One of the best parts about illustrating this book was the range of spreads this rover's journey allowed me to portray. 

Some pages required a lot of detail and intricacies, whilst others had to convey such a large scale, it was best to draw very little at all.

From the gorgeous Californian hills surrounding the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, to high tech launch control rooms, to landscapes on another planet all together, it really was an incredible story to try and put to paper, with the best part being - it was all true. 

The feats this mission has achieved thanks to the incredible engineers behind it, captured my imagination and countless others around the world. She really is a very special rover indeed. 

My Photoshop canvas

Need to practice at staying inside the lines.

Cali

Crowd

Working on a big spread and getting the crowd looking right is proving the trickiest part. Lots of fun removing parts of a drawing and framing them on their own though.

Roll up

Never did get round to posting this, a fun exercise.

JPL

Hide some layers...

And voila, negative space

Small update for a small mouse

Part of a much larger picture which I'll post if I ever finish it!

End of April update

Had a fantastic visit to the London Book Fair earlier this month. I didn't really know what to expect beforehand, and at first I thought perhaps it was entirely business focused, and me wondering around with 'illustrator' on my name tag was entirely redundant, but all those worries were unfounded. I listened to an inspiring talk by Anthony Browne, whose surreal illustrations always fascinated me growing up, no other children's book looks quite like his. 

I also received some invaluable feedback on my work and portfolio, and since then it has been a case of attempting to plug the holes my portfolio's had.   

With that in mind, here are a bunch of images which are me attempting new things with my illustration, and also look totally random next to each other.

A giraffe, yesterday.

A Closer look

Here's a look at what I've been tinkering away on. 

I was greatly inspired by the journey the Mars rover took, on Earth and in space, and I felt there was a great opportunity to teach younger readers about the amazing things happening in space exploration. 

The story is told by Curiosity itself, much like the rover's official Twitter page tweets in the first person. Seeing the first person narrative created on the Twitter page was one of the places I drew my inspiration from.

I was also inspired by Pixar's film Wall-E, which perhaps was itself partly inspired by previous real life rovers. 

My goal was to create great big spreads which would capture children's imaginations, whilst also teaching them about the amazing story behind Curiosity's mission.

Spot the odd one out.

Hint: it's the unpublished one! Hopefully it doesn't look too out of place.

Work in progress shot

Snapshot of a piece which is taking me a looooong time. Sketching a crowd scene, using repeating figures to build up an idea of how I want the final, all individual crowd to look like.

Here's a couple of landscapes from my ongoing project, involving rockets and buildings and such things. The plan for this story book is to have it printed as large as possible, much like my final major project book. And like that book, this story involves a long journey, and I like the idea of having a huge double page spread to read across, making the expanse of the journey seem as big as possible,

Planet Sketching

Various planets from the book I'm pushing forward with. 

More updates to come as I ramp up production on this lil project of mine.

Ho ho ho

Our Etsy shop sure is looking a little fuller these days, what with my cards for this year now up, plus the hand made decorations Charlie has been working away on busily. See for yourself at our ridiculously Chrtistmassy looking shop.

A is for....

UK film mag Little White Lies has had another creative brief running, this time to do with Nicholas Winding Refns' new film Only God Forgives. As if the prizes didn't make the competition alluring enough, Refn himself is actually judging the competition entrees, so I thought I best get involved! I started on the poster 5 days ago, but only had precious little time each evening from 6 til 10ish to work on it, so it was definitely an exercise in working to a deadline. Without having seen the film (out today) it's hard to know how well I've captured the film (if at all) and there were a hundred different layers and colours I continue to tweak and mess about with to slightly change the look of the poster, but this is it as of the competition deadline today. That and the alternate version.

The idea and design basically came from noticing Ryan Goslings simple wardrobe throughout most of the films trailer. Much of the time there (and in Drive) he wears a well fitting plain t shirt. I figured if he was a superhero, that would be his iconic super hero costume. With the t shirt switching between black and white, immediately I thought of the negative space it could create, as the more colourful neon lights the film is basked in surrounds him.

I was inspired by the new Little White Lies issue with a Man of Steel cover to do a simple portrait of Henry Cavill as big blue. LWL covers always feature great covers, with the brief simply being the chosen films stars face on the cover. 

This is where my idea for a simple portrait came from. Click for full size.