Preface:
For the 2002 holiday season, The D-90 Source contracted Michele to create a seasonal cartoon in order to have holiday cards printed and sent out to vendors that had extended specials on the site through out the year as a little special "thank you". This year, Michele was again contracted for a new creation for the site and he offered to open his sketch book and walk us through his processes of how he comes up with one of his works, in this case, the 2003 holiday cartoon.

Ok as a start I usually stare at the sketchbook waiting for a good vision...
...
...
...
3 days later nothing comes in my mind still so I usually close the sketchbook and throw it away ...

But there comes the good fairy of the great ideas with a brand new one for me! Ok, thanks! Let's go! First I do a really rough sketch of what appeared in my mind

Somebody could ask now if I usually have nightmares at night or if I use drugs...none!

I know that, being the Xmas Card, Santa is needed. I already know that we created a cool duo last year starring a cute reindeer in the 'toon (last years card), so I want it this time too. This year it's time for some dwarfs to have a bit of action too so let's put some at work doing something.

Let's suppose midnight is drawing nearer, and Santa is ready to leave. So all he got to do is to get down in the box, give his Defender the usual check before take off. As Santa lives in the real North, snow reigns supreme, so it's wise move to put good rubbers under the Landy before getting out there. Big, huge and heavy rubbers... So, what are dwarfs for? I just imagined a couple of them trying to handle a tire change and GOTCHA! There's the gag!

I take my blue pen (the previous sketch is in black but it's pen too) and do a "spot on" the dwarfs with wheel.

If you look close at the final version, the dwarfs are a bit changed, because I wasn't satisfied of their faces and I wanted to add another little gag inside the main one...

At last I do a cleaned up version of the first sketch, trying to go as close as possible to the final result

Here you can see the yellow Post-It on the left corner. You can't use eraser while drawing with pen on thin sheets, but minor scratches corrected with liquid white, and if you go wrong with a whole character you already ruined the artwork (who cares of the sketches you could say! ME!!!!I do!). So I use Post-Its and draw on again. (This trick I learnt from Bruce "Supreme Master" Timm, creator of Batman, the new series)

When all is ready, I put all the (3 or more) different sheets on my light-table and I draw all the bits together again to create the complete scene. Final task is to ink it without going wrong, which does happen :(

On another sheet of paper I have sketched all the decorations to create a frame. Another sheet to add on...

The final result (with a bit of lettering when necessary) is what you can see here on The D-90 Source.

Hope you enjoyed,
Best wishes,
M