Spotlight on Legends of the Guard contributor: Ben Caldwell:

David Petersen: Ben, You have worked in animation, toy design and how-to-draw books, and also in comics, what keeps you coming back to sequential storytelling?

Ben Caldwell: While character design and world building are fun -- and easy -- at the end of the day you only get to know these characters and worlds through the stories that revolve around them. When I design characters etc, I’m instinctively building stories around them. Who is the person? Why are they dressed like that? How did they get their hands on a giant cannon made out of butter?
So I always come back to telling stories, although I’m perhaps not as good at it as I’d like. There’s just no
substitute for the visceral connection that you make with your audience through a story.

As for comics specifically, there are so many unique ways you can play with storytelling in comics that you just can't find in, say, prose or film-making  Of course the opposite is also true, but I’m a visual person and when I try to write prose, I find myself trying to describe everything in ridiculous detail. As for film, comics are a unique medium where you can create something with the same bombast, without a budget of millions or limitations of special effects, actors, etc.
The downside is that you are trying to create something without a budget of millions and special effects, actors etc. 

David: You tend to work on all-ages material, Your own series Dare Detectives is in the spirit of a great old Saturday Morning cartoon, is the choice of tone a purposeful one? Or is it more a reflex that comes naturally?

Ben: I have a lot of stories stuck in my head, and a lot of them are definitely NOT all-ages. One particular story I’m doing right now is way too cussin' and violence and anatomically correct drawings to be kid-friendly.
But the all-ages stuff is a lot of fun. Of course, I’m also very contrary, so the fact that so many people are so contemptuous of all-ages books probably motivates me as well. A big part of it comes down to the fact that certain types of stories are, well, not necessarily childish, but certainly not "realistic". So I like to skip the superficial veneer and let ridiculous things be ridiculous, and that makes a lot of adults uncomfortable.*

*These people are stupid. Avoid them.


David: The story you created for Legends of the Guard, can you talk a little about the subject of the story and where the idea came from?

Ben: I knew I didn't have time for a long story, so I wanted something short and sweet.  Or at least short. One thing most of my stories feature is the glory of unintended consequences -- wait, the two things most of my stories feature are the glory of unintended consequences, and a bit of unnecessary theatricality.
One of my favorite bits of mouse guard (outside of the world building) is the intimate nature of the characters, so I wanted to do a small story. So I worked both all that one story by watching my insane twin daughters, and thinking what sort of stupid antics they would come up with to stop villains. The story pretty much wrote itself from there.

David: How do you proceed with a story after you have an idea, what is your process? Script? Thumbnails? Voodoo Magic?

Ben: I used to do full scripts, but I realized no matter how many revisions I did, I would always make further changes at the thumbnail or pencil stage. The fact is that the brain processes information in prose/manuscript form differently than it does images, and comics are essentially a visual medium.
So I usually start with a general breakdown of a plot, punctuated on the one hand with scraps of scenes or dialogue that just pop into my head and work, and on the other hand with a very calculated look at the characters, how they should act/react/interact, and what that means in terms of getting them from the beginning of the story to the end. As I get older, I find my stories being less driven by a pre-ordained plot (except maybe the loosest conceptual idea), and more with getting the characters nailed down, then turning them loose and seeing what happens.
Procedurally, once I have an outline of the overall plot, I will break it down into scenes. I've done enough GNs and had enough experience with building up and cutting down scenes to fit pre-allotted page counts that I have a pretty good idea of how many pages a particular scene can take without overwhelming the rest of the story. it sounds inartistic, but I like to break things down as hierarchical information. That is, what is the overall gist of scene x?  Then, what is the gist of each pair of pages (in comics and children's books, pages should always be worked in pairs, since that is inevitably how the viewer will experience them)? Finally, what is the most important idea for each individual page?
From that I do thumbnails, usually doing a whole scene's worth on a single sheet, so I can see the scene as a whole. Usually I put a note under each page(s) like "Toby punches goons", "he misses, falls into cotton candy machine" etc, before making any drawings. I’ll often drop balloons with rough dialogue in at this stage, just to account for the space that will be needed for lettering later.
IMPORTANT: I try to pop out the thumbnails as quickly as possible, without over thinking them. First off, it's just too easy to get paralyzed at this stage, and it's important to keep momentum. Second, it's much easier to do something concrete and say "oh wait, the butter cannon sounded awesome, but now that I’m looking at the drawing on the page, a PUDDING cannon is much more logical", instead of staring at a blank sheet and trying to guess ahead of time what will work or not. At this stage there is no such thing as bad ideas, just ideas that can be improved.
As I get older, pencilling gets harder because my drawing has improved like a mazillion percent, but I’ve become even more sensitive to the nuances of expressions, body language etc. cartooning makes it even worse -- if you have a drawing with a hundred lines and one is out of place, who cares? But if you have a drawing with three lines, one out-of-place line is really going to stand out. 
Even at the pencilling stage I will find myself reworking certain panels or even scenes. It’s not the sort of thing that makes editors sleep well at night, but at every stage of the storytelling, as you get closer to the final page you might notice new problems that weren't apparent at earlier stages; or to put it more positively, you notice new opportunities to tell a better story.

David: A lot of talk on this blog is about process & materials. Can you share with the readers what art supplies you use for each step of the artwork on a story like this? (paper, pencils, ink, digital program...feel free to list brands.)

Ben: I use generic #2 mechanical pencils, because I hate to pause and sharpen them. At first it was just a matter of convenience, but I found that after I became used to them, I could get a huge range of line weight and sensitivity. But I am obsessed with drawing on laser print paper, particularly Xerox digital Xpressions. So the thumbs were done on that paper, then I printed them slightly larger in blue line (on more laser paper), to do the final "clean" art. In this case, the trick was to keep the final pencil art somewhat loose.

In any case, I was surprised at how closely the final art followed the thumbnails in the MGL story. There are usually a LOT of changes during finalization, either tweaking poses or, as often as not, completely rewriting pages.

The coloring was all digital (photoshop). I tried to keep the process simple, partly so that it could be standardized and quickly replicated throughout the pages, partly because the simpler that stage is, the more time is left for working/reworking the actual drawings and storytelling that are the guts of the comic. I laid down an antique paper texture for ground, then colored with flat colors at 66% opacity. This way you can easily create solid color with a few strokes, but since it isn't full opacity, there's a certain organic buildup. In a few places, I also used levels to create surreal color shifts.

David: What does Ben Caldwell like to do when he’s not making comics?

Ben: That’s between me and my parole officer.

David: Thanks for a really fun story Ben. I’m excited for the fans to read it. Where should people go if they want to know more about you and your work?

Ben: You can always follow me on twitter (@bencaldwellart) or my blog (purge theory.blogspot.com), and, when the stars align, you can visit my website www.daredetectives.com. Those are good places to start, because I update them regularly, and I’m going to be making some announcements for future projects soon!

If you want to get your hands physically on my work, short of burgling my house you can buy my sketchbooks online, or find my classics comics, "dare detectives" comics, and how-to-cartoon books at fine bookstores everywhere. I presume shady bookstores also sell them.

Ben's story A Bone To Pick will appear in Legends of the Guard

volume 2 # 1 along with stories by Stan Sakai, Nick Tapalansky & Alex Eckman-Lawn

Watercolor Wednesday:Here's another look at last week's two watercolor pieces I offered up for sale. For inspiration I looked up images of old men for fun expressions and wrinkles. First up is a blind gnome...with dandelion puff balls in the background.I went with the Rien Poortvliet costume and colors for this guy.

The other piece from last week's offerings is some manner of small Fay with a cracked teacup for a hat and a set of his-size silverware ready for a meal.

Upcoming Appearances:

San Diego Comic Con: July 17-21

Boston Comic Con: August 3-4

Baltimore Comic Con: September 7-8

New York Comic Con: October 10-13

North Carolina Comic Con: November 9-10

Spotlight on Legends of the Guard contributors: Nick Tapalansky & Alex Eckman-Lawn

David Petersen: How did you both get in to working in comics? (Nick writing and Alex drawing)

Alex Eckman-Lawn: We actually got into comics together. Nick found a few pinups and art samples of mine on the internet and approached me with a script. We did some preliminary art and a test page or two and the rest is beautiful romantic history.

Nick Tapalansky: That's not how I remember it at all. I'm pretty sure your mom put you in my cab and I drove you to your uncle's place out west after you got in one little fight while playing basketball outside your school in Philadelphia. Your mom tends to be panicky. You were singing the most annoying song on the way, but somehow we came up with a few good ideas and kept in touch.

David: For folks unaware, you two are the creative team behind Awakening. Tell the readers a bit about that book.

Alex: AWAKENING is a zombie noir story, set in the small town of Park Falls. I tried to use my experiences growing up on the playgrounds of west Philly to inform my portrayal of the streets.

Nick: Yes, little-known fact: AWAKENING is a philosophical exploration of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, set against a heady science v. religion debate.

In all seriousness though, AWAKENING is, like Alex said, a zombie noir. We tossed almost all of your basic zombie tropes out the window and started fresh, giving the story room to breathe with a slower pace. We wanted time to explore questions and ramifications without the constant pressure of SURVIVAL placed on the characters from the beginning, so we began at the start of a year when the first zombies appear. They don't infect with their bites and they don't multiply dramatically by their own doing. It's an inexplicable trickle that slowly builds up as people begin to drop dead and "awaken" in this new, undefined state. That's where the story starts, following a retired cop as he tries to put the pieces together, both for the town and his own life.

Alex: It’s probably worth mentioning that AWAKENING was both mine and Nick’s first comic book ever (or since childhood anyway). To backtrack a bit, AWAKENING is pretty much how we got into working in comics.

David: A horror book about a potential outbreak of zombies, I would think, is very different from writing and drawing a mouse folktale. Did the process feel different to you guys? Did you approach it differently?

Nick: It didn't feel too different for me, to be honest. Is that weird? I try to think of stories as stories, writing as writing. I'm just putting down what I see, but the process stays pretty static. So when I sat down to work on "Leviathan" I just tried to convey what I saw as best I was able, applying what I'd learned from other shorts, and even AWAKENING. It was the first time I told a story like this though, and it really was a lot of fun.

I think, in terms of process, things change a bit more for Alex, since so much of the atmosphere and tone in a comic relies on the instant visual connection a reader makes with material.

Alex: I definitely did have to approach this story differently, but that’s always exciting for me. Part of the fun of making pictures, for me at least, is getting to try out different visual approaches for different projects.

"Leviathan" was a breath of fresh air for me, especially after all the bleak and spooky stuff I usually tend to do.

David: Nick, describe the Legends of the Guard story and its origins.

Nick: "Leviathan" was the product of me being a sarcastic pain in the ass! Back at some old con or another, may have been New York, right when MOUSE GUARD was really just going insane, I joked that I was going to do my own animal guard to ride your coattails to stardom. Somehow we settled on a Whale Guard, and I distinctly remember your sweet, sweet whale impressions. Then you ripped off a piece of cardboard and drew the quick sketch (pictured) signed with your blessing. Pretty sure you also bit it to sign off with your slobber-DNA. I still have that cardboard and fully expect it to buy me a sweet house one day, not to mention produce my own stay-at-home-Petersen clone.

Then at another con, San Diego I think, you asked me to moderate your spotlight panel. During the talk I had another opportunity to chat about my great idea, Whale Guard, and sow the seeds for usurping your fanbase. It's been a slow process, but it finally paid off. When LEGENDS OF THE GUARD's second volume was getting underway, we got the call: "Nick, we want it. We want “Whale Guard.”

David: Did you ever think that joke would have paid off into this short story?

Nick: Never! Haha! I'm almost sure my first reaction was abject terror, followed immediately by excitement. Not only is it such a robust and well-loved world, but we're in ridiculously great company. I'm gonna have to start joking about more things I want to do.

Alex: I have to admit, I thought Nick was joking when he told me we'd be doing “Whale Guard” for realsies.

David: I remember thinking when I getting ready to ask you guys for a story: "With Legends, I think Nick could play up his whale guard joke and it not seem silly, but grounded and honest for Mouse Guard. Without spoiling anything, what themes or intent did you want to pursue when you started actually writing ‘Leviathan’?

Nick: I think, for me, it was a matter of scope. The Mouse Guard tend to be brave, selfless mice who stare danger in the eye to protect their fellow mice. They'll fight down other mice, snakes, owls and bats but at some point there are certain dangers even the bravest, most headstrong mouse can't face on their own. Things just get too big, sometimes literally. I wanted to explore that a bit.

I also wanted to bring just a touch of magic to the world, since this was a "tall tale" and it wouldn't impact the main narrative or the realism of your story in the main books. So that was fun, getting to see our little guy, not a guard mouse but an adventurer, in situations you might not typically get to see in MOUSE GUARD thanks to a sprinkle of some fantasy elements.

David: Did you guys work on the story ideas together or is the workload separated strictly into writing and art?

Alex: I wouldn't say it's STRICTLY separated, but Nick had a clear idea of what he wanted to do with the story so in this case it was pretty much all him.

Nick: Yeah, it does vary from story to story for us. We both try to get our hands pretty dirty in everything.

Alex: Yup, we do a fair amount of back and forth about actual layouts and visual stuff, but I think this story was 100% Tapalansky.

David: Nick do you write scripts with page breakdowns (each page’s panel count described with what goes in them) or do you leave a lot of the pacing and layouts to Alex?

Nick: This script wound up being the last one I wrote with panel counts, actually. I wrote all of AWAKENING that way, and the handful of shorts we followed that book with. Alex knew that my scripts were just the best way I saw to do it, not necessarily the actual best way, and played with formats and pacing if he saw better ways to approach what I was trying to pull off. That's the best part of working in comics - the collaboration.

Alex: This is why I like working with this guy. Not everyone feels that way.

Nick: Nowadays I tend to take an approach between screenwriting and full-script comics. I won't label panels with numbers, sizing, or total count on a page (except in specific instances). If an artist wants to take a "panel" and make it into two, there's no problem there. Want to combine actions? Go for it! I couldn't work in the old Marvel Style - I'd feel as claustrophobic and passive as an artist given a super-strict script - but I think this is a middle ground that works. It gives freedom to everyone, and permission to be as involved as possible in every aspect of bringing a story together.

Alex: I think the real challenge with this story was just fitting everything into the six pages.

Nick: Oh, totally! Working within a defined page count like that definitely pushed us to trim every bit of fat wherever we could. I like to think we packed each page with possibilities though, in case Tiernan ever gets a chance to pop back up.

David: Alex, how do you approach starting work on a page?

Alex: Well for this story I had Nick's script to work from, so I start by laying out panel shapes in photoshop and doing some ultra rough drawings with my tablet-- just to get placement and shapes down. When I'm happy with everything in this super-rough stage I start actually putting pencil to paper.

David: Your artwork is ultimately a blend of drawing and textures and photo-collage and digital painting. How do your ideas develop and what is the process for getting to a finished page?

Alex: This is always a hard one to answer. I tend to work a little differently on every project, depending on the subject matter, tone, setting, etc. For "Leviathan" I tried to let the pencils speak the loudest.

There is a bit of photo collage and scanned texture in there as well, especially when we start getting close up to the whales, but this is primarily just pencil and photoshop "painting!"

I suppose the more technical answer is that I start with a scanned pencil drawing, then paint under and over it, introducing photo elements as I go. It's a kind of push and pull process, until I find a balance I think works.

David: Awakening is a closed ending story that wrapped into a collected softcover back in 2011, so what have you two been working on since and currently?

Nick: We've been quietly busy, but comics take FOREVER sometimes! I just finished writing a new book, just a bit shorter than AWAKENING, that First Second will be publishing in the next year or two. Comics are tons of fun but, like I said, sometimes take a while to make it from our collective brains, through the publishing machine, and into a reader's hands. My editor and I are looking for just the right illustrator for that book, so when that comes together we'll really be off and running. 

It's a pretty big departure for me, this book, but it took on a life of its own when I was writing it. It's more of a kids/all-ages title, with a very animated, or even a manga style to the writing. A brave new world from the desk of Tapalansky, and I can't wait until it's finally out!

In the meantime, I'm working on another exciting graphic novel, which I hope to start pitching this month, and Alex and I are always brainstorming what comes next.

Alex: Yeah, I've got a few bigger projects in the works as well but most of whats actually seen print has been shorts.

I had a piece in The Graphic Canon Part 1- a collection of comic artists and illustrators taking on classic literature and poetry. There's some pretty awesome stuff in there, and I'm proud to have been a part of it!

Nick and I also did a short story for the Perhapanauts gang, which is finally up on their website *LINK*. It's a bit older at this point but it'll be new to all of you!

Nick:  And it’s free! Who doesn’t like free comics?

Alex: I also just finished working on a short for Moon Lake Volume 2, coming out through Archaia. I did a whole mess of pinups for that book as well. As always, big stuff is on the way.

David: Thank guys for a fun story for Legends of the Guard. Where can readers find out more about each of you and your work?

Alex: Thank YOU, Dave! This was a blast to work on and I think both Nick and I are pretty honored to be a part of the MOUSE GUARD story, if even just tangentially.

Nick: It was definitely a great experience! We rarely get to play in other people's sandboxes, but when we do it's always a treat. Especially when the sandbox is as vast and inviting as MOUSE GUARD.

I tend to hang around on Twitter mostly (under the creative handle, @NickTapalansky) and have a secret narcissistic internet fort at nicktapalansky.com/blog, resplendent with info about yours truly and free comics. A Tumblr is imminent, once production gets going on the new book, so feel free to bookmark/follow nicktapalansky.tumblr.com. I do not yet have an Instagram, though I take enough pictures of my food that I should seriously consider it.

Alex: You can find me work on Tumblr:  http://dudenukem.tumblr.com, read my innermost thoughts on Twitter, @alexeckmanlawn, and Check out my website here: www.alexeckmanlawn.com

Nick & Alex's Story Leviathan will appear in Legends of the Guard

volume 2 # 1 along with stories by Stan Sakai & Ben Caldwell

Watercolor Wednesday:

Here's another look at last week's Watercolor Wednesday paintings: As I said in last week's blogpost, I was influenced by being at Spectrum Live and seeing all the folklore creatures. This week's pieces continue in that tradition. First up we have "Nod Longcap" When I grabbed the scrap piece of bristol he would occupy, I thought "It would be fun to do a vertical painting where most of it is the character's hat." The fun facial hair and nervous expression and body language developed on its own.

The other little fay from last week's Watercolor Wednesday offerings is this minstrel wearing a thimble for a hat. In Mouse Guard I love playing with having them use objects they have hand crafted to their scale so they look no different than human-scale items: swords, mugs, tools, etc....while still having them use items that are raw natural materials that remind us of the mouse-scale: acorn cap snowshoes, pinecone shingles, turtle shell boats. The tiny lute and the thimble gave me that same scale juxtaposition in this piece.

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

Upcoming Appearances:

Albuquerque Comic Expo: June 21-23

San Diego Comic Con: July 17-21

Boston Comic Con: August 3-4

Baltimore Comic Con: September 7-8

New York Comic Con: October 10-13

North Carolina Comic Con: November 9-10

Spotlight on Legends of the Guard creator: Karl Kerschl:

David Petersen: Karl, I discovered your work through your web comic The Abominable Charles Christopher, but you have a wider audience through your work for DC like the Flash for Wednesday Comics. Was working on a Legends of the Guard story more like the work-for-hire jobs or more like your creator owned strip? or was it somewhere between?

Karl Kerschl: I guess it was somewhere in between. It's strange, but I rarely think of drawing comics (of any sort) as 'work'. That's not to say that it isn't difficult, or that I sometimes wouldn't rather be doing something else, but rather that each story requires some investment of my energy in a way that's more social than laborious. In order to craft a convincing story, the characters require personal attention; if I don't treat them as real beings then they won't feel real to anyone else. So in the case of the 'Legends' story, my part in it was really just to spend some time with Sadie and see what she was interested in. Superman or The Flash or Charles Christopher all require the same kind of attention. They just have different personalities.

David: I set out a few rules for the creators, and one was to not use existing main characters in their legend stories. You asked to use Sadie and showed me how the story wouldn’t upset any continuity plans I have with her as a character. What was it about Sadie that drew you to a tale of hers?

Karl: When I was reading through the Mouse Guard books I found myself constantly wondering about Sadie's state of mind whenever she was in the scene. She's very quiet. She's obviously brave and capable, but there's something beneath the surface of her character that always seems to be asking a question, and I was interested in what that question might be. I thought of her as a very reflective, almost meditative character and it occurred to me that her time in Frostic, in complete isolation, might have been an important time for her, spiritually.

David: When discussing the project you mentioned Northern Ontario being inspiration for the setting. Is there any place in particular? It also feels like the same woods that Charles Christopher tromps around in...did you set your webstrip there too?

Karl: Not consciously, but I'm sure it influences most of my woodland settings. I grew up in Southern Ontario - almost as far south as one can get in Canada - and it was a rural area with a forest behind the house where we would go for long walks. My family also spent a lot of time up north at my uncle's cottage, and it's one of my favourite settings, geographically speaking. I love the rocky Canadian Shield coasts and the mossy forests.

David: The story you described to me on the phone went into Sadie’s feelings, mental state, motivations, etc....however, the story ended up being wordless (other than sound effects). Why did you feel the story worked better this way (and I think it does!)?

Karl: We talked about adding narration of some sort, but I don't think it would have played very well. The idea was really to accentuate the loneliness and quietude of Sadie's time at the Frostic outpost and to suggest that perhaps that extended period of solitude had affected her state of mind - cleared here head, so to speak. Adding words would have amounted to mental chatter, which is in direct opposition to the meditative state I was hoping to convey. I also like the way the sounds of nature build to a crescendo with the rumbling of the caribou herd, and adding narration to those moments would have been redundant.

Daivd: Speaking of sound, what do you listen to while working? music? audiobooks? your studio mates? podcasts?

Karl: When I'm writing, or just trying to imagine scenes, which is basically the same as writing, I listen to a lot of soundtrack music from films. Anything wordless, really. Unless I have a very specific emotional idea in mind for the scene, for which I'll play appropriate lyrical songs. Sigur Ros and Aimee Mann got a lot of play for some of the scenes in The Abominable Charles Christopher. The 'Legends' story was all about ambient music. I liked listening to 'Joga' by Bjork because of all the cracking ice sounds.
When I'm just inking or colouring and I don't need to concentrate on mood, I listen to podcasts. Mostly tech and video game news.
David: As for process, how did you take your story idea and pace it into your 5 pages?

Karl: I think 5 pages may actually have been too short for what I had in mind here, but I think it still works. I just loosely mapped out the arc of the story in my head and jotted down certain moments in the margins of the pages that I wanted to see, knowing that it needed to culminate in a stampede by page 4. If I'd had more time and space I would have liked to start the story with Sadie inside the outpost, making herself some tea before going out.
David: In terms of format, you seem to work in opposite layouts, either more vertical with your mainstream work, or horizontal for your Abominable Charles Christopher strip. This project had you splitting the difference with a perfect square. Was there any difference to your storytelling or layouts in the format?

Karl: It definitely forced me to think about my layouts differently. I like to use a lot of 'widescreen' panels when possible - page-wide panels that allow for landscapes and long pauses in reading. But with this square format it was tough to do that while still being economic with the space. I wanted to stick to the aesthetic you'd already established, otherwise I might have used more inset panels here and there. But I like that the end result is clean and uses the whole page in a very even, geometric way.

David: With a layout ready, how to you move on to the final artwork?

Karl: I kind of blur the line between layouts and finished art. The pencils on the page serve as my layouts and are very rough. Sometimes I'll ink panels or pages before I even know what I'm going to draw on the following page, which is not something I'd recommend to anybody. :)

David: What size did you do the final art? And using what supplies?

Karl: These were 12" by 12" on Strathmore Bristol. I used a blue pencil to do my drawing and inked everything with a Staedtler pigment liner and a Pentel Brush Pen.
David: The colors on Charles Christopher is all done in a pale green/grey tone, so even though I shouldn’t have been, I was surprised when you turned in your colored Legends pages as they were full color. Did you ever consider using a limited palate? or has this project made you think about introducing color ever to Charles’ neck of the woods?

Karl: This story was a bit of an experiment for me in that I could see what Charles Christopher might look like if I were to colour it with a more diverse palette. It's something I couldn't and wouldn't do in the strip because A) I don't have enough time to do it weekly, and B) it's no longer appropriate. I think the limited palette on Charles Christopher gives a dreamy, otherworldly felling to the comic that full colour would take away. Everything would seem too 'literal'. But it was fun to do here.
David: What process do you use to color? Are you a tablet guy?

Karl: Yeah, I do all my colouring in Photoshop using a Wacom tablet I recently bought a Cintiq tablet so I'm eager to see how my process changes now that I can draw directly on the screen. I also use WAY too many layers.

David: Where can people find out more about Karl Kerschl and your work?

Karl: I have a blog and gallery at karlkerschl.com, but most of my online presence is centred around The Abominable Charles Christopher, which updates weekly at http://www.abominable.cc/.

Karl's Story "Bowen's Tale" is in Issue 4 of Legends of the Guard and collected in the recently released Hardcover collecting all 4 issues.

Spotlight on Legends of the Guard creator: Craig Rousseau:

David Petersen: Craig, I have told aspiring artists before that there are two kinds of artists out there, those that love telling other people’s stories with other people’s characters (like Marvel or DC) and those that simply must work on their own projects. You have a foothold in both sides of my model. For that reason, was it fairly simple to slip out of your other work to jump in to Legends of the Guard?

Craig Rousseau: Simple answer, yes.
David: Your story: ‘The Lion and the Mouse’ is a retelling of the Aesop’s fable. What resonated with that story for you to do a Mouse guard retelling?

Craig: Well, I knew the story obviously needed a mouse protagonist .... and trying to figure out what I wanted to draw, immediately I thought of that fable.

David: When we wrote the series bible/guidelines for the creators, one of the points had to do with keeping the animal species and location much like my Mouse Guard stories (where I use my home state of MI as a guide). however, I was open to creators who wanted to break and bend the rules. Did you find it difficult to take the story outside of the normal settings and species and still make it feel Mouse Guard?

Craig: See, I know we had a conversation about this via email back when I had the idea... but to be honest, I only JUST found the bible attached to an earlier email you sent (and STILL haven’t read it)... I knew the framing sequence would allow some flexibility, and the idea of a story passed along from generation to generation, across continents becomes a “legend” of a sort. I particularly liked the idea that the story had traveled so far and a lion would be a fantastical creature and Africa like another world.
David: With your book Perhapanauts, the co-creator Todd Dezago handles the writing. For this project you acted as word-jockey as well. Was that something new for you? And did you find it to be difficult or a breeze?

Craig: It was a bit intimidating. I knew where I thought the story should go and worked out the story beats and panels easily enough. For the dialogue and captions, I was going to fall back and just have Todd script it from my notes (“so, the mouse will say something like...” and “then the lion says...” and “a caption like...” ) but as I sent them to him, his reply was “dude, you’ve already written it.”

David: Lets talk about art process. Do you thumbnail your layouts as you are writing the story? Or do you have an outline first?

Craig: Being the first story I’ve actually written, I went with my strength and started with an image (that last big panel on page 2) and worked it out in both directions from there. From there, I had a rough plot breakdown in my head and started laying out the pages.

David: Once you have your thumbnails, do you enlarge them or transfer them to your final working size? or do you just use them as a sight guide and redraw at the full size?

Craig: At this point in my career (crazy to think how long I‘ve been doing this... and how many pages I’ve turned out over the last 14 or so years), I thumbnail the pages in my head and go straight to the boards.

David: Your inks are a defining ‘Rousseau’ style for me. I read in a comic art magazine "Work on line weights, only a few people like Craig Rousseau can pull off not using any" Where did your finished line style come from and what tools do you use to achieve them?

Craig: Even though I’ve never really working in animation (beyond dabbling in storyboard work for Walt Disney Television animation a few times), over the years I’ve done quite a bit of work on animated properties for publishers... and one defining aspect of most animation styles is a very consistent line weight and tried to work that look into my ink. I’d also been trying to break down my work into the simplest drawings possible, using that one “right” line rather than using 20.
Oddly, with my next Marvel project, i started inking heavier lines and spotting blacks to mix things up (it’s been years since i’ve done it), but i’m still using only Faber Castell Pitt pens (S for super fine)... for the Perhapanauts i’m still using a more open line work.

David: How did you color your pages for Legends of the Guard? And where did your color choices come from?

Craig: All the color work was done in Photoshop CS4. I tried to keep the palette very simple with minimal shading and highlights (and added a subtle aged paper texture to the art in a semi opaque layer). The mouse’s garb is based on the Massai warriors of Africa and i wanted to keep that the most vibrant element in the art (being so small, I needed the mouse to stand out) and wanted those golden, earthy tones throughout.
David: Where can people find out more about Craig Rousseau and all your various projects?

Craig: www.craigrousseau.com and www.perhapanauts.com

Craig's Story "The Lion and the Mouse" is in Issue 4 of Legends of the Guard and collected in the recently released Hardcover collecting all 4 issues.

Legends of the Guard Creator Spotlight: Joao Lemos
For the hardcover collection, I asked Portuguese artist Joao Lemos to do an epilogue. Instead of a typed interview though, I asked him questions and talked with him about story, process, and his past works on Skype. Here in two parts, is my interview/conversation with Joao.
I appologize that Joao's audio is fuzzy, it is a fault of my recording set-up.

Direct Link to part 1

Direct link to part 2

The Legends of the Guard hardcover collects issues 1-4 of the Mouse Guard spinoff anthology series and is available tomorrow 11-17-10. In addition to Joao's epilogue also features a cutaway of the in, map of the territories, a guide to the characters, cover gallery, and a contributor section with bios and sketches. It is available at your local comic shop and major book sellers.

Legends of the Guard Creator Spotlight: Mark Smylie

David Petersen: Mark, I think Legends of the Guard is the first non-Artesia sequential storytelling you have ever done. How was working on another property different from your work in your own book

Mark Smylie: Process-wise it wasn’t that different, but I have to admit that I had a lot of trepidations about doing a Mouse Guard story in particular, given the dedication of MG fans and the unusual page aspect ratio. The square format was fun to work with, however, and the universe is a pretty deep one to find storytelling ideas in...

David: This project started as a comment I made to you an Jeremy after you turned in your awesome pinups for Fall 1152 (because of that, I bookended the series with your two stories). As both a creator on the series and a decision maker at Archaia, did you have any idea when I mentioned that you and Jeremy could "play in the world of Mouse Guard whenever you wanted" we would be 4 issues in to an anthology series?

Mark: No, it’s been very nice to watch this project grow from that random conversation into an amazing anthology. Conversations and ideas like that all too often fall into the “that’s nice, but it’ll never happen” category, so both as a publisher and as an artist it’s fantastic when a great idea that’s kind of casually batted around then grows into an actual published work.
David: When you submitted story ideas, there were three to choose from. I picked one because I thought it felt the most ‘like you’ and because you would be drawing mice in armor. Tell folks about your story and talk about how you developed it.

Mark: Oddly enough there’s not necessarily a lot of mouse armor in it, at least not in comparison to Jeremy’s take on mouse armor. For this particular story I had been inspired by the cover of LEGENDS #1, with the two mouse kings fighting each other on the bridge. I thought a bit about what the history of mouse war would have been like; given how many predators and natural dangers there are for them, inter-mouse war would seem pretty rare, but clearly (as we saw in FALL 1152) the Mouse Territories have reached a point of safety and security that, oddly enough, opens up the option of mice fighting mice. So I thought about the idea of these two lineages squabbling with each other, generation after generation, and about some of the things that would motivate them to fight and do un-mouse-like things, and how that kind of vendetta war could come to an end. I wound up drawing from the story of David and Bathsheeba from the Bible, in which David sends his general Uriah the Hittite out on a suicide mission so he can marry Bathsheeba, and tried to put a Guard spin on it.

David: With Artesia you are doing something I’m a real fan of: World Building. It’s a very complete place with culture(s), maps, & history. And you seem to be bringing that commitment to your Legends story as well. What went into making the cities and armor in your story and who are some of your favorite world builders in art and storytelling?

Mark: Well, there’s a lot to work with already in the MG world. I took the name “Rosestone” to be kind of literal, and wanted to have a mouse town that combined both an earthy, underground atmosphere with these flowering roses everywhere. And since the events of the story are supposed to be happening at some point in the past, I tried to take the medieval flavorings of the current MG series and work backwards a bit, so hopefully there’s an early medieval, Romanesque feel to the armor and “costumes” (for example, Moira’s bonnet, the legionnaire shields that the mouse soldiers use, etc.). I think there are a lot of great world-builders out there to be inspired by; beginning with Tolkien’s Middle Earth, of course, but Robert Howard’s Hyboria, Lloyd Alexander’s Welsh Prydain, Roger Zelazny’s Amber, Robert Adams’ post-apocalyptic Horseclans novels, Glen Cook’s Black Company books, George Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire, all of them have awesome fantasy settings. Same with fantasy RPG settings like Greg Stafford’s Glorantha and Bob Bledsaw’s Wilderlands. For visual worldbuilding you can’t get much better than James Gurney’s Dinotopia and Rien Poortvliet’s Gnomes.

David: You and I are both fans of paper modeling, but what other real world techniques do you use to try and build a world as real as you can make on paper?

Mark: I use some plastic models of men in armor (there are some Japanese companies that do historical plastic model kits, for example), and have a few reproduction weapons and helmets, but a lot of it is book research: just trying to read as much as possible about the history of culture and technology, look at lots of pictures of real places and objects and costumes.

David: With your process, how do you take an outline or story description and break it into pages and panels?

Mark: The words are first, at least most of the time, and tend to dictate for me which panel is coming next, where the characters are positioned, etc. I break down the script of the dialogue and story actions, grouping them into beats, then thumbnail the pages and panels to see how it’s all going to flow, how much can fit into each page, whether material has to be cut or stretched out to make a particular page or transition work.
David: You did a pinup for me on the square format, but this is your first time doing panel by panel storytelling in it. Did you find it very different from how you lay out a traditional page?

Mark: The basics are still the same. The square format definitely changes things subtly; like when you do wide panels, they’re very wide, almost cinematic. I tried to give this particular story a little bit of a fairy tale quality, so the panel selection was fairly simple, nothing too complicated (which always feels more modern to me).

David: Your final artwork and thumbnails match fairly closely, do you redraw the thumbnails on your final surface? or do you transfer them somehow using a lightbox or blueline printing?

Mark: No, I do the thumbnails on spare typewriter paper. I’ll have them nearby as reference when I’m doing the actual penciling, but I generally don’t use a lightbox even though I have them available.

David: Your work is all hand painted using watercolors and gouache. What brands and materials do you use (paints, paper, brushes)?

Mark: I pencil and paint onto Strathmore 500 2-ply Bristol plate, sometimes 3-ply; I usually buy it by the sheet and then cut to the size I need. Though for the LEGENDS pages I think I used a pad of 14x18 2-ply Bristol plate. It’s not really suitable for watercolor painting, but I like to ink on the plate surface. I use a variety of watercolor and gouache brands; Windsor & Newton, Sennelier, and Old Holland, mostly, with an occasional Grumbacher Academy. I often use Wilcox’s Guide to Watercolor Paints to pick a brand for lightfastness and pigmentation. I use a bunch of different brushes, mostly sable, from industry standard Windsor & Newton Series 7 No 2s and Rekabs to brushes of uncertain origin that I just happen to like. There’s a lot of detail work so I don’t tend to use brushes with big heads, they’re usually size 2-8.

David: What is the process for painting a page? Do you ink first and paint second? How long do you spend painting vs waiting for paint to dry?

Mark: I paint directly onto the pencils, then ink afterwards; then usually do a second pass with paints, and then finish with another round of inks and colored pencils. Watercolor dries pretty fast, which is both good and bad, in that it doesn’t give you much time to correct mistakes. Other watercolorists work differently; Mike Kaluta, for example, inks first and then sprays a workable fixative to fix the inks, and then paints on his inks.

David: Where can people find out more about Mark Smylie and Artesia?

Mark: Well, I used to have a big fancy website at www.artesiaonline.com, but we lost the files on the server a little while back and I haven’t had a chance to reconstitute it (such is the life of an artist turned publisher, unfortunately). Hopefully it’ll be back up and running soon...

Mark's Story "Crown of Silver Crown of Gold"
appears in Issue 4 of Legends of the Guard available 11-10-10