Documentary Day

The "TMNT fan documentary" crew paid us another visit today. Isaac Elliot Fisher returned, and brought with him two of the producers on the documentary, Mark Hussey and his wife Sarah (both very nice people). They were in Northampton to do some follow-up stuff, including a bit more interviewing and getting some footage of me drawing something. We set up in my office (I'm glad I cleaned it up yesterday!)



It was fun to listen to some of their stories about going all over the place to talk with both Turtle fans and people who have been involved with the TMNT property professionally. I especially liked hearing about their visit with my old pal Ryan Brown in his home in Ohio.

Here's a photo of Isaac and Mark conferring about some technical camera-related issue.



One thing I did to prepare for this visit was to dig out an old sheet of Graphix Duo-Shade paper which had been kicking around my office with an unfinished pencil drawing on it. It was unfinished because it was pretty bad, and I had no compunctions about erasing it so I could use the paper for this drawing demo. I thought it might be fun to do it on the Duo-Shade paper, as that was what Kevin Eastman and I had used for many of the Turtle comics we did together.

I'd also brought in some originals from issue #4 of Volume One, so I could demonstrate how we used to carefully cut up the large sheets of Duo-Shade paper to maximize the use of this expensive material. Once I'd done that, I proceeded to pencil, ink and tone this drawing of Donatello, which I gave to Isaac once I'd finished it.



It was fun to do -- I think it was the first time I'd used Duo-Shade in this way in about five years. Isaac and Sarah both took me up on my offer to try the Duo-Shade paper. I drew a quick Turtle head sketch in Sharpie on a small piece of the paper for Sarah. Here she is working on it...



... and here she holds up the finished piece. Unfortunately, I think my camera flash washed out most of the tones she did on it!



Isaac drew his own Turtle head (quite well, I thought), and toned that. Here he is with the result, which he gave to me.



Isaac also brought with him the t-shirt that he has been getting signed by many, if not all, of the people he's interviewed for this project.



All in all, it was a fun couple of hours. I have to say I'm looking forward to seeing the final documentary. -- PL

For more information about the project, visit http://turtledoc.fauxpop.tv/