Last week I covered the artwork I created for a bunch of Muppet related podcasts from fansite ToughPigs.com and the history I’ve enjoyed working with them. Today I’m wrapping up the remaining podcast art I created for them (for now) with two of my favorites!
Last year, Disney + premiered the one and only season of the multi–award winning series, The Muppets Mayhem. Still riding high off the prestige of being able to use licensed IP artwork for Fraggle Talk, ToughPigs’ Editor–in–chief and dear friend Joe Hennes excitedly reached out to tell me they now also had full permission to use the new Disney + Muppets Mayhem graphics and the Disney + logo for their latest podcast, The Muppets Mayhem Backstage Pass.
The title also made it clear that designing anything further beyond what Disney had used for marketing was overkill, so using the graphics as a literal backstage pass became the obvious direction. All I had to do was shoot it convincingly. First things first though, make a backstage looking pass. After a quick Google search, some simple drafting, and using my NYCC lanyard from last year’s Sam and Friends panel, I put together a pretty standard and simple looking pass. Now all I had to do was to sell its validity through some clever photography. Fortunately for me, my friend and coworker Doug Berry has a studio and recording set up in our building, and I was able to shoot my backstage pass among Doug’s own band rehearsal and recording space. I even brought in my own trumpet as a stand in representing the character Lips.
Mock up of the pass, copies printed and trimmed, a shot from Doug’s studio
This whole project was markedly different from all the other podcast illustrations and designs I’d done previously and allowed for a ton of different options for Joe to choose from week to week as well as for promotional posts. I’m also incredibly grateful to Doug for letting me invade and shoot his super cool studio space as well.
Actually, I just remembered I shot my trumpet in my daughter's room, using her night light to reflect over the brass
Finally, this year I was asked to create art for ToughPigs latest podcast, The Fantastic Miss Piggy Podcast, and it was by far the most daunting one yet. It certainly didn’t start out that way. By now, Joe and I have developed a pretty comfortable way of working on any project like this together, and nowadays, it’s always officially kicked off with a video chat. Starting in 2020 when video conferencing became the norm, Joe and I would jump on Zoom and throw around some ideas before figuring out the best direction to head forwards. On this particular occasion, Joe drew a rough idea out on a napkin of how he envisioned Miss Piggy holding and talking into a microphone. It was the best direction I had and we both saw the napkin as a beacon of inspiration and absolutely nothing else at all and that’s the only reason we laughed so hard and why Joe mailed me the napkin and I cherish it still and get your mind out of the gutter!
Joe's initial concept drawn on te back of a napkin and the final design.
But the daunting parts were clear from the get go. For starters, this particular podcast is hosted by ToughPigs founder Danny Horn! But the real pressure was making sure my artwork of Miss Piggy her fabulous self met the criteria set by one of the podcasts creative overseers: Peter Savieri. If you’ve seen the 2011 movie The Muppets, you can briefly see Kermit wistfully looking at a painting of Miss Piggy during the emotional Pictures in My Head scene. Peter painted that and has been linked with the character pretty closely ever since, creating gorgeous art of everyone’s porcine diva.
So if you’re wondering why I was taking on the task of drawing anything even partially resembling Miss Piggy instead of Peter, then you and I are on the same page! But Peter was in the middle of his own battle against deadlines whereas at the moment, I was not. So Peter became my art director on this one giving me tips on what to tweak and how. Not wanting to set off any copyright infringement lawsuits, the plan was to only have Piggy’s snout and gloved hand represented in the art, but just because it can’t be seen didn’t mean I wasn’t going to draw her whole head. In this instance, I knew it’d be easier to draw more of the character for wiggle room when it came to cropping. It also would help me manage her proportions and overall layout.
The full illustration of Piggy (Yeah! I drew all of her!), the inspiration for the title, and my title design before filagree elements and effects were pulled back
Peter was pleased with the total art, but when only a small part of Piggy’s face is visible, Peter gave dynamic direction to make sure her mouth was easily identifiable and to make the art pop as much as possible. He also gave helpful direction to pull back the decorative filagree design elements recreated from the podcasts original namesake: The Fantastic Miss Piggy Show.
If you enjoyed this two part post, make sure you tune in next week to learn about some other podcast art that’s even more closely connected to the Muppets than anything I’ve done for ToughPigs! Please follow me on Instagram, TikTok, Substack and X!
