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My focus is on children's books and for my final project I did a book about a little
bird called Bradley who's glow in the dark. My name's Lorna Scobie, I do Illustration
and Animation at Kingston University. I came up with the idea on a holiday to Bruges
when I was just talking to my dad about story ideas.
(Little girl: At the edge of a city in the... )
All the way through the book the other birds in the tree don't discover who's there and
then there's a darker threat that emerges and the child can take an active role in discovering
the bird on each page because he's actually glow in the dark for real. So you can put
the book under the covers and then see that he is glow in the dark.
It was always going to be set in a tree because I really liked the image of the tree. I was
interested in the idea of exclusion and children like not being involved in other children's
games and that's why I wanted to have a single bird down at the bottom.
(Lorna: Can you find him? Yeah! That's him! But the other birds can't see him.)
I really like the idea of children being involved within the story. So it was really important
to me that it wasn't just a passive experience of reading the book. I wanted them to pick
it up, to turn the pages themselves and actually actively look for Bradley on each page because
he's quite hard to find. Interactivity is something that I'm really interested in so
I've also developed this book to be an App as well for the iPad, which won the Macmillan
Digital Prize 2012 this year. The Macmillan Prize is a really big award;
it's what everyone who does children's books, kind of wants to achieve I think at student
level. I chose to screen print purely because of
the technicality of it, because I wanted to add the birds with mono print on top, screen
printing meant that I could mass-produce the images, so I could make lots of mistakes before
I got to the final image. I knew I wanted to do a children's book. And
then I also went into schools and spoke to children, looked at the different ages as
well. Animals were something that kept cropping up; that kids like reading books about animals.
(little girl: Until the end of the light... Little boy: There he is.
Lorna: Where is he in this picture? Little boy: There! )
The older children kind of understood that he was different and that's why the other
birds weren't talking to him and that was really interesting, just seeing the jump in
the understanding between a five year old and a seven year old.
The response was really good from children, they really liked the fact it was glow in
the dark and they were all coming up to the front and looking with their hands, looking
at little Bradley. This was the first one I've tried to rhyme
as well and that was a challenge but I think it's worked out ok.
I think Kingston's really made me focus on what I want to do because when I came here
I had no idea. I knew I was interested in drawing and maybe animation but then throughout
the three years I just carried on being encouraged to focus in certain areas and that's when
I discovered digital children's books and this whole new area of publishing.
We get a lot of tutor time and I think that's really benefitted the whole three years, just
the fact that I know I can talk to my tutors about any problems I've got. All our tutors
work in the industry, so you feel like all the information you're getting is current.
Also I think the tutors have really helped by setting up Industry talks, so we've had
visits to studios and visits to Publishers. For me, the biggest support and help has come
from the print rooms, there's really good print facilities here and the technicians
know everything about print. And so you can just go up there and really kind of experiment.
I chose Kingston because I came here on an Open Day and I saw how much tutor time there
was and saw that there were big studios and for me it was only ever going to be Kingston,
I didn't apply anywhere else, I only wanted to come here, which is good because I got
on. And then Illustration advice: don't try and
be like anyone else, just concentrate on having really good ideas, really good concepts and
then the illustration I think will come out of that.
I think my next step is to head to all the Publishers, show them my book, show them the
way I work. I'm taking my portfolio around studios at the moment, which is good, getting
the feedback, seeing the areas that I can work on, and just building connections I think,
keeping in touch with everyone. I want to see Bradley in the shop soon, yeah!