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More snapshots of The Vermont Monster Guide:

Retouch work on finished pieces: webbed fingers for the alien, longer fingernails on the Northfield Pigman — nips and tucks, to be sure, but part of the end run.


Some illustrations have gone through many changes since their initial rough sketches (late winter/spring 2008).

For instance, compare the Pigman rough (left) with the final drawing (above) — which itself was part of the initial book proposal Joe and I labored over for a few months and I pitched to University Press of New England last August.

It’s an interesting process, and different in every single case.

Sometimes, as with the Pigman, I have to draw multiple sketches to shuck previous archetypes and ‘versions’ I have stuck in my own head — I’d previously drawn the Pigman for Joe’s book Weird New England, and didn’t want to take the same approach this time around.

The Vermont Monster Guide rough I originally showed to Joe indeed took it in another direction, but was still too close to a classic version of the critter: the makeup for the ‘pigman’ in the 1933 Island of Lost Souls, Paramount’s still-chilling adaptation of H. G. Wells’ The Island of Dr. Moreau. That was fresh in my mind for a number of reasons — a bit of a dance I took with adapting the novel back in 2007 (for a possible venture with James Sturm, which we just didn’t work up any chemistry with or for), an ongoing conversation with a friend (hey, Bill Stetson!) about the film — but it was another orientation I had to delineate in order to abandon it, and move on.

The final Pigman is still rooted in classical fantastique imagery, but it feels ‘right’ — and helped establish the tenor for the rest of the project.

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Tonight is the pre-graduation barbeque at the Center for Cartoon Studies — and tomorrow is the graduation proper.

Exciting time for one and all hereabouts, and per usual tinged with a blend of relief, joy and melancholy.

The inevitable process of spring activity, completion, elation, disappointment, completion, community, separation and the simultaneous end of one momentous trail and blazing of a new path for each and every individual graduate — and the first year students, who are plunging into the summer, be it seeking a summer job, working, interning, drifting and/or deciding on a variety of issues that will shape their coming second year, for those returning in the fall — all comes down tonight and this weekend.

Whew.

Good luck, CCSers, one and all, and we’ll see you tonight!
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Frequent and rock-steady Myrant reader tOkKa emailed me out of the blue yesterday, steering me to

Hey, it’s Terror-Pin the Terrible — the April 1990 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle toy design pitch that predated the TMNT 2: Secret of the Ooze snapping-turtle mutant villain Tokka!

I’ll write about the backstory behind this drawing, and its legacy, another day — suffice to say it was a pitch invited and encouraged by the Mirage Studios cartoonists, and Steve Murphy’s direct involvement was reflected by his addition to the pitch, Snappy Warhol.

Steve was one of the Mirage crew I contacted to ask if anyone had ever concocted a TMNT creature based on snapping turtles — an obvious enough link to make, I thought, and one I wouldn’t have tossed into the ring had it already been concieved or proposed before.

Turned out it hadn’t been, so I sketched up Terror-Pin as one of a number of pitches I made that afternoon.

Thanks to tOkKa and to Steve and Ryan — hard to believe that was almost two decades ago!

Vermont Monster Guide artwork ©2009 SR Bissette, all rights reserved. Terror-Pin/Tokka ©1990, 1991, 2009 Mirage Studios, Inc., per revised legal agreement with Mirage Studios, Inc.; Snappy Warhol (unless otherwise licensed) ©1990 Stephen Murphy.