I’ve been cleaning out the garage, excavating lots of old artwork from my Muppet days when I was designing and illustrating licensed products. I thought I might post some iPhone pics here.

This one looks like a piece I did for some Muppet art markers – and it looks like it wrapped a thick book or package with a rat in the middle, on the spine – as line art to be colored, I’m sure.

Here another one, which is quite big and very light, which makes me think type was going over all the light parts – I think it was a complex package (judging by the crop marks where folds would go) with a window in the open space showing the product inside – which I’m guessing was a Fraggle celery vehicle toy. That’s why the characters are not in the same perspective – the box turned a corner between the characters. Hey, I designed 2,000 Muppet products/packages 30 years ago, and I don’t remember them. Also, it has been a long time since I used watercolors – all I do are political cartoons on the computer now. Sorry about the color and exposure – hey, it’s a phone camera.

Here’s another Fraggle project I don’t remember – these look like line art for sheets of Fraggle stickers, or rub-ons, or Colorforms, that probably were meant to stick onto backgrounds that I probably painted – but I have no idea. Does anybody remember this product? Jeez, the garage is full of old junk. I did lots of stuff like this. I even did Muppet Shrinky-Dinks.

I miss my old Muppet days.

In the garage I found a bunch of Muppet comics pages, like this one that I’m guessing was for Muppet Magazine. I remember going into Marvel Comics where they asked me to draw Muppet comic books, and I said, “great! lets do it!” and they said, “$50/page” Ouch. No Marvel Comics for me.

This gouache painting was for a Muppet Babies wallpaper runner. I remember they thought my Piggy face wasn’t baby enough so I corrected it with a patch. I drew Muppets on wallpaper, shoes, pajamas, toys, books, games, watches, glassware, lunch boxes, hats, purses, McDonalds toys, turnarounds for sculptors … my memory fades, but my garage never forgets.

I’ll post some more occasionally.