I’ve been waiting to really break down a huge and wonderful experience I had and today is the day I finally (start to) talk about the work I did for Sam and Friends: The Story of Jim Henson’s First Television Show. There’s a lot to cover so let’s start with some basics. As I have written about numerous times, I’m a huge fan of Jim Henson and all his creative works. Jim has always been my leading creative influence starting when I was a toddler all the way through to today. When Jim was a kid himself, he was fascinated with television and broke onto the scene with a black and white puppet series in 1955 on WRC–TV in Washington, DC. Craig Shemin—who I’ll also talk a whole lot more about in a bit—took on the huge task of writing a book about this particular introductory foray into Jim’s career, and would eventually bring me on to this fantastic adventure. But let’s slow it down now and get into more detail.
Images from the MuppetWiki
Every true Muppet fan knows who Craig Shemin is, but to the lay person, he’s a massive contributor to preserving the memory and legacy of Jim Henson. At his core, Craig is a writer who has written for television shows like The Wubbulous World of Dr. Seuss, Telling Stories with Tomie dePaola, Donna's Day, and Dog City. He's also written short stories, video game scripts, press interviews & appearances, text for licensed products, concert scripts, and liner notes. He's also hosted live events, screenings, & panels and prepared additional video content for such things. He has a ton of other credits like director, curator, and consultant as well as his current title of president of The Jim Henson Legacy. To say he is incredibly talented is putting it mildly, but he's also genuinely a wonderful person.
Sam and Friends saw the birth of a lot of what would be in store for Jim Henson's future including the unique and newly innovated techniques in puppetry for what would become the Muppets as we know them today. Chief amongst those Muppets would be Kermit the Frog who was only vaguely amphibian at the time. Jim Henson's complete creative collective would be splintered after his untimely death in 1990 with Kermit and his friends from The Muppet Show eventually being purchased by The Walt Disney Company, Sesame Street transitioning full ownership to Sesame Workshop, and things like Fraggle Rock, Labyrinth, and The Dark Crystal remaining with the Henson Company. Sam and Friends would become known as a "frozen property" essentially meaning that nothing new can be developed with the characters. I'll expand on that later, but ultimately this is a long and convoluted way of saying that if you really want to know more about Sam and Friends, then you should absolutely buy the book.
So now we come to late April of this year when Craig reached out to me asking if I'd be interested in creating promotional materials for the book. There were a few things I was really excited about for this, but the main draw was that I was being hired to create printed materials that would look like Jim Henson had created them himself. This was huge and I was stoked and honored. Initially I had to create four pieces: a bookplate that Craig could sign at publicity events, a campaign poster that was inspired by a 1960 sketch where Sam ran for president, a sticker, and a bookmark.
Professor Madcliffe's Bookmark
Of all of these, the bookmark was the most ambitious. Professor Madcliffe's Manual Marking Machine for Books would be completely illustrated save for the character himself whom I meticulously but lovingly masked from a 1959 photograph. This was where I set some guidelines for myself from here on out. Because I was drawing every other element aside from the professor, I wanted this particular piece to look like it was actual set design that would have been painted on wood or cardboard much like Jim had done for the actual show. As a result, the pieces that would be further set deeper in the background would be out of focus slightly on camera, so layering everything in Photoshop not only allowed me to move everything freely and easier, but the depth of field was changed as well. A subtle film grain was also added.
I need to quickly add something here that I neglected to before. While Craig was the gatekeeper on what I did, everything had to then be approved by The Jim Henson Company. For the most part that meant just making sure nothing from the show was being used without proper permission from the lawyers, but it also had to meet merit as to how it looked comparatively to what Jim was doing back in the late 50s and early 60s. I've talked about how a committee can complicate this process sometimes but also how scrutinous it can be. Higher–ups tend to need very good visual representation, so early on I was advised to have more fully fleshed out illustrations as opposed to sketches. Again, I've walked down this road thousands of times, so this wasn't a huge ask. Some of the notes that came back though made me tighten up where I found my creative direction.
All the props I created for the bookmark including the rejected ones!
For example, while I used a fantastic (and now out of print) book called Imagination Illustrated by Head Archivist for The Jim Henson Company, Karen Falk for reference, I quickly realized there wasn't quite enough material to re–create Jim's aesthetic without directly plagiarizing it. I found most of my design inspiration from the classic Rocky and Bullwinkle Show. The mid century style was fun to create and a style I've enjoyed emulating for quite some time now.
Imagination Illustrated by Karen Falk and screenshots I took from Rocky & Bullwinkle
One of the notes that came back that I appreciated was the push to stray away from things like mechanical gloved hands and wooden signs as they were too reminiscent of the Looney Tunes, whereas Jim used more ornate and flowing designs as opposed to Warner Bros. more industrial style props. I did try and hide a few Easter eggs though. Here they are:
Professor Madcliffe's "Mirth–Meter" was changed from "Smiles per Second" to "Smiles per Page"
The wooden board is taken from a sketch where Chicken Liver plays a sheriff from the old west
A Wilkins Coffee cup (a main commercial entity who sponsored a lot of Jim's work) is obscured just enough to the left of Professor Madcliffe
The television EKG monitor, tape reals, machine with bulbs on it, and the odd phone looking device are all illustrations of things found from various Madcliffe sketches
The pickle jar is a reference to the campaign sketch from the Sam for President poster where the character Moldy Hay discovers there's no surplus of pickles
The red phone is my own tribute to the Muppet Newsman from The Muppet Show
The intricate round mirror on the back is a recreation of the frame used for their sponsor Esskay Meats
However, the best Easter eggs are the ones Craig created when I requested to label the dials, knobs, switches, and screens (much like Jim did on the show). Almost all of them are obscured, but he wrote so many great ones and then wrote more!
Paper Thickness
Ink Opacity
Avg. Read Speed (WPM)
Page Turn Count
Between the Lines Content
Font Definition
Binding Integrity
Indexing Index
Recycled paper content
Subtext Comprehension
Page Density
Chapter Adapter
Margin Marginalization
Hinge Protector
Colophonograph
Gutter Guard
Comprehension Override
Pulp Friction
Kerning Kompensation
Print Offset Offset
Paper Strength
Appendix Inflammation
Little to Big Word Ratio
Sam for President
The campaign poster seemed like it should be more straightforward and easy, but other campaign posters of the time were relatively bland. In 1960, the notable comparison was that of Kennedy and Nixon. To a modern audience though, it was important that Sam's poster looked nothing like favoring one political party over the other. I had varying degrees of making the poster look aged 60+ years, but the main goal was to reproduce (at least in aesthetic) how it would have looked printed from a 1950s press so I leaned heavily on exploiting its color halftone look.
I didn't realize it at the time, but just creating the "Sam for President" text (to match the Sam and Friends title card) would play a huge role later when I would design the cover, but I'll get more into that next week.
ToughPigs.com editor–in–chief and co–owner Joe Hennes and designer/illustrator extraordinaire Jamie Carroll (who frequently consults on classic Muppet character design for toy companies) became integral to me for notes and critiques. I relied heavily on their input to make sure everything I created here on out looked and felt authentic. When I say none of this stuff was created in a bubble, I genuinely mean it.
Sticker & Bookplate
The last two promotional pieces were the sticker and bookplate. As I mentioned before, Karen Falk's Imagination Illustrated was very helpful, particularly for these two pieces, especially because they really relied heavily on Jim's fanciful and fun, yet intricate border designs. Craig was insistent on having my art credit listed on all of these things primarily so no one thought Jim actually created them. This was one of the most appealing things for me because not only did I share legit credit with my hero, but a few people missed it and thought they actually were drawn by Jim.
Aside from a few non–specific looking creatures that may or may not evoke certain classic characters from all the Muppets, the only true Easter egg was my daughter's (and coincidentally, Craig's grandmother's) name in the first draft of the sticker's border that ultimately was removed.
Ironically, none of this is what I would be known for once the book's official release date was announced and I was then credited as the cover artist! But that's another story for part 2! Tune in next week when I discuss getting the honor to be a much bigger part of the history for Sam and Friends! In the meantime, follow me on Instagram and Twitter and you should also buy the book at Bear Manor Media in soft and hard cover.