Muppetober Was Chaos And I Loved It
It’s October 31st and that’s significant for two reasons. One, of course, it’s Halloween. Look out for spooks. And two, it marks the end of Muppetober, our self-imposed, Muppet-a-day, illustration/video challenge for the month. It was grueling, and we just made it by the skin of our teeth. Now we can collapse like a puppet after you take your hand out.
Waldorf: That Muppetober wasn’t half-bad!
Statler: No! It was ALL-bad! Ahahhahahahaha!
We weren’t sure we could pull off Muppetober with all the other projects we had to complete, but I managed to draw, ink, and watercolor a different Muppet every day of the month. Then, because we recorded the whole process, Michelle would pull the video into the computer, edit it down to a very tight, one-minute short, we’d do the voiceovers, and upload it before 4:30 every day. It was exhausting, but after about a week and a half in, you just start riding the wave of chaotic energy in the studio and it carries you through.
“Artists are weirdos.”
The reason we did all this was to challenge ourselves. But while we were racing toward today’s finish line, we also learned a lot about working with our materials more efficiently, scheduling work to hit daily deadlines, maybe even a little bit about acquiescing to the demands of the YouTube algorithm and allowing it to work for us for a change. And even though it was my images out front, Michelle was doing a truckload of work behind the scenes to meet those challenges and make it possible for us to finish on time.
“Behind every great man is a great woman with a great left hook!”
But beyond that, because of the research required to get the illustrations right, we also learned a lot of facts about Muppets that had previously flown under our radar. Things like Gonzo’s pronouns being they/them, Uncle Deadly being a dragon, and the fact that Emmet Otter’s Jugband Christmas predates The Muppet Movie. The things you learn when you doodle Muppets for a month.
Emmet: Who are they, Ma?
Ma: Hooligans, if you ask me.
So, the shorts are up on Youtube, all compiled into a convenient playlist. They’re each under a minute, and mostly cover the inking process, but I think you can feel the frantic energy we generated while making them. Here’s the link to the playlist.
Every morning should start with a tall stack of Muppets.
And if you’d like see some of the watercolor process, we put together a video where I color just the Monster Muppets — in honor of Halloween — and we laid it all over a bed of nap-inducing piano jazz. So grab a mug of something hot on this chilly autumn afternoon, curl up under a blanket on the couch, and watch me paint some classic children’s characters. Soon, you’ll drift off to sleep and dream of muppets and monsters just like Michelle and I have been doing for the last 31 days.