This article was originally shared on Dave Hulteen’s blog on his professional website DaveHulteenDesign.com, re-published here with permission.
Two years ago at New York Comic Con, I was privileged to sit on a panel for Craig Shemin’s book, Sam and Friends: The Story of Jim Henson’s First Television Show because I got to do the cover and promotional materials for it. ToughPigs Editor–in–Chief and my good friend, Joe Hennes himself moderated the panel and noted how I was a fan artist who now does work on actual Henson related projects (with freelance work for other Muppet performers too). I am not shy about my gratitude to Joe and ToughPigs for promoting that fan art and being crucial to my career as it relates to the Muppets. So it’s no real surprise when they come callin’, I answer! Case in point, while ToughPigs has featured so much of my work just because they love to do so, I’ve also created a lot of the art for their increasing library of podcasts as well.
Of the ten they have currently featured, I have done the art for half of them, making me the most prolific podcast illustrator in Muppet fandom. That’s right, I’m claiming the title, so suck it, Durkin!
I thought I’d take a look at some of that art and share some secrets about how they came to be. And to start that list off, I’m talking about an older podcast that just happened to be the first podcast art I ever did, Frog Kissin’! Way back in September of 2013, hosts Julia Gaskill and Lara Frazier reached out to me asking if I would create art for their new podcast. The name “Frog Kissin’” was taken from an episode of The Muppet Show where Kermit’s nephew Robin sings a song originally popularized by Chet Atkins. The visual however was specifically inspired from a different episode of The Muppet Show where Bernadette Peters sings Just One Person before kissing Robin directly on the lips. I felt that visual looked more sensual than sweet, so I turned Robin’s head so he’s getting a kiss on his forehead.
It wasn’t until 2019 when Joe started setting the precedent for me designing podcast art for the site. 15 Seconds to Curtain was a podcast for famous people like Lisa Loeb and James Monroe Iglehart (to name a few) to talk about their love of Muppets. This was the first podcast Joe oversaw, and it had a pretty steep learning curve for him. For starters, he had to make sure any art was not infringing on Disney owned IP and imagery. He also learned he had to be more specific with what he asked for.
However, it wasn’t until very recently that I learned the concept Joe selected was also used in conjunction with some absolutely wonderful art by Jay Fosgitt! But I’ll let Joe explain it from here:
“I asked Jay for some art, and he delivered the gorgeous image of an interviewer being eaten by a Muppet-esque monster. But as pretty as it is, it isn’t an icon. Once shrunken down and seen on a podcast app, it doesn’t work so well.
So I used the Scooter-ish one that [Dave] designed for the logo, and I used Jay’s for the social media, because it was too nice to just pass on.
Both images are so great in their own regards, and it’s interesting to see them mashed up together. But the big thing here is the lesson I learned about logo design and commissioning work from my friends. Giving artists carte blanche to create what they want without any guidance from me (as the client) doesn’t always work!“
I was asked again to create podcast art for To Introduce Our Guest Star, with hosts Joe Hennes and my yet–to–be–adopted son Jarrod Fairclough. But before I get into that, I need to give you a very brief history of MuppetFans.com
In 2010, Joe Hennes and Ryan Roe from ToughPigs, Ryan Dosier from The Muppet Mindset, and Steve Swanson host of The MuppetCast podcast asked yours truly to help create art and assets for a website that would funnel everything to fans in one nifty space on the internet the following year.
It didn’t work. BUT! It set a precedent for how we would look as Whatnot Muppets if we were on The Muppet Show (or Anything Muppets as they’re known on Sesame Street). This may not seem super important, but even after MuppetFans.com shut down, our Muppet likenesses maintained a presence online. In fact, Joe’s in particular is so well established that the incredibly multi–talented Richard Gomez built the puppet based on my illustrations!
Fast forward to 2021 when Joe and Jarrod wanted to start this new podcast where the premise was that they would each take turns surprising each other with guests like Kirk Thatcher and Bob McGrath (again, to name a few). As the former owner and editor of The Muppet Mindset now transferred as a head writer on ToughPigs, Jarrod needed a Muppet version of himself to fit the pre–existing cast. Did any of you realize that us Muppet fans have our own lore too?! So when all was said and done, the magic that once was MuppetFans.com continued to maintain its hold over all of us.
A year later, Joe asked me to create art for a podcast that would coincide with the new Apple TV series Fraggle Rock: Back to the Rock. Initially, Joe was clear we needed to be respectful of The Jim Henson Company’s IP as this was an unofficial podcast. I only got one concept deep before Joe excitedly informed me that not only was The Jim Henson Company allowing ToughPigs to use audio from the series, but that I could use the Fraggle Rock logo as a design element!
This was right up my alley as I had just recreated the Sam and Friends title card for Craig Shemin’s book. And so, Fraggle Talk The Unofficial Fraggle Rock Podcast came together pretty fast after that.
Last year, Disney+ premiered the one and only season of the multi–award winning series, The Muppets Mayhem. Still riding high off the prestige of being able to use licensed IP artwork for Fraggle Talk, Joe excitedly told me they now also had full permission to use the new Disney+ Muppets Mayhem graphics and the Disney+ logo for their latest podcast, The Muppets Mayhem Backstage Pass.
The title also made it clear that designing anything further beyond what Disney had used for marketing was overkill, so using the graphics as a literal backstage pass became the obvious direction. All I had to do was shoot it convincingly. First things first though, make a backstage looking pass. After a quick Google search, some simple drafting, and using my NYCC lanyard from that aforementioned Sam and Friends panel, I put together a pretty standard and simple looking pass. Now all I had to do was sell its validity through some clever photography. Fortunately for me, my coworker has a studio and recording set up in our building, and I was able to shoot my backstage pass among my coworker’s own band rehearsal and recording space. I even brought in my own trumpet as a stand in representing Lips.
This whole project was markedly different from all the other podcast illustrations and designs I’d done previously and allowed for a ton of different options for Joe to choose from week to week as well as for promotional posts. I’m also incredibly grateful to my coworker for letting me invade and shoot his super cool studio space as well.
Finally (so far at least), this year I was asked to create art for ToughPigs latest podcast, The Fantastic Miss Piggy Podcast, and it was by far the most daunting one yet. It certainly didn’t start out that way. By now, Joe and I have developed a pretty comfortable way of working on any project like this together, and nowadays, it’s always officially kicked off with a video chat. Starting in 2020 when video conferencing became the norm, Joe and I would jump on Zoom and throw around some ideas before figuring out the best direction to head forwards. On this particular occasion, Joe drew a rough idea out on a napkin of how he envisioned Miss Piggy holding and talking into a microphone. It was the best direction I had and we both saw the napkin as a beacon of inspiration and absolutely nothing else at all and that’s the only reason we laughed so hard and why Joe mailed me the napkin and I cherish it still and get your mind out of the gutter!
But the daunting parts set in quickly after that. For starters, this particular podcast is hosted by ToughPigs founder Danny Horn! But the real pressure was making sure my artwork of Miss Piggy her–fabulous–self met the criteria set by one of the podcasts creative overseers: Peter Savieri. If you’ve seen the 2011 movie The Muppets, you can briefly see Kermit wistfully looking at a painting of Miss Piggy during the emotional Pictures in My Head scene. Peter painted that and has been linked with the character pretty closely ever since, creating gorgeous art of everyone’s favorite porcine diva.
So if you’re wondering why I was taking on the task of drawing anything even partially resembling Miss Piggy instead of Peter, then you and I are on the same page. But Peter was in the middle of his own battle against deadlines whereas at the moment, I was not. So Peter became my art director on this one giving me tips on what to tweak and how. Not wanting to set off any copyright infringement lawsuits, the plan was to only have Piggy’s snout and gloved hand represented in the art, but just because it can’t be seen didn’t mean I wasn’t going to draw her whole head. In this instance, I knew it’d be easier to draw more of the character for wiggle room when it came to cropping. It also would help me manage her proportions and overall layout.
Peter was pleased with the total art, but when only a small part of Piggy’s face is visible, Peter gave dynamic direction to make sure her mouth was easily identifiable and to make the art pop as much as possible. He also gave helpful direction to pull back the decorative filagree design elements recreated from the podcasts original namesake: The Fantastic Miss Piggy Show.
Click here to get your mind out of the gutter on the ToughPigs Discord!
by Dave Hulteen, Jr.
