Jim Henson's Designs and Doodles: A Muppet Sketchbook by Alison Inches

Jim Henson's Designs and Doodles: A Muppet Sketchbook Reviews

• 
  Shek

  I am not such a huge fan of the muppets. I mean, they're fine, but I'm fucking thirty. Even if I were a huge fan, this book would probably just rate an "ok." It's here because there's a story that goes with it:
  
  I was driving through Mississippi on my way to Memphis. I thought, 'I am in Mississippi. This is, let's face it, the last time I am ever going to be in Mississippi, barring an extraordinary and unforeseen circumstance. I should really play nerd tourist as long as I'm here.'
  
  So I went to 'the crossroads,' where deals were made with the devil. It was fine; the museum was closed. This can pretty much sum up most trips I bother to take anywhere. "Grand Canyon? The museum was closed, so I peed at the gas station."
  
  After 'the crossroads,' the only thing left in Mississippi that I wanted to do was to see the Jim Henson museum. Why would a person who is not crazy about the muppets want to do this? Well, it's like this: Muppets...eh. Jim Henson...ooh! Creative guy, came up on DC television, made insane coffee commercials. Shut up. You'd go.
  
  The Jim Henson museum is in Leland, where he spent a good chunk of his early childhood. Leland is a flyshit. The Jim Henson museum and the Leland Chamber of Commerce share a single three-room building just inside the town line, and by the look of the place it's about 95 percent Chamber of Commerce.
  
  I parked the car on the grass. Yes, the Leland Chamber of Commerce has no parking lot, and the street it's on isn't wide enough to accommodate both a) a car in motion and b) a car at rest. I walked up and tried the door, which of course was locked. "The museum was closed."
  
  But when I cupped my hands and looked through the glass, I saw a nervous and surprised and delighted old lady jumping up from a desk to come unlock the door. The museum was not closed! Shame I did not have to pee.
  
  Whereas the place was all Chamber of Commerce from the street, inside it was clearly the Jim Henson Show. The first thing you see is a Kermit the Frog terrarium, wherein Mr. the Frog is settin' on a log strummin' a banjo. The Lady asks if I would like a tour. I say yes.
  
  Here is the tour: arranged on the walls of the room are the artifacts of everything Jim Henson accomplished while he was a resident of Mississippi. In other words, until he was about fourteen. In other words, a Goddamn load of nothing. We're talking 5th grade report cards. You've got to hand it to Leland, though; every boring piece of who-gives-a-shit was lovingly framed and handsomely displayed next to an index card redundantly explaining what you were looking at.
  
  I looked to the little old lady. Surely, I thought, this lady must have some neat stories to tell about Henson. There are like 900 people in town. She was probably related to Jim Henson, or was at least his kindergarten teacher or something.
  
  But here's what she did: she peered at the card and read it to me. This lady didn't know Jim Henson. For all I knew, this was the first time she'd ever heard of Jim Henson in her life. So there I was, looking at a report card, reading a little sign telling me that I was looking at a report card, and having the same sign read to me by somebody's grandma. That's pretty much how the whole tour went. Thank God it was a small room.
  
  After the Wall of Obvious, we proceeded to a smaller room in which various pieces of Muppet merchandise were arrayed in glass display cases. There were no index cards to help, so the lady took a guess. "These were other things owned by Jim Henson." Uh huh. After that was the gift shop. I bought this book.
  
  On the way out, I saw a blank tv screen in front of some chairs, and the lady got nervous. "Do you want to watch a movie about Jim Henson?" I was asked. I nodded. She then gestured helplessly at the VCR. She'd clearly been hoping I'd say 'no.' It was at this point that she sheepishly explained that she was just filling in that day for the usual person.
  
  The end!
• 
  Sue

  It pains me to give anything about Jim Henson even as few as 3 stars. While it is wonderful to look at these sketches, there are some real issues with this book. There are outright errors. Perhaps they are things I only noticed because I had just finished Jim Henson: The Biography or perhaps because I am just a huge fan, but they bothered me nonetheless. Also, there are some real formatting and layout issues. Several times, the last line of main text on a page will end with a hyphenated word, and will not pick up until several pages later, after illustrations, captions, and smaller blocks of text. This makes it very difficult to read. And finally, in many cases, the illustrations are laid out in the wrong order, and images being discussed in the text are either several pages before or after. In the end, this book was wonderful to look at and frustrating to read.
• 
  H. Givens

  Some neat drawings, but it doesn't offer much more than that. The text is written at an oddly low grade level, so it felt a little condescending -- what child is going to be reading this instead of a book about the finished Muppets? -- and there's no new information for people who want more than the usual, who are presumably the people who will be reading this book. There are few or no images of the finished characters, or work at several stages of development, so you don't really get insight into the process.
  
  There might be a place for this in a puppeteer or Henson enthusiast's library, or in a research project if you're willing to do a lot of your own legwork. Otherwise I recommend Imagination Illustrated: The Jim Henson Journal over this one.
• 
  Charlene

  Informative, yet not much information.
  
  I like the idea of compiling Jim Henson's unseen artwork into a book, but I personally think there was more that could've been done with this. For example; a full-fledged artbook featuring all or most of his work, and not just limited to WIPS and colorsketches, but even photographs of his most earliest Muppet creations. This is me speaking as a professional illustrator, and I think there's more that could've been shown.
  
  However, it was fun to read about his creative process and how he approached certain ideas.
• 
  Lauren

  Not much new information if you’ve read the biography, but the drawings are awesome. This was a curated art show and they really got the best quality sketches from the archive. A great gift for a kid who loves to draw or any big fan of the Muppets.
• 
  Anna

  I liked the design of this book but the content was definitely more of a boiled down biography than the in-depth sketchbook run-through I'd hoped it would be. The drawings are interesting and the layout is nice, and sure, context is always great, but I feel like this book couldn't figure out how chronological and detailed it wanted to be, and it seemed to veer back and forth in time while also describing things that seemed obvious when looking at the drawings and, in my opinion, over-analyzing on the meaning behind a lot of the sketches.
• 
  Elise

  I love being able to see some of Jim's sketches. The writing and stories were more of Muppet History 101.
• 
  Scott Williams

  The artwork here is great fun, of course, but the layout of the book is not great.
• 
  Ceste Stanly

  My 4th bk about Jim Henson & the muppets. This was the 2nd 1 to show his sketches. Love seeing his sketches & storyboards. The ideas literally jump out
• 
  Becca Jones

  I really enjoyed the sketches collected here. I think one or two pictures of finished muppets or sketches wouldn’t have diluted the idea so much and could have given more of an idea of the full process.
• 
  Susan Bazzett-Griffith

  Once in awhile, very rarely, but once in awhile, I need to read a good coffee table book. The last one I really loved was The Works! from the mid-1990s, about the Muppets, and it remains one of the only of these types of books that has survived the many book purges and donations over the last couple of decades of my life. A few years after that book came out, this unique and beautiful hardcover was published, and for a Henson fan, it is a must read. The biographical information on Henson is great, if not anything new, and the great exposition about some of my very favorite early Muppet works (Hey Cinderella!, Emmet Otter's Jug Band Christmas) was trivia heroin to this Henson Junkie. The best part of this book, however, are the pictures. The book is a little treasure trove of the earliest sketches of many of Henson's famous characters- Kermit, Gonzo, Sweetums, Big Bird, Ernie and Bert-- but also has a ton of lesser known Muppets as well, PLUS tons of sketches and proposals for characters and stories and shows that were never produced, so literally some "new" Muppets that were never actually carved, just drawn. I loved it. A must-have for Henson enthusiasts.
• 
  Mary

  As someone who owns too many Jim Henson/Muppet books, I'm glad I have this one in my collection. It'a a great visual guide to the artistic development of Jim's concepts, focusing on all kinds of ideas - not just the "traditional" Muppets. I'm pretty sure there a few inaccuracies here and there, but since I really just wanted the illustrations and process, I still enjoyed it very much!
• 
  Rachel

  Not at all what I expected. I was looking forward to seeing sketches of all his original characters. I'd have liked to see the stages of his thought process with an image of his final piece.
  
  The text felt disjointed to me. Perhaps the author was a novice. It felt as if anyone, even a high school student could have written it.
  
  In conclusion, this book was a total miss.
• 
  Rusty

  A wonderful look at the creative process behind Jim Henson's characters. Many character designs and art from Jim's early career at WRC in Washington, DC.
  
  For those that may only know Jim through The Muppets, this is a great way to see how his artistic focus formed early in his life.
• 
  sam kim

  this book is incredible. what makes it more awesome is that my wonderful found it for me.
• 
  April

  Any fan of Jim Henson will appreciate this book. Great behind the scenes stuff.
• 
  Sarah

  totally learn how all muppets were created!! see bunches of jim hensons early work, made out of total simple shapes and materials. its delightful!
• 
  cubbie

  the doodles are of course amazing, the spirit of the work is good, but the writing is very bland and seems to miss the point sometimes.
• 
  Carrie

  Neat to see the sketches and doodles that brought the Muppets from the page to film.
• 
  Sarah

  a wonderful book to just thumb through and daydream with.
• 
  Tim Decker

  A fun insight to his creative approach
• 
  Jaymin Ewens

  This was a great look into Jim Henson's work and his development of The Muppets. I thoroughly enjoyed seeing his designs and where his ideas began.
• 
  Bill

  Early sketchbook from Jim Henson, giving early appearances of some of the loved muppets.
• 
  Scott

  Good book but I have to agree with others that if you have read the Biography, nothing new here but the drawings. I do really like the drawings as well!!
• 
  Lafcadio

  Like nothing and everything I imagined or expected.