voice with Licensed Characters:

Today’s blogpost topic comes from a fan who asked: “How do you find your POV/voice as an artist when using licensed properties?” This is an interesting question, partly because I didn't have an answer spring to mind when first asked. Another reason was that while I explored an answer, this post would give new readers a look at some of my licensed character cover work. These pieces were all done as work-for-hire and have been published as either covers, posters, trading cards, or as pin-ups in hardcover collections.

Working with a licensed property means serving a few masters. The publisher has licensed the rights from a rights holder...so in the case of Fraggle Rock, Archaia have the rights to do the comics granted to them by the Henson Company who own the characters. There is editorial at the publisher level, but also at the rights holder level...and sometimes there are some other folks along the way who get a say. So while you have been hired to do original work, hopefully because of the style of work you do in mind, you must stay within the realm of what the publisher and rights holders have in mind.

My first thought about keeping your own voice is that I'm mindful of the work I take on. Some of that boils down to what I'm offered...but I've also said no to a few cover gigs because I knew my style wasn't going to jive well with their established aesthetic and that it would be more work than I wanted to take on to adapt to that. The things I've done are all things I'm genuinely a fan of and fit well with my work. Henson properties, the Muppets, and TMNT are clearly in my wheelhouse...superheroes and sexy ladies aren't. So right there I've started on a path of keeping my creative voice with job selection. Having the excitement of getting to work on something you've long admired also gets your brain thinking about how to sum up that love in a single image that works for what everyone on the publishing end & owners want, but also keeps your inner fanboy excited.

Each project and property is a bit different, and not just because of the publishing team and approval process, but because of the subject matter & tone. I look at each one and think of what I like about that property and how I can embrace that, especially if the property has been around long enough to have several incarnations of it exist. For the Muppet covers, I really loved how real the characters felt even though you knew they were puppets. You could see the materials they were made of, they didn't blink or move their eyes, but they felt like real characters. I wanted to draw the Muppets as though I were drawing the puppets, with all the limitations the puppets had, but still make them believable as characters.

For something like the Turtles, which have been reinvented through movies, animation, games, multiple comic series, and by lots of talented people, I wanted to hone in on the grittiness of the original Eastman & Laird run. I was never a fan of many of the other versions of the Turtles, but I know that most of the TMNT fans were fans of some other version of them. So I did my best to get inspiration from my favorite incarnation, but while never being disrespectful of any of the others. Figuring out how you are going to take on something, what to emphasize and what not to is a big part of the battle and inherently is a method of bringing a voice to the property.

I then try to bring what it is I do with my work naturally to exemplify what I like about each property. I tend to focus on texture with my inks, so on the Muppets or Fraggles that meant trying to render the fleece and fur and feathers and foam that the characters were made of. In other properties the texture worked its way into the background. With Mouse Guard I try and make the locations and backgrounds as convincing as possible to help ground the premise of walking, talking, sword-wielding mice. The more detail and realism I add to the environments of the Turtles, the Muppets, the Dark Crystal characters, or The Storyteller the more set in their time and location they become, and ultimately the more real as a single-image story.

I've had good and bad luck with approvals and going through the steps of showing the stages of work to catch any problems. Some pieces slide through with no trouble at every stage, others get nitpicked along the way...and what gets called out and what doesn't can seem arbitrary at times. My worst approval process was with the Muppets & Boom. The Boom editors were always supportive of me, but Disney wouldn't look at my covers until they were pretty far along (ie: when it's painful to make a change because it's almost done now). Disney would also keep Boom on the line for script approval and then make changes late in the game. Changes like swapping out characters for roles...which affected finished covers multiple times. Overall the Muppet covers were fun and rewarding to do, I just learned how to deal with that approval process while still doing the best work I could within their system. The notes Pixar sent over for the Brave poster from Mondo were some of the best notes I've ever gotten. My initial reaction was "oh no, they want me to change things", but after doing a mock-up of what they wanted I could see instantly that it improved the piece so much, it would be artistically negligent to not make the alterations.

So to sum up, being selective of the properties to work on, honoring what it is you enjoy or feel those properties do well, and then bringing your skill set to the table to show off those characters as best as you can while still playing withn the rules of approvals the publishers and property owners set-up is my answer.
I didn't include examples of work I've done for Usagi Yojimbo, Cursed Pirate Girl, or the Abominable Charles Christopher in this post. That's because unlike the pieces I've shown today, they are owned by a single creator and therefore is a slightly different process of making it and making them happy. Next week I'll focus on those. *DIRECT LINK FOR PART II OF THIS POST*

To read more about some of these covers and the process behind them here's a list of links:
-Fraggle Rock cover
-TMNT Leonardo cover
-Jim Henson's The Storyteller pinup
-Brave poster for Mondo
-TMNT Splinter cover

Watercolor Wednesday: 
I got into a D&D beastie style mood when doing last week watercolors. First up is a half-orc. I imagine that he fancies himself an intellectual and perhaps a decent spell-caster. In my high-school roleplaying group we had a paladin that died. We then used several methods in the game to resurrect reincarnate him...but it was with mixed results....he came back as a goblin. A heated debate started about if he could still use his paladin abilities (as in those days only humans could be paladin. My main gripe was in the game...where my thief had to surrender my hat of disguise so our goblin-paladin could go into towns.

Second up is some kind of a goblin...I guess I spent my goblin story above while showing the half-orc painting. While painting this goblin I thought of something the Henson creature shop might have made if doing a D&D fantasy style movie. Not too grotesque...but still un-human.

The last of last week's paintings started as a rushed and quick sketch that became a rather muddy painting. It's a cockatrice...which is a mythical beast which comes into being when a chicken's egg is hatched by a snake. I feel I saved this painting with the action in the background.

Tomorrow I'll post more paintings in my online store.

2013 Appearances: 
C2E2: April 26-28
Spectrum Live: May 17-19
Heroes Con: June 7-9
Albuquerque Comic Expo June 21-23
San Diego Comic Con: July 17-21
*more 2013 dates coming*

Genres & Diversity of Audience in Comics 

-or- A Comic for Everyone:

I find myself delivering the same message at 80% of the panels I speak on at conventions. I figured it bears repeating here: Comics are a means of telling a story as valid as film, television, prose, poetry, and theater. Any type of story is fair game in comics and can be told with sequential imagery...any genre, any topic, which also means, any audience can be addressed. Comics are not simply superheroes. While the industry could benefit from having a more diverse offering of material, as it stands right now, there is a comic for any and every person willing to try comics. Male, female, very old, very young, any race, creed, or interest, there is a book on the market today for them.

Sequential stories can cover Comedy, Horror, Westerns, Sci-Fi, Adaptations, Talking Animals, Popular Characters, Autobiographical, Historic Fiction, Non-fiction, Fantasy, Romance...basically there is a comic to cover all the any genres or shelves in a bookstore or video store (though that reference is going to go the way of the dodo in a matter of years). I cobbled together this post from slides I've used at a few library/school/educator talks I've done. I limited myself to only three titles per-subject and tried to make sure I had at least read if not also own the material.

It is by no means a complete list of book types or good material within that category...It's more of a 'best of' from my bookshelves. Also note that the categories are broad...'romance' doesn't need to mean 'trashy romance'...just a story about relationships...'horror' can also be 'suspense'..etc. But instead of belaboring the explanations...here are the titles:

Fantasy:

Mouse Guard, Bone, Cursed Pirate Girl

Comedy:

Muppet Show, Dork Tower, Jeremy

Horror:

Nocturnals, Hellboy, Locke & Key

Historical Fiction:

300, Usagi Yojimbo, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen

Kids:

Owly, Tiny Titans, Korgi

Adventure:

The Crogan Series, Little Nemo, Rex Steele

Pulp:

The Rocketeer, Sin City, Blacksad

Romance:

Miki Falls, Blankets, Strangers in Paradise

Non-Fiction:

Treasury of Victorian Murder series, Maus, Bone Sharps, Cowboys, & Thunder Lizards

Sci-Fi:

Runners, Space Girl, Robotika

Adaptations:

Fafhrd & the Grey Mouser, The Oz Books, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea

Webcomics*

Lackadaisy, Abominable Charles Christopher, Gronk

*I used examples of webcomics where the material is still free to view online, but the creators have published quality collections of the comics which makes it easier to curl up with on a Sunday afternoon or loan to a friend.

I encourage you to look through these suggestions and links and try something new you have never tried before. And if you see something you already know and enjoy, suggest it (or lend it) to a friend or relative who isn't a comic reader, but may be interested in the subject matter or genre of the book. Everyone loves stories, so everyone should love comics.

Watercolor Wednesday: 
Last week I posted three watercolors for sale. I enjoy drawing dragons and thought they'd make for good Watercolor Wednesday material. Here are three metallic dragons: Gold, Silver, & Bronze..

Tomorrow I'll post more paintings in my online store.

2013 Appearances: 
C2E2: April 26-28
Spectrum Live: May 17-19
Heroes Con: June 7-9
Albuquerque Comic Expo June 21-23
San Diego Comic Con: July 17-21
*more 2013 dates coming*

Writing Process:

've told interviewers and fans that I don’t consider myself to be as much a writer as I am a storyteller. The difference there is that I use images as my primary tool to explain & explore a story, not words. Sure Mouse Guard has dialogue and narration, and even before that I have to write something for myself to draw, but I don’t tend to smith words into the shapes of my imagination. I use them as bracing to hold up the pictures and as notes to remind me of the flash of images as I thought about my next story. 

oday’s blogpost will be about my writing process and also how it evolved. Today I write differently and with a different purpose than I did back in late 2004 when writing Mouse Guard Belly of the Beast. Then I was merely making notes, now I write scripts that help me shape the character's actions. But then and now I did always start with an end goal and an outline of notes. For that first issue I knew my goal was to have introduced the characters, concept of the Guard, and to have shown the real dangers of the natural world to the mice. I then wrote something that would work to that goal.

t’s similar to something I've heard other writers talk about as ‘know the ending’. But I don’t always know the ending of an issue or chapter when I sit to write it, but I know my goal for writing it. Sometimes they are one in the same: Character X dies and on his deathbed passes the torch to character Y. That was both the goal and ending to the last chapter of winter. But my goal in some issues is to explain a societal nuance or get the reader involved and to care about a character or place...and that is not an ending. Any number of endings could satisfy that goal.

y next step is to write an outline of steps I think should take me to an end. This is the same with writing the outline for an entire series like Fall, Winter, or Black Axe, or just for getting though one issue. The outline hits all the major steps of the story I want or need to include. I tend to write this rather quickly and without writing too many sub-notes under any given plot point. So some of those points come naturally and are just gut decisions. Other times I play out two (or more) variations of the same story, but with characters or situations taking opposing turns to the other version I've typed. It’s a bit of an exploration process, but also just a way to dump my thoughts one step beyond my head, because just the act of saying them aloud or writing them down give you the instant insight to edit or reject them.

nowing how to explore those ideas with writing or just brainstorming in the shower (a place I still find inspirational, so I keep a wax pencil & piece of plexiglass nearby for jotting down notes with wet hands) is something I judge by gut reaction. However I also think it stems from playing and running roleplaying games in my younger days. As a player, I was responsible for making my character as interesting as they can be for the GM to have moments to work off of and as a GM, I had to play off players’ decisions. When I ran games, I’d often not prepare a great deal, because I knew with any one choice my players could divert the entire story away from anything I’d thought of and into new and interesting or troublesome territory that I had to make work. Thinking on my feet like that helps with story writing when I write myself into a corner or the story shifts in a direction I didn't plan.

ow because I write AND draw Mouse Guard, the document I write is different than other comic writers’ text-for-the-artist. Just like theirs, it is meant to inspire and direct the artwork while providing a framework that fits into a larger whole. But the writer me doesn't have to worry as much about ideas getting lost in translation to my artist. Even if I have a good idea while writing, I don’t belabor the description of it, I rely that with just the seed of that inspiration jotted down, I’ll either have the same visuals I imagined when writing (it’s all in my brain after all) or I will have improved on it by leaving room for it to breathe. 

hen I started Mouse Guard I was writing the outlines with no dialogue and then drawing the story only filling in dialogue at the end where it was needed or perhaps making notes on the backs of pages as dialogue occurred to me. Through the Winter 1152 series, I started writing scenes of dialogue, still drawing mostly from outline, but using some character conversations as training wheels to get characters ‘acting’ more meaningfully at the right moments. Now for The Black Axe, I've been writing full on scripts. Not that they would make sense to work from for anyone other than myself, they exist to help me imagine and pace the art. There are no stage directions, location descriptions, page break notes, or emotion cues...just dialogue. The rest comes to me as I layout panels and make handwritten notes on the outline & script as I do so.

elow, I've posted examples of the finished outlines used to write scripts for Black Axe #5 & #6. I have not included the scripts themselves, because for the most part they are just the text from the issues. I advise that if you have not yet read any of Black Axe, you avoid looking at the images.

Watercolor Wednesday: 
Last week I posted three watercolors for sale.I had a sheet of paper with some watercolor smudges and splashes on it, and instead of scrapping the paper, gave it an equal wash and then painted the mummies in after that dried.

Tomorrow I'll post more paintings in my online store.

2013 Appearances: 
C2E2: April 26-28
Spectrum Live: May 17-19
Heroes Con: June 7-9
Albuquerque Comic Expo June 21-23
San Diego Comic Con: July 17-21
*more 2013 dates coming*