Missile Mouse Kid

Got this in the email from my friend Kory Hienzen.  Kory's a phenomenal artist who works for Dreamworks Animation.

His kids are big MM fans and so he drew his son as MM.  Love it Kory, thanks for sending it along.

Missile Mouse's Blaster

Got this in the email from Richard Smith who says:

"Hey Jake,

Love your work. My 4yr old son and I read your stuff all the time. MM is in the same pantheon with Spiderman and Diego for him :) I made this model based on your design. I hope you like it!

Respectfully,

Richard Smith"

You know what?  I LOVE IT!!!  Nice attention to detail, and I love the extra flourishes he did.  A++
Thanks Richard!

Fan Art - Mark Lewis

Got an email yesterday with a link to a delightful post Mark Lewis did about Missile Mouse.  If you've got a sec go check it out here.  Mark also did a great bit of Missile Mouse fan art seen here:

 

Thanks Mark!

San Diego Comic-Con

Hey all, I'll be at San Diego Comic-con next week.   You can find me at the Flight booth #2235 sandwiched between Marvel and Sideshow Collectables.  I'll have both Missile Mouse books for sale.  Stop on by and say hi if you're in the neighborhood.  Also here's my Missile Mouse banner with Calvin doing his best Missile Mouse pose.

Fan Art - Alyssa Daw

This fantastic MM was done by Alyssa Daw.  I had Alyssa in my character design class and she consistently amazed me with her work.  I made a deal with my students that if they draw me something I'll draw them something, so now I owe her.  She also took my advice and set up an art blog: The Art of Alyssa Daw. Go check it out.

Missile Mouse - Aquamonster

I did this commission a couple months ago and forgot to post it up here.  I enjoyed this one a lot.  First time I inked Missile Mouse with a brush.

As always, I'm accepting Missile Mouse commissions, so if you want one just click here.

Fan Art - Rick Evans

This beauty was done by the prolific Rick Evans aka Arkonbey.  I love this take on MM and also the great graphic treatment with the posters.

Fan Art - Michael Regina

Michael Regina sends in some Missile Mouse story boards he made.  Looks like he based the action off of the MM story I did for Flight Explorer. Cool stuff!

He also makes a comic called Kevin and the Light of Destiny that can be found at www.kevincomic.com

Fan Art - Ryan Metcalf

Ryan was a student of mine this semester and did some great work...when he was there.  He works for Carbine Studios now and I'm really happy for him.  Here's a link to his blog: Murtcurf check it out, there's some great stuff.

Fan Art - Anthony Wu

I'm going to start posting Missile Mouse fan art on the blog here. There's a lot of pieces I've seen over the last few years that are really great and I'd hate for them to not get the proper showcase they deserve.

To kick it off Here's some galacticious work by Anthony Wu.  Anthony helped me out on both books with some of the color chores. So big thanks to him for that.

These first two are his conception of what the artwork for a Missile Mouse cartoon might look like:

 And here's a sweet poster design of MM fighting the Blazing Bat.

Awesome work!

If you have a sweet piece of MM fan art send it with a link to your website/blog to jake ( at ) agent44.com and I will post it up.

Blazing Bat

Not long after I came up with Missile Mouse in 1992 (see all about that here) I came up with his nemesis: Blazing Bat. He's a fixture in MM mythology and a key player in Missile Mouse: Rescue on Tankium3. Below is the first drawing of MM fighting BB.

The years passed and I kept drawing Missile Mouse, but Blazing Bat got shelved. In the early 2000's my interest in the Missile Mouse character intensified and I thought I'd take another stab at the bat:

And now present day. I knew I wanted to bring Blazing Bat back to the Missile Mouse graphic novel series so that meant updating the design.

And here's the final design.

And the Blazing Bat in action:

Robot 44

I have some more visual development stuff for Missile Mouse: Rescue on Tankium3
. One of the main characters in this book is the Galactic Security Bot Robot 44. He's a loyal partner to Missile Mouse and proves to be just as tenacious as the rodent himself.

I began sketching out designs for him on my story writing pages. At this early stage I new I wanted a big black dome for the head because I thought it looked cool.

The idea developed further as I played around with proportions and little details like the joints. My editor felt like this design looked more like a guy in a spacesuit than it did a robot and you know what he was dead right. Plus he said there's no way for anyone to relate to this character if you can't see any sort of face. Right again. Sometimes I get too hung up on a design and I forget the practicality of it.

So I went back into the design trying to go for a more clunky robot look, and began working out an appealing robot face.

Didn't like the above sketches all that much, but these guys below started to get close to something I liked.

As it came closer and closer to actual production time on the book I had to go with something, but I didn't think this guy was quite there yet. Then it dawned on me to stick the dome head on the new body design and give him a glowing digital face projection, not unlike Eve from Wall-E.

Here's the data sheet and cutaway I did for the World of Missile Mouse section in the back of the book:

And finally, here's Robot 44 in action:

The Tankians

In Missile Mouse: Rescue On Tankium3 there's a race of amphibian men who have become enslaved and it's up to Missile Mouse to rescue them. The tankians went through a couple design passes before I settled on something. In this first page I initially thought of my main character, Lasukus, as being a little boy:

But the story changed and I knew he needed to be older. Plus I knew I needed to draw A LOT of these guys in the end of the book, so the design couldn't have too much line mileage. Here's the direction it went next:

And here's the final design on an information page I made for the Tankian race for the "Guide to the Missile Mouse Universe" I have at the end of the book:

And lastly, the guys in action. They're actually good guys, but they've all been outfitted with mind control devices that forces them to be agents for the evil King Bognarsh (more on him later):