World Penguin Day!

The man on the radio has just announced it's World Penguin Day so.....

The story of Fluff and Billy Part 4 - Penguin drawings

Apologies for my blogging silence of late - I am working hard on artwork that I can't show you at the moment. However, I realised that I could continue with The Story of Fluff and Billy - so here's part 4!

Having decided that my story would feature penguins, I felt that I needed to draw real penguins to help me develop their characters. I already had a few drawings from London Zoo that I'd done for a previous project but I now spent time at Whipsnade Zoo drawing and observing the penguins there. At the time they had Humboldt, Rockhopper and Gentoo penguins and it was so interesting to watch their behaviour and movements ( and to also hear what the zoo visitors said to them and about them)!

I also made a trip to the Zoology Museum in Cambridge. This allowed me to do some more detailed studies like the bigger drawing in the middle.

When I'd gathered all this reference I could start working on my characters.

See Part 3 here.

And I almost forgot to say....Fluff and Billy will be on CBeebies!

Very exciting news.....Fluff and Billy is being read on CBeebies at lunchtime on Wednesday 28th December. Apparently it will be around 12.53pm which I think will be after an episode of Pingu! My publisher says the schedule is subject to change but fingers crossed the penguin pair will be making their tv debut very soon!

The story of Fluff and Billy Part 3 - Dummy Books

After I'd finished a storyboard I was happy with, the next step was to make a small dummy book. I would really recommend doing this as it is so helpful to see how the pace of your story works and to check that the scale of your characters is varied through the book. As you can see from the covers above I had also started to play around with techniques to use for the penguins but I will talk about that in a later post.

As you can see from these phone pics (please excuse the blurriness), I make my dummies as a concertina. I went to see the marvellous Mini Grey give a talk about her picture books while I was a student on the MA course, and this was a method she shared. It makes it very easy to cut out any pages you're not happy with and replace them with new ideas without having to make a new dummy.

I showed my first dummy book to Pam Smy, a wonderful tutor on the MA course and she suggested making more of Fluff and Billy falling out and the ensuing silence. We then worked out a way of changing the pagination so that there would be an extra page with no text at all, emphasising the break in their friendship. I then changed the dummy book accordingly, and this is how the story stayed until it was published 3 years later!

See also: The story of Fluff and Billy Part 1 - Where the idea came from

The story of Fluff and Billy Part 2 - Developing the idea

The story of Fluff and Billy Part 2 - Developing the idea

I now had an idea for a story where one character copies everything the other character does. I decided that to make the story more interesting, the two friends should fall out at some stage before making up again at the end.

I then had to think about:

What or who would the two characters be?

What actions would they be doing/copying?

How would they fall out?

How would they make up?

As my previous projects on the MA had involved child characters, I decided to make these animals of some kind. I thought about two bears or a bird and a bear but decided that the characters needed to be a similar scale so they could interact easily. I used to work as a Christmas card designer before starting the MA, so maybe the idea of penguins was a leftover from those days - my top 4 Christmas characters were always: 1. Santa: 2. reindeer: 3. snowman and 4. penguins! (If I remember I'll post some of my old designs closer to Christmas)! I thought the contrast of black and white penguins on water and snow would work well so I made my decision......penguins!

I then started working on very rough story boards - drawing thumbnail ideas of what the two penguins would get up to.

As you can see, these were very basic! I wanted their actions to fit into their environment so things like sliding, swimming and splashing seemed to be the way to go.

I originally called the penguins Scruff and Billy - Scruff was big and scruffy and I just liked the name Billy for a little penguin! But when I was drawing Scruff, he looked more fluffy than scruffy, hence the name change!

Initially, I thought the pair could fall out by getting carried away when spinning each other around. One of them would take a tumble and get in a mood. However, I thought it might be better if the copier deviates from the pattern at some point and so when Fluff rolls a snowball, Billy throws a snowball.....straight at Fluff!

The making up started off as Fluff pulling a funny face to make Billy laugh but soon switched to a spot of tummy tickling!

Next: Part 3 - making a dummy book

The story of Fluff and Billy Part 1 - Where the idea came from

I had a launch night for Fluff and Billy at Heffers Children's Bookshop in Cambridge last night. I shared it with the lovely Marion Lindsay and Elizabeth Baguley who were launching their book Ready, Steady Ghost! Thanks to everyone who attended and to Michelle and the staff at Heffers for organising everything.

In the run-up to the event I had a few emails from my friend's mum who wanted me to talk a bit about the process of making the book - I found the idea a bit scary but I'm so glad she applied the pressure! I prepared a short sequence of images which explained the progress of Fluff and Billy over the many months it took to complete. It seemed to go down well so I've decided to share it on my blog!

Part 1: Where the idea came from

Back in 2008 I was in the middle of studying for my MA in Children's Book Illustration at Cambridge School of Art. I was working on my diploma project (which became the book 'Not Me!') and needed to practice drawing children. I was lucky enough to get permission to go into the university's nursery to draw and observe the children there - it was an amazing experience to see how a big group of kids interact, and the staff made me feel so welcome. As well as sketching, I made little notes in my sketchbook about the things the children said to each other.

One conversation between two children went as follows:

"I'm making a beeping noise."

"I'm making a beeping noise."

"I'm going to stop beeping."

"I'm going to stop beeping."

"I'm going to sit over here."

"I'm going to sit over here."

The way one girl was copying everything her friend did got me thinking..... and that was the very start of Fluff and Billy!

Next: Part 2 - Developing the story

Illustration Friday: Influence!

As you may have noticed, I've not participated in Illustration Friday for a while. Things have been quite hectic (with lots of work in the pipeline and a studio move) but apologies for being so inconsistent. My next book is called Fluff and Billy do everything together and will be published by Egmont on October 3rd in the UK. It is going to be published by Sterling Books in the US. It features a little penguin called Billy who is under the influence of his bigger penguin friend called Fluff! I'll try and organise a giveaway closer to the publication date to celebrate their venturing out into the big wide world!