2012 FCBD Story: The Tale of Baldwin the Brave:
My story for this year's Free Comic Book Day book from Archaia followed the tradition I set last year with the story being some sort of morality tale told to a younger version of one of my main characters. Last year's story was a bedtime tale being told to young-Kenzie, and I did a post about the process of creating that story last year. Saxon was the recipient of this year's story, but before we go further...in case you have not found a copy of the 2012 FCBD book or you didn't get around to reading it yet, you can follow this link to have it read to you aloud: http://vimeo.com/mouseguard/mgbaldwinthebrave

Not wanting to repeat the bed-time-story setup from last year's offering, I chose to tell the story to Saxon by having him watch a puppet show. The idea had come to me early last year when I drew this piece of a mouse puppet maker. I love puppets and puppetry, so I thought mice telling stories with puppets would be a wonderful way for them to tell tales, make art objects, and charming for the readers of my books. The fez & vest of this mouse puppet builder is an homage to the Fraggle I made as an analog of myself named Gib. So, I proceeded with the idea to tell the whole story using marionettes. As a side note, I did pause for a moment to realize, I wasn't planning to use the puppets as a gateway into showing the 'real' story, but would illustrate the puppets on stage as you would see them if you were in the mouse audience....it still seems like a gamble to have only drawn 'real' mice in only 2 panels of my story, but I liked the immersion into the storytelling method.

The story itself was all built around a way for me to impress on Saxon that he should become the mouse who doesn't pause and hesitate at the thought of danger, that he should be a mouse willing to leap into peril for the good of mice, and that this bravery and daring-do pay off in the end. I thought of the quote from Edmund Burke, "All that is required for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing". And mousified it to "Evil Prevails if Good Mice Do Nothing". And then it's easy to imagine Saxon perverting that into his leaping into everything wards off evil.

To prepare for drawing this story, I built a few props as guides for me. I printed out the stage proscenium from my cover art for the book (done in advance of the story) and cut it up adding a few basswood sticks and cardboard to create a paper-stage model. I made a few backdrops and flying walls to scale for the stage so that each scene would be playing out in new locations while still seeming like a believable stage play. I also sculpted a mouse marionette that I could pose for reference to get the joints and weight of the lifless limbs correct..

Baldwin (our puppet hero...and named after my Paternal Grandmother's Maiden surname) overcomes three obstacles in the tale. He saves the village from starvation by cleverly trapping a greedy goose as bait for a wolf, he has the courage to speak to a pretty mouse before she chooses death over loneliness, and finally, with his bravery as an example, he leads the town to triumph in battle over the same wolf from earlier. The pattern of three is a classic fairy tale device, and I wanted to make sure the three tasks were not all solved by brute force or just by the tip of a sword. Even though this story was for Saxon, I opted to make Baldwin a bit more well rounded and used bravery to outsmart, love, and lead.

Now to start thinking up NEXT year's FCBD story....perhaps it will be for Sadie's ears....


2012 Appearances:
Heroes: June 22-24
San Diego Comic Con: July 11-15
Baltimore Comic Con: Sept 8-9
New York Comic Con: Oct 11-14
Detroit Fanfare: Oct 26-28

2012 Free Comic Book Day video:

I hope you all had a great Free Comic Book Day last weekend! In case you didn't get a copy of the amazing hardcover Archaia put out, word is that you can contact them directly to try and obtain one. It really is a great book, and besides a new Mouse Guard story there is a Labyrinth story by Corey Godbey, Ted Naifeh, & Adrianne Ambrose, A Return of the Dapper Men story by Jim McCann & Janet K. Lee, a Rust story by Royden Lepp, A Cursed Pirate Girl story by Jeremy Bastian, and a Cowboy story by Nate Cosby & Chris Eliopoulos.

But as a treat for everyone who already got their copy or don't want to wait get one, here is a narrated version of my story: The Tale of Baldwin the Brave:

direct link: http://vimeo.com/mouseguard/mgbaldwinthebrave
Narration: David Petersen

Music: Jon Sayles

I also colored up the FCBD bookplate artwork I created for my appearances at Larry's Comics and Jetpack comics last weekend:

Next Week's post will be about my process for creating this story.

2012 Appearances:
Heroes: June 22-24
San Diego Comic Con: July 11-15
Baltimore Comic Con: Sept 8-9
New York Comic Con: Oct 11-14
Detroit Fanfare: Oct 26-28

2011 Free Comic Book Day video:

In honor of Free Comic Book Day this coming weekend (For those of you who don't know, most comic retailers offer a selection of new comics on the first Saturday in May for FREE! They use it as a way to try and get people who have never tried reading a comic -or- haven't picked up a comic in years, to try a comic for free.) I present to you all a narrated version of Last year's FCBD story: The Tale of the Wise Weaver:

direct link: http://vimeo.com/mouseguard/mgwiseweaver

Narration: David Petersen

Music: Jon Sayles

My 2012 Free Comic Book Day Plans:

On Saturday May 5th I encourage you to seek out your local comic shop and pick up Archaia's AMAZING hardcover for Free Comic Book Day.
The book contains: 

-a Labryinth story by Cory Godbey, Ted Naifeh, & Adrianne Ambrose

-a Dapper Men story by Jim McCann & Janet Lee

-a Rust story by Royden Lepp

-a Cursed Pirate Girl story by Jeremy Bastian

-a Cow Boy story by Nate Cosby & Chris Eliopoulos

-and a Mouse Guard story by me.

This year I'll be happily signing books in two locations in New Hampshire & Massachusetts:

From 9:30am-12:30pm I'll be at Larry's Comics in Lowell, MA.

From 2pm-4pm I'll be at Jetpack Comics in Rochester, NH.

Both stores will have a special tip-in bookplate for the event ,which are in very limited quantity from my understanding, and can be seen to the right.

Not everyone knows about FCBD. If you do know & plan on attending, explain to to your friends/parents/teachers/colleagues who don't. There's a comic out there for every kind of reader, every age, every genre. Publishers & comic shops are working to find new readers with FCBD. A message I really want stressed by FCBD (and I think the Archaia's FCBD hardcover does a great job of this) is that comics are stories. Not just superheroes & guns*, but ANY & EVERY story that can be imagined. Everyone likes stories. There's no reason comics shouldn't find new readers

*For the record, Nothing wrong with Superhero comics. I like superheroes. I just don't want them to be the sole representation of what we are

Check back next week for a similar video treatment to this year's FCBD story: The Tale of Baldwin the Brave.

2012 Appearances:
FCBD: Jetpack Comics: May 5th
Heroes: June 22-24
San Diego Comic Con: July 11-15
Baltimore Comic Con: Sept 8-9
New York Comic Con: Oct 11-14
Detroit Fanfare: Oct 26-28

Free Comic Book Day 2012

As Archaia announced earlier this month, they will be releasing a 48 page 6" x 9" hardcover for Free Comic Book Day (May 5th 2012). I'm doing a new Mouse Guard story which follows last year's tradition of being a morality tale told to a younger incarnation of one of the adult characters from my series. Other stories will include a Cursed Pirate Girl story by Jeremy Bastian, Labyrinth by Ted Naifeh & Cory Godby, Rust by Royden Lepp, Dapper Men by Jim McCann & Janet Lee, and Cow Boy by Chris Eliopoulos & Nate Cosby. It's going to be a real honor sharing the book with all that talent! (5 of whom either have-done or will-be-doing a Legends of the Guard story!)

Before I knew Archaia's plan to do a 6" x 9" book, I started work on a FCBD cover the way I normally would...as an 8" x 8" square flip book like the last two years. The morality tale in my story is all being told through a puppet show, so the cover features the three main cast of the play with the puppet theater where the show is staged. There was barely room to accommodate the traditionally blank space where retailers can stamp or label their store's info so new customers will know where to return. Then I got the call about the size format. I still plan to do my pages square, floating them on the 6" x 9" page with decorative elements framing the panels (so that later I can collect the FCBD stories sometime down the line in a Mouse Guard 8" x 8" format), but for the cover...that needed to be special.

With the art already colored, I needed to do a patch job to extend the artwork. I laid out more bristol board over the original inked linework and using a lightbox I added more height on this new piece feathering into the existing linework on my original below. I added a little to the top, and a great deal to the bottom. This way there would be plenty of room to place the retailer's stamp, and display all the titles for the various stories going into the volume. Scanning in my height-patches, I feathered in the coloring and tried to make it look as seamless as I could. Here is the artwork I sent to Archaia. They made some changes to the design to make room for all the titles and logos. It looks great this way too, and it sounds like the retailer's stamp/sticker will be on the back cover(?). You also notice the Free Comic Book Day banner on Archaia's version? That's one I was asked to draw. I don't know if it's fully approved by the FCBD committee yet...so let's move on (plus I could do a whole post just on the process for that logo!)

Once I started working on the story, I wanted to build myself (you guessed it) a little model of the puppet stage. I did this because 1) I had already designed the look of it when I drew the cover, so it would only mean printing out my cover at and pasting it to a few sheets of cardboard, and 2) since I was going to be blocking out a tiny theatrical play, I wanted to make sure I had an understanding of how deep the stage was, how the backdrops could be unfurled for a new scene, what room the puppeteers had etc. The model is made of cardboard a few balsa sticks and my printed out drawings from the cover art. It has one of the highest quick/quality ratios of all the models I've built.


And earlier in the year, after drawing a Mouse puppet builder, I had a bug to make my own mouse marionette. I sculpted the shapes out of Sculpy, building up the mass of the head and body with balls of tinfoil. Once the polymer clay had baked in the oven and cured, I carved the enlarged woodgrain (and various dings, dents, & scratches) with my woodcarving tools. The marionette has come in very handy for me to reference...not just for proportion, scale, and the anatomy of the joints, but for feeling the weight of how the arms WANT to hang, the head WANTS to loll to the side, the legs WANT to dangle.

That brings us to a teaser. Here is the first page of my Free Comic Book Day Story colored sans-text. I know it's a long wait till May 5th of next year for the rest of it, but now is the time to tell your comic shop that you want this hardcover!

Upcoming Appearances:
2012
London Super Con: Feb 25-26

Emerald City: March 30-April 1 

Boston Comic Con: April 21-22

Free Comic Book Day 2011 Story Process

I am very proud of the story from this year's Free Comic Book Day flip-book. I am continuing to get emails and tweets from fans who discovered Mouse Guard through the story and from existing fans who loved using it as a gateway for their friends and relatives to get into the series.
So I wanted to take a post to talk about my process in getting that story finished.
In case you missed this year's issue, you can read it for free online at Graphicly.com here before reading the rest of this post.

Last year I found the task of writing short a Mouse Guard story for FCBD rather daunting. It needed to be accessible to new readers who have never seen Mouse Guard while still having something new and plot-connected for the existing fans. I was able to do a story that worked, but this year I felt I had to try a new approach. After the success of Legends of the Guard, I thought it would be fun to change the FCBD story format to be more like a folktale or Legend. With the story being told to a younger aged version of a known character, I could show how something as simple as a bedtime story could shape who that mouse became.

On a car ride to a friend's house I started thinking of folktales I liked which I could just do a comic translation of with mice. J.K. Rowling's Tale of the Three Brothers (featured in the Deathly Hallows), Chaucer's Pardoner's Tale (from the Canterbury tales), and Snow, Crow, & Blood (I had re-written a version years ago). What they all featured were a series of items, used in succession which change the outcome of the ending.

I then settled on a trio of concepts that are frequently echoed in Mouse Guard: Aggression, Defense, and Wisdom (Saxon, Rand, & Kenzie-- Swords, Strongholds, & Diplomacy). I couldn't come up with a "wisdom" item that would work to twist the ending and swapped it for poison, but made wisdom the key attribute to acquiring and successfully using the items in the correct sequence. Therefore, it made sense that I have a young Kenzie (the character's name means 'wise') told the tale that would shape his future.

The Hawk, Crab, and Snake would gift parts of themselves in their greed to get a greater claim on mouse-prey. A talon became a sword, a shell became a shield, and poison became..well, poison. The process of making the pages is my standard: break down the script into 1 page chunks, sketch the panels in a sketchbook, scan the sketches and assemble them in a Photoshop template of the page with placed text blocked where I think it goes, print out those layouts, and ink the final artwork on bristol using a lightbox to follow my layouts as guides. Lastly I scan the inks, and color the artwork and make final text changes.

ps: Sorry about missing last week's post. I was swamped returning home from Phoenix,and
with the power outage later that week I never got a good chance to catch up on the posting.

Upcoming Appearances:
Cherry Capital Con: June 25-26
San Diego Comic Con: July 20-24
Baltimore Comic Con: Aug. 20-21
New York Comic Con: Oct. 13-16

FCBD-2010 page 3 Process:

Its been a while since I have done a ustream or shown a process post. This is a start to finish look at the third page of the Free Comic Book Day story from this year.

Writing: The script I typed wasn't anything more than the words that appear in the final page. Other than page 1 being a 'Gwendolyn writing' setup and the end of the story, each page was supposed to simply be a different patrol of mice doing typical spring time work. In this case, harvesting/escorting a harvest of early growth food plants. In addition to showing the main characters from Fall and Winter, I also wanted to showcase other Guardmice (some from Winter and the RPG cover art)

Sketches: I started this page knowing the 1st panel would be a map section showing where the mice were, but the rest of the panels needed to show the work they were doing there. Sela and Cerise (mice based on my sisters) are escorting this harvest, so I worked up several sketches of that. Sometimes sketching this stuff out helps me figure the size/shape of a panel. Other times I know the size, but need to draw the elements separately so I can resize, slide, rotate and tweak them for the final composition. Two sketches are marked with * as being panel layouts I discarded.

Composition: I scanned in my sketchbook work and placed the drawings into the panel grid I chose for this page. I used the lineart for the map from the 1st hardcover to distort for the first panel. The other panels are composites of my various sketches. Sometimes I tint the portions so it's easier to read with the sketchy lines where one mouse or element begins and the other ends. I find the freedom to resize and shift and move parts of the drawing around to really help my compositions for each panel. Because the story was a bit text heavy, I added in the text so I knew where I would place it and that it would all fit.

Inks: I print out the composite layout and tape it to my bristol so that I can ink it on a lightbox. Sometimes I'll work on tighter pencils (which I may or may not have on this one..I don't recall and don't have scans of me working on it midway). Using my sketched lines as a guide, I ink the page with UniBall Vision pens and sometimes a brush. This is the stage where I concern myself with line weights, textures, patterns, and the balance of light and dark.

Rain: With this story happening in the rain, I needed to do a rain overlay. Overlays help so that I can easily isolate all the linework and tint it or make it semi transparent in the final colors. For the graphic here, I simulated that I'm doing the overlay on a white sheet of drawing paper over the final inked bristol board on a light box. This way, I can see the scenes and know where the rain should be, if it needs to be splattering on a surface, or dripping down a mouse's face.

Flatting: This is the stage where I have scanned in the lineart and am now adding color. I'm mostly focusing on areas the colors go, and to a certain extent what my overall palette will be. I want to make sure that I establish that a mouse's fur color is different than their cloak and different from their paw, and the hilt of a sword is different than the blade. Using layers for groupings of colors is how I find it easiest to do this: fur, cloaks, skin, twigs, leaves, sky, etc. (past post on this method)

Rendering: Once my flats are done and established, I can start rendering the pieces and tweaking the final color selections (I may find a mouse looks too red or too green, or too close to the background colors). I use the dodge and burn tools to do the shading and highlights for the forms. Basically, Dodge lightens and Burn darkens any color it goes over, however their are tricks to using it based on the tolerance and settings you use for each tool. I use a textured brush that come standard with Photoshop and set the dodge and burn settings almost as low as they go. (past post on this method)

Holds & Effects: Color holds are the term used for line art that I want to display as a color instead of black ink (past post on the method). here I have added a color hold to the map, Sela's tunic stitching, and nature elements I wanted to push to the background to create depth. The rain art is inverted, tinted, set to blending mode 'overlay' and turned down in opacity. Using dodge and burn, I can render the color holds and the rain to a degree. Otherwise they can look very flat and computer generated sitting on the rendered colors for the rest of the page.

Final: Now that the art is done, it's just a matter of adding the text back in (perhaps shifting it's placement a bit from the original layout) and adding the narration boxes. I lightly rendered the narration boxes using dodge and burn so that just like the rain and holds, they don't look flat and out of place with the rest of the page.

Upcoming Appearances:
Baltimore Comic Con: August 28-29
West Hollywood Book Fair: Sept. 26
New York Comic Con (Archaia booth): Oct 8-10
Mid-Ohio Con: Nov. 6-7

FCBD 09 Print Process

Weekly Blogging:
If you haven't noticed, I'm trying to update the blog more often than I have in the past. I was posting at a 1 per month rate before, but decided to up it to 1 per week. I'm certainly no James Gurney, and can't imagine doing a daily blog, but the weekly schedule seems do-able.

FCBD '09 process:
I just sorted through a bunch of sketches I had in a drawer to find some examples of my process. I'm reluctant to share pencils usually, but I think I have a few weeks worth of stuff to share. This week I'm showing the progress on the Free Comic Book Day print from this year.

Having done a FCBD print the year before, I had established a format: 5.5" x 8.5" print with 2 panels, a scene and the letters FCBD and the year. Here is my rough sketch. It's only a few inches wide in my sketchbook. My idea was to show Saxon, Kenzie, and Rand fighting weasels (a nod of stories to come). I was concerned here with the shape of the mass of weasels and the mice as a final focus.

The next step was to scan and enlarge the thumbnail to working size (about 6" x 10" for the images). I printed out the rough at size and then using a lightbox, tightened up the pencils on a new sheet of paper. You can see the rough as yellow lines in the image here. Note that I also used a font for the layout of the text here.

Once I liked the tightened pencils, I threw a sheet of bristol on the lightbox with the pencils underneath. I inked directly on to the bristol. This way I never get any pencil on the final art. I'm finding I like using this method lately. It means being tied to my studio to ink over the lightbox, but allows me to have cleaner final artwork. As for the "FCBD" portion, using the printed font as a guide, I was able to distress the text and add stippled texture.

I then scanned the inked artwork and started coloring in Photoshop (I'm still using 7 cause I like it and "if it ain't broke..."). This stage is called 'flatting' Not only am I selecting an overall palette here (which sometimes can change again before the final colors) I'm designating which areas are broken by color. I tend to do this on multiple layers labeled things like 'mouse fur', 'clothing 1', clothing 2', 'weapons' etc.
This is also the stage where I select linework that will get a 'color hold' ie: linework that will be printed as a color as opposed to black.

The final colors get rendered and tweaked. With this composition it was important for me to make the weasels a mass, but also have each weasel 'readable'. You needed to be able to tell where one ended and the next began. I also wanted to really help the mice be the focus, so I added the lightness to the background and color hold behind them.

Next time I plan on showing more overlay/lighbox sketch/layout techniques.


Detroit Comics Book Club:
This Friday (Sept. 25th) I'll be a guest at Detroit Comics in Ferndale, MI as they discuss Mouse Guard Fall and Winter 1152 from 7PM to 9PM. The plan is to have a real conversation about the books and story and the creation of the artwork and not to wander off into various other topics. I'm excited to talk about character motivations, places I feel the book fell short, or how little story threads tie together. With that in mind, I won't be doing any drawings or sketches at this appearance, I want to focus on the book club conversation.

September Ypsi Ink & Stein:
It's that time again, the last Saturday of the month! For those unfamiliar, a group of artists and writers gather at the Corner Brewery in Ypsilanti the last Saturday of every month from 7pm 'till close. The idea is to come and work, make connections, bounce ideas off one another, and to inspire and be inspired. If you live in South-Eastern Michigan and want to join us, you are more than welcome!

Fan Art:
This week comes from Sandra Becker. You can check out her work by clicking her name. Thanks Sandra!


Upcoming Appearances:
Detroit Comics' Book Club: Sept. 25
Long Beach Comic Con: Oct. 2-4
Baltimore Comic Con: Oct. 10-11
Big Apple Con Oct. 16-18