The Great Muppet Mural
Artist Spotlights: Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3
As ToughPigs celebrates our 20th anniversary, we wanted to do something big. Like, really big. Like, Sweetums-sized massive. Considering ToughPigs’ love of all things related to Muppet art, that seemed like a logical direction to go.
When ToughPigs turned 10 in 2011, we celebrated with a series of illustrations from a few of our favorite Muppet artists from both the fan and pro art worlds. We thought it’d be fun to do something similar, but – as previously established – bigger.
We reached out to every artist in our Rolodex. Fan artists who we’ve given spotlights to here on ToughPigs, professional artists who’ve created some of our favorite official Muppet illustrations, and creative folks we know from the fan circles. We received an overwhelming response from all these folks who agreed to donate their time and talent to help us celebrate our little website and these characters we love so much.
The result is The Great Muppet Mural, featuring over 270 characters illustrated by 75 different creators. As you can see in the image above, the result is truly epic. (Click on the image to see it fullscreen!)
The Great Muppet Mural won’t be available for sale. We didn’t create it for any sort of profit. We just wanted to celebrate our history and pay homage to everything that Jim Henson created. And we’re so grateful that all of our artist friends were willing to join us.
You’d be hard-pressed to think of a Muppet who didn’t make the cut for the mural. We’ve got The Muppet Show characters, the Sesame Street gang, all your favorite Fraggles, and a ton of other Henson creations from the past six decades and around the world.
I mean, just look at the love poured into every detail of this thing!
And look at this exciting collection of Muppets!
And how about these fine folks??
I especially love these Muppets, kindly spelling out a familiar website name.
This mural took a lot of work to assemble. Thanks to the diligence of James Carroll, who art directed this entire project, and iconic Muppet fan artists Dave Hulteen and Kenny Durkin, the gorgeous backdrop was created, and the characters were all expertly placed, color corrected, and shaded for continuity. For just a taste of how much it took to assemble, take a look at this timelapse video:
Incredible, right???
I’m sure you’re wondering just who contributed to this massive work of art. Over the next few days, we’ll be sharing all of the individual pieces so you can see all these incredible illustrations, along with proper credit for every one of the artists. In the meantime, here’s a handy key so you can see who-drew-who. (Click to embiggen.)
We can’t thank all of our artist friends for all of their hard work and talent. We’re extremely grateful for all you’ve done for this project, and we hope you’re as happy with the end result as we are.
Stay tuned as we continue celebrating ToughPigs’ 20th anniversary with a closer look at each of these gorgeous character illustration throughout the week!
Click here to draw every Muppet you can think of on the ToughPigs forum!
by Joe Hennes – Joe@ToughPigs.com
