David Petersen's Blog, page 70

Something New Under the SunAt San Diego Comic Con this ye...

Something New Under the SunAt San Diego Comic Con this year, I was on a panel called: MTV Geek's "Creator Pitch LIVE!". Tom Akel (exec editor at MTV comics) asked me to join Marc Silvestri(X-men & Cyber Force) and Kevin Eastman(Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles)to a friendly competition of pitching an idea live for the audience to declare a winner by applause. We were each given the same theme about three weeks before the convention for us each to come up with whatever presentation materials we wanted for the pitch. The theme was "creator's rights" and gave examples of current news stories with creators (and their heirs) in legal battles with publishers and even some recent co-creators going to court over ownership rights.

I want to stop right here and say that the images and story I created for this pitch were for the pitch alone and not a project I plan to work on in comic book form. I'm still working on Mouse Guard full-time.
You can start by watching the 3 part video on MTV's site (my pitch is part 3) or read my rough pitch and notes below and then go watch later

I boiled down my idea into something simpler to get a better grasp on where to take it as a comic story: "Who owns ideas, and what ideas are you willing to part with and for what cost". So here's the pitch: In the not too distant future, your cell phone, social media, music player, gps, etc are all contained in an over the ear device that also has the ability to collect your ideas and transmit them to your service provider and also for the service provider to beam ideas into your head to get readings on your opinions.
(Art Notes: This is a composite of several paintings with some text and logo design thrown in for good measure. The 'Sun' brand is the company the story focuses on the most)


Who would use such a device? Everyone. The devices are so user friendly and help with everyone's busy lifestyles, that no one cares about owning their ideas. Old, young, fat, slim, male, female...everyone has signed on. Why? Because people don't see values in most of their passing ideas "that pasta looks tasty", "what if that scarf came in yellow", "If only someone made a self-adjusting wrench".
(Art Notes: I started with the old man, girl, fat lady, and lifeguard looking dude and added the other two later after thinking the four didn't show enough of diversity or enough of a crowd to get my point across. I do wish I had pushed the shapes further on a few of their designs.)


Since the data is being tracked and beamed back into other user's head to collect market research data, you are rewarded with cash back on your good ideas, enough so that, if you are a creative type, your device and plan may be free! All of this is done without you noticing your idea ever left your head (or perhaps that you ever had the idea in the first place) and the same is true for anything they beam back into you for market data purposes.
(Art Notes: I was going for a really moody high tech big brother look here. I had an Eric Canete layout in mind for the piece, but after failing at emulating Eric twice for this image, I stuck with this 2nd version)

Enter our 'hero'. 17 year old Sammuel Simons has just graduated and is, as most of us were at 17, confused about his life and what to do next. Sam has grown up with this technology, and probably got his first device at a young age, but now he's having 2nd thoughts....
(Art Notes: This is the first painting I did for the pitch to establish Sam's look early. The red hoodie I thought made him seem average and comfy, not poor, not rich. The red hair was for me to escape my usual dark haired characters that usually resemble 16 year old me)


In this state, he decides to write a story, but has second thoughts about the personal ideas he writes to be collected by Sun Telecom, so he disables and removes his device (unheard of for a teenager who wants to be plugged in to anything and everything!). He wants this to be personal and his own, and a story without interference.
(Art Notes: My favorite piece from the pitch. I had fun roughing in the people in the background to be people-shapes rather than people. I'm also happy with the body language I got in this painting.)



News about Sam disabling his device is picked up by Sun Telecom first, who are upset at the breach in the user agreement (you know...that really long thing you never read before you check a box and click 'agree'). But beyond that, word is getting out to other users across the world that "some kid" is not only off the grid, but is writing something new...something new that no one has had a chance to see, influence, or change. That piece of info alone is pinging higher on the research data charts than almost anything ever has. The public is excited, really excited, and Kane Greer, President of Sun Telecom, wants that idea back.
(Art Notes: Kane was originally more of a classic Snidely Wiplash type villain, but to move away from that cliche and make the antagonist more president-of-a-business looking, I started with a more heroic head-shape and hair style)


Everyone is looking for Sam because they want their hands on this new story, this un-homogenized new idea. This includes the equivalent of bounty hunters that will be rewarded for the capture of not only Sam's book, but also Sam himself (in case he hasn't finished his writing). Sam is driven out of the city beyond the suburbs and into the woods, camping and forraging for supplies, but where he also quietly writes his ideas down and freely thinks up new ones.
(Art Notes: I painted this scene twitce. The first time was smaller with the tent very small and Sam just a dot, but I liked the layout concept and figured it would be a good mock-cover for the pitch, so I did this larger version and worked the logo/title in)


Along the way we meet several characters that encounter Sam while he's on the run. Keeley Adams, a girl a bit younger than Sam, but wants to be his girlfriend, and so she is torn about turning Sam in, because doing so would bring him home, where she could spend more time with him. Bryan Golder, a jerk-jock from Sam's school who is an amature info-bounty hunter on the trail of Sam. And Jackson Jeffers, Sam's good friend who wants to wheel-and-deal so that everyone profits from this new idea.
(Art Notes: Since the only characters I'd spent time on were Sam & Kane at this point, I decided to round out the cast a bit, to show this story had more to do than just Sam leaving the city and sitting in a tent while a big-wig at a phone company got mad. Jackson is visually based on my good friend Jesse Glenn who is the real-life inspiration for Mouse Guard's Kenzie)


Sam also crosses paths with Aldwin Barnes, a hermit in the woods who also gave up technology to live a simple life some time ago. He is a recluse camped out like Sam, and wants Sam to leave because of the attention being drawn to Aldwin's home. Aldwin also serves as a frightening mirror for Sam, of perhaps what can become of you if you stay away from people and sit with your own ideas for too long.
(Art Notes: This was just a purely fun painting to do. I was more in the groove of painting these people as characters, and I'm always better at drawing/painting craggy old people and dwarves and wizards anyhow.)

I'm unsure if in the course of the story what it is Sam is writing should be revealed...or if his idea was even good. I think the message is more about the chase, about the excitement over something that wasn't decided by commitee, over edited, or test marketed for optimum results for the lowest common denominator... because that is what So Something New Under the Sun is all about.
(Art Notes: I still like the layout of this piece, but as it was my last to finish before packing up for San Diego, I rushed on the chasing figures and think they all look awful compared to the running figure of Sam that I'm still pleased with)

At the end of the panel, I was voted the winner. Even though I'm pleased with my concept (especially when it came to me on the car ride home from HEROES con and then just 1.5 days painting), I want to be fair ad mention that Kevin missed the email about bringing pre-made visuals to the panel until it was too late, and Marc had his drawings, but was unable to scan them so they could be presented on the big screen. Winning officially entitles me to bragging rights (over Kevin & Marc) and to come back next year and defend my title. However, a movie producer approached me afterwards saying that he liked it and would easily make that story into a movie. I have his contact and we will see in the future what happens to Something New Under The Sun....

2012 Appearances:
Baltimore Comic Con: Sept 8-9
New York Comic Con: Oct 11-14
Detroit Fanfare: Oct 26-28
Thought Bubble: Nov 17-18

The Confederacy of Unprecedented Fellows:For Je...

The Confederacy of Unprecedented Fellows:
For Jeremy Bastian's Birthday, I did this piece for him. A while back, he and I had fun thinking of who would be the members of an 'anti-Leauge-of-Extraordinary-Gentlemen'. In the cartoon Challenge of the Superfriends, the heroes faced the Legion of Doom, a group of supervillians where there seemed to be perfect match-ups for their superhero counterparts: Aquaman vs Black Manta, Wonder Woman vs The Cheetah, etc.

In coming up with foes or counterparts to Alan Moore's literary comic team we settled on three immediately. To face off against the brute of Mr. Hyde, we would have Frankenstein's Monster. For the sea battles, Capt. Nemo would square off against Captain Hook (and perhaps a bit of stolen Neverland Magic). And for the consummate hunter Alan Quartermain, who better than the villainous big game of Shere Khan.For counterparts for Mina Murray & The Invisible Man, Jeremy & I struggled for a bit. 

The Headless Horseman came up and so did the Wicked Witch of the West and for a long time it was what we settled on. But as I started to work on this piece, I didn't like those two figures. First off the comparisons were weak...The Horseman was missing a head so there was a bit of overlapping visual to the Invisible man...but the correlation ended there, and Mina and the witch were both female, but shared no other threads. And secondly, both characters were written into literature by American authors and felt as treasonous to the Leauge's sensibilities as the 2003 movie (with Tom Sawyer being added so that American audiences had a character to relate to).

With Mina, I thought of the parallels between her and Christine Daae from Phantom of the Opera. Both characters are engaged to seemingly perfect milk-toast men, are kidnapped & seduced by passionate & horrific strangers, and are returned to their lives somewhat changed for the experience. However, I couldn't bring myself to make Christine a villain in any light. But that track did get me to consider the Phantom as a counterpart to the Invisible Man. Both are manipulators and work best when unseen. For Mina I ended up going with Irene Adler, a love interest of Sherlock Holmes and an adventurer in her own right.

For the process of this piece, I followed my typical routine. I started with sketching bits in my sketchbook. I then scanned those and manipulated them in Photoshop into a digital composite image. At that stage I mirrored some characters, fixed a few proportion issues, and added text & some design elements. The layout was printed and using a lightbox I was able to see it through my bristol board where I inked the piece. The inks were scanned and I colored the piece digitally setting flat colors first and then rendering the image using the dodge (lighten) and burn (darken) tools.




2012 Appearances:
Baltimore Comic Con: Sept 8-9
New York Comic Con: Oct 11-14
Detroit Fanfare: Oct 26-28
Thought Bubble: Nov 17-18

SDCC 2012 Info:Comic Con starts this week so, here is all...

SDCC 2012 Info:
Comic Con starts this week so, here is all the info you need to know about where I'll be, what I'll be doing, and what I'll have for sale.
I'll be spending most of my time at my artist alley table: GG-09, but I'll also be doing some signings at the Archaia booth: 2635. Those signing times will be announced by Archaia soon, check their site and or Twitter feed for updates. I'll try and tweet (@mouseguard) any location/signing/info updates as much as I can. At my table I'll be selling Original pages from Mouse Guard, the 2012 bookplate, T-shirts, past prints (buzzard & mouse, Monty Python Spoof, and the Guardmice crossing weapons)...and...


2012 Sketchbooks:
Just like every year, I'll have a new sketchbook that debuts at SDCC. 24 pages of commissions specifically colored for the sketchbook (plus a few odds & ends illustrations). They are a limited printing of 400, signed and numbered, and sell for $20. After I'm home from San Diego, we will make sketchbooks available for online ordering (and don't worry if you are not attending SDCC, I always have over half my print run to offer both online and at future conventions)


SDCC 2012 Print:
I've done a new print for SDCC too. The piece is a signed and numbered edition of 300. It's 11" x 11" (like the UK print from earlier this year) and will sell for $20. I don't know how well these will or won't sell because I've never done a limited print for SDCC. If I have any left after the show, I'll offer them for sale online. But there is a chance they will sell out at the convention, so if you can't attend, but know someone going, see if they can pick one up for you.


Pannels:
I'll be on two panels at the convention:

Thursday 5:00-6:00 MTV Geek: Creator Pitch LIVE!— MTV Comics executive editor Tom Akelhosts a live pitch competition between three of the top creators in the business. Just three weeks prior to Comic-Con, creators were each given the same topic, something that's been a hot button issue in the industry in the past year, from which they will draw their inspiration to develop a new comic series. Creators have 10 minutes to present their pitch to the fans. They're be some time for questions, and then the pitches will be put it to a vote that's determined by you!  Room 25ABC  

Saturday 6:00-7:00 Archaia: How to Tell a Better Story Through World Building— Are you an aspiring storyteller? Want to know the keys to world building and telling a good story? David Petersen (Mouse Guard), Jeremy Bastian (Cursed Pirate Girl), and Royden Lepp(Rust), three accomplished storytellers who have published or are publishing books through Archaia, present an informative, entertaining panel to show you how world building can help you write and/or draw a better story. From character development to settings and environment to deciding on the right era, this panel will impart valuable insight into what goes into crafting a better story. Panelists will showcase rarely seen sketch art, concept designs, and models to enhance their presentation.  Room 9  

Both should be fun. The Creator Pitch Live blurb doesn't mention it, but my co-panelists will be Marc Silvestri & Kevin Eastman! 

Print Process:
Here is the process for making the print image. I hadn't planned on making a new print for SDCC, but with no new books, and no new prints, I felt like I could use something new and fresh for the SDCC attendees. Julia mentioned that in my time doing prints, I have not offered up one that is simply "pretty". I've done mice with swords & axes, I've done darker imagery of mice on bones or mice on buzzards, and I've reprinted cover art as prints...but never something pretty for pretty's sake. Julia said "something where a non-comic-fan wife/girlfriend would be happy to have it framed or displayed in the living space". Julia also wanted there to be peacock feathers because she likes the way I ink those. I started with this sketch, scanned it, and printed it out at final art size

I ustreamed most of the rest of the process. The inks were all done on 12" x 12" bristol with a 0.7 Copic Multiliner suing my printed layout as a guide. The mouse started off being no mouse in particular, but as I inked her, I may have started developing a history for her. The flowering tree is one that is near my house and that I photographed when gathering some reference of a patch of ivy that grows beneath it. The sword is one I've drawn a few times before. I know what mouse it belongs to and, to some degree, what it means in that mouse's life, but I have not worked out the details of when that mouse gets it or how this mouse came to have it tied to a flowering tree. See how the act of just making a print image can open the doors for new stories, characters, and backgrounds?

The inks were scanned and then colored digitally. I color held the pattern on her dress and the eye details of the peacock feathers.That pale yellow background color is starting to become one of my go-to color choices, and the muted red-oranges and olive greens are also popping up as regular color selections for me. In some ways, having a stock palette is good, it gives consistency to your work and world. In other ways it becomes an easy crutch and makes it harder to evoke different times of day, seasons, locations, and moods. In this instance, as a one-of image that represents the beauty of Mouse Guard, I think the colors work, but I'm typing this as a reminder to myself to make sure I go beyond this color range for future pieces.

2012 Appearances:
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
Thought Bubble: Nov 17-18

Old RPG character drawings:Playing Roleplaying games betw...

Old RPG character drawings:
Playing Roleplaying games between the ages of 12 and 20-something helped me hone my storytelling skills, see how good (as well as bad) character interaction works, and how to think on your feet when a story goes in a direction differently than you planned. One of my favorite parts of roleplaying though was the excuse to draw the character portrait (sometimes drawing all the other player's characters as well). Today I'm going to show some old character portraits I uncovered in a folder in my file drawers. Please excuse that some of them are very old and embarrassing.

I'll start with some of the earliest characters I still have drawings of (as opposed to the 50-60 that all were scrapped in a move or two). I was 16, heavily influenced by the Image founders and trying my best to ape their style without knowing anything about drawing anatomy. James Bristol is a character that came about because of a car accident. Jesse Glenn (real life Kenzie) and I got into a car accident that day where I totaled my Dad's car. (the other driver, who was in the wrong, drove off) The accident happened on the corner of Bristol and Fern in Flint, MI. Jess & I each took the street names for our character's surnames (his was Chloe Fern). James was a character who could get up and walk away from any accident, his body was still wounded, but he didn't seem to feel it or have it affect his motor skills.

Next in line for my obviously-emulate/copying-an-Image artist is this portrait of Calvin Cooper influenced by J. Scott Cambell's work. For this session, I was told to come up with a character with no super powers and that through the course of the adventure they would be revealed to me (much like in comics the character is suddenly aware of abilities they did not have previously) Calvin, or Cal for short, worked at a fast food joint and was shy around girls...I may have some up with other personality traits for him, but I don't recall them now. His super power was that if he was cut, he only needed to squeeze the wound together for it to start healing. In the adventure this was put to the text on a lager scale when his fingers were severed from his hand and he needed only to push them back in place for full functionality (note red rings on his hand added to the drawing after that event happened in the game)

In college some friends and I dusted off some of our old RPG rule books and decided to play Robotech. Cartoon Network was re-running the cartoon series at the time, so it was easy for us to get back into the genre and excitement of being Veritech pilots. In this instance I have portraits for both my character Kiley Webb and my friend Seyth's character Kamal Duce. Here the emulation of style was more intentional. I wasn't drawing this way as a habit, but just for the purpose of making the characters look like they fit in the Robotech world. With the above examples, I wanted to draw like those guys all the time and was trying to train myself to.

Our group did play a lot of super hero games (Heroes Unlimited, GURPS Supers), futuristic games (Shadowrun, Star Wars, & Rifts) and the TMNT RPG, we tended to fall back on fantasy adventure games like D&D (though I know we played a few other systems and even made up a few ourselves.) I tended to play elven thiefs and my stock character was Lucas Taver. Lucas looked an awful lot like me, but with pointed ears, more dextarity and a big floppy blue hat (which is a rather consicuous wardrobe item for a thief). This watercolor of Lucas was from college, but was probably the third or fourth time I had re-created the character having lost character sheets or switching Game Masters.


I came up with a backstory for their being a wing of the Thief's guild that was all kin to the Taver clan, and from that point on I tried to make characters that were Tavers (even if they were not thieves). Abram Taver was one of my favorite characters I ever rolled up, but I never really got a chance to play him. The character creation came from the D&D supplement book for elves where various 'kits' were made to have special multi-class characters. He was a fighter/thief/mage and was essentially like D&D Indiana Jones, but with just enough magic to light his way, detect spells, and ward off curses. He would collect artifacts and relics for them to go into a vaulted collection of the elves for safe keeping. Like J.K. Rowling's goblin's ideas about goblin made items, Abram felt that either a treasure was wrought by elven hand and therefore belonged back with the elves, or it was a wonderful item dwarves or humans managed to craft well themselves, but were too simple-minded to appreciate and care for. I couldn't pinpoint when I drew this, but I'd say it's from 1998-ish and a drawing I still really like.


Other Taver-kin were H.S. Berkley (a recreation of the stats/kit for Abram), Frederik Taver (who I remember very little about) and Avril Taver. These were all drawn at dinners either on the placemats, butcher paper, tablecloth, or in a food-stained sketchbook I'd carry around. Avril was both an RPG character and a comic story character. I was participating a group comic-making activity on a message board when I created Avril. The project was to do a D&D adventure type comic where each participant has a character of their own but writes & draws the whole story for 2-4 pages before handing it off to the next person.


The comic never got to page 1. As a warm-up for it though, each artist was asked to draw a 3-4 page story with just their own character as an intro. I set up a 4 page comic where Lucas confronts Avril about the tenuous connection to the Taver-clan Thieves Guild now that Avril has abandoned it abd become a ranger of the land. Avril's fancy armor is a point of contention and has Lucas believing Avril stole from his own kin of thieves. I finished all 4 pages, but they were mainly compositied and colored sketches, and I don't have any of the files anymore. The sketches remain, and I was able to recreate the look of those pages here. The black areas were all open in the sketches and filled digitally in the coloring process. The backgrounds were minimal (mostly non-existant) and filled in with arts & crafts era woodblock cuts of trees.


Fan Art:
Dylan Maddox sent in this 3-D rendering of his Mouse Guard RPG character. And with this post being all about the love of drawing your RPG charaters, Dylan's fan art is the perfect piece to showcase this week.

2012 Appearances:
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
Thought Bubble: Nov 17-18

Black Axe #5 Cover Process:A few weeks ago, I turned in t...

Black Axe #5 Cover Process:
A few weeks ago, I turned in the final files for Black Axe #5 to Archaia. While that is a great milestone, I know that it is much further behind schedule than everyone (Archaia, fans, & myself) would like. I'm moving ahead with Issue #6 and wanted to take this blogpost to share the cover art to #5 and my process behind it.

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HAVEN'T READ ISSUE 4?
READ NO FURTHER: SPOILERS ABOUND
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Em's death is explained and given meaning in issue 5, so I wanted the cover to feature her and show respect to the passing of the character. I showed a mouse funeral in Winter 1152, and for Black Axe, I wanted & needed to do something different with the ceremony. My two big visual cues came from various paintings (but mostly the one shown here) of Hamlet's Ophelia and Padme from Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith. Celanawe, a weathered & grizzled mouse, recieved a funeral by fire. Em's more gentle nature needed something more calming, a sea/river burial. The flowers from Padme's casket-sled translated directly to this cover and the scene in the book, they also gave the ever-important mouse-scale to the imagery.

I sketched a floating Em surrounded by flower pedals (based on a daisey native to Denmark...since Denmark was an influence on the creation of the isle of Ildur). Em is holding a crow's feather, and (this isn't a spoiler) I don't explain why when it's shown in the funeral scene.Her kinship with birds gives Celanawe & Conrad the idea to send her off with a feather Once I had a floating Em sketched, I didn't need to do much more drawing since most of the work of this cover was going to be in the trick of getting transparent water on the submerged items & making the surrounding water interesting.

I scanned the sketch, made some resizing adjustments and then printed it out in-scale with the final cover art dimensions. Using a lightbox to see my printout as a guide, I inked in the figure of Em and the flowers. There wasn't much need to shade or render anything on this cover, so it looks a bit stark in comparison to some of the past covers. To get some transparency for the water's flow I inked water-ripple lines on an overlay sheet (using the lighbox so I could keep the lines in registration with the cover art). The lines shown here are pink only for illustrative purposes for the blog, they are black on the real overlay sheet. Having them on separate paper makes it easier for me when coloring to isolate and manipulate those lines.

Last step was coloring. The color choice for the water was directly related to the color of Em's dress. I wanted to take advantage of a blue/orange contrast and used a muted blue green that still played off of Em's muted red-orange dress. I set the water overlay lines on a layer which has some transparency to it. This allows the ink and color work underneath those lines to be seen. To get the parts of Em, her dress, and the flowers that are submerged to look so, I made a photoshop layer to affect those areas and desaturate, tint, and darken them.

Fan Art:
This piece comes from Kal Siagian who writes:

I did this fanart to get a laugh out of my friends who play kendo (Japanese fencing)...Adapting the helmet to the mouse head shapes was surprisingly tricky, and there was so much going on behind the mice with tails and armor cords that the cloaks were just too much, so I moved the identifying cloak colors to the plate of their torso protectors.

I wrote Kal back saying that the attention to detail with the costume is much more interesting than a guard's standard cloak. Well done Kal!


2012 Appearances:
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
Thought Bubble: Nov 17-18

Rocket Raccoon:I was asked by Jon Morris to contribute to...

Rocket Raccoon:
I was asked by Jon Morris to contribute to his blog project: The Official Handbook to the Marvel Universe REDUXE Edition. Jon has previously organized several projects with indy artists coming up with their own covers for an alternative DC New 52, for a re-imagined Marvel, for re-imagined comic covers in general, and for new corner logos for various comics. The idea of the REDUXE Ed. of the Marvel Handbook is to have current indy artists redraw all the character portraits from the handbook, but with the freedom to redesign/reinterpret the character as they go.


I went for Rocket Raccoon simply because, as an animal character, he was purely in my wheelhouse. I combined a few visual cues from several various incarnations of the character and filter that all through my inking sensibilities (and with some copper-ish steampunky guns). Below are the pencil sketch and inks.

My Grandparents:
Gilbert & Doris Petersen were a pretty big part of my life. We lived only a few miles from them, and I saw them at least once a week from my birth right up through when I left for college. Even though neither lived long enough to see Mouse Guard released on a national level, I have tried to put their presence in the books (Fall is dedicated in their memory, there are mouse cities in honor of them, and the whole matriarchal society is because of the strong woman my grandmother was.) I sculpted these mice for them as Christmas presents around 1998 (6 years before I drew issue 1). My grandmother was the best baker I'll ever know, & my grandfather was a bit of a cowboy, so their mice sculptures depicted that.


Fan Art:
This piece of Saxon, Kenzie, & Lieam was painted by Andrew Bayliss. I really like the sense of scale and imminent danger. Great job Andrew!

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
Thought Bubble: Nov 17-18

Mouse Development:

Mouse Development:
While organizing things in the studio, I found a few older drawings of the mice I thought I'd share. They show a progression of how I didn't know what to do with my mouse concept for many years and eventually came to the ink work you recognize in Mouse guard today. If you are not a regular reader of the blog, you can look back at a few past posts about the origins of Mouse Guard and my drawing style before reading on:
Pre-Mouse Guard~1149
Drawing Like Yourself
The Old Guard

In 1996, after the initial drawing of Saxon, Kenzie, and Rand, I painted this on a wide scrap piece of mat board. I remember wanting to show the three as wilderness wanderers and adventurers without them being knights or warriors. It's interesting to me now that the wide horizontal composition, something I pushed for with Mouse Guard by making it a square book, was at the root of one of the earliest pieces I did of the mice. I was still heavily referencing Tom Pohrt's mice & backgrounds for this painting.
By 1997 I hadn't separated the mice out of the larger story concept of my "1149" animal world. While attending community college in Flint, MI, I started writing the animal tales as a chapter book (with the  plan for spot illustrations) I was also taking printmaking at the time, and generated a few etchings of the mice. The first one of the mouse trio (left) was a foundation level assignment where we were only allowed to use one type of ground (acid resist) to make the image.
The second I did as a mock book cover. While writing the first few chapters (which at that time had goats, a tiger, a fox and many other species) I was finding how compelling the mice were to write for. The concepts for their culture were solidifying from a vague altruistic-boy-scout-D&D-ranger to what has since become the inner workings of the Guard on display in my books and the roleplaying game. Using them as the focus of this mock cover not only was the shift for making the stories mostly about mice, but also for this importance of a major winter conflict with weasels.
Over the course of college I was jumping around between tools & techniques I could use to make images. And in the same way, I didn't know what would be the best way to tell my mouse story and jumped between options there as well. As a comic? as a chapter book? as a children's book? This drawing with watercolor wash was done when I was still in chapter book mode. The heavily photo referenced drawing taught me how I would need to draw my main characters without looking up photos of mice on every illustration. The facing page in my sketchbook has the note "the mice rarely trusted weasels, but in this case, they made an exception. Rand walked along ahead to warn of any dangers, Kenzie fashioned a clever saddle pouch from the weasel's bag and belt, and Saxon refused to be out of a sword-swing of the ferret's head in case the new partner was not to be trusted"

By 1998 or so though I had started to cool on seriously doing a mouse story. I was introduced to the Redwall series by Brian Jacques, and saw how someone else was already telling this genre of story with words far better that I could have hoped to. And though I was in school for art, I wasn't confident with my chops as an artist to tell a story mostly with pictures. The characters refused to die in my mind though. So for several years i would just draw the mice, even creating new characters, though I had no serious intent on moving forward with a way to tell their tales. But this causal hobby was allowing me to draw the mice in my own way ...no longer looking at how other artists drew mice or digging up endless photo reference.

After I graduated college in 2000, I had the itch to try telling a story with comics again (something I hadn't had enough time to try while earning a degree). Among other story concepts I considered to play with was Mouse Guard. The rendered pencil work seen above was too time consuming to draw panel after panel of, so I tried drawing the characters with just contour lines. I found the drawing too bland, it needed tone. So I added watercolor (which I overworked and subsequently made the drawing worse by adding). The watercolor went on quicker than fully rendering a pencil drawing, but it was less forgiving. (as a side note, I liked this composition so much I redrew it and used it on the über-rare 2004 MG sketchbook)


It was at a family BBQ where I tried drawing the mice in ink where I found my happy place for the art-style. I had enough experience drawing the mouse characters, I could do it without reference and still make them look like semi-real mice, and I could use cross-hatching and stippling to get all the tone I wanted out of them. With the ink I also got a look of polished-finish that my pencil and water color work always seemed to lack.This drawing (supposed to be me as a mouse) was from that drawing session at the outdoor BBQ. I was calling back my printmaking experience with etchings and woodcuts for "how to make grey tones from black lines" and it just felt right.

There was still a part of me that questioned if I could pull off doing a Mouse Guard story in a medieval setting though. Redwall wasn't only a popular book series, but had an animated series on PBS by this time, and I feared the comparisons. So briefly I toyed with the concept of a rather steam-punk-London-airships Mouse Guard. This character was to be one of our heroes who patrolled a war torn city from mouse spies, running up tall structures to leap into scheduled passing airships. Like James Bond, I wanted him to have a number for a code name, one that suggested there were others like him. This concept wasn't developed more than that, but I do remember while doing this drawing feeling I had a better handle on inking textures and making shapes out of inked negative space.

This last drawing (which butt ends the artwork from the Drawing like Yourself post from last February) was a carry over from the steam-punk idea where I tried to design an Ewok-esque flying rig for the medieval mice. Not only is the rig silly, but I opted to have mice ride birds in Mouse Guard to show the sense of wilderness, setting, and scale.


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

Iron Pinup process:Shane-Michael Vidaurri and I met sever...

Iron Pinup process:
Shane-Michael Vidaurri and I met several years ago at the New York Comic con. He was an illustrator who was starting to dabble in sequential storytelling. I really liked what he was doing with watercolor washes and subtle pacing. We have since stayed in touch and his first book is due out from Archaia this summer: Iron, or the War After. Shane asked me to do a pinup for the collection.

Shane contributed a pinup to Mouse Guard (which will be seen in Black Axe #5) and this piece was to balance the exchange. I like how he frequently uses inset panels, open space, and muted colors. So I intended to emulate these methods into my piece for him. He specifically asked for the Officer Tiger character, Engel. Using the first chapter's imagery, I honed in on one page from the book showing Engel in his office, uniform jacket removed, suspenders showing, with his important documents and intercom-radio on his desk.

I started with a sketch or two in my sketchbook (the tiger's head was drawn on a different page and at a different scale while looking at photo reference). The sketches were assembled and adjusted in photoshop. Some of the details didn't fit into the frame (like the radio or the desk papers) the way I originally drew it, so I sliced up the image and moved bits where they needed to be for this final composition. The inset panel was saved for me to draw a tree branch in ink, and the wall paper pattern was pasted together off of a sampling of a pattern from a historic wallpaper company.

Using a printed version of the digitally adjusted layout above, I inked the final art on bristol board using a light box to see my layout as a guide. Instead of just digitally inserting the wallpaper texture, I wanted to hand ink every little bit of the pattern. This allowed me to make subtle wear marks or differences between them so that in the end, the image doesn't look hand drawn with a computer generated/pasted pattern laying on top of it. The hand inking makes it all cohesive.

Scanning the image I layed in my flat colors. This is where I establish the color areas: his face & arms being a different color from his shirt, also different from the pants, and the wall...and where all those colors start and stop. I forgot to mention above that the pocket watch was something I added to give the character an interesting pose and also to suggest something about his character...a man who believes in rules and following them. Turns out Shane liked this character detail and incorporated it into the later chapters of the book.

After my flats were established (and we took time for the pocket watch segue) I rendered the image. To add the highlights and shadows I use the dodge (lightens) & burn (darkens) tools in photoshop. The color holds on the wallpaper and the tree branch were color tweaked and rendered as well. It was a pleasure to do this pinup, not only because of knowing shane, and it being for our mutual publisher, but also because it's an interesting animal story, where the animal species are cues to the reader about what type of personality that character has, and I would love to read more stories like that.

S.M. Viduarri's Mouse Guard pinup2012 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

Printmaking: Intaglio + ReliefI've talked before about my...

Printmaking: Intaglio + Relief
I've talked before about my two main printmaking disciplines (Intaglio & Relief)  in college and how they informed my growth as an artist. But I wanted to share a process I only used a few times in practice that combined the two techniques for Itaglio (printing from ink underneath the surface of the 'plate') and relief (printing from on top of the surface of the 'plate'.

My Printmaking professor at Mott Community College, Sam Morello, showed us a piece of his work when it was on display for an exhibition in Flint. Normally he wouldn't have shared his work with us since he wanted us to be uninfluenced by his work and only influenced by his teaching. The piece pictured here wasn't the piece he showed us, but similar. He was also vague about how the image was made. With a bit of pressing he gave enough details for those of us inspired to figure it out.

At Eastern Michigan University, I decided to try the technique in one of my last semesters as a printmaking student. The process goes something like this, in a woodblock, you carve lines like a contour line drawing (I chose to do drawings of hands in odd positions and cropped awkwardly). The block is then inked and wiped like an etching, meaning the ink settles down into the cuts below the surface of the uncarved wood block. All of the wood grain also act as tiny etched lines and the ink gets wiped down into them as well. As a last step before printing, you can add areas of flat color with a brayer (ink roller) like you would with a woodblock print. The colored ink sits up on top of the block. Making this technique a mix of Intaglio & Relief printing.

Unknown to me at the time, some past students at Eastern  had broken the press by running wood through it when they didn't also adjust the press for the correct pressure/tolerance settings. So I had no hesitation to adjust the press for my test runs of the prints, but when I put the proofs up for critique the professor was very upset I had run wood through the press. I explained I knew how to correctly adjust the press and he didn't sway, I asked him to adjust the press for me and we could run them together under his supervision, he didn't sway. I explained that these pieces were the majority of my work for the semester, and I had little else to turn in as a final, he didn't sway but re-iterated that by no means was I to run wood through that ever press again.

I called Sam. He had retired from teaching by then, but had a basement studio and a press he was willing to supervise me using. He and I printed the images I've shared above and when I turned the work in at Eastern for a final grade I was able to do so with out having broken any rules. I was questioned by the EMU professor at the final portfolio review as to how I printed them. I promised that it wasn't done on school grounds. He seemed uncertain and not pleased I still turned this work in...until the head of the art department walked in by chance, saw the work, and was very excited about my images & wanted to know more about the process. The head of department's enthusiasm forced my professor to put on a smile and grade the work based on merit rather than the backstory of how & where it was made. To add insult to injury for the professor, the head of department asked if I wouldn't mind loaning the artwork to them for their summer showcase.

The Hands Triptych now lives in our spare bedroom.




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

Casey Jones Cover process:Cover number 6 of 8 TMNT micro-...

Casey Jones Cover process:
Cover number 6 of 8 TMNT micro-series covers I'm doing for IDW is Casey Jones.
Not as familiar with both Casey in the new IDW series and with drawing humans in general, I talked over the cover with my editor Bobby Curnow. We established that Casey running through someplace in Central Park with vigilante sports equipment in-tow would be just the ticket. I referenced a few photos of hurdlers to get the pose, but found that professional hurdlers have too good of form to be convincing as teenager/vigilante Casey Jones...so I found a photo of a kindergarten field day where a 5 year old was leaping over a hurdle and it was the perfect form for Casey. I sketch out the figure on one page of my sketchbook and some benches on another.

In photoshop I compositied the drawing of Casey with the drawing of some park benches. At this stage I also did some quick lay-ins for how the tone of the piece was going to be and to fill in the background a bit. I told Bobby when I sent this in for approval that I'd be doing some digital painting for the background. I did get some notes on the rough cover, but they had to do with changing Casey's legs and replacing the cricket bat with a hockey stick. I took the opportunity to enlarge Casey a bit and rotate him to make the pose & layout more dynamic.

The inks for this piece went rather smoothly. I used a printed version of the above layout on the lightbox to ink this on bristol board. Normally for folds in fabric, I'm drawing mice in cloaks and use stippling, but here I just concentrated on some well placed contour lines. The most difficult part of the inking process was the tread of that oncoming shoe. I wanted it to read as true to being a converse all-star, but also to not be so detailed that you couldn't believe it is in motion. Something about how painless this piece was to ink should have given me warning...but it didn't.

The next step was to flat the colors and start that digital painting...oh...there is the problem...I don't really digitally paint much...I relly on hard ink outlines to guide my color work...uh-oh. After several attempts to get the painted background to look right in the same image as my hard linework, I opted to add more falling leaves as a background cover-up and distraction. Here you can see the background still in process, but with newly added drawn & inked leaves I patched in. I drew that batch of leaves on a separate sheet of paper...still wasn't doing the trick though.



I rationalized that when I do subtle color backgrounds in Mouse Guard, I often will have inked crosshatched lines that I just color-hold. This adds a unifying texture to the page and is certainly in my comfort zone. So I went back over all my painted background using a wacom tablet to paint in crosshatched lines. I built them up on top of each other more like 'painting' with colored pencil rather than paint. This technique did prove to be the solution that got me through the cover. Here you can see a close-up of the hatching


I'm showing the process out of order a bit. Here is the final rendered cover, with crosshatched background, but by the time I was doing the hatching, I had already rendered the figure of Casey, the benches, and that golf bag. This cover took a lot out of me. I don't know if I conveyed the self-doubt I had while working on this piece in my blog-write-up...but it was crushing. I spent more time on fixing that background than it usually takes me to do a cover from start to finish. But I'm happy enough with it to have turned it in, and IDW and Nickelodeon were both happy enough to approve it!


I've listed the original inked cover art, sketch, & overlay inks for sale on ebay. Provided the auction goes well, I'll list the Splinter cover next...
CASEY JONES COVER ART EBAY LINK

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