Tag Archives: Muppet art

Behind the Scenes: Muppet Robin Hood, Part 2

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A couple days ago I posted some Muppet Robin Hood audition art from Armand Villavert, Jr. It was strong enough to get Armand the gig, but he wasn’t the only artist who was considered. After all, this was one of the first Muppet comics to be produced since the 1980s. There was a considerable amount of fan interest in it, along with plenty of artists who grew up watching the Muppets and wanted a chance to put their spin on Jim Henson’s classic characters.

In fact, at one point, it really looked like Armand might not be able to draw the book. Muppet Robin Hood had already been solicited and we had a deadline in place, so Paul Morrissey, the comic’s editor, had to scramble to find a potential replacement. And the first person we both thought of was Amy Mebberson.

Now if you’re a fan of BOOM’s Muppet comics, then Amy Mebberson is probably a name you know well. She was the artist on both Muppet Peter Pan and Muppet Sherlock Holmes, and she served as the guest artist for several issues of Roger Langridge’s Muppet Show comic. But all of that work came after Muppet Robin Hood. At the time, Paul wasn’t sure how well Amy could draw the Muppets or whether her style would be one that Disney would get behind. To get her greenlit, he asked Amy to draw a short sequence from my script.

What follows is the sequence as it ran in the comic, followed by Amy’s version of it. Her version was never inked or colored and the lettering is rough and temporary, but it’s easy to imagine how it would’ve come together. Whichever version you prefer, seeing the two side-by-side helps illustrate just how much control the artist has in shaping the tone and pacing of the story, even when they’re working from a completed script. Armand’s version reads considerably different than Amy’s.

Here’s the sequence as it ran in the comic, with art by Armand Villavert, Jr.

And here’s the sequence as drawn by Amy Mebberson.

Amy really managed to bring out the comedic beats. Her version is laugh-out-loud funny and Kermit’s reaction to being handed the staff is priceless. Armand’s version, on the other hand, reads a little more aggressively. He chose to draw the sequence fairly straight, making sure the action got its due. Neither is right or wrong. They’re just different.

I would’ve loved to work with Amy (and I since have on a different project), but I’m  just glad she got her chance to work on the Muppets. After seeing the pages above, it was clear to me that she was born to draw these characters. If you haven’t read Muppet Peter Pan (written by my good friend Grace Randolph) and Muppet Sherlock Holmes, do yourself a favor and hunt them down before they go out of print!

Behind the Scenes: Muppet Robin Hood, Part 1

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The process of selecting artists is a little different for me than it is for many editors. Most editors have a full roster of projects in need of artists, so when they find an artist that they like, often they have a project immediately available that they can offer them. But as a freelance editor — which is still a rarity in comics — I’m only working on a handful of projects at any given time. So when I discover a new artist that I like, I save their info, bookmark their website…and I wait. I wait for a project to come my way that would really suit that artist’s style.

Sometimes I may wait to work with a particular artist for years, but when I do finally find a good project for the artist, that’s really just the first step. Since I work primarily on licensed comics these days, I’m not the only person who needs to approve creative teams. The publisher and the licensor both get a say, and the only way they can really judge whether an artist is fit to draw Warcraft, The Dark Crystal, Fraggle Rock or The Muppets is to see some sample art.

Trust me, if there was a way of getting the guys in charge to sign off on an artist that didn’t require asking for sketches and sometimes full pages on spec, I’d be all in favor of it. But there really isn’t, particularly when it comes to the licensor. They want to know what their characters will look like rendered in the artist’s style.

This audition material is often truly remarkable, and outside of the occasional sketchbook section, it’s usually not seen by readers.

Muppet Robin Hood completed its four-issue run two years ago, and with a new Muppets trailer playing in theaters, it seemed like a good time to revisit it and share some fun behind the scenes stuff. Obviously, the Muppets are still © The Muppets Studio and none of this stuff should be considered official Muppet canon. (Especially since I’m pretty sure that the official Muppet canon is property of Gonzo. At least, you’d think so considering he’s always the one who’s getting fired out of it.) Also, I should probably mention that I wasn’t the editor of Muppet Robin Hood. I was the writer. The editor was Paul Morrissey, but my points about sample art still hold true.

The artist on Muppet Robin Hood was Armand Villavert, Jr., an illustrator that Paul Morrissey and I knew from TOKYOPOP. Armand really wanted the gig. So much so that to get Disney to sign off on him, he didn’t just provide character sketches, he came up with a couple of sequences and wrote a complete script for them. These were never meant to be an actual part of the comic, but they’re as funny as anything I came up with. None of the below was written by me. This is all Armand.

The below two pages were colored by T. J. Geisen. I’m not sure why he wasn’t hired to color the entire comic as I think he did a great job on these samples. Note the extra detail and texture he’s provided, which helps give Armand’s line art a little additional depth. That wasn’t an approach used in the actual comic, but it probably should have been.

If you’ve read Muppet Robin Hood and you’re perceptive when it comes to art styles, you may notice something else about the above pages. They’re drawn in a different style than the one used in the comic. Armand originally drew the Muppets less stylized, opting to try to reproduce the actual look of the puppets a little more faithfully. However, after the success of Roger Langridge’s Muppet Show comic, a decision was made to render the Muppets in a style closer to his.

I understand the reasons, but I’m rather fond of this initial approach and can’t help to wonder how the book would’ve looked if we’d stuck with it. The above pages and the below sketches of Kermit and Sweetums at least give us a hint.

Later this week, we’ll look at how much differently a scene can read when drawn by different artists following the same script, and get a glimpse of what Muppet Robin Hood might have looked like had it been drawn by another popular Muppet artist. Stay tuned!