Squeak Attack: Talking Mouse Guard with David Petersen
By: Casey Cosker |
Thursday April 06, 2006 |
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Mouse Guard is an independent comic for all ages from Archaia studios featuring swashbuckling mice and stunning visuals. Static Multimedia writer Casey Cosker interviews creator David Petersen, the mind behind the mice. |
| David Petersen is the writer, illustrator, and colorist on Mouse Guard an independent comic book from Archaia Studios Press. After reading the first issue, I was smitten with the book. At New York Comic Con, I bumped into Petersen at the Archaia booth. He agreed to an interview, where we mostly talked about Mouse Guard. Casey Cosker: For starters, you do everything on Mouse Guard. What sort of process do you go through for each issue? David Petersen: I start with an outline of the major things I know need to happen in that issue. It could be a point of action or a point to get across, but the outline is very basic. From that I make tic marks next to each point to figure how many pages it should take me to visually relay that information. I can then play with some of those numbers once I see the estimated page count so that it will fit correctly. From there I do the pages in sets. It helps with layouts to work on facing pages. I do most of my designs and layouts and sketches on paper then resize and transfer them to the final Bristol page (I work on 12"x12"). I use pens for most of the inking, but use a brush to fill in large areas. Once the inks are done, I'll start coloring on the computer. Once the colors are done, I'll go through and write the dialogue for each panel. Aside from Mouse Guard, what do you do with your time? Do you have a day job? Do you do other art commissions? I have a day job, and use almost all of the time I'm not at work (or sleeping) to work on Mouse Guard. I will occasionally stop to play some Pac-Man (I recently became addicted again after seeing a plug & play unit at a relative's house) or play settlers of cattan online with some old friends. My wife and I watch DVD's while I ink pages. (I end up doing more listening than watching). I do commissions, but currently am so backed up with them that I'm not accepting any at the moment. This is my first time seeing any of your work, so I'm curious - what other comics have you done? I self published Mouse Guard in 2005 along with another book that Jeremy Bastian, a friend of mine, and I self published together called 'Ye Old Lore of Yore'. It is a short story anthology with five stories. He did two of the stories, I did two, then we collaborated on the fifth. I have done some other work for books and games like Heroverse, Season of the Witch, and Vogelein. But Mouse Guard is my first book on my own. What challenges do you encounter as a freelance illustrator? Finding work that pays. I found there were two types of jobs, those that pay (which are harder to find) and those that don't. It's funny to be approached by people who have written a children's book and need illustrations to help pitch the book to a publisher, but don't want to pay anything (or next to nothing) for you to do the work. How easy or hard is it to create an independent comic like Mouse Guard? In some ways it was both easy and hard. In the easy category, I have complete control over the book. I don't need to ask to do what I want to do. The hard part is getting the work done alone. Do you have any mice in your life? Nope. Never had any rodent pets. We do have two dogs. Where did you get your inspiration for this story? I have long been a fan of classic adventure stories and at one time planned on doing a cross between a adventure story and an anthropology experiment with only animals natural to the same habitat as the main characters. It gave me a problem of coming up with story devices and plot to keep everyone from simply eating each other. It more closely resembled Disney's Robin Hood than Mouse Guard. In giving the mice a leg up, the idea of the mouse guard and how the mice hide themselves away became the most interesting focus. I quickly shifted all attention to their story. In doing so have drawn from some of my favorite creators and their work including Mike Mignola, Frank Miller, Kenneth Grahame, E. H. Shephard, and Rick Geary. Mouse Guard has different dimensions than the traditional comic. Why is that? Was this your decision? Before I self-published I was toying around with doing a mini-comic. I figured out that legal size paper folded in half ends up being a book close to square. I liked that idea and decided to make Mouse Guard a perfect square. I also like what it forced me to do with page layouts. When Archaia picked up the book we agreed that we wanted to continue to do the book in the same dimensions. How did you learn to draw? Did you jump into the comics industry, or did you have some sort of formal schooling? I started drawing about the time I could hold a crayon, but didn't get serious about it until Junior High or High School. I went to Mott, a wonderful community college known for their art program, and then transferred to Eastern Michigan University to complete my degree in Fine Art. None of that was direct training for sequential art though, so while I had a great foundation taught to me, I needed to teach myself about what good panel by panel storytelling is. In Mouse Guard, you give the mice very human qualities. They stand on two legs and have hands. How do you make this visually believable? I have to do some 'anthropomorphizing' to get them upright and to wield weapons. That is a careful balancing aft to get them to emote without making them too cartoony. I also try and make sure the visual style and detail of the other elements in the book fit with the artwork of the characters. I've noticed that most of Mouse Guard's story is told visually instead of through dialogue. Why is that? There is a common test or exercise with comic artwork to make sure the page is understandable without the dialogue. I took that to the extreme. I tell the story visually because I have no exact dialogue when I'm drawing the pages. I may know the idea the character is getting across, but not the wording. My outline may say "mice find eggs and destroy them: 2 pages. I then figure out how I want to use my 2 pages to depict that part of the story. It forces me to focus on my storytelling. There's obviously going to be comparisons between your story and Brian Jacques' Redwall series and other stories featuring heroic rodents. Did those books have any influence on yours? How do you keep the concept of swashbuckling rodents fresh? I was working on the concept for the Guard and drawing lots of mice back in '96 when a friend said "oh, you like drawing mice, read this book" and he handed me Redwall. I read it and enjoyed it, but was instantly disappointed thinking it meant I couldn't do my story. I sat on the idea for years and then decided that there was enough room for me to do my project as well. I made a few conscious decisions to make a clear difference and forged ahead. To keep the idea something 'fresh' I just make sure I do the best work I can and I try and make sure there is a solid story behind them, not only in their current entanglements, but for their very purpose. Issue 1 of Mouse Guard is available in comic stores now. Issue 2 ships in April, 2006. |
