Blue Moon Blog

The Blue Moon Crew were featured in the July issue of the Four Estates Guardian magazine, which focuses on neighborhood news and one family in our area per issue. Below are reduced images from the sections in which we were featured, as well as the text of the article.

Mind Your Neighbor’s Business: the Fricke Family of Artists

Art has a way of keeping people young at heart, and so it is with the Fricke family. Paul, Mary, Laura, 14, and Emily, 10, are a family of artists who live in Silverthorne subdivision. Despite humble beginnings, they show that following one’s dreams and inborn talent can take a person farther than any college degree.

Though none of their four parents were artists, Paul and Mary were encouraged to draw at a young age. By age 12, Paul knew he wanted to be an artist. In the early 80s, Paul and Mary took classes at the American Academy of Art in Chicago (though neither knew of each other at the time). By age 22, Paul had co-created and independently published the comic book Trollords with his former high school pal Scott Beaderstadt. It was Paul’s first breakthrough into the comic book industry, a success that led to a decade of work with other comic book companies in Chicago and New York, such as DC, Topps, First and Image Comics.

Paul and Mary met in 1985–not at the Academy, but on a trip to Florida–and quickly discovered they had much in common. While dating, they took more classes at the American Academy of Art, though neither of them ever graduated with degrees. They began collaborating on projects together in 1986. Meanwhile, Paul had quit his non-artistic job to become fully self-employed in freelancing. They were married in 1989 and celebrated their 21st wedding anniversary this June. Paul has been in professional artistry for 25 years.

In 1993, they moved from Chicago to Plymouth and settled into their newly built home in Silverthorne subdivision in 2001. They are the owners of Blue Moon Studios that specializes in cartooning, comics, storyboards, and illustration, “a one-stop-shop from concept to final digital art.”

Through his art, Paul helps companies, both large and small, to communicate ideas and to educate. He has done a variety of projects, specializing in historical, religious, and educational comics for companies such as Microsoft, Scholastic, and the National Kidney Foundation.

Another facet of Blue Moon Studios is storyboards, which are preliminary, rough sketches for broadcast or online commercials or print ads. These storyboards are for a company’s internal use. Paul’s hand has been behind a majority of Best Buy commercials, and has drawn comps for ads featuring such popular characters as the Pillsbury Doughboy.

Inspired in their art by countless painters, book illustrators and comic book artists, Paul adds that inspiration comes from the fact that, “To make a living doing what we love – on our worst work day, we’re drawing.” Cartooning keeps Paul “a kid at heart,” he says. “It’s fun, expressive and nearly everyone can enjoy and relate to it.”

Mary’s passions are painting and drawing, and she has exhibited her portraits and landscapes at local art fairs.

Working from home is a delight for them. The whole family contributes to Blue Moon Studios in one way or another. Mary colors a majority of her husband’s comics and illustration drawings. Paul says she is a “reliable sounding board with good creative instincts.” While their daughters have helped with art and lettering on a few projects, they are also a constant inspiration to their parents.

Laura and Emily have inherited a double-portion of their parents’ creative genes and entrepreneur spirit. Emily runs her own cookie business called “Emily’s Funky Munky Kookies.” The girls hobbies include art, music, gymnastics, swimming, sculpting and reading. And as a family, they all enjoy drawing and painting together, playing music, and gathering around the table for a board or a card game.

At work or at play, the Fricke family finds inspiration to keep their art alive and their hearts young. They say to their neighbors, “Thanks for all the happy hellos, waves and chats, and your support during times good and difficult.”

Night of the Bedbugs is Paul Fricke’s colorful, rhyming story book published this year by Image/Silverline Books. The book tells the story of how a little girl’s nighttime fears are calmed when a friendly bedbug and his pals join her for a pajama party and sing her to sleep. To learn more, visit www.bluemoonstudios.com and www.bedbugsmania.com.

Starting in 1962, Alex Toth began working in the field of animation with the semi-animated Space Angel. He then began a long stint with Hanna-Barbera Studios, doing character creation and design and storyboards on shows such as Super Friends, The Herculoids, and Birdman. But perhaps he’s best known for the creation and design of the Space Ghost show and characters.

Toth’s design for the character are strong, sleek and simple. It looks like he drew these straight with a  marker, fully formed, like they were traced directly from his brain. This first crack isn’t the Ghost we all came to know, but most of the elements are there already:

Wisely, he simplified the design further, adding the black hood which gives his face/head a dark, mysterious look, while he drops the gloves, boots and tights, leaving the rest of his costume largely white which conveys ghost. I love the triangle chest logo, and that Toth moved the power ray buttons from the belt to metal sleeves - it looks better and is more functional for the character when in action.

And these various head shots show how Toth thought through how the hero would look from any angle, still keeping things as simple as possible for animation. Unfortunately, even though it was one of the best animated TV shows at the time, animators usually didn’t follow Toth model sheets closely enough, placing his eyes too high on his head.

The rest of the team is rounded out by teen sidekicks Jan and Jace, as the always fun Blip - loved that little monkey when I was a kid!

Though the show was among the best of its time, the cartoons and villains are kinda silly viewing them now years later, but it was a show designed for kids, after all! Here’s the weekly intro:

Many of the full cartoon episodes can be found at YouTube, so give ‘em a look-see.

I was pleased to discover a few years ago that Toth had drawn at least one Space Ghost comic book story, all five pages of which I present below. I cleaned up and tweaked the images as best I could.

Mark Evanier’s title is a play on Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress, which doesn’t have anything to do with the story, really. Funny that while the character is named “Pilgreem” throughout the story, letter by Toth, presumably, whoever lettered the title misspelled it as “Pilgreen.” LOL!

I love the design and set-up of the splash panel. Jan never looked curvier than in the 1st panel on page 3. There’s a gorgeous sweep and flow to the last three panels of page 3, and the first three of page 4. And it’d be great to see the black and white art of the final panel of that same page to better check out the sexy lady alien feeding Buzzard grapes.

All in all a light and fun little trifle, and great to see Toth handle these characters in print.

Next week: The Many Moods of Toth, a gallery of faces and expressions.

Update - 8/27/10: I enlarged the 5-page Space Ghost story better viewing and reading.

Not a warm-up sketch this time, but and end-of-work-day sketch, after a long day of storyboards and illustration work.

I present here another old man, and gave him three different treatments, just for grins and tickles.

So, after Microsoft decided on a format change from an 8-page comic book to a semi-animated video, I had to rethink the storytelling and change gears. Either format was fine with me; I just had to disregard the comic page layouts I had already begun to formulate in my head and think instead how to tell the story in a fixed widescreen format, with zooms, pans, fades and simple movements and effects.

Instead, then, of doing comic book page layouts of varying panel sizes and shapes, I needed to do a series of what amounted to 35-40 “shooting storyboards” to figure and convey the action frame by frame. These were drawn quickly and small, 2″ x 3″, taking maybe 3-10 minutes each, depending on the degree of complexity. They’re not much to look at, they’re supposed to be just enough to form the plan to tell the story, a guide for effects and movements, and figure shot compositions. Below is a sampling of the boards alongside the finished color shots.

The story begins with the four heroes meeting at their…meeting place, Justice League of America-style:

Nova (kinda like Charlie did with his Angels) speaks to them via intercom, informing them of the situation and and their task. Then, my fave, Affinity affords her mates a glimpse into the Dark World of the Workers they’re to aid:

The Workers’ World is filled with shadow and devoid of color, as they toil away chained to their desks at their desktops, limited and hampered in their prison-like workplace:

Affinity peers into that Gray World and transports herself and her colorful clan there to perform their task:

But despite their best efforts, the evil force, Pernicious fights back and begins to drain color and energy from the heroes!

Harmony turns on her charm, spreading enthusiasm and sweet color to the workers, freeing them from their sorry state:

The above shots of Harmony leaving her feet we determined to be superfluous, slowing down the action. I’d hoped to see her lower into frame from above, but that action was cut from the final video.

Harmony and the heroes celebrate before returning to their headquarters for kudos from Nova.

In the end, I lost only a few effects and motions I’d planned and hoped to see, and was pleased the animator added effects I hadn’t thought of or expected. To view the video for the rest of the story, visit the GXS Facebook page. And now in benediction, Harmony wishes you peace and happiness:

While planning their new sales tool, GSX, Microsoft wanted to add some energy and pizazz by utilizing the superhero genre. Initially, they intended to use the comic book format to help get the point across, create interest and enthusiasm within their sales force. So, when I began designing the four heroes, a comic book it was to be.

With some superhero illustration projects I’ve had over the years, clients sometimes lean towards a silly, campy and retro tone, which is fine - it can be fun. Many seem to want to emulate the Batman TV show. Y’know, it comics - it’s for kids! I’ve drawn a Pizza-Man, who wore a hairnet and glasses. Also, heroes who aren’t too muscular or curvy, or even in superhero costumes. In this case, Microsoft wanted something cool and edgy.

I was on the right track right off the bat with the two heroines, Affinity and Harmony. Affinity has a punk-ish look, with something of a mohawk and lots of leather. I was asked to try leggings instead of the semi-loose leather pants, change out the boots, and then add skirt with chains. Her tattoo was later dropped. Though I think she ended up with kind of a Desperately-Seeking-Susan look, she turned out well, my favorite of the four to draw.

Harmony was to be meditative and calming, so I went with a clean and straightforward super-heroine outfit, borrowing some french curves from the yin/yang symbol. She was good to go from the start.

My initial designs for the two male heroes, PI and Alt leaned towards a sci-fi look, more clean and streamlined, evoking the new Battlestar Galactica. But to their credit, the folks at Microsoft yearned for something less “Star Trek” and more “Watchmen.” So it was back to the drawing board for the males. Alt wasn’t too big a change, I just added a leather jacket and made his outfit mostly black, darkening his overall look. He became a bit more serious and cocky, rather than too smiley and friendly.

For PI, a complete overhaul was required. He became a more shadowy, detective-like character in a long overcoat and fedora, more like the Watchmen’s Rorschach, Will Eisner’s Spirit, or DC Comics’ Phantom Stranger.

I also designed an Average Joe worker, then named Simon, patterned a bit after “Jim” from The Office. His role decreased as the script was developed, but I used him in the final art when depicting workers in the story.

About halfway through the character design process, the client changed gears and decided to do a semi-animated video instead. That was fine with me. More about that part of the creative process tomorrow, including some storyboards and some of my favorite shots from the video…

At my table at the MN MicroCon recently, I had a nice chat with Sarah Morean of The Daily Cross Hatch. A great site/blog of which I was unaware, now in its third year covering alternative comics. It’s jam-packed with news, reviews and interviews, and many features I’ll be revisiting to catch up on what I’ve missed.

For her Tricks and Swag article, Sarah was interested in what promotional gimmicks artists use to attract people to their display and pony up some dough. Many artists are featured with a photo showing how they jockey for readers’ time, attention and cash, including yours truly (with all the assorted Bedbugs thingamajigs), who she describes as a “one-man circus.”

In the piece, Sarah ponders why artists spend so much time, energy and cash for their little slice of the pie, and whether it’s worth it. I’ve struggled with this question, too. For years, while raising a family and working on big art projects for large companies, I’ve slogged away at my own personal creative projects, looking again to make dreams a reality.

I began my art career with early success, self publishing Trollords. But even after that initial burst died down, even while working for DC and other comics outfits and drawing storyboards and illustrations for big time companies, I still have that desire to have something of my own real and out there in the world.

With all the demands of work, family and the day-to-day obligations and distractions of modern life, it can be difficult to find time for some of the things you may want the most. And for me, setting up shop at a local con a couple times a year has been a way to keep those projects alive, let people know about them. But I’ve found without a more substantial book or product, readers and fans can’t really hook into what an artist is doing.

Keep your eyes peeled here for news on that front.

In the meantime, the Bedbugs marbles, buttons, mini-comics, sketches, shirts and juggling beanbags serve to whet the appetite.

For this frame from a Fiber Choice storyboard, we were asked to fill the screen with fiber-iffic fruits and veggies. This was patched together digitally from a series of other drawings, so we could save time using elements I’d already drawn, just rotating some to mix ‘em up a bit.

And these two were of a series prepared for a Fiber Choice running on TV currently. Veggie and fruit eyes and mouths were moved and rotated digitally to form various expressions. Why redraw?

For this last grey tone “bite ‘n’ smile” shot, we threw a spot color on the tablet to help draw attention to the product.

Following those storyboard pencils I posted yesterday, here are some color frames recently finished. As I’ve mentioned previously on this blog, I keep them looser by coloring over scanned pencils, then coloring digitally on-screen with my trusty Cintiq. The rough color effects are achieved simply with a “chalk” brush in Photoshop, at various degrees of opacity.

People with products.  Go figure, I enjoy drawing them, after all these years.

I’m currently working on another round of Breathe Right storyboards. I can’t show those yet, but here are a couple more frames from those I did last month.

Yep, they’ve got these strips for kids now, to help children sleep more soundly when they’re congested or have a cold.

I’m coloring my storyboards digitally now, with my trusty Cintiq. Still penciling at the drawing board, I scan the pencils, darken them in Photoshop, and color away. I’m finding with the Airbrush Pen Opacity Flow brush at certain settings, I’m able to achieve a similar look to those frames colored with markers. To rough things up a bit, and to lessen any computer sterility, I use a large chalk brush to finish things off. The more I do, the quicker it gets!