Learning to Read German...

The postman delivered another parcel this week. It's the German co-edition of Jungle Grumble:

It's always fun to get copies of foreign co-editions of my picture books. I especially enjoy it when I get German ones, as I did German A level at school, many, many moons ago. 

It got very rusty of course so, in the days when I used to torture myself at the gym, I used to work my way, painfully slowly, through German translations of trashy novels, while I was puffing away on the exercise bike - much easier vocabulary than more worthy literature. People used to laugh at me, because I had to hold the book in one hand and a pocket dictionary in the other!

After that, I decided to re-do a German GCSE, just for fun, as an evening class, because I was OK reading off the page, but absolutely rubbish at any kind of conversation - which is after all, the point of a language. I really enjoyed myself and was a real swot. A little group of us used to get together in-between classes and test each other. I got an A* and was very pleased with myself.

Anyway, enough of this rambling and back to Jungle Grumble. The fact that I can read the text (more or less) is interesting, because things are not always direct translations. The title for instance is no longer Jungle Grumble but 'The Hippo Wishes He was a Bird'.

It's great news that the 2014 German edition of 5000 copies has already sold out: the copy my publisher has just sent me is from a 2015 reprint - they have done another 4000. Hurrah! 

I also just found out that Jungle Grumble has now got a Chinese co-edition. I had Chinese editions of Stinky! and Lark in the Ark too. I love the ones with different alphabetic styles. I've had lots of Korean ones and Big Bad Wolf is Good was published in Arabic, which is great for taking into schools, because it runs in the opposite direction to a UK book, something I didn't know until I got my copy.

Publication Day: Jungle Grumble is Here!!

My new book, Jungle Grumble is in the shops! Yahooooooooooooo!!!

Actually, its publication date came while I was still in Barcelona but, as you can imagine, I had a few other things going on at that point, so have only just found time to tell you the good news. 

Jungle Grumble is really funny and very unusual, so please do all rush out and buy it, right away! The paperback is £6.99. If anyone would like a signed copy with a little drawing and a dedication inside, just drop me an email and we'll sort it out on PayPal, then I'll pop one off to you. Perfect Christmas presents to put away perhaps?

Jungle Grumble is another brilliant text from my good friend Julia Jarman, who is of course also author of the classics, Class Two at the Zoo and Class Three all at Sea, as well as my top book for reading in schools at the moment, Bears on the Stairs. Julia also wrote one of my old favourites, sadly now out of print, Kangaroo's Cancan Cafe,  so you can see, we have had a lot of fun together over the years. Thanks Julia!

Thank you as well to all the team at Piccadilly Press who have worked with Julia and I on the book. People outside the business don't always realise what a team job picture books are and how important people like the editor, art director and designer are, not to mention all the folks we rarely get to meet, from sales and publicity etc.

If you would like to follow the process of how I created the illustrations, use this blog's Jungle Grumble label and scroll back to the beginning, for my very first sketched thoughts. There are also several short films on my YouTube channel, explaining how I created the animal characters in Jungle Grumble:

...and how I designed the book's roughs (it takes about a month to work out all the drawings and layouts in pencil, before any colouring can begin):

There is also another film on the way, talking you through the creation of a piece of pastel artwork - the cover of Jungle Grumble - just like the film I did when I was illustrating Swap!:

The footage for new film is all shot, but it always takes quite a time to edit the films and this is the most complicated one we have attempted. It got put on the back-burner while other things have been happening, but now the book is available, it's definitely time to get it out and get it sorted, so watch this space!

Jungle Grumble - the Paperback!

The day before I left for Brazil, the postman bought me another of those fun packages. I have already had an advance copy of my next book Jungle Grumble, so I have seen it, but this new copy is the paperback.

It's due out in October, although I am not sure which end. Not long though now!

Jungle Grumble - Almost Here!!!

Sorry I've been off-air for a while. I am so busy trying to get my sketching book ready for presentation at the Frankfurt Book Fair, that I have not been able to stop and chat. But I had to tell you about what arrived in the post today... 

My advance copies of Jungle Grumble! It was a total surprise, as I wasn't particularly expecting them yet, since publication isn't until October. It's looking great. It's got a silk-finish cover, rather than full gloss, which I rather like.

I'll let you know when it's actually available to buy. Not long now! Right, back to work...

Jungle Grumble: How it's Going to Look

I managed to get all my Jungle Grumble finishing work done in time, so that's me finished until proofs come back from the printer. 

The publisher is now setting up the final designs. My designer at Piccadilly sent me low-res versions of how the spreads will look with text. Now she has my finished digital illustrations, she will be fine-tuning the designs and placing all the text into position, ready for proofing. This is how the first spread is going to look:

They have also created designs for the 'extras', like the back cover and the title page, using sections from the existing illustrations. This is the title page design:

It's all perfect timing, because of course I am out of the studio most days at the moment, visiting schools. Today I am actually in a school in Sheffield, so nice and close for a change, but sadly no chance for train sketching.

Illustrating a Picture Book: Finishing Touches

Last week, the scans of my Jungle Grumble illustrations came back from the repro-house. Things have been a bit fast and furious: I've had just a few days to get all the 'finishing work' done, then Dropbox the final digital artwork back to the publisher, ready for everything to be put together and sent off to the printer. Phew.

There were three 'finishing' jobs for me to do in Photoshop / Painter: 

1 - text overlays

Children's illustrators never draw text onto their actual artwork, because of translations. All text, even wording that is part of the actual picture, is added afterwards, digitally. Unfortunately, because of the pastel texture of my work, ordinary, typed text 'floats', so I make my own text overlays, using Painter, which look like they are drawn in black pastel. Luckily there wasn't much intrinsic text in Jungle Grumble, only one lion roar and the Swap Shop sign, though that does appear a few times: 

2 - legibility issues

To keep things as clear as possible, it's easiest when a story's main text falls over areas of sky. That wasn't always possible in Jungle Grumble: in several places I had to use trees or bushes as backgrounds for text. But it was tricky to be sure precisely where specific lines of text would need to sit and, because of my style, it was hard not to include undergrowth textures which might be visually distracting behind the words. Once my designer got the scans, she was able to layer the two together so we could spot any places where things were slightly too busy or too dark to be sure of maximum visibility. I then used Photoshop to make subtle changes. Spot the differences to the bush bottom right:

3 - vignettes

Not all my illustrations are full spreads with illustrated backgrounds. Some pages feature smaller vignettes: characters against a plain background. My biggest digital job is cutting vignette characters off my pink paper. It takes ages because of the pastel edge, especially where the pastel colour is close to the pink of the paper, like Lion's roar:

He looks so much better on green, don't you think? For anyone who wants to know how I do the cutting out, here's a detailed 'masterclass' (though my version of Photoshop is old, so many things may be slightly different on up-to-date editions).

Most illustrators don't do this digital stuff themselves, but I prefer to, as the pastels make it quite a bit more tricky than usual. It's possible that I'm being a bit of a control freak, as usual, but after all that time spent getting the drawings done, I like to be sure that these final alterations are exactly right.

How to Illustrate a Picture Book: Creating Different Animal Characters

Yes, John has been editing like a demon and we have now finished the 2nd of our two new films about creating a set of roughs. This one tells you how I designed some of the many animal characters for Jungle Grumble. If you are new to my blog, Jungle Grumble is the latest book I have been working on with author Julia Jarman. 

In this 2nd film, I show you how I begin with photographic reference and how I play around with facial features in particular, to turn each animal into a character more suitable for a picture book:

We shot the footage for this film back in September, at the same time as the one I published last week. I had just finished all the line-drawings and had submitted them to the publisher, so it seemed a good idea to talk about the process while everything was fresh in my memory. 

But both films got put on a back-burner for a while, because of school visits and festivals. Then suddenly I had my artwork deadline to meet. We finally got round to editing them a couple of weeks back, while I was still having to sit around, because of my bad foot. 

Anyway, I really hope you like our efforts. We have over 1000 views on the first film, which is great:

Please, please, please - if you enjoy the films, do share the links and tell your friends!

The next film to be uploaded to my YouTube channel will be another demonstration with pastels at my drawing board, showing you how I turn one of my roughs into a piece of finished artwork. Let's hope we get that one edited together a little more swiftly for you!

Jungle Animals Stampede Publishing House!!

Well okay, not quite literally, but the entire Jungle Grumble menagerie has been rounded up, tethered by John with masking tape and card, then popped in a package and posted off to Piccadilly Press: I made my deadline (cue applause...). 

It's an odd sensation, particularly with this book, which has taken quite a lot of graft, because of the complexity of the images. There is a sense of relief, a slight fear for the package's safe arrival, but also a vague feeling of disbelief that it's actually all done. 

Not that it is entirely done. Once all my artwork has been scanned, I will have the digital finishing work to do. All the vignettes need cutting out in Photoshop, like the piece above: the final piece I had to do (remember the altered end?). Also, because of the inevitable jungle undergrowth textures in the backgrounds of many of the illustrations, we need to get all the text in place and check for legibility issues. On my computer, I can slightly lighten background areas if necessary and tinker with any mark-making that interferes with the words.

The schedule is pretty fierce, as Piccadilly want it proofed in time for the Bologna Children's Book Fair at the end of March. I will get the digital scans by Feb 19th and have to get all the Photoshop work done by the 28th. Then it's all put together at the publishers, sent round to everyone for a final once-over, then off to proofing on March 14th.

I can't wait to see how it looks! 

Finishing the Artwork

This week, I have been finishing off the last stragglers of my Jungle Grumble artwork -  mainly the front cover. 

Sometimes publishers ask you to do the cover at the beginning, because they want to use it for early publicity, but I hate that: it's much better to leave it til last. As I work through the illustrations for a book, I get more and more comfortable with the characters and the colour palette. I sometimes have to go back and tinker with the first illustration I tackle, because I realise I've got better as I go along. 

The cover illustration is so important. You want it to be as strong as it can possibly be, so I was really pleased to be allowed to leave it until the very end this time.

The Jungle Grumble cover is based on a detail from one of the spreads and, like most cover illustrations, it's not too complicated: simple, bold images generally work best. Because of this, I knew it wouldn't take too long to complete, so I thought it would be another good opportunity for John to do some filming.

The last demonstration film we made of me creating a piece of my pastel artwork, when I was working on Swap!, proved very popular. I've had such lovely feedback and it's had over 16,500 views so far, so I was pretty sure you would like another one. Here's that demo film, in case you missed it first time round:

I think it's far more interesting to film me working on an actual book, rather than a random drawing, but it can be a bit stressful to be filmed while I am grappling with one of my illustrations. I can get grumpy at the best of times, when things aren't working right and, as I'm sure you can imagine, the last thing I need then is John at my shoulder with a camera! That's another reason why we left the filming of the Jungle Grumble artwork until the cover, when (hopefully...) I knew pretty much what I was doing. 

Even though the cover illustration was far simpler to pastel-up than any of the inside spreads, we still shot 1.5 hours of film. Poor John now has the task of whittling that down to something more appropriate, without losing too much of the practical information. We will probably edit the demonstration into two halves, which will double the film's length, so we don't have to scrap quite as much. I will of course let you know once it's ready (or you can subscribe to my YouTube channel to get automatic updates on new films).

My task now is to double-check all the Jungle Grumble artwork for continuity errors, and do any last-minute tinkering, before everything is mounted up and sent off.

New Film: How I Design My Picture Book Illustrations

Yes, at last John and I have got another film finished - hurrah! 

I thought it might be interesting to use the work I have been doing on Julia Jarman's story, Jungle Grumble, to talk people through how my picture book illustrations are created. 

This is the first of two films about creating a set of roughs (the next one will be out in a week or so). This first film talks you through how I get from a simple sheet of typed text, emailed from the publisher, to a set of finished designs. 

I show you how thumbnail drawings work as a great way of capturing first thoughts, then how those are enlarged and redrawn in various stages. I talk about using a layout template and how I work around the text and the central gutter. I don't like to draw at a computer, but it is still an invaluable tool and I explain in the film how I use it to move the drawings forward.

The films John and I have created over the last year have been made as a direct result of writing this blog. Telling my readers about what I do has been really useful for me, as it makes me analyse my process and consider precisely what it is I am doing at the various stages. When you've been doing something for so many years, it can be hard to explain it to other people, because so much of the process becomes second nature.

If there is any aspect of my work which you would like to know more about, do please let me know. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy the film. If you do, please leave me a comment. And it would be wonderful if you could help me by spreading the word on Twitter, Facebook etc, because every little helps!

Two Alternative Endings in One

Remember, there was some conversation about changes to the end of Jungle Grumble? We had a slight problem pleasing the German publisher, who is doing a co-edition. Julia came up with alternative possibilities, but they were all rejected. 

Above was the original rough for the final spread. In the end though, I created the final spread with just the lion asleep. No thought-bubble joke. The thinking is, we can have two different versions. This slightly boring end was what the German publisher wanted (along with altered text that, for our market, rather over-explains the moral). For the UK edition though, we can have our own text and add back the visual joke. 

Of course, we can't have a different piece of artwork for the final spread - that would be prohibitively expensive. But there is an answer - there is an extra, single page available, after spread 12. The plan is to add back the joke for the British version, as an extra piece of artwork, on this final page.

But my Art Director asked me to do a re-draw: she felt that Lion's fantasy multicoloured mane / stripy coat idea was not enough, that it would be better if Lion was made up from parts of the other animals instead, showing that he too has a secret desire to swap.

I tried out various possibilities, narrowed them down to these three and have sent them off:

There is something bothering me though: the actual 'thought-bubble' has been removed from around the fantasy lion. Without it, I worry that the reader will be confused. Now that the sleeping lion is no longer on the same page, there is nothing to suggest that this is a dream / daydream. It looks as though somehow he has actually swapped. Which doesn't make sense with the rest of the story. I have passed on these concerns. We'll see.

At the moment I am still working as best I can from an armchair, with my foot up, wedged under a bag of frozen peas, but next week I have the dressings off my foot and my stitches snipped. Come Monday afternoon, I will be able to put on a shoe (and have a shower!) for the first time in 2 weeks. I should be able to sit at my drawing desk too, at least for part of the day, so I can get on with the front cover artwork. 

Jungle Grumble: Designing a Front Cover

The rough I sketched out last week has been approved - hurrah! Piccadilly Press has been working in close conjunction with a German publisher, so it had to be approved by their team too. 

They sent me this idea, which I think works pretty well, so most of the work was done already. I love the flamboyant text, picking up colours from the animals:

The hippo has been taken from a section of my existing artwork, from spread no 8 - the mega-parade. If you look closely, you can see that the texture is very peculiar in places. That's because the designer has done a quick Photoshop job on it, to get rid of things they didn't want. You can see what's changed by looking at this detail from the original illustration:

I popped the monkey/giraffe character it next to Hippo, instead of the elephant, to add more colour, with his dappled neck and flamingo wings. He was the only other character with sufficient height to tuck neatly into the space next to the title. I've created a little more room for our names too. Here's my sketch:

I still can't get up into the studio, so the artwork will have to wait another week. It shouldn't be too problematic to do though, since it's pretty much just copying the existing characters. I'll keep you posted.

The Business with the Sign...

As you know, I am now laid up, so only able to work in a very limited way, but I can put a laptop on my knee, so thought this would be a good time to tell you about an interesting bit of jiggery-pokery, to do with the Jungle Grumble artwork, something I never got around to telling you earlier.

Those readers who are very observant indeed, might have noticed a visual anomaly. See if you can spot it before you read on...

No? Well, remember I was asked to do a couple of pieces of advance artwork, so my publisher had some colour for their Frankfurt presentation? One of these pieces was spread eight, the illustration with all the animals parading. There was a blue sign attached to one of the trees:

This came about because, when I was drawing the rough for spread five (below) - the point where Lion's swap-shop idea is first introduced - I decided we needed a 'Swap Shop' sign, because otherwise it was hard to make it visually obvious what people were looking at: 

Now, one of the reasons I get nervous when I am asked to start on artwork before all the roughs are confirmed, is because things change. Once my publisher had thought further about the rough above, they made some alterations. They had already asked me to use leaves rather than canvas, which was a definite improvement, but now they also pointed out that it would be nicer if the animals were running into the swap shop in the same direction the book was travelling. They flipped my drawing:

Trouble is, that put the Swap-Shop sign on the wrong side of the changing room, compared to the artwork I had already completed:

I couldn't move the sign to the correct position, as it would now be well out of shot, but it had to be in the picture, as it was for spread five that I introduced a sign in the first place. I couldn't keep the sign where it was though, as we would then have two signs: a ridiculous overkill. 

I thought about artistic license: maybe I could draw the tree with the sign on the correct side, but much nearer, so I could nudge it into frame... But I didn't have room for it in the foreground without blotting out half the animals. In any case, we had the issue that, in this illustration, we are looking in from a different angle, so we would be seeing the back of the sign. Big problem! 

Eventually, I had a brain-wave: I would remove the existing sign altogether and hang a new sign from one of the existing trees, above the action. This wouldn't blot out the animals and could work from both sides, because it could have wording on both front and back!  

Of course, I then had to go back and remove the blue sign from the original piece of artwork. Luckily, because I hadn't fixed it, I was able to rub out the pastel and patch it up, then rub out the area for the new sign and draw that in over the top: 

Can you spot any other changes, by the way? 

The palm tree fronds on the inside of the changing room were introduced after this original piece was done, so I popped those on at the same time, plus I also added some extra background trees to tie in with the spread below, where I wanted them for twilight atmosphere: 

Once I had the new sign idea sorted, I had to go back and rework all the other spreads where the sign appeared.  Mostly it just meant changes to roughs. Luckily, of all those which needed altering, only the twilight illustration above had gone to artwork stage. It wasn't too hard to correct:

Phew!

Celebrating a Beginning and an End

Well, of course, the 'beginning' we're celebrating is the start of the New Year. I hope you all had a lovely Christmas holiday and enjoyed your New Year's Eve festivities. I wish you all that you would wish for yourself in this coming year.

The 'end' that I'm celebrating is my finishing the final spread of Jungle Grumble. Hurrah! 

You remember I told you about the changes to my rough? Well, because we have lost the impact of the joke on this spread, I wanted to make sure we had a lot of visual impact. Since the actual content is very simple (for once!) I decided to use colour to make sure we had a visually striking note to end on.

The final illustration, of Lion dozing in the tree, follows straight after the one where the sun is going down over the waterhole:

Luckily, we've had a couple of cracking sunsets here in Sheffield recently, so I knew the effect I wanted to capture for my final image. There was a spectacular sun-down on the evening of our Sketch Pub-Crawl: we were on our way into the Sheffield Tap at the train station, when everyone stopped in their tracks and stared up at the sky, which appeared to be on fire. One of my fellow sketchers, Lynne McPeake, (who fortunately for me is also a photographer), caught this photo, which I used as inspiration for my illustration:

I laid down the basic colours and the sky texture first, which took one day. It was lovely to let rip with a bold, simple image, without too much fiddly detail. I was also having a lot of fun feeling my way, not knowing quite how it would finish up. I accentuated the gold a little more than in the photo, so I'd have a wider palette in play and kept the blue of the sky a little lighter, so the text placed over it would still be easily legible: 

At the end of the day, I gave the artwork a thorough spray with fixative. I knew this would darken everything, but I wanted to work over the top, to establish darker shadows, so at the same time I just re-brightened where I needed to. 

It took just over one more day until I was happy. This is how it looks finished:

The only thing I am not 100% sure about is the top left corner. I think I will go back and simplify it slightly, so it is more like the earlier version. Then it's done. Yippee! 

Actually, I can't totally celebrate yet, as the cover still has to be done. I'm taking a break for a couple of weeks though, as I have the operation on my foot on Monday morning, which is going to put me out of action for a while. This is the 2nd of three identical ops, so I know what I am up against and know from last time that there's no way I can sit at my drawing board for at least a fortnight. Still, now it's just the cover to go, I should be fine to get everything to the publisher in time for my end of Jan deadline.

Difficulties Agreeing an Ending

Last week, I finished the final piece of artwork I could for Jungle Grumble. This illustration comes quite early on in the story, where the animals first get into the changing room and begin to experiment. Lion has got fed up with hanging around waiting for them to emerge (it's the spread before this one): 

But there was still one spread outstanding, waiting for approval: the final spread of the book. My publisher, Piccadilly Press, has been negotiating the ending with a German publisher, who they signed up for a co-edition, as a result of the Frankfurt Book Fair. 

This was my original rough, illustrating Julia Jarman's initial ending (the idea is that, despite his wise words earlier, in his fantasy, Lion is wildly multicoloured):

The hold-up has occurred because the Germans are keen to have something less jokey and more moralistic. Julia has come up with various other endings, but nothing has proved acceptable. In the end, Piccadilly have agreed to keep the illustration element simple, which will allow two different endings to be created, using text changes alone.

This is the image we have now: just the lion in the tree (the text is the UK version, left over from the first idea above, the German text is far more along the lines of 'be thankful for what you have'):

To be honest, I am a little concerned that, by removing the fantasy joke, it could leave our version with a rather limp ending, but hopefully Julia can come up with something clever for the text, to make the UK edition sassy again. Julia is really good at this stuff, so I am casting misgivings to the back of my mind, remaining confident and getting on with the colouring up.

I have been desperate to get the go-ahead for this final spread as my artwork deadline is tight. It's because I am having another foot operation on Jan 6th, which means I will lose a minimum of 2 weeks working time, sitting with my foot in the air, packed in ice.

In the end I only had 2 days last week waiting around, without being able to work. To be honest, that was pretty handy at this time of year. So now, Christmas shopping all done, I am back down to it. I have around 2 weeks working time to do this spread 12 artwork, plus design and pastel the cover artwork. Then, after a final continuity check and general touch-up, all the artwork has to be packaged up and sent off to Piccadilly Press, for Feb 1st.