One thing that has been rather a lot of fun while working my way through a myriad boxes has been unearthing old sketchbooks, none more so than the one whose pages I've scanned below. This particular sketchbook is only a teeny A6 affair, something one can safely stash in the jeans' back pocket. Leafing through it I discovered all the early design work from a number of my projects, published or otherwise. Below is the first design I did for Bobby from DINOSAURS AFTER DARK. Beside him you'll probably recognise my first (and possibly only) colour design of CURIOUS COW.
The pages here are particularly pertinent to current work schedule, as this was the sketchbook I conceived FRANKENSTEIN'S CAT in on the train journey from Warrington to London years ago. The two pahes below show the very first Cat drawing as doodled on a bumpety-bump Virgin rail carriage, all wobbly-like and pretty much as he appears on the cover of the book. And the pages that follow show the first couple of paragraphs as I toyed with the idea on the journey, again, pretty much verbatim as they appear in the book. Got off the train and showed it to the editor @ Hodder Headline and it was commissioned off the back of it.
Below are the first designs from the MY DADDY picture book, featuring the three girls from the story. Further down the line as I looked to develop this as an animated film I revisited the look of the characters and design approach, but again these are how they appeared in the original book.
Lastly here's CHEEKY MONKEY in his earliest guise. Still cheeky but slightly different shape to his face. The accompanying words are from POCKET DOG, which I developed with Ian Carney.
So that's what I've been up to. Reminiscing. There are loads of other sketchbooks that I'll pull artwork from too, although time is at a premium at the moment with production work on the CAT taking priority.Bada Bling!
