Monday, January 25, 2016

Monday Night Magical Movie, er, Series,The Magicians Premier Tonight!


"I can't just go to Yale if I know this place exists!" 

SEE AWESOME UPDATE AT THE END OF THIS POST!!

The magic is back in Mondays! Back in July, some of you may remember, a set designer contacted me about using some of my artwork as part of the set decoration for the SyFy series they were filming, The Magicians. The Magicians is based upon the popular series of epoch fantasy books written by Lev Grossman. I watched the pilot last night on the SyFy website, (it's airing tonight, so the video is off the website now) and I was totally delighted, this is going to be a really cool series, and they used the art of a real witch on their set, so how could they fail?! My art. On TV. OMGs!  And the show? It's sexy, edgy, great music, basically, if Harry Potter took place at a Grad School in NY, that's what's going on.

This is a release form for the set designer of the upcoming SyFy series The Magicians so that they may use a couple of prints of mine as part of the set decor! Dan said, "I guess we'll be ordering this series on BluRay." Yes we will Dan, oh yes, we will. 


Ok, I didn't see any of my art in the pilot, but I wouldn't have because they filmed it before they ordered the prints, unless they really have time-travel magic! But you can bet I'll be watching every episode several times, once for the story, and the second time scanning the background on an Easter egg hunt for my prints.
The actual prints right before I packaged them up and sent them off! These are to ones to watch for in the background. Again, we won't see them in the first episode, but with a little luck and some magic, we might be lucky enough to see them in one (or more) of the other episodes!

Will one be over the top of a main characters desk and appear in every episode? Gasp! Will they be a blur in the background while people are running down a hallway? Very possible. No idea. That being said I would watch this series anyway after seeing the pilot.  I watched that first episode and loved the characters, the magic was stunning, and the story has me very curious about what happens next! They ended the pilot with one hell of a cliffhanger!

So, tonight the SyFy channel will be airing a Double Episode premier at 9/8c. So you don't have to sit breathlessly for a week to see what happens after the first episode cliff hanger! Thanks SyFy, much appreciated by those of us who love a good binge-watch, two episodes is definitely better than one!

Here's more about the series, trailers, interviews with the author and actors, bits and bobs of sneak peeks for you while we anxiously wait for the premier tonight! http://www.syfy.com/themagicians/videos/magic-is

Watch the background of The Magicians for Drawing Down the Moon by Mickie Mueller, read more about this art here
Watch the background of The Magicians The Art of Magic by Mickie Mueller from The Hidden Path Oracle deck, read more about the art here

Oh, did I mention, they did some car-aaazy mirror magic in the pilot!


Who wrote the book about mirror magic coming out this June? Oh, just yours truly! The Witch's Mirror does not contain the spell they performed though...
UPDATE:

11:43 AM 1/25/2016 My friend Kathy Jo on Facebook just found this promo pic of Penny in a flaming chair with not only one, but BOTH of my prints on the wall behind him! Holy cow! I can't even believe it! Bonus, I frikkin love his character, he won me over in the pilot! Dubstep. heheh.
Whooo-hooo!!!

Blessed Be!

Mickie


Tuesday, January 12, 2016

A Badass Logo for Some Badass Roller Girls

I designed a logo for a local Roller Derby team that my friend Tanya is on recently, I just found out that it's been approved! Whoo-hoo! I present the official logo for Franklin County Fury!



I'm really excited, can't wait to go watch them sometime! This was a really fun project, I thought you might be interested in seeing some of the "work in progress" shots of this fun piece.

First, I submitted a sketch to make sure I was going in the right direction for what they wanted. They had shown me a couple examples of stuff they liked, and told me it should be a fierce roller derby girl with flames coming from her skates, so I went from there.



Once I had sketch approval, I hand inked the derby girl...



Then I scanned it and added the font digitally. 


Then I colored it on the computer in Photoshop using some techniques that I used to use back in my days of comic book color fill when I worked for Network Color. I turned the ink drawing into a transparency and traced each section out using the lasso tool. One by one I added color to a layer behind the inked art.



We used to add color to comic books for DC, Marvel, Disney, and Darkhorse to name a few, it was a really fun job. I met my husband Dan at that job, back then we were just friends, so when I finished up the coloring, I surprised him with it and asked, "Hey Dan, can you check my page?" It was just like the good ole days, we had a laugh over that!


I knew the ladies would want a full color version, but I figured that for some merchandise, newspapers, etc. they might need a black and white version as well, so I made sure to save an uncolored black and white version also.

What they need was a tough as nails but sexy roller girl. I had fun researching the proper protective gear, accurate poses, and wild clothing they wear. These gals proudly wear their war wounds like medals of honor, so I just had to include a band aid on her cheek and a tear in her fishnets! I wanted her to be sexy but not demure in any way, she had to "own" it, fierce and strong. 

When we talked about color, they told me that red is their team color, but they wanted some other colors in there too. Since flames was a "must-have" for all the team members, I decided to add some of that "hot blue" into the flames that you so often see and pull that color up into the roller girls outfit as well.

If you live in Franklin County and want an amazing night of fun, come check out the Franklin County Fury, also watch for t-shirts and other cool merchandise with the logo I designed for them coming soon!

Click here for Franklin County Fury Facebook Page

Want to know more about Roller Derby? Check out the Franklin County Fury FAQ